It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and the weekly beer bust is in full swing at Quantum Software’s Seattle headquarters. The sun shines on the volleyball court and beyond; the patio sparkles over a dazzling view of Lake Washington. Every week most of the employ-ees drop in to unwind and relax at the beer bust for an hour as a reward for extra effort.
Quantum Software was founded three years ago by Stan Albright and Erin Barber based upon an idea they came up with in college for forming a business aimed at developing and selling computer software specifically oriented to the needs of independent oil businesses. Few of these firms grow large enough to do their own data-processing systems. Quantum has grown to more than 200 employees and $95 million in sales over the past three years. One Friday afternoon, Bill Carter, the corporate attorney, dropped in to at-tend a business meeting.After the meeting, he was
in-vited to mix in with employees at the weekly beer bust.
“What a great place to work!” several people told Bill. The spirit of Quantum continually amazed Bill.
Stan and Erin knew how to keep things hopping and yet hold morale at an enthusiastic level. To counter the frantic work pace of 16-hour days and six-day weeks, Quantum had a beer bust every Friday after-noon. Everyone was invited, from Stan and Erin to the part-time janitor who worked nights.
No ties, no suit coats, first names only: this was a great way to encourage the team concept. Lately though, Bill Carter had been having second thoughts about serving alcohol at a company-sponsored party.
He made up his mind to speak to CEO Stan Albright about it and started toward the pool where Stan and Erin were holding a lively discussion with three em-ployees. Just then, John Hooker, a new programmer in
ISBN: 0-536-63893-4
software development, lost his balance and fell on the snack table, sending finger sandwiches flying in all di-rections and getting a round of applause. “All right, John!” several people called out. More determined than ever, Bill approached Stan and Erin and said,
“Don’t you think this party thing is getting a little out of hand? It used to be a lot of fun, but now maybe we’re growing too fast.We’re getting more people like John there, who just seem to overdo it.”
“Take it easy, Bill,” said Stan. “The atmosphere around here would get stale real fast if we couldn’t blow off a little steam now and then.”
“Come on, Bill,” Erin added,“lighten up.We need this time to relax and for everyone to socialize over a beer without the pressure of work.”
“You should know, Bill, how much these parties mean to our success. I really feel that one of the keys to our continued growth has been the family feeling among our employees. On Fridays at our TGIF get-to-gethers, we all get to know one another as equals.That gives me the right to kick butts when I have to be-cause they know I like them and want them to suc-ceed. That’s the real value of these parties.”
“Okay, Stan, so you tell me,” asked Bill, “what’s the value in having someone like John who has had too many beers driving home and possibly causing a serious accident? Do you realize that Quantum could be held liable in such an instance?”
“Bill,” responded Erin, “you know I’m the one who first thought up the idea of having a Friday bash and I still think it’s a great idea. I agree with Stan that this company is a success thanks to our employees and the esprit de corps that we’ve developed. If we drop the TGIFs as a time to unwind, what can we re-place it with? I can see the point you’re trying to raise.
I agree that something bad could come out of this, but if we can’t take a few risks we may as well close the doors.These parties are great for recruitment and they define our corporate culture. I feel it would be a big mistake to drop the parties.”
“I think you two are missing the point,” answered Bill. “Of course, I realize how important it is to keep our team spirit. What I’m trying to say is, isn’t there a way to keep that spirit and put some limit to our lia-bility exposure at the same time?”
QUESTIONS
1. Does Quantum have a problem or not?
2. How would you respond to Bill?
3. Examine the pros and cons of the various actions.
4. What do you think Quantum should do?
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An Experiential Approach to Organization Development, Seventh Edition, by Donald R. Brown and Don Harvey.
Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc.
CASE ANALYSIS FORM
Name: __________________________________________________
I. Problems A. Macro
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B. Micro 1.
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II. Causes 1.
2.
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III. Alternatives 1.
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IV. Recommendations 1.
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CHAPTER 1 ENDNOTES
1. For additional information, see Diane Brady, “Will Jeff Immelt’s New Push Pay Off for GE?” Business Week,October 13, 2003, pp. 94–98; Dave Ulrich, Steve Kerr, and Ron Ashkenas, The GE Work-Out : How to Implement GE’s Revolutionary Method for Busting Bureaucracy and Attacking Organizational Problems—Fast!(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002);
Michael Maccoby, “The Narcissist-Visionary,” Forbes, vol. 171, no. 5 (March 3, 2003), p. 3; Robert Slater, Jack Welch & the G.E. Way: Management Insights and Leadership Secrets of the Legendary CEO(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999); Noel M. Tichy and S. Sherman, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will(New York: Doubleday, 1993).
2. Laura Rubach, “Downsizing: How Quality Is Af-fected as Companies Shrink,” Quality Progress, vol.
28, no. 4 (April 1995), p. 23.
3. Pallavi Gogoi, “Thinking Outside the Cereal Box,”
Business Week,July 28, 2003, pp. 74–75.
4. Richard E. Dutton, “High Technology with the Human Touch,” paper presented at Academy of Management, Washington, D.C., 1989. See also Jean-nie Coyle, “Aligning Human Resources Processes with Total Quality,” Employment Relations Today, Autumn 1991, p. 273.
5. Richard Beckhard, Organizational Development:
Strategies and Models(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), p. 9. Also see Jyotsna Sanzgiri and Jonathan Z. Gottlieb, “Philosophic and Pragmatic In-fluences on the Practice of Organization Develop-ment, 1950–2000,” Organizational Dynamics, Autumn 1992, pp. 57–59.
6. Marie McKendall, “The Tyranny of Change: Organi-zational Development Revisited,” Journal of Busi-ness Ethics,February 1993, p. 97.
7. Jack Ewing, “Is Siemens Still German?” Business Week,May 17, 2004, pp. 50–51; idem, “The Decline of Germany,” Business Week, February 17, 2003, pp.
44–53.
8. For more information, see Rosabeth Moss Kanter,
“Change Is Everyone’s Job: Managing the Extended Enterprise in a Globally Connected World,”
Organizational Dynamics,vol. 28, no. 1 (Summer 1999), pp. 6–24.
9. Teresa J. Colvin and Ralph H. Kilmann, “A Profile of Large Scale Change Programs,” Proceedings of the Southern Management Association,1989, p. 202.
10. William C. Symonds, “The Kodak Revolt Is Short-Sighted,” Business Week, November 3, 2003, p. 38.
11. Warren G. Bennis, Organization Development: Its Nature, Origins, and Prospects(Reading, Mass.: Addi-son-Wesley, 1969).
12. For additional information, see
http://www.trilogy.com; [this was an interview con-ducted by Steve Gibbons and Cathy Kramer] Steve Gibbons and Cathy Kramer, “From GE to Trilogy:
How to Hand on a Legacy of Leadership,” Journal for Quality & Participation,vol. 23, no. 3 (May/June 2000), p. 6; Evan Ramstad, “How Trilogy Software Trains Its Raw Recruits to Be Risk Takers,” Wall
Street Journal,September 21, 1998, p. A1; Michael A.
Verespeg, “Do Anything You Want,” Industry Week, vol. 247, no. 21 (November 16, 1998), p. 14.
13. Robert B. Reich, “The Company of the Future,” Fast Company,November 1998, p. 124.
14. See Bennis, Organization Development: Its Nature, Origins, and Prospectsfor one of the first discussions of OD practitioners.
15. For more information on organizational culture, see Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leader-ship(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.); Joanne Mar-tin, Organizational Culture: Mapping the Terrain (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2002); Neal Ashkanasy, Celeste P. M. Wilderom, and Mark F. Peterson, eds., Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2000); Cary L. Cooper, Sue Cartwright, and P. Christopher Earley, eds., The International Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate(New York: Wiley, 2001.)
16. B. F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1969), p. 13.
17. Dean Foust, Anand Natarajan, and Brian Grow,
“Disability Claim Denied!” Business Week, Decem-ber 22, 2003, pp. 62–64.
18. See H. S. Becker, “Culture: A Sociological View,”
Yale Review,Summer 1982, pp. 513–27; Edgar H.
Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985), p. 168.
19. Edgar H. Schein, “Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture,” Sloan Management Review, Winter 1984, pp. 3–116; Daniel C. Feldman, “The De-velopment of Group Norms,” Academy of Manage-ment Review,vol. 9, no. 1 (1984), pp. 47–53.
20. See, for example, Daniel M. Cable and Charles K.
Parsons, “Socialization Tactics and Person-Organiza-tion Fit,” Personnel Psychology, vol. 54, no. 1 (Spring 2001), pp. 1–23; J. Hebden, “Adopting an Organiza-tion’s Culture,” Organizational Dynamics, Summer 1986, pp. 54–72; G. R. Jones, “Socialization Tactics,”
Academy of Management Journal,June 1986, pp.
262–79.
21. Robert Berner, “P&G, How A. G. Lafley Is Revolu-tionizing a Bastion of Corporate Conservatism,”
Business Week,July 7, 2003, pp. 52–63.
22. Glenn Hasek, “The Right Chemistry,” Industry Week, vol. 249, no. 5 (March 6, 2000), p. 36–40
23. Edgar H. Schein, “Organization Socialization and the Profession of Management,” Industrial Management Review,vol. 9 (1968), p. 8.
24. For some of the original material on psychological contracts, see C. Argyris, Understanding Organiza-tional Behavior(Homewood, Ill.: Dorsey Press, 1960); Schein, “Organization Socialization and the Profession of Management”; Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Psychology,3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980); H. Levinson, C. Price, K. Munden, H. Mandl, and C. Solley, Men, Management, and Mental Health,(Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press, 1962). For additional infor-mation, see Yehuda Baruch and Patricia Hind,
“Per-ISBN: 0-536-63893-4
An Experiential Approach to Organization Development, Seventh Edition, by Donald R. Brown and Don Harvey.
Published by Prentice Hall. Copyright © 2006 by Pearson Education, Inc.
petual Motion in Organizations: Effective Manage-ment and the Impact of the New Psychological Con-tracts on ‘Survivor Syndrome’,” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology,vol. 8, no. 2 (1999), pp. 295–306; Douglas T. Hall, “The New Pro-tean Career Contract: Helping Organizations and Employees Adapt,” Organizational Dynamics, vol.
26, no. 3 (Winter 1998), pp. 22–37; and Paul R. Spar-row, “Reappraising Psychological Contracting,”
International Studies of Management and Organiza-tion,vol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 30–64.
25. Robert W. Goddard, “The Psychological Contract,”
Management World,vol. 13, no. 7 (August 1984), p. 12.
26. Rebecca Blumenstein, “A New CEO’s Choice: Keep the Old Team or Bring Your Own,” Wall Street Jour-nal,December 24, 1998, pp. A1 and A4.
27. Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, and L. J. Bourgeois III,
“Politics of Strategic Decision Making in High Veloc-ity Environments,” Academy of Management Journal, vol. 31, no. 4 (December 1988), p. 38.
28. This exercise is adapted from David A. Kolb, Irwin M. Rubine, and James M. McIntyre, Organizational Psychology: An Experiential Approach,2nd ed.
(Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1974), pp. 9–17.
29. Don Harvey, John Hulpke, and Joe Hudson, Califor-nia State University, Bakersfield, Bakersfield, Calif., 1994.
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