The story of Eric and Kipsy is a good example of the complexity managers face regularly

in their roles of integrating the individuals to the organization as they try coordinate
employee efforts to achieve the objectives of their organizations. It demonstrates how
management interventions with good intentions if not well thought of or not implemented
well can backfire to give negative unintended consequences leaving the situation worse
off than before. Above all, it illustrates the essence of good understanding of management
and organizational behavior for the effective manager.

Eric and Kipsy are employees at a national wholesaler of electrical equipment. Eric takes
on the position of product information manager in charge of four supervisors and a few
dozen female clerical employees. One of the clerical employees is Kipsy. Kipsy joined the
company with high optimism and enthusiasm. She had been told of the fast pace at which
the company was growing and had hoped the company would provide her advancement
if she showed initiative and performed well. She soon became frustrated as she realizes
those hopes could not be realized. Her frustrations are exacerbated with the rigid and
routine nature of her job which restricts her work/life balance. Kipsy and the other clerks
had been hopeful that being a youthful manager, Eric would improve the organization and
improve their working condition. They soon become disappointed when the new manager
tells them that implementation of their requested proposal required approval beyond the
manager’s authority. Kipsy finds relief in leading an informal group of the clerks whose
objective is to exploit loopholes in the organization controls, reduce their active working
hours and counter management initiatives. The job of clerical employees is to provide
field sales men with price, availability and delivery time information of the company’s
products.

Eric assumed the tough management role at the company straight from management
training and this makes him proud. His first impression on the first day was that work was
being done so well using the company technology that he would have nothing to do. He
however came to disillusionment when he realized the opposite realities on the ground.
He realizes several challenges needing his attention. He notes salesmen were often not
able to get product information quickly, information errors were excessive and the clerks
were often rude to the salesmen. To make matters worse, the company’s vice president
visits him within weeks of his employment to tell him of the dwindling sales of the company
due to the poor-quality information provided to the companies sales men.

The management and organizational behavior problems illustrated by the story are many.
There is high turnover, tardiness, alienation and detachment from work, one of the
employees Kipsy becomes an unproductive informal leader, there is strict adherence to
bureaucracy, informal groups with norms not in line with those of the formal organization
take center stage, there is boredom of employees, clerks are not being held accountable
for their mistakes, lack of employee involvement in decision making, delays in
salespersons getting through to the clerks for information, falling product sales, low level
of motivation and management is failing to motivate staff.

Careful analysis shows that most of the management and organizational behavior issues
visible at the national wholesaler are symptoms of major underlying management
problems. For example, tardiness can be explained by lack of interest in the job caused
by missing motivation. Employee perception of their job at the company is that is it not
interesting. It can also be said that in their view, the company is not meeting its social
contractual obligations in making the job interesting. This has driven the employees to
equally withdraw some of their social contract obligations including tardiness. According
to (Mullins, 2010), social contracts comprises the unwritten obligations expected from the
company by employees and also those expected by the company from its employees.

In general, the problems at the company can be linked to the following root causes. There
is a general lack of motivation system at the company and the organization structure is
rigid with strict adherence to written down procedure in bureaucracy.

The linkage of some symptoms to the motivational root cause has already been
introduced above. As an expansion, it is clear from the story that the lack of motivating
factor is making the employees to be less enthusiastic about their job. According to the
motivation theory by Abram Maslow, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, employees
have five levels of needs namely the physiological, safety, social, esteem and self-
actualization needs. The company has put much emphasis on the physiological needs by
giving the employees pay which is above the average in the area. However, the

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progressive needs in the hierarchy are not being attended to. There is no possibility of
growth which would give the clerks esteem and no opportunity for social interaction with
fellow employees due to the strict working schedule. The formation of an informal group
led by Kipsy can be said to be an attempt by the employees to meet some of the higher-
level needs of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. By leading the group, Kipsy tries to meet
the esteem need. Other group members

The Herzberg two factor theory is another aid to explaining the motivational problems at
the company. According to this theory, two sets of factors influencing employees at a
company are hygiene/maintenance factors and motivating factors. Hygiene factors are
those elements of the job which when absent will cause employee dissatisfaction and the
motivating factors are those which when present will motivate employees to give their
best superior performance (Robbins & Judge, 2013). At the company, some hygiene
factors have been provided. These include the cited reasonably good payment offered to
the clerks. However, motivating factors which include advancement, recognition,
responsibility and achievement are not provided at all at the company.

Employee productivity is a product of the employees’ ability and motivation (Daft, 2010).
All the employees at the company were certified as being able to do their job through the
vigorous employment testing and interviews. However, their productivity reduced due to
the lack of motivation. The reduced employee productivity resulted in increased
information errors, and delays in giving salesmen product information. The delayed
provision of information to the salesmen is what eventually led to the slowing down of
sales.

Analysis of the design of the jobs at the company are missing enrichment factors.
According to the Hackman and Oldham model of job enrichment, the job characteristic
model, an enriching job that provides intrinsic motivation should comprise the five
dimensions of task variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback
(Mullins, 2010). It can be said that the nature of the clerk’s work has direct task
significance to the salesmen in the field. However, most of the required dimensions are
missing in the clerks’ work. The mundane nature of the work at the company makes it
require no much different skills and talents (task variety). The work does also not provide

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freedom, independence and discretion in planning the work and determining how to
undertake it (autonomy). Job design at the company has not taken care of the intrinsic
motivation factors in job design. The emphasis was on the job content regarding the tasks
the employees had to do.

The other root cause of the problems at the company is that of structure. Organizational
structure is the system by which interactions in an organization are channeled (Mullins,
2010). From the story, it is evident that the company adopted a strict bureaucracy type of
structure which is characterized by strict adherence to written down rules and procedures.
For example, when the clerks approached the new manager to propose a new flexible
working pattern which the manager seems to have been comfortable with, the proposal
could not be implemented as the manager had to refer to the procedure of consulting the
“top” management. Bureaucracy has been shown to stifle innovation (Hughes, 2003). The
requested working pattern changes were innovative and provided mutual benefits to the
company and the clerks. When the manager failed to make a decision on the proposal,
he was perceived as incompetent and weak by the employees. This compromised his
influence on the employees.

The recommendation to resolve the problems at the company can be divided into short
term, medium and long term. They are interventions to resolve the problem root causes
identified above. Short term solutions are the quick fixes of the very adverse symptoms
and will be implemented immediately, the medium-term solutions will address symptoms
and some elements of the root courses. These will require much more resources than the
short term. The long-term solutions are aimed at the root courses and will implementation
of which will see the organization back to effective running.

The current situation at the company is very volatile. There is direct conflict and
confrontation between Eric and his employees. This is not conducive for work and there
is risk of riots. The nature of conflict is no longer the cognitive type that is encouraged but
has transformed to the emotional type of conflict as exemplified by Kipsy’s crying reaction
as he got out of Eric’s office. Emotional type of conflicts derail work and are discouraged
in work environment (Hamilton & Kroll, 2018). In the short term, Eric should diffuse the
toxic situation and employ conflict resolution strategies. The first step would be to initiate

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communication and dialogue. In the communication, he should try to undermine the group
dynamic of categorization between employees in their informal group and management
and emphasize the view of all the people working together towards the organizational
goal. This strategy of recategorization is suggested in the Handbook of Social Psychology
(Delameter & Ward, 2013). It is unfortunate that Eric has not had enough time to know
the personalities of the individuals under his charge. Knowledge of the individuality is
important to the choice of conflict resolution strategy to be adopted.

Another short-term solution could be to try to change the working hours policy to make it
flexible. By its implementation, there is a good chance that employees will perceive
management as responsive to their demands. Management can monitor reaction of
employees to this intervention. This intervention is a low risk because it can easily be
reversed if it proves futile.

The problem is slowing down of sales is pertinent and needs urgent attention. Survival of
any business requires paying customers and sales (Kerin & Hartley, 2017). One of the
reasons identified as causing the slowing down of sales is the errors that the part time
clerks are making. The company should review the training that is being given to the part
time clerks before they can be engaged to production. The impact of errors made by the
salesmen in the field can be detrimental to the reputation of the company. Indeed,
research has shown that when an organization makes a mistake even a small one,
customers will perceive it as incompetent (Hamilton & Kroll, 2018).

In the medium to long term, the company should rethink how it is motivating its
employees. There seems to be a general deficiency of intrinsic motivation factors at the
company. The company should consider meeting the Moslow hierarchy’s higher-level
needs of the employees on top of the physiological needs to which it seems to pay much
attention to. Employees should be able to visualize genuine possibility of growth if they
work hard. Employees who achieve exceptional targets should be recognized and
rewarded. The jobs of clerks should be made more challenging to make employees see
meaning in it. The clerks at the company are spending more time there than at work. So
many people are finding meaning and purpose of their lives in the work they do (Mullins,
2010). By making the work meaningful and interesting, employees will offer their effort to

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the organizational goals. Whether a motivational remedy mentioned here is implemented
in the medium or long term will depend on the associated resources including time and
finances available.

Another long-term recommendation for the company should be to consider restructuring.

The strict bureaucratic nature of the organization is hampering flexibility in decision
making. Eric being a trained manager should have been able to implement the adjustment
of working pattern for employees under his charge. Even though this was a low risk
decision which could be easily reversable, he was not able to not make it quickly or at all
because the company procedures spelled out that he needed to hear from “the top”. By
changing the structure, the organization will be more able to respond to contingencies of
everyday organizational management.

The state of organizational behavior at the national wholesale company is dire. Eric
inherited a bad situation and made it worse by when he implemented a haphazard
intervention without critical analysis. One thing has led to another leading to numerous
visible management and organizational behavior issues at the company. Not all hope is
lost, if management takes a wholistic analysis and implements the recommendations
outlined above, there is possibility of eliminating the root causes of the problems and
taking the wholesaler back to a coordinated organization and operating efficiently.

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References
Bovee, C. L., & Thill, J. V. (2018). Business Communication Today. London: Pearson Education Limited.

Daft, R. L. (2010). Organization Theory and Design. Mason: South-Western Cengage Learning.

Delameter, J., & Ward, A. (2013). Handbook of Social Psychology. New York, London: Springer.

Hamilton, C., & Kroll, T. L. (2018). Communicating for Results. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Hughes, O. E. (2003). Public Management and Administration. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Kerin, R. A., & Hartley, S. W. (2017). Marketing. New York: Mc Graw Hill Education.

Mullins, L. J. (2010). Management & Organisational Behaviuor. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2013). Organizational Behaviour. Boston: Pearson.