GROUP 2

HBO GROUP Apoorv Parmar

Arjun Dua
Nimin Mathew Jose

ASSIGNMENT-2 Siddharth Sharma

Sonal
Sonia Kataria
Q1) WHAT SOURCES OF POWER & INFLUENCE TACTICS EVIDENT AT RESONUS,
PARTICULARLY WITH RESPECT TO DOC AND CHOY?

As pretty evident by the case, there are power handling issues and influence tactics in Resonus.
Resonus Corp has suffered from interdepartmental conflict and there is delay in product
manufacturing. Bill Hunt, the CEO always do unequal distribution of power by being biased
towards Doc Kalandry, the research director. His incompetence is being blamed on Frank
Choy, the new engineering director and Jacqui Blanc, the production director.

The key power handling issues were:

Substitute: Doc Kalandry has too much freedom to implement his ideas, other
departments were left with no choice rather than implementing it no matter idea was
feasible or not.
Central authority: there was no decentralisation, all the decisions were to be made by
CEO, which seems to be pretty casual about the power.
Wariness: the company employees have very little say in the matters, especially those
in the ESD group, decisions were made mainly by department heads Frank Choy and
especially Kalandry.
Legitimate power: the main reason for interdepartmental conflict is the department
heads and CEO can use their powers negatively and put all the pressure on employees
Powerful influence: Doc knows he has a powerful influence on the CEO and he can
easily influence him

The influence tactics present in the group are:

Assertiveness: the CEO was very much optimistic with the work of doc and he think it
could become into reality very easily by ESD team
Rearranging information: we can say that Doc can easily influence the information
as he can change the design at any level.
Conflicts: as doc has easily influenced CEO and he was in Docs palms. He believes
Kalandry was a genius that can lead company to innovation was main reason of conflict
in Resonus.

Q2) ANALYSE THE CASE IN TERMS OF SOURCES OF CONFLICT AND CONFLICT HANDLING
STYLES. BRIEFLY IDENTIFY INCIDENTS OF CONFLICT MANIFEST .

The case depicts an organizational source of conflict. It is a conflict that arises where there are
differences in treatment between departments or groups of employees. Those relating to
hierarchy also fall under this type. This conflict can also be termed as process conflict which
is a type of conflict over how work gets done in an organization.

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This can be said because whole of the ESD department is often blamed for delays, where they
are not the only ones responsible. Also, Frank feels that they do not get enough credit for their
work. Thus, the source of conflict is the organization where different departments have
different styles of work and different work cultures.
According to the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, there basically are 5 ways of
handling a conflict.

According to this case, the conflict handling style followed by the departments is Competing.
This is an approach where the group acts in a very assertive way to achieve the goals, without
seeking to cooperate with the other group, often at the expense of the other party.
This can be said because often the departments are not coordinating with one another and often
are ready to put the blame away from them. They are not following a proper chain of command.
The CEO Bill Hunt often follows Avoiding type of style, as he often just tells the departments
to sort out the problem without taking any concrete action.
The incidents that display the conflict manifest include:
Kalandry not considering director of engineering as his boss.
ESD employees getting blame for all the delays.
Production and research teams sharing the design faults and problems without keeping
the engineering team in the loop.

Q3) FOR CHOY, WOULD AVOIDANCE AND /OR COMPROMISE CONFLICT STYLE WORK? WHY
AND WHY NOT ?

Conflict management is the practise of being able to identify and handle conflicts sensibly,
fairly and efficiently. Since conflicts are an unavoidable part of a business environment it is
very important to know how to resolve them. Everyone is striving to show how valuable they
are to the company they work for and at times this can lead to disputes with other members of
the team.

Here Frank Choy and Doc Kalandry is having a conflict between them about new nano-
processor technology that doc wanted to install in the forthcoming high hearing end aid

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product. Here both avoidance as well as compromise will not be the best option for Choy. Basic
reason is that both of them are short term solutions. Since both are looking forward to work
there for a long while.

Avoidance could have been applied but this type of conflict resolving doesnt help the staff
members to reach their goals. It does not help the managers who are avoiding the issue
assertively purse his or her own goals.

Compromise is a lose-lose scenario where both the manager (Choy) and employee (Doc)
doesnt achieve their goals. So compromise is generally not satisfying for both the parties.

If we compromise, we may feel OK about the outcome, but still remain there in the future. And
if we avoid discussing the conflicts at all, both parties may remain clueless about the real
underlying issues and concerns only to be dealing with them in future.

Since Doc is favourite for Bill Hunt, CEO it is not wise for Choy to conflict Doc directly. So
here it will be advisable for him to talk to Bill about the problems that he is facing. Choy must
not think that he will be fired for discussing his problems with Bill. Since Choy is looking
forward to work in Resonus Corporation for a long time he will have to resolve this conflict in
a constructive manner. Since Hunt is a person who believes that Resonus is a firm that operates
through informal relationships among its managers it is always wise for Choy to talk to him.
Since the Sale Director was furious and implied that it was because of Choys incompetence it
is now his moral responsibility to prove him wrong.

Anywhere the intentions are always fixed and they cant be kept fixed. During the course of a
conflict, they might change if the parties are able to see the others point of view or respond
emotionally to the others behaviour.

In the present competitive world an employees success highly depends on how well he or she
responds and results from a conflict. So conflicts are an unavoidable part of our life and they
must be resolved in a constructive manner.

Q4) ASSESS OF THE SITUATION OF RESONUS CORPORATION WITH FIRO B CONCEPTS.

Fundamental interpersonal relations orientation (FIRO) is a theory of interpersonal relations,
introduced by William Schutz in 1958. This theory mainly explains the interpersonal
interactions of a local group of people.

Premise of FIRO-B theory is that people need people. The theory is based on the belief that
when people get together in a group, there are three main interpersonal needs they are looking
to obtain affection/openness, control and inclusion.

Assessment of the given situation is as follows:

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Components Character Expressed Wanted Example
need need
Inclusion

Frank Low High 1. When Kalandry expressed

Choy his desire to install new
Nano processor technology
in the forthcoming high-
end hearing aid product,
CEO hunt endorsed this
change. At this point Frank
wanted to be included in
the decision making
process but he kept quiet.
2. Also Frank suspected that
CEO Hunt favoured the
Research Department so in
a way he felt that he was
not included in Hunts
inner circle. Yet again he
did not express this.
Doc High High He has high need for
Kalandry inclusion because:
1. He reports directly to Hunt
even though formally his
boss is Frank Choy. He
wishes to be in the inner
circle of the company and
hence reports directly to
Hunt

Control
Frank Low High 1. Choy wanted to protest
Choy against the last minute
changes being introduced
by Hunt on receiving
suggestion from Kalandry
(regarding the forthcoming
high-end hearing aid). He
wanted to take control of
the situation but he did not
express this desire.
2. Choy observes that ESD
staff gets most of the blame
and little credit for its work.
He wishes to take control
of this situation but is yet
again not expressing his
desire openly with CEO
Hunt.

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 Bill Hunt Low Low 1. Bill Hunt the CEO of the
company has low need for
control. It is evident from
the fact that He discourages
bureaucracy and believes
that Resonus operated best
through informal
relationships among its
manager.
2. He does not try to control
the Production process and
often agrees to last minute
changes suggested by Doc
Kalandry

Jacqui High High 1. Most executive employees

Blanc have an informal way of
working but Jacqui Blanc is
quite formal in her
approach
2. Her high need for control
highlighted by her
insistence on strict
guidelines.
3. When the changes in the
high-end hearing aid are
being discussed, Blanc
again expressed her desire
for control and said her
team was ready if the ESD
unit could get accurate
specifications and Sales
team would stop making
wild promises to customer.

Affection
Doc High High It is shown by an engineers
Kalandry statement about Doc Doc is like a
happy puppy when he gets a new
product idea. He delights in his
discovery, but wont let go of it.
He also gets Hunt too
enthusiastic
If we assume this statement to be
true we can say that Doc wants
approval from Hunt and sometimes
acts childlike with him. This shows
his need for affection.

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Overall we observe the following points from the above table:

Frank Choy has high wanted need for control and Inclusion but he does not express
this need in front of Hunt and because of this discrepancy in his wanted and expressed
behaviour. Because of this discrepancy He, along with his ESD unit employees, is
getting blame for the delay in the production.

For Frank Wanted Needs > Expressed Needs

He should try to overcome this discrepancy by expressing this needs to this fellow
employees and superiors (especially Hunt)

Bill Hunt has low wanted and expressed need for Control. There is no discrepancy in
his wanted and expressed behaviour.

For Bill Wanted Needs = Expressed Needs

Jacqui Blanc has high need for Control (both wanted and expressed) so no discrepancy
is there.

For Jacqui Wanted Needs = Expressed Needs

Q5) KEEPING IN MIND THE PROBLEM OF PRODUCT DELAYS, WHAT WOULD YOU RECOMMEND
SHOULD BE BILL HUNTS LEADERSHIP APPROACH IN THE CONFLICT SITUATION ?

Before the product delays even took place, two of the directors departed the company. One was
fired from the organization and other resigned. Bill hunt, being the CEO of the company should
have figured out that there was some issue with either the way the work was done by the other
departments or the kind of work given that hampered the performance of the two directors that
left the organization.

Also, Bill Hunt should have had a chat with both the previous directors and asked about their
problems before allowing them to leave. Both of them would have given an honest feedback
about the kind and the way the work was done at the organization.
Bill Hunt, not once, but twice missed the opportunity to inspect was actually was working
wrong and was too convinced that the problems can be solved if they learn to get along better.

Bill Hunt was biased towards Doc which is not a very good sign for a good leader. He was
biased towards the research department as that was the first department that he joined in this
particular company. Bill over looked the attitude of Doc and did not realized how his attitude
was affecting the other employees of the organization.
He should have had a dialogue with Doc to ask him to be more reasonable on time as the other
departments will have time crunch.

He should have also asked for the suggestion from Choy about the introduction of new
technology and the time that will take to implement it in products without compromising the

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product quality so that they do not have unreasonable task at hand.
Also this would prevent any unnecessary delays of the product.

Also have a meeting with all the directors and ask them about their view about the
implementations and the time they would feel is sufficient to deliver a quality product.

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 Feedback Table

Given to Apoorv Arjun Sonia Sonal Siddharth Nimin

Given by Parmar Dua Sharma Mathew
Jose
Apoorv - 4.5 4.5 4 4 4
Parmar
Arjun Dua 5 - 5 4.5 4.5 4.5
Sonia 5 5 - 4.5 4.5 4.5
Sonal 4.5 5 4.5 - 4.5 4.5
Siddharth 5 4.5 4 4 - 4
Sharma
Nimin 5 5 5 5 5 -
Mathew Jose
(The scores are given on a scale of 1-5)