Thomas Green

Thomas Green Paper: Power, Office Politics, and a Career in Crisis
Vanessa D. Goins
Grand Canyon University
LDR-610-0101 Power, Politics, and Influence
Brian Lahargoue
July 20, 2013

Thomas Green ‘s actions as a senior market specialist was not meeting Frank Davis’s expectations A senior market specialist job is responsible for identifying industry trends, evaluating new business opportunities, and establishing sales goals(Sasser & Beckham, 2008).Shannon McDonald had hired Green because she was counting on him to do a job well done, instead he lacked the managerial experience in his job position .McDonald and Davis wanted Green to think strategically and outside of the box , but Green was only concerned with the sales target. He listened to Davis but was very doubtful of his expectations for him. Davis thought that Green would do his duties as a senior market specialist, but Green was not keeping Davis informed of his schedules, not answering his cell phone, not turning in reports, and not being able to be located of where he was supposed to be. During the meetings with Davis, Green would display a negative attitude and that was not good for the company. He felt as though that he was doing everything right and not be lacking anything, his negligence of the expected duties that Davis needed him to do was putting his job in jeopardy. The individual agendas of Davis and McDonald were to think strategically as a senior market specialist and be able to handle the different functions of the corporate office. The agendas were also to spend a significant amount of time preparing for client meetings and developing supporting details for proposals (Sasser &Beckham, 2008).Each person Green, McDonald, and Davis wanted to be treated with respect in their positions. Green wanted to be treated like an employee that knows how to do the job as a senior market specialist that can get the job done. He wanted Davis to let him do things his way and he wanted him to trust him that he could make the sales happen. McDonald, as the division vice president took Green under her wing expected for him to treat her like a leader, someone who is willing to help him be successful in his new position so that it will help the company grow. Davis, as Green’s boss wanted Green to treat him like a boss and follow the job requirements that were expected of him as being a senior market specialist. He also wanted Green to respect the fact that he was only looking out for his best interest and agree to do focus more on his job expectations and come to the meetings having a positive attitude instead of having doubts and negativity against what Davis was saying. Pfeffer (1992) suggests that power, as a function of a position and or unit in the organizational structure, is reflected in the control and use of resources. The personal power of bases that I believed that were used in this case study was legitimate power, reward power, expert power, and coercive power. McDonald uses legitimate power and reward power, as vice president, she had the power over the decision to promote Green to his position as she was impressed with his insights into the company’s markets. Being that McDonald had the legitimate power, Green had to obey McDonald based on his position. Davis used coercive power whenever Green was hired, his ignoring Davis’s orders and behavior was causing dissatisfaction in the workplace with the high position that he was carrying. David warned Green that he had to make an effort to do what he supposed to as senior market specialist or his job was in jeopardy, meaning that he would lose his job. Expert power was used in Green’s case, he used his ability to administer his knowledge and expertise about sales for the company and he was good at getting his clients to trust him and to buy in to what he was presenting to them.
I think that reward power should have been used more effectively when it came to Davis and Green situation. Davis could used a reward power for Green and expert power. He could have took up more time with Green, mentoring him and finding solutions to help Green become a better and more productive employee of the company. Davis could have used the reward power to encourage Green to do a successful job in helping make the company grow. McDonald could have trained Green a little bit more in his position as senior market specialist so that he would not have been lacking any managerial experiences. Green would have been more eager to learn the proper steps of his position if McDonald and Davis would have both too help him come up with a lot more strategies. They could have used their expert power to always keep him informed of any new information and how to make it at the top to be successful. If they would have used those powers toward better educating Green, he would have a better attitude and be more motivated to come to the meetings eager to learn and ready to go with the plan of action to help Dynamic Displays grow. One of the powers that were abused was coercive power that Davis had used towards Green as being his boss, he would call out the things that he was not in agreement with Green’s job performance. He did not think that Green was doing the duties of his position that he was supposed to do and he abused the coercive power to warn Green because he had that authority over him to fire him if he didn’t improve on his job performance. Green had abused the expert power to the point where he figured he knew it all and how to handle his job, not knowing that he was lacking in managerial experience. He had resentment toward Davis for his pointing out all of the incidents that occurred as Davis pointed out that green was only concerned with the sales target and focus more on how to capture the target.

References

French and Raven 's Five Forms of Power. Understanding Where Power Comes From in the Workplace. Retrieved July 20 from www.mindtools.com/pages/article
Pfeffer, J. (1992) Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Sasser, W., Beckham, H. (2008). Thomas Green: Power, Office Politics, and a Career in Crisis.
Harvard Business Publishing

References: French and Raven 's Five Forms of Power. Understanding Where Power Comes From in the Workplace. Retrieved July 20 from www.mindtools.com/pages/article Pfeffer, J. (1992) Managing with power: Politics and influence in organizations. Boston: Harvard University Press. Sasser, W., Beckham, H. (2008). Thomas Green: Power, Office Politics, and a Career in Crisis. Harvard Business Publishing