Thomas Green Case Analysis

JIA LUO WANG

Prof. Ellen Bruce

Organizational Behavior

3.27.2017

Thomas Green, a former accountant executive, worked in Dynamic Displays as a senior market specialist right now. Directly promoted by Shannon McDonald, the Division Vice President of Dynamic Displays, Thomas Green is currently encountering problems while working with Frank Davis.

1. First of all, Thomas Green has lower organizational power compare with Frank Davis because Frank is the boss of Thomas Green and organizational power derived primarily from positions. First, his title was a senior market specialist, so he had lower legitimate power compared with Frank. Second, he had no reward power. Third, he had no coercive power also.

At the same time, Thomas also have low personal power as well as organizational power. At first, Thomas has low expert power. It is true that he had a degree of economics but he lacked managerial experience as a professional. Thomas was directly promoted by McDonald so he did not have working experience in former position. During the 2008 Budget Plan meeting, Thomas disagreed with Davis’s 10% growth goal because he analyzed this goal from an accountant perspective and he was too conservative. Also, he did not have the ability to coordinate with his boss, Frank, and the communication skill is also important for coordination. When he had disagreement with his boss, he told his workmates about Frank from a negative aspect and did not respect Frank at all. Meanwhile, he could not provide supporting details and market data continuously in demand of both boss and clients. When he proposed ideas right after his promotion, he gave many great advices, however, he could not develop supporting details. In fact, he also failed to provide hard data, memos and presentations again when he worked with one of the market specialists. Secondly, Davis did not have high referent power so Thomas did not want to identify and associated with Davis.

1. First, Thomas lacked personal power which is very important for good performance as a senior market specialist and Davis, his boss, cannot stand that.

Second, Thomas did not have high organization power when he believed he was right.

Third, Davis used his organizational power improperly, especially reward power. He did not praise Thomas frequently when Thomas gave good ideas. Instead, he concentrated on coercive power, making Thomas depressive.

Fourth, Davis used his influence improperly. Davis adopted pressure and coalitions, 2 least effective influences when he found Thomas’ problems instead of inspirational appeal, consultation, collaboration, apprising, exchange and ingratiation. Davis kept demanding Thomas to update Thomas’ calendar and change strategies, making Thomas felling uncomfortable. During this process, he did little effort to rational persuasion. He claimed that Thomas needed to provide more data but he only had two meetings with Thomas and he only mentioned once. Meanwhile, when those strategies failed, Frank used coalitions, in which he sent the contents of meetings with Thomas to McDonald. Those actions Frank took made Thomas not to talk with Frank.

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