Case study

Organizational Behaviour (OB)

What will you do, if you were the Boss?
M. Rakesh is a team leader of a sales team. Nearly fifteen people report to him.
Rajgopalan, one of them, is a very loyal, engaged and committed employee. He is
generally very professional and punctual in completing all the tasks assigned to
him. Even the clients are generally delighted with his service - he tries to solve
them problems as fast as possible. He is equally effective.

Once Rajgopalan was engaged in some personal work (which was critical). M.
Rakesh was fully aware about it and had been very supportive to Rajgopalan. He
was officially on leave because of the same.

A potentially profitable client (let us call her Ms. Disha) called Rajgopalan.
Rajgopalan didn't receive Disha's calls more than once, because of above
mentioned condition. That annoyed Disha thinking that Rajgopalan was not sincere
in his work. When Rajgopalan called back to her, she said that she didn't like his
attitude (of not accepting her repeated calls). Rajgopalan felt very sorry about it.
He knew that losing this client would be a great loss to his organization.

Rajgopalan wrote an unconditional apology letter (e-mail) to Disha, and marked its
CC to M. Rakesh. In fact, M. Rakesh came to know about this client only after
reading Rajgopalan mail. Rajgopalan clarified why he had not received her calls
and even mentioned in that mail to Disha that she could complain about him to his
boss (i.e. M. Rakesh), if she felt that his clarification to her was not justified.

Though Disha didn't bother to complain to M. Rakesh, he (M. Rakesh) did realise
that the company had lost a big client as Disha gave contract to a competing firm.

Discussions

Now, if you were in M. Rakesh place, what would you do?

Would you take any action against Rajgopalan?

Your reasons for any of the decisions?

 Note: Hypothetical case study for academic discussions only

 Source :
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337928124_OB_CASELET_PATHIK_B_
VARIYA
 Faculty : Padmin Buch