John Peterson is president of JP Chemical Corporation. He is committed to continually improving the company's management through the use of modern management practices. To get new ideas, he attended a management development seminar at a local university. The seminar focused on using participation to improve productivity and to increase employee commitment to their jobs. Mr, Peterson became convinced that all his managers needed to immediately implement participative management practices.
To ensure implementation of participative management, Mr. Peterson sent an e-mail to all the company managers that stated: "I am convinced that we must immediately begin to practice participative management. The attachments to this e-mail are the handouts from the university management development seminar that explain how to practice participative management.
I expect each of you to implement the practices in the attachments starting next week. As a company, we are now committed to practicing participation. Any managers who do not implement participative practices will find it impossible to remain with this company."
QUESTIONS
1. Do you think President Peterson's e-mail will result in effective participative practices by the managers? Why?
2. How do you think managers will react to the message in the email> How would you feel if you were one of the managers who received Mr. Peterson's email?
3. Do you think Mr. Peterson should have approached implementing participative practices in a different way? If so, how?
How Can You Influence Gary's Behavior?
You supervise six tellers in a savings and loan company- The tellers handle opening accounts, deposits, withdrawals, and loan payment. The tellers can have a major effect on customer satisfaction.
There are very few complaints about the behavior of the tellers, with the exception of Gary Thompson. When customers ask Gary a question, he comes to you to check on the answer. If you
are busy, Gary keeps the customers waiting until he can check with you or someone else. It seems to you that he checks with you or someone else. It seems to you that he checks with you on every minor detail related to his job, Gary's dependence on you has been increasing, and he wants approval for decisions that the other tellers routinely make on their own. He is consuming a great deal of you time by seeing that everything is done exactly the way you want it done.
Gary appears to have strong desire to do good job. He is always at work on time, very polite, dresses exceptionally well and tries to cooperate with the other employees.
Your "gut" feeling is that you are sick and tired of answering Gary's questions and listening to the customer complaints about hang to wait on Gary to complete routine transactions.
QUESTIONS
1. What would be your analysis on Gary's behavior? What do you think is being rewarded and how is it being rewarded by the supervisor?
2. If you were Gary's supervisor, what changes would you want in Gary's behavior?
3. What specific leader behavior would you use to change Gary's behavior?