There are several problems in this case. Your assignment is to read the case and identify the problems that, in your opinion, Karen Carlin and the firm of Hepplewhite and Boyce will have to confront, and suggest solutions to those problems in a five page, double-spaced paper. The format for this case is the same as case # 1. Only the topic has changed. You will present your findings to the class in a five minute presentation with slides. As the case states, firing people is not an option. Also, financial calculations are not necessary for this case.

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You are to assume that you are a consultant in personnel management who has been hired by Ms. Boyce, the CEO of Hepplewhite and Boyce, to study this case and write a report to her. As a reminder, below is the information from case study # 1 about a suggested outline for a standard problem/solution format. It can be adapted in any fashion you think is appropriate, or you can develop your own format. 1. The purpose of the report 2. A clear definition of the problems 3. The probable causes of the problems 4.

The feasible courses of action to be taken to solve the problems . The best courses of action in your opinion 6. Why they are the best courses of action, including probable outcomes 7. Additional steps that should be taken in the future to ensure that similar problems do not occur. The written report is due April 4, 2013 The presentation is due March 14, 2013 Karen Carlin Used with Permission from the Publisher: OB in Action: Cases and Exercises Wolff Wohlberg, 6th Ed. , 2001. This case was written by Scott Weighart. Karen Carlin graduated from Plympton University’s School of Management in 1995.

Though she was a top student and planned someday to get an MBA, she wanted for the moment to work in Manhattan. Karen grew up in the small town of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and she was excited at the idea of living in the big city. She figured New York was the next logical step after going to school in Pittsburgh. Having heard many horror stories about the cost of living in Manhattan, Karen wasted no time trying to find a job. While working at the Daily Free Press, Plympton’s student newspaper, Karen had learned a great deal about word processing.

Accordingly, she went to Temployee Specialists and applied for a job. The interview was high pressured. The woman in charge of Temployee Specialists, Jane Thorley, gave her four consecutive timed typing tests, followed by a Dictaphone test. She asked Karen unusually specific questions about her education and work background. Finally, Thorley brought her to an Apple Macintosh computer with Microsoft Word and Pagemaker software. “Have you ever used one of these? ” she asked. Karen reluctantly admitted that she hadn’t. “Well, you seem bright enough,”

Thorley told her. “Sit down, and give it a try. Although Karen felt a little intimidated, she tried calling up files and doing simple commands. It was different from the Free Press’s Varityper system, but she managed to figure out the basics. Fifteen minutes later, Jane Thorley came in and watched over her shoulder. Although it was hard to tell from her all-business expression, Thorley was apparently pleased. She told Karen that she had a long-term assignment for her at Hepplewhite & Boyce, a large accounting firm in a huge office building near Canal Street. Karen was shocked and thrilled to have gotten a job so easily. However, there was a catch. If they ask you if you’ve used the DataLogic computer, just tell them that you have,” Thorley said.

“You’re a quick study; you’ll pick it up right away. If you get stuck, just ask if you can take a look at the manual. Tell them you need to refresh your memory. If you could photocopy the manual for us, that would be even better. ” Karen felt uneasy about deceiving her first client, but she also felt she couldn’t afford to pass up a job offer. In Manhattan, who could tell how long she might have to wait for another one? She had found a great apartment in the West Village through a Matching Roommates agency.

Her room was claustrophobically small, and her rent was $1575 a month, but she wanted to be in the heart of the city. She decided she couldn’t afford to pass up this opportunity. By the time she was sitting behind her computer at Hepplewhite ; Boyce, Karen was a nervous wreck. She typed frantically, certain that someone would find her out. She had been assigned to the schedule typists’ office, where there were three other women, all sitting at desks with computers and all studying her out of the corner of their eyes. Their job was to update lengthy tax schedules for the fifteen accountants who worked in their department.

After half an hour of typing as fast as possible, Karen was interrupted by Pauline, a thirtyish woman sitting across from her, who walked over to her with an annoyed expression on her face. For ten long seconds she stood and watched Karen work. Finally, she spoke: “What in the world do you think you’re doing? ” Karen turned bright red. She was sure her charade had been discovered. Instead, she was amazed as Pauline scolded her for working too hard. “Would you please slow down? ” she said. Then she shook her head, and as she walked back to her desk, Karen could hear Pauline mutter, “Can you believe these eager-beaver temps?

Before long, Karen was almost fascinated by how little work was done in the office. The system was almost ingenious. When the accountants needed work to be done, they sent it to the schedule typists through the internal mail system or dropped it by personally. Either way, the work piled up in the office in-basket. The office supervisor, Keith Frazier, would stop by every day or two. If there was only a small pile of work in the in-basket, Frazier would get extra work from another floor to keep them busy. If there was a large pile of work in the inbasket, he would take some of it to another floor to be done.

Sometimes, instead of taking the extra work elsewhere, he would hire an additional temporary employee to deal with it. Karen realized that this was why she had been hired. Two of the women in the office, Pauline and Pat, had purposely been doing the least possible amount of work for the last few weeks. They had correctly realized that the more of the tedious work they did, the more they would have to do. On the other hand, if they spent all morning getting coffee, chatting about their weekends, and so on, Frazier would take the work elsewhere. It was unbelievable. The third woman in the office, Myra, was different.

Myra was an Indian immigrant who commuted from the Stuyvesant area of the Bronx. Although she laughed at Pat’s off-color jokes, Myra kept working away while the others dawdled. She never criticized them for fooling around even though their lack of effort generally meant that she was the one who did most of the schedule preparation. When Karen started working in their office, the others were polite to her but not very friendly. Slowly, Pauline began asking her questions. What did she think about Manhattan? Where was she living? And so on. The others eventually joined in. After a while, Karen started to enjoy working in this group.

Pauline and Pat, who lived in Brooklyn, were very quick-witted and entertaining. In particular, things seemed to revolve around Pauline, who was the ringleader behind most of the mischief-making. When Pauline started coming to work at 10 a. m. , Pat did the same. After a week, even Myra and Karen were coming in late, around 9:15. Myra was shy and quiet, but sometimes Karen had good conversations with her when the others took one of their ninety-minute to two-hour lunches at a nearby cafe. Even though the four of them were very different, Karen was intrigued to find that they each stuck up for one another.

If Frazier stopped by while Pauline and Pat were taking an extra long lunch, Myra would tell him that they were checking on work with an accountant on another floor or that they were getting supplies from the stationery center. Karen learned that Pat had occasionally taken a whole day off to go shopping uptown-and been paid for it–while Frazier thought she was up in the schedule typists’ office, working away. Karen believed that the Hepplewhite ; Boyce employees in other departments didn’t like her or anyone else in the office.

If she sat down in the cafeteria at lunch and told someone where she worked, she felt she was treated like a nobody. When she asked Pauline about it, Pauline just chuckled. “We’re what you might call the Black Sheep Office. No one wants to have anything to do with us because they know what we do is just busywork, something any moron can do. ” As Karen listened, she glanced out the window of the office, which overlooked an ugly jumble of back alleys and construction projects. Pauline went on to explain that they had initially pushed Frazier to give them a little more free rein in how they did their work. Karen was confused. Don’t you have free rein already? ” she asked. “Frazier only checks on us about twice a week. ” “Yeah, right,” Pauline said.

“But he still tells us we have to do things his way. ” The current procedures were rigid and monotonous. Pat had suggested that the schedule typists should be able to fix obvious mathematical errors without sending them back to an accountant, and Pauline herself had asked if they could each be responsible for working with three or four specific accountants so that the schedule typists could get used to the style and handwriting of each one. Doing that, Pauline had told Karen, might save time.

Pauline was certain that they could have come up with many more ideas, but Frazier had assured them that his way of getting the work done was the most efficient. Using his system, for example, it wouldn’t matter if one person was absent; because someone else would just do her work. Since absenteeism was high, he felt this was an important consideration. “After a while, we stopped complaining,” Pat said, “because, number one, he wouldn’t listen, and, number two, it’s easier to do less work his way. ” Pauline nodded. “Why should we knock ourselves out? This way we have a lot more time to chat and have long lunches.

The day goes by just as fast either way. ” Within a few weeks, the typists began having increasingly serious conflicts with Frazier. He had started to receive some complaints from the accountants about the delays in getting tax schedules updated. Then he succeeded in tracking down a bunch of international phone calls that were being made from the schedule typists’ office. Pat had a sister who was married to an Air Force colonel in Keflavic, Iceland, and she had been calling her regularly. Frazier’s solution was to change the phone system so that it was impossible to make anything but an internal phone call from the schedule typists’ office.

Pauline, angered about this development, took it as a personal challenge to beat the system. Within twenty-four hours, she discovered that it was possible to make international calls from the emergency telephone in the office elevator. She and Pat commandeered the elevator for half an hour, while Pat called her sister. By now, Karen, also annoyed because she couldn’t even call her temp agency without using a pay phone on another floor, was fully willing to cover for her new friends. One Monday morning, Frazier called Karen to his office, a spacious corner room with a beautiful view of the southern tip of Manhattan and the Hudson River.

When Frazier asked about whether everyone was pulling their weight in schedule typing, Karen said they were. During the conversation, it became clear to Karen that Frazier had found out about the elevator episode and that he intended to take action. Still, Karen was astonished by his plan. “Some people around here need to learn a few lessons,” he said. “Since you’ve been here, Karen, you’ve worked hard, and you’re certainly qualified. ” Karen blushed, knowing how untrue that was. “Frankly, Karen, I don’t have time to baby-sit certain individuals in certain departments.

So, I’m putting you in charge of the schedule typists. You can do whatever you want, be as tough as you like. Just don’t fire anyone. As you probably know from your management background, that’s an expensive alternative, a last resort. ” Frazier added that he was responsible for over thirty workers so he hadn’t been able to give the schedule typists the iron hand of discipline he felt they needed. “Still, I’ve always spelled out for them everything they have to do. They just don’t want to listen. They need someone like you to slap their hands as soon as they get out of line. “

Karen accepted the position, figuring it would be a good opportunity to find out if she could apply what she’d learned in her management courses at Plympton. Nonetheless, she had many doubts and anxieties. Regardless of what Frazier had said, she knew that he wasn’t making her leader because of her ability. He was probably more interested in embarrassing Pat and Pauline by appointing someone who was much younger and much less experienced than they, and someone who came in from a temp agency to boot. It was clear that it would surely be fine with Frazier if Karen made their lives miserable.

What could she do to make the group productive? Frazier would probably laugh in her face if she suggested raises and bonuses for the “black sheep” group. Besides, the salaries were already more than reasonable, given the nature of the work. After all, the women Would have probably quit long ago if money was the issue. Another worry was that Pauline was unquestionably the informal leader of the group. She had been there the longest and knew the most about the computer system, and she was well liked. Karen liked Pauline and couldn’t really blame her for most of what she had done.

Still, how could she keep Pauline from being a problem? There was another dilemma. After work, Karen took the subway to the midtown office of Temployee Specialists so she could tell Jane Thorley about her promotion. Thorley thought it was a wonderful thing. “Now we can deal with you directly when Hepplewhite ; Boyce needs another temp! ” she said. Karen smiled weakly, knowing that Temployee Specialists would probably continue to send inexperienced but eager college graduates who would cheerfully lie about their computer ability to make it past the personnel department.

When tax season arrived, Karen knew she would probably need to hire one or two temporaries, regardless of how successful she was in managing Pauline, Pat, and Myra. If she did use Temployee Specialists, she would be encouraging more lying, which didn’t seem right. Karen had made a regrettable decision at a time when she felt desperate for money. Now that she was a manager in a position of responsibility, she felt she should be a good role model and earn the respect of her business associates. At the same time, she would feel like a hypocrite if she told Jane Thorley that she wouldn’t go along with the scheme: It would mean hat she had been willing to lie when her own selfish interests were at stake, but not when someone else was involved.

Admittedly, Thorley had put her through a tough selection procedure, Karen thought. Maybe Thorley was actually able to identify workers who could do good work, even if they weren’t technically qualified. Still, did the end justify the means? Karen now believed that she shouldn’t have jumped at her first job offer, but at the same time there was no way to make that decision again. She realized that she had been naive. Now, in many ways, she had to grow up in a hurry.

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