White Collar Type Of Employee Working In The Film Office Space
This paper discusses the film “Office Space” featuring Ron Livingston as Peter Gibbons who is an average white -collar type of employee working for a software company called Initech (Judge, 1999). Peter Gibbons and his fellow co-workers loathe working at Initech, and Peter hates his boss Bill Lumbergh, most of all. After being convinced to go to hypnotherapy by his girlfriend, Peter gets stuck in a trance like state after the hypnotherapist suffers a heart attack and fails to snap Peter out of his hypnosis. This causes Peter to no longer care about his problems, and sets off a series of events that lead him to find new love, devise a plan with his coworkers to get money from the company, and actually find a new job he enjoys after the destruction
…show more content…
of Initech.
Organizational Life Cycles
Entrepreneurial Stage concept that is represented in this film is niche formation.
Niche formation is when you carve out a place in the working world. Peter’s place at Initech was carved out for him because of the repetitive work he did during the workday. Initech as company was not very organized, because no one knew what they were doing, it was always someone else doing the work.
Collectivity Stage OLC concept was represented by Peter and his coworkers Samir and Michael Bolton, and their attempt to regain control back from Initech after Samir and Michael are fired and Peter is promoted. The three employees were committed to creating a software virus that would steal fractions of a penny off of every dollar Initech makes. Peter devised the plan, Samir installed the software program, and Michael created the software virus.
Formulation Stage OLC concept is represented by how the three men formulate a plan because they felt wrong by Initech. Underpaid and under appreciated. The men check the bank account they are sending the pennies to, to make sure that the virus is working, and how much profit they have made so far after the uploading of the virus. Yet when Peter checked the account it stated there was over 300,000 dollars in the account, when the virus was only supposed to take fractions of
penny.
Structure, Elaboration, and Adaptation Stage OLC concept is represented by the decentralization and adaptation after the fellows decide to confess to stealing from the company and turn themselves in to the authority. Peter slides the confession letter under his bosses door and leaves. To his surprise the company gets burned down by another fellow employee, and Peter is finally free from his dead end job. He finds work elsewhere after that and adapts to his new working arrangement.
Intervention
Initech like many companies needed to be restructured from the top to the bottom. There was no organization among the company leaving those in charge unchecked by a higher authority. Because Initech failed to actually produced work and there were so many employees who felt like they were going nowhere they needed to be restructured. Even though company cleaning by head management was attempted, by outside management and with Peter being promoted, he still tried to keep his friends employed. The intervention should be checking the virtue of the company and making sure it is upholding those virtues. Differences between individual and organizational virtues need to be clarified, as do the ways in which virtues are fostered and inhibited in organizations (Cameron, Bright, Caza, 2004).
of Initech.
Organizational Life Cycles
Entrepreneurial Stage concept that is represented in this film is niche formation.
Niche formation is when you carve out a place in the working world. Peter’s place at Initech was carved out for him because of the repetitive work he did during the workday. Initech as company was not very organized, because no one knew what they were doing, it was always someone else doing the work.
Collectivity Stage OLC concept was represented by Peter and his coworkers Samir and Michael Bolton, and their attempt to regain control back from Initech after Samir and Michael are fired and Peter is promoted. The three employees were committed to creating a software virus that would steal fractions of a penny off of every dollar Initech makes. Peter devised the plan, Samir installed the software program, and Michael created the software virus.
Formulation Stage OLC concept is represented by how the three men formulate a plan because they felt wrong by Initech. Underpaid and under appreciated. The men check the bank account they are sending the pennies to, to make sure that the virus is working, and how much profit they have made so far after the uploading of the virus. Yet when Peter checked the account it stated there was over 300,000 dollars in the account, when the virus was only supposed to take fractions of
penny.
Structure, Elaboration, and Adaptation Stage OLC concept is represented by the decentralization and adaptation after the fellows decide to confess to stealing from the company and turn themselves in to the authority. Peter slides the confession letter under his bosses door and leaves. To his surprise the company gets burned down by another fellow employee, and Peter is finally free from his dead end job. He finds work elsewhere after that and adapts to his new working arrangement.
Intervention
Initech like many companies needed to be restructured from the top to the bottom. There was no organization among the company leaving those in charge unchecked by a higher authority. Because Initech failed to actually produced work and there were so many employees who felt like they were going nowhere they needed to be restructured. Even though company cleaning by head management was attempted, by outside management and with Peter being promoted, he still tried to keep his friends employed. The intervention should be checking the virtue of the company and making sure it is upholding those virtues. Differences between individual and organizational virtues need to be clarified, as do the ways in which virtues are fostered and inhibited in organizations (Cameron, Bright, Caza, 2004).