Monica Ashley Case
The Monica Ashey case
Monica Ashley was a bright employee at Health Equipment and Laboratories, Inc. (HEAL-INC), an advanced diagnostic and treatment equipment manufacturer. She was appointed manager of “Project Hippocrates” by Gary Dorr, the President of HEAL-INC. The purpose of this project was to shift from analog to digital electronics by purchasing digital components from an outside vendor. Since this was the industry trend, it would only be logical for all the divisions within the company to readily accept the project. Unfortunately for Monica, this was not the case.
Monica faced strong opposition by Ralph Parker, the VP for Signal Processing Design. Parker had three important sources of power: legitimate, expert and coercive. As VP of Signal Processing, Parker’s power was legitimate: it came from his VP position. In addition, Dorr once told Monica that “there was no way the company could do without Parker because of his signal processor contributions” (Cohen & Bradford, p. 58), which leads us to conclude that Parker had expert power. However, Parker resorted to his coercive power most of the time, causing unpleasant experiences for Monica in every single meeting: “he was nasty to her and made numerous accusations (...)” (p. 56). On the other hand, Monica’s most important source of power was referent power, which stemmed from her relationship with Dorr: “He liked her spirit and the hard work that had enabled her to back up her views with data (…) Dorr had periodic long talks with Monica and once told her that he thought of her as his HEAL-INC daughter” (p. 56).
To mitigate Parker’s attacks and to complete Project Hippocrates, Monica relied on coalition and rational persuasion tactics. Seeking coalition, she began by recruiting members from other parts of HEAL-INC at the beginning of the project. In one of the meetings, she also pointed out that the people from Signal Processing Design had “agreed unanimously on the need for a switch to digital signal
Monica Ashley was a bright employee at Health Equipment and Laboratories, Inc. (HEAL-INC), an advanced diagnostic and treatment equipment manufacturer. She was appointed manager of “Project Hippocrates” by Gary Dorr, the President of HEAL-INC. The purpose of this project was to shift from analog to digital electronics by purchasing digital components from an outside vendor. Since this was the industry trend, it would only be logical for all the divisions within the company to readily accept the project. Unfortunately for Monica, this was not the case.
Monica faced strong opposition by Ralph Parker, the VP for Signal Processing Design. Parker had three important sources of power: legitimate, expert and coercive. As VP of Signal Processing, Parker’s power was legitimate: it came from his VP position. In addition, Dorr once told Monica that “there was no way the company could do without Parker because of his signal processor contributions” (Cohen & Bradford, p. 58), which leads us to conclude that Parker had expert power. However, Parker resorted to his coercive power most of the time, causing unpleasant experiences for Monica in every single meeting: “he was nasty to her and made numerous accusations (...)” (p. 56). On the other hand, Monica’s most important source of power was referent power, which stemmed from her relationship with Dorr: “He liked her spirit and the hard work that had enabled her to back up her views with data (…) Dorr had periodic long talks with Monica and once told her that he thought of her as his HEAL-INC daughter” (p. 56).
To mitigate Parker’s attacks and to complete Project Hippocrates, Monica relied on coalition and rational persuasion tactics. Seeking coalition, she began by recruiting members from other parts of HEAL-INC at the beginning of the project. In one of the meetings, she also pointed out that the people from Signal Processing Design had “agreed unanimously on the need for a switch to digital signal