Dorothy Morrison
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Bijendra Man Singh
MGT 800
FINAL CASE – ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR – SPRING 2010
Dorothy Morison was a manager in the Information Services Division of the Ace aerospace Company. Management from various departments which Dorothy was working with to plan and implement certain programs regarded her attempts of teamwork as interference. Her main problem was a project with the acronym ISAC (Information Services Asset Control), where she was directed to form a team of analysts from other departments who would do the actual technical work while she and her staff monitored the ongoing process.
The cause of the ISAC problem was that the management would not work as a team. Jim Gardner was the director for the ISD application department which did the system analysis for the project. He had served over twenty years as a supervisor and then as a manager in the business application area. He believed that relationship within his organizations were good. Jim claimed that his people did not like to work with Dorothy because she spelled out solutions and if his people did not agree with her, she would immediately refer the problem to Bill James. HE also explained that Dorothy wanted to be assured of staffing in ISAC and wanted to know who would be assigned to the project and who would work on it for its duration, by name, which was not the way Jim wanted his area to operate.
In my opinion, after reading the case, the source of the problem traced back to Dorothys background. Dorothy was out of the scientific and engineering are of the company, which meant that most of the Information Service people thought that she didnt know what they were about. Dorothy was in a difficult position because she had a relationship with the director of the Information service division, William James, and her boss, Bill McNultry. Dorothy was in a very difficult assignment and she did not have the authority or backup she needed. People saw her as a perfectionist and the problem was that she gave her own opinion on how the problem should be solved rather than seeing that they are solved.
Dorothy was a manager in the Information Services Division of the Ace Aerospace Company. Her job was to work with personnel in other departments on planning and implementation of certain programs. A manager who had worked with Dorothy in the past and who had since moved to another division was interviewed on the subject. This states that Dorothy was a direct leader. Direct leadership spells out the subordinates tasks.
What sources of power does Dorothy have? What leadership style would you guess she has? (refer to a couple of theories in the text).
What sources of power do the other main characters in the case have? Can you guess what their leadership styles might be? Why dont they like