Wendy Peterson case study Stefanija Mindova

Contents
Introduction 1
Diagnosis 2
Solution 4
Conclusion 5

Introduction
“Wendy Peterson” is a case study about the company Account Back which offers services and is making software products that can be used for accounting functions. In the case can be described some the issues occurred while managing people, performance management, cross cultural relations and leadership. Wendy Peterson was promoted to VP of Sales within the Plano Texas office of Account Back. She has performed research for five years in order to penetrate the Chinese market. So, in order to continue this step she thought of hiring someone more familiar with Chinese background that can provide better insight of culture. Candidates that spoke Mandarin and have advanced degree in business where preferred. Her final choice was hiring Fred Wu. Wu was produced and elevated in China partly educated inside the U.S. and immigrated for the U.S. in 2005. Within 12 several days he'd signed his regional team's greatest client but Billings has reservations about Wu's performance which is uneasy regarding working relationship. Wu has requested an assistant unequaled within Account Back's flat business structure.

Diagnosis

Peterson had joined Account Back right after her graduating, she had outshined as a junior manager and she was described as a “doer”. Since in Plano, Texas there were a cluster of businesses owned by Chinese entrepreneurs penetrating into this market she considered with hiring the right person. For the new position there was a plethora of choices. Employing Wu was mainly because of his similarities and the access of Chinese business leaders. Wu was born and raised in China, part of his education is in US and he was living in US since 2005. He did not have any experience in the related field but was eager to learn. Even though during the first year of his working he had signed his regional team’s largest client, he failed to accomplish his day to day tasks and he did not align with the organizational structure. In his first months of working he would have arrived early ad stayed late, help his colleges with the software since he enjoyed the role of being an expert. He was praised across the company. Wu believed that Account Back’s short-term goals would conflict with his approach to the clients. And at the end of the year he required to have personal assistant in order to be able to realize his requirements.
A lot of problems occurred during the work of these two people with different background. First of all Wu did not fit into Peterson’s style of working and he did not keep his daily contact. Mostly, Wu have been working outside of the office more than it was approved by the organizational policy. He had various meetings which ended up with conflicts because he rarely had been showing up.
The first the conflict occurred from the personality and values. Personality and values can be defined as the sum of the total ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with other people. Consistent with the big 5 personality traits model and considering the scores of Wendy and Wu they are totally opposite. Wendy is an extrovert person, not agreeable, conscientious, neurotic, too opened to experience. On the other hand Wu is introverted he does not talk much with his coworkers and what he is talking about is very short and only about the job. He is independent quiet and enjoys to be alone. So, Wendy could not approach him on a personal level which resulted in difficulties in communication. Also he is not neurotic and has moderate openness to experience.
The second problem can be found in the difference between leadership and management. Leadership is described as an ability to influence a group towards the achievement of goals, while management is defined like the use of inherent authority in designated formal rank to obtain compliance from organizational members. Wendy is approaching the employees by participating with them in the most of the work they are doing. She believes that employees should be able to connect to their leader to become good followers. On the one hand Wu is introverted as previously mentioned, on the other hand Wendy is not able to get closer to him which leads to conclusion that Wendy cannot address the problem and solve it immediately.
The third problem can be found in the power and conflict. The power means the capacity that one person has to influence the behavior on the other person, so that the other person acts in accordance to the first one person wishes. To summarize power is a function of dependency. There is low level of cooperation between Wendy and Wu which leads to rivalry and the conflict will be solved on slower and less effective. They have to understand each other’s intentions before choosing a strategy how to solve the conflict. They can overcome the conflict by compromise with each other, accommodate their expectations and collaborate to achieve their common goals. The communication between them was caused by the different norms and different communication style. Wendy has low context culture compared to Wu who has high context culture which is in that group of people who are expressing less verbally, valuates long term relationships, decisions and activities should be made face to face.

Solution

Wendy Peterson is faced with the tough decision to supply Fred Wu with an assistant or lose him to a competitor. Peterson’s actions going forward could affect the other members of the office and alter the working relationship with Wu in the future. Terminating or caving his requirement for an assistant is the question. By not allowing his requirements which means losing him as a professional, there will not be any further conflicts among the other employees that are longer than him in the company and were working according to the rules and policy during the year. Further on this may result in lowering their level of job satisfaction and motivation which will lead to lower work performance. Losing Wu one is worthy since he was not trying to obey with the rules and policies of the organization in his first year he will not to that later on.

Conclusion
There are a lot of factors that were mentioned such as the values and personality, cross cultural differences, way of managing and dealing with conflicts, communication, leadership and management. Hiring the right person is a tough decision considering the fact that the right person may not meet the expectations at the beginning. The failure of one to complete the basics and rules that are provided by the organizational structure it should not be tolerated no matter how good is their overall performance because later on the person will not be able to complete the long term objectives if he falls to meet the short term ones.