施乐公司组织行为学案例-英文

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Course: Organizational Behavior

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Homework: Xerox

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I declare that this assignment is my own work, which all sources of reference are acknowledged in full and it has not been submitted for any other course.

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Q1 Overcome opposition

Firstly, when Clendenin want to start the plan and enlarge the MDC’s task definition, his proposal could not get support by his superiors and individual managers, who did not want to change. He solved this problem by contacting with Les Elstein and had an opportunity to mad a presentation to CISB and got approval for his plan.

Secondly, when Clendenin asked Zivan about adding staff, he could not get support from Zivan. Clendenin did not argue with Zivan. What he need was the funds. Instead, to solve this problem, Clendenin did the following things to get the funds from operating unit managers. He spent time to build relationship and know the secretaries of group members. Then he let the members of the working group to know that it was easier to fund Clendenin to complete the projects than did by themselve. After he got the project, he used a new programming language, APL, which allowed him to do the project less expensively. As a result, he got additional funds to add people because he charged over the system needed.

Thirdly, the members of the committees had animosity with Clendenin when the budget of MDC was raised. Clendenin was told that MDC guys had no right to spend the funds and do the benchmarking visits. In order to solve this animosity, Clendenin tried to maintain a delicate balance. He needed to please his customers. He always used “we”when he coming up ideas. Also, in order to make thing work, he would use all of their names in vain.

Q2. Relations

For the superiors, Clendenin did not do very well and he is very forthright. When he

started the plan, he could not get support from superiors. His direct contact with the CISB made Zivan, who called the project as a monster, unhappy. When Zivan retired, he did not arrange the career of Clendenin, which reflected that the relationship between them is not very close. Besides, Clendenin is very forthright. He is on the precipice side while supervisors on the discipline side. Superiors need to keep eyes on him. However, Clendenin got recognition from the superior by excellent performance.

For the subordinates, we can find that most of them trusted Clendenin. Even the subordinate did not agree with Clendenin, he or she trust him to do the right thing for the MDC. Clendenin did the following things to build the relationship. First one is that Clendenin cared about subordinates and deal with them as a whole person. For example, when he felt that someone is under great stress, he would take him or her out for a long lunch. He treated his senior level managers the same as the secretaries. Second one is that Clendenin solved the conflict between employees by analyzing their context, which could help employees work the conflict through and build the trust with Clendenin. Third one is helping the subordinates to achieve what they want. The last one is that using an appraisal form to spot problematic relationships on the top team. However, the relation was not always harmonious. The one who did not do the job well would get warning like verbal reminder. Moreover, he pushed subordinates to grow more, which made some of them frustrated.

For the peers, the relationship is good in most of the time. Clendenin kept this good relationship by helping them to solve the problems. He pleased them because they are the customers of the MDC. He also trained his subordinates to be professional, which reduced the conflicts between him and the peers. However, there also is animosity as mentioned

above, and he solved the problem by trying to maintain a delicate balance.

Referring to the way that Clendenin manages his relations, what I like is the successful trust building with his subordinates because he used a lot of useful methods. What I do not like is that he contacted with CISB directly quickly, which made his superior unhappy. In my opinion, he should keep on communicating and convincing his superior for a longer time.

Q3 Helped or hindered

In my opinion, the structure hindered Clendenin’s ability to build up the MDC. There are two reasons. Firstly, there is no regular channel for the employee feedback. If the company has a common feedback channel, Clendenin would not make Zivan unhappy because of his contacting with the CISB directly. Secondly, the functional structure made Clendenin hard to fulfill his projects. As we know that the functional structure usually has the issue of bureaucracy and it is hard to carry out the projects which is crossing different functional department.