What Do You Think Caused Deborah to React in Such Manner Towards Melinda? Do You Think These Reactions Are Justified?
1.0 What do you think caused Deborah to react in such manner towards Melinda? Do you think these reactions are justified?
Usually in every organization, there are myriads of ways how people resist change. People often show resistance to change in a very rational response based on self-interest, fear of unknown, fear of failure, personal conflicts, cultural values and assumption, politics etc. Therefore, it can be established that there are innumerable reasons people resist change and many of them focus around the notion of reactance – a negative response that occurs when individuals feel that their private freedom is threatened. From the case study, it can be seen that the housing industry association in Brisbane brought about a change relative to the human resources in the company by promoting Melinda, a 2-year-old working staff in the company to be the Executive support manager. In this same company however, Deborah (HIA Brisbane Office Manager) who has been working for HIA for fifteen years failed to be promoted. This however caused lots of negative attitude in Deborah and the reasons that caused this are discussed.
Deborah is seen to have made some offensive remarks about Melinda to other staff in the company through the use of strong critics that she is an egotistical slave-driver with no respect for the people who are being supervised this is because of the lack of freedom to do things the way she likes doing it. Although these things she enjoys doing are selfish in nature and are seen to be unproductive at work. She enjoys having two hours break instead of an hour as stipulated by the company. Not only that she comes to work often time an hour after the normal time and leaves the work an hour before the closing time on the excuse of taking kids early in their schools. She felt threatened that she may not enjoy the freedom anymore more importantly that Melinda’s office will be supervising her office. She doesn’t want to relinquish her selfish attitude
Usually in every organization, there are myriads of ways how people resist change. People often show resistance to change in a very rational response based on self-interest, fear of unknown, fear of failure, personal conflicts, cultural values and assumption, politics etc. Therefore, it can be established that there are innumerable reasons people resist change and many of them focus around the notion of reactance – a negative response that occurs when individuals feel that their private freedom is threatened. From the case study, it can be seen that the housing industry association in Brisbane brought about a change relative to the human resources in the company by promoting Melinda, a 2-year-old working staff in the company to be the Executive support manager. In this same company however, Deborah (HIA Brisbane Office Manager) who has been working for HIA for fifteen years failed to be promoted. This however caused lots of negative attitude in Deborah and the reasons that caused this are discussed.
Deborah is seen to have made some offensive remarks about Melinda to other staff in the company through the use of strong critics that she is an egotistical slave-driver with no respect for the people who are being supervised this is because of the lack of freedom to do things the way she likes doing it. Although these things she enjoys doing are selfish in nature and are seen to be unproductive at work. She enjoys having two hours break instead of an hour as stipulated by the company. Not only that she comes to work often time an hour after the normal time and leaves the work an hour before the closing time on the excuse of taking kids early in their schools. She felt threatened that she may not enjoy the freedom anymore more importantly that Melinda’s office will be supervising her office. She doesn’t want to relinquish her selfish attitude
References: Deal, T. and Kennedy, A. (1999). The new corporate cultures: Revitalizing the workplace after downsizing, mergers and reengineering. London: Orion Business Books. Bass, B.M. and Avolio, B.J. (1994).Improving organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage. Rousseau, D.M. (1990). Assessing organizational culture: The case for multiple methods. In B. Schneider (ed.), Organizational climate and culture. San Francisco, CA.: Jossey-Bass