Assignment #1- Case Study (individual) = 10%

Due date: September 24, 2022

Consider the communication case study below. Read the questions carefully and
ensure that in your answers you use the diction appropriate for the communicative
context.

Vicky was an employee of a large insurance company located in Kingston. Vicky

arrived at work at 8:00 a.m. in a foul mood, having slept very little the night before.
Two things were on her mind. First she had serious concerns about the
memorandum she and her co-workers had received from their boss two days earlier,
telling them to reduce the number of claims they approved so that the company
could improve its profitability. The memorandum also announced a new policy
whereby those who failed to reduce claims approved by at least 40 percent would be
terminated. Being told to deny claims whether or not they were justified bothered
Vicky. Being threatened about it made her angry. Second, on the previous day
Vicky had received a call from a job placement agency about a vacancy at another
company in which she might be interested. The job would pay slightly less than her
current job but it might have long term potential provided that the small company
survived. It was a small start-up firm that had been in existence only nine months.
Taking the job would require Vicky to move to Falmouth, a prospect Vicky did not
relish.

Naturally, the first people Vicky saw as she entered the building were her union
representative and the director of Human Resources (HR), having a friendly chat.
Vicky was not particularly fond of either of them. She believed her union
representative had done a poor job of helping her through the grievance she had
filed against her boss four months earlier. She was also not pleased with the
support she had received from the Human Resources director, who, in her opinion,
was a “lackey” for the company and had no interest in employee concerns.

“Good morning Vicky,” the director said cheerily upon seeing her.

“Yeah, yeah,” Vicky muttered in response, thinking to herself, “Moronic cheerleader;

that’s all those HR people are good for –pretending everybody is happy.”

The HR director’s shocked look caused Vicky to realize that, in her sleepless fog,
she had actually said her thoughts out aloud.

Slinking to her desk, Vicky logged onto her computer and checked her email. There
were ten messages from co-workers. She read each messages and found that they
all said much the same thing: “We have to do something about our boss.” Knowing
that the company monitored e-mail messages, Vicky visited each co-worker’s cubicle
during the next 30 minutes, inviting everyone to meet in the break room at 9:30.

Everyone came to the meeting and for 30 minutes, almost everyone vented anger at
the boss’s directive.

“We should all walk out,” someone suggested.

“We should get the union to fight this thing,” another worker argued.

“We should just shoot the tyrant,” another worker argued.

“We should just shoot the tyrant,” suggested Vicky, forgetting for a moment the
security cameras placed in the break room.

Most of the suggestions were shot down. “If we walk out, they will fire us,” someone
observed.

“The union hasn’t done us any good up to now. How would they help?” asked
another. “Let’s go to the employee ombudsperson.”

All agreed, and at lunch they met with Madeline the company’s ombudsperson.
Madeline listened to the group’s concerns and agreed she would take their issue to
the boss in an effort to persuade him to change his thinking.

The conversation between Madeline and Vicky’s boss did not go well. During the
conversation, some of the boss’s comments included: “This is none of your business.
I am in charge of this department” “Your job is just to meddle in other people’s
business. Why don’t you go do something that actually helps this company?” “You
are a bleeding heart, just like all the other women around here.” “The only reason
you have your job is because you are from the constituency of a certain Minister of
government.” “If you don’t get out of here now, I am going to the president to get you
fired.”

When Vicky and her co-workers left work that evening, they did so not knowing the
outcome of Madeline’s conversation with the “tyrant.” They could still hear the
voices of the boss and Madeline coming from the boss’s office as the two argued
loudly.

1 Ombudsperson: An official appointed by the company to investigate employees’

complaints against management.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

1. (a) Communication is a process. For each stage of the communication process

briefly identify the major element or event of the case study, that represents the
phase. (4 marks)
 (b) Identify four (4) of the main goals of business communication (2 mark)

(c) For one of the four main goals of business communication identified in (b)
above, state how the actions of Vicky’s boss contributed or failed to contribute to its
accomplishment. (2 marks)

(d) Identify one barrier that exist in this case and indicate the event that it is linked
to. (2 marks)

(10 marks)