Leadership as Preserving a Sound Working Environment - Case Study Example

Dear Customer, You actually do not have a right to put this order under revision because what you are asking now was not in your initial instruction. There is no such thing in your order instruction. Is that my mistake or yours? How can I possibly know when there is no structure or format given to me before? Anyway I will do it even its beyond the policy because I can reject your request right away for the above reason. Sending a message is good enough. Why ask for a revision when its plain and simple not my mistake? Carlene’s Dream Job Review and Case Analysis 1. Introduction With her enthusiasm and ‘can-do’ approach to management, Carlene was appointed as CEO of a Western Sydney subsidiary of large garment manufacturing corporation in July of 2010 despite her short track record and lack of experience in this management role. Although risky, the parent company allowed Carlene to head the subsidiary alone believing that a young and energetic CEO can revive and improve their subsidiary experiencing the impact of global financial crisis and high Australian dollar rate. Carlene planned to make significant advances in the subsidiary’s operation which she felt needs to focus more on performance and profitability. However, the subsidiary’s Operations Manager who has been with the Western Sydney subsidiary for a long time and performing well with his traditional work practices seems not so good in assignments requiring deviation from established practices of his department. For this reason, he had been allowed to run his own show by the former CEO for as long as the organization’s targets are met. Six months in her new role as CEO of a ‘charmed’ and profitable Western Sydney subsidiary, Carlene received an informal report from the HR Manager that their Operations Manager assaulted and verbally abused a young supervisor during a meeting. Carlene strongly believed that such behaviour is inappropriate and requires disciplinary action as specified in the Group’s policy about bullying and harassment but there was no indication that the affected party will file a formal complaint against the Operation Manager. Moreover, although unhappy with the way things are majority of employees working in the Operations Department are scared of the Operations Manager and do not have the courage to question his leadership. Since the Operations Department was a key player in Carlene’s performance indicator, plan for profit-focused change, innovation to increase production, flexible working and others it was necessary for her to take immediate action to resolve the matter. However, instead of listening to her concerns, the Operations Manager questioned Carlene’s expertise, intimidated her and expressed his sensitivity about being supervised by a woman with no knowledge of the business. Although sad and stunned by the result of her meeting with the Operations Manager, Carlene maintained her calm and let the Operations Manager cool down for a few days before calling another meeting. However, she started thinking about the adequacy of Operations Manager’s leadership and management skills in running his department particularly when she started her planned progressive change. She was also thinking about her short-term KPIs and the consequences of eliminating the Operations Manager to her business plan and objectives. Similarly, determined to depend his working practices, the Operations Manager called the attention of the Managing Director in Melbourne and complained about Carlene’s intervention and threatened to revolt if something is not done. The following section reviews and critically analysed the workplace and the actions, attitudes, and skills of managers involved. 2. Review and Critical Analysis of Case Study 2.1 The Western Sydney Subsidiary Some of the qualities of healthy workplace include safe and friendly, with clear policies and procedures, equitable, and a place of moral well-being. According to the case study, the Western Sydney subsidiary is a mature organization with established industry accepted procedures, practices, codes of conduct and a Human Resource Department ready to support the organization’s goals and objectives. These include managing compliance of policies, monitoring performance and conduct, and assisting management on disciplinary matters (Case Study, p.1). The HR Department is therefore clearly responsible for overseeing compliance of Operations, Sales and Marketing, and Finance departments. However, with the long existence of an Operations Manager who have been performing well in terms of organizational goals and objectives but arrogant and intimidating, the Western Sydney subsidiary may not be a healthy workplace at all. Similarly, subsidiary’s HR Department may not be efficient as described in the case because although aware of the Operations Manager’s bad behaviour there was no action against him. More importantly, despite clear organizational policies and procedures, the former CEO allowed the Operations Manager to run his own show despite negative consequences. For instance, according to Luecke & Hall (2006), an organization may have employee-friendly policies, high pay and benefits, and other characteristics contributing to a healthy workplace but one bad manager can tear down all these virtues and de-motivate employees (p.33). Moreover, bullying and mobbing staff, poor management, and lack of control are workplace stressors that can be counter-productive (Week 3 Seminar Notes, Slide 5). In general, the workplace in the case study particularly the Operations Department is an unpleasant working environment allowing managers with appalling attitude to prevail over higher management. As evidenced by his arrogant attitude towards the new CEO or Carlene, this manager can easily threaten his subordinates and get away with his offensive workplace practices. The HR Manager is also powerless against such terrible managers since no case has been filed despite awareness, policy violation, and clear evidence. More importantly, top management or the former CEO and the whole organization in general allowed such attitude to prevail and gave more importance to financial benefits rather than maintaining a friendly and healthy workplace. 2.2 The Operations Manager The confrontation between Carlene and the Operations Manager could not have happened if there was some form of disciplinary actions taken against the OM in the past. His unacceptable actions and attitude seems a product of long years of top management inactions, continued disregard to his arrogance in the workplace, and lack of necessary management skills. The Operations Manager lack of self-awareness resulted to distorted values and negative attitude towards change (Week 2 Seminar Notes, Slide 4) as evidenced by his department’s inability to cope with urgent and unusual assignments (Case Study, p.1). His negative attitude toward change is actually a “restraining force” (Daft & Marcic 2010, p.277) and a road block (Umiker 2005, p.278) to development as shown by his reluctance to work under Carlene’s management. Autocratic leaders who usually derives power from position and coercion creates a hostile environment that eventually displeased employees (Daft & Lane 2007, p.44) like the unhappy supervisors working in the Operations Department (Case Study, p.2). For instance, bullying or mobbing staff can greatly stress employees and with this kind of Operations Manager who most of the time managed to get things done within the budget, it is more likely that employees suffered distress due to unreasonable workloads, unsafe conditions, and poor management (Week 3 Seminar Notes, Slide 5). In terms of employee motivation that requires a mixture of individual personality, management skills, organizational goals, and a healthy working environment (Week 4 Seminar Notes, Slide 9), the Operation Manager is evidently far from being effective. According to Davies (2007), attitude and professional conduct is the most important factor in employee motivation (p.82) thus there is no way that employees working under the Operations Department in the Western Sydney subsidiary benefits from this Operations Manager. Moreover, effective communication will be absent because it can only occur when employees feel that their manager is open to discuss matters with them (Stralser 2004, p.45). It thus appears that the efficiency of the Operations Department in the past was mostly made possible by coercion rather than good managerial skills, effective leadership, and a healthy workplace. Although he can deliver the goods for the subsidiary, the Operations Manager’s actions, attitude, interpersonal and management skills, self-awareness, and working practices is generally poor. He was generally obtaining compliance by coercion which according to Hellriegel & Slocum (p.2007) is not a managerial approach since fear is a negative emotion that restrain performance (p.497). 2.3 Carlene as new CEO Carlene is young and in terms of experience and knowledge of the manufacturing business, there is no doubt that the subsidiary’s Operations Manager knows more about his department. However, this does not mean that she lack the necessary skills to innovate and ensure profitability. Her self-awareness such as values, interpersonal style, emotional intelligence, attitude towards change, and cognitive style is an advantage over traditional managers. For instance, being calm after being insulted by the Operations Manager (Case Study, p.3) is good virtue and emotional intelligence which can rationalize and balance a manager’s thought and feelings (Alexander 2007, p.58). Moreover, studying the business consequences and delaying her decision over the case is equitable, even, and fair that can greatly contribute to a conducive, safe, and friendly workplace. According to Kirkerby (2008), equity and practical wisdom are virtues of leadership where a leader is required to be faithful to policies and regulations, strike a balance between emotional insights, real situation, and ethical action (p. 172). During her meeting with the Operations Manager, Carlene demonstrated these skills and in the course of solving the matter, she exhibited great care and never let her emotions destroy her leadership virtues. Unmanaged conflict in the workplace is detrimental and costly thus it is important to determine the nature or intensity of the conflict. Similarly, the leader’s behaviour and actions when resolving a conflict should not disrupt the work environment, should be analyzed, planned, and implemented in an equitable manner (Collins & O’Rourke 2008, p.4). The details of the case study suggest that Carlene was very careful deciding about the conflict and in fact weigh the consequences of eliminating the Operations Manager and achieving her short-term KPIs (Case Study, p.3). However, Carlene should not see conflict resolution as an ultimate goal since it is often a difficult task and not always desirable goal (McManus 2006. p.92). Instead, she must try to concentrate on conflict elimination and reduction of destructive conflicts such as the one occurring in her workplace. 2.4 The HR Manager Although it appears that the HR Manager was helpful in providing ‘off-the-record” information acquired from one of the supervisors in the Operations Department, he or she should do something about it regardless of formal complaint. As the case study suggest, bullying and harassment are grounds for disciplinary actions and there were enough witnesses to prove that the incident actually occurred (Case Study, p.2). The HR Manager performance, opposite to those described in the case study as being ‘efficient’ in overseeing policy and disciplinary matters was acting more like a messenger of bad news than implementers of policies, procedures, and codes of conduct. According to O’Riordan (2004), good policies are not enough since they need to be implemented so they can make a real difference in employee’s attitude and eventually to the wider values and culture of the organization (p.13). Clearly, the problem with having an Operations Manager with a bad attitude, physically and verbally abusing his staff for a long time is definitely not a matter of having an industry accepted policy but failure of Human Resource Department to implement. More importantly, as the details of the case study suggest, the HR Manager was aware that many supervisors working under the Operations Department are unhappy with their working environment but he or she did nothing about it. The skills and attitude of the HR Manager toward employee behaviour and healthy working environment is inadequate as evidenced by the existence of such managerial practices and employees discontent over their manager. The HR Manager could have taken some actions or develop an HR strategy and at least negotiate to reach a mutually favourable agreement (Baldwin et al. 2008, p.307-318) or hire the right people for the job (Bolman & Deal 2003, p.137). Moreover, he or she should realize that bullying and poor management are stressors (Week 3 Seminar Notes, Slide 5) that can affect production negatively thus immediate actions should have been be taken in the earliest time possible. The skills, attitudes, and the lack of actions from the HR Manager contributed to the growth of seems uncontrollable behaviour of the Operations Manager which at the time of Carlene recognized no authority. 3. Recommendation Based on the analysis of each manager’s skills, attitudes, and actions presented in the case study, the Board of Directors may consider providing additional training to the HR Manager particularly in the area of policy implementation, healthy workplace management, and conflict management. The Operations Manager on the other hand may be given immediate disciplinary action, counselling or dismissal if deemed necessary. The new CEO or Carlene should be given the opportunity to continue with her short-term KPIs and be allowed to prove herself in the spirit of equity and fairness. 4. Conclusion The case study demonstrated that leadership does not only mean achieving organizational goals and objectives but maintaining a healthy working environment, good management practices, personal and interpersonal skills, and self-awareness. It is a reminder that resistance to change particularly by higher management is detrimental to growth and consequential to employee’s dissatisfaction. More importantly, it is more advantageous to maintain leadership virtues, emotional intelligence and conflict management skills in the face of overpowering managerial challenges. 5. 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