ORG20003 Organisational Behaviour

The case is about departmental problems in Resonus Corporation. Frank Choy an engineering director responsible for ESD and research department felt that the interdepartmental battles were wearing him down. He realized that employees got most of the blame rather than credit for issues that could be avoided if the right protocol was followed. He tracked the problem to the corporate’s CEO, Bill Hunt, who responded to the problems with a lack of urgency, urging employees to remain civil and telling them to learn to get along better. He even fired the previous engineering director due to constant disputes in the office. He thought that the problem was not on how the departments were run but how people learn to fit into the existing organizational culture.

Hunt insisted on promoting informal relationships between managers since the company’s founder had groomed him to maintain organization’s family spirit. The informal relationships has led to poor organizational response to departmental heads. For instance, a research director in the corporation who directly reports to the CEO, ‘Doc’ Kalandry has never felt the need to acknowledge Chow as his director. Hunt had a close relationship with Doc since his first job in the company was in the research team and he is still very connected to Doc and most employees are aware of it. Hunt even refers to Doc as a living genius and sees his innovations as the company’s get way to success. Although everyone seemed to love Doc’s over enthusiasm about his innovations a few ESD staff felt like his director needed to manage him better.

Choy and his team felt that they undergo through constant critique on their work from the production supervisors unlike the higher research team whose explanations are taken without any complaint. ESD team believe that those critiques should be directed to the research team since they are responsible for the design changes. They argue that with the work experience that they have they shouldn’t be constantly put in a position to defend their abilities rather they should be getting work done. Latest trouble began when Doc came up with one of his last minute innovation which Hunt endorsed without consulting other departments which were going to be involved in the development and manufacturing process. The innovation was a new nano processor technology that was to be installed in the hearing-aid product.

The case demonstrates that the departments in the organization lacked coordination and unity in identifying new inventions that were efficient and cost effective. Hunt’s leadership was biased and he lacked impartiality when it came to dealing with his cronies such as Doc. Even with proven failures in Doc’s previous innovations Hunt kept on endorsing and favouring him, which brought about agitations from employees. Anyone who brought up the issue was viewed as being aggressive, this was the very reason that Choy’s predecessor got fired. This resulted to employees getting along with Doc’s innovations even though they knew it was not possible to deliver the product on time. This kind of behavior eventually led to poor organizational relations that had huge implications to the success of the organization.