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 [ CITATION Lau10 \l 1033 ], 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
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

1
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 [ CITATION Ste13 \l 1033 ]. 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 [ CITATION

Ric10 \l 1033 ]. 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[ CITATION Lau10 \l 1033 ]. 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 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 [ CITATION

2
Lau10 \l 1033 ]. 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[ CITATION Owe03 \l 1033 ]. 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 [ CITATION Che18 \l 1033 ]. In the short term, Eric should
diffuse the toxic situation and employ conflict resolution strategies. The first step would
be to initiate 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[ CITATION Joh13 \l 1033 ]. It is unfortunate that Eric has not
had enough time to know the personalities of the individuals under his charge.

3
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 [ CITATION Rog17 \l 1033 ] . 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[ CITATION Che18 \l 1033 ].

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 [ CITATION
Lau10 \l 1033 ]. By making the work meaningful and interesting, employees will offer their
effort to 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
4
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.

5
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