Elmdale College Case Study

Elmdale College Case Study

This case study discusses problems that arise with the employees of an Elmdale College Residence Hall. Each residence hall on campus has the organizational structure of: two Residence Managers who are full-time staff or faculty employees, two Head Residence Assistants who are senior undergraduate students, and 16 Residence Assistants who are also usually seniors. The main organizational behavior topics that are illustrated in this case through the dynamic interactions of the above listed residence hall employees are: Leadership, Employee Training, Discipline, Communication, Organizational Structure, and Human Resource Management. All of these topics are directly related to the leadership that is present in the organization.

About.com defines leadership as “a critical management skill, the ability to motivate a group of people toward a common goal.” (http://management.about.com/od/leadership/Leadership.htm) Each of the Residence Managers, Heather and Matt, seem to have a different leadership philosophy. Heather attempts to “please everyone” and therefore relies heavily on the consensus of her subordinates when making decision. Matt on the other hand states that he defines his practices by “integrity”, and claims this means that he “walks the talk”. However, both seem to have one leadership trait in common, which is that due to their busy schedules, both tend to have a hands-off approach to managing their employees and are not visible managers. One of the 6 traits of effective leaders listed by Christian Nevell BoveeIn is: “Stay close to the action. Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire." (http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/businessinfo/p/leadership.htm) In Peter Lucash’s article Seven Deadly Sins of Leadership, some of the “sins” that he lists are:

• Assuming that your people are trained

• Failing to evaluate and measure

• Failing to provide appropriate feedback

• Assuming that you are doing a good job and that your customers are happy

(http://www.allbusiness.com/services/health-services-offices-clinics-doctors/4052690-1.html). Heather and Matt both commit some of these “sins” of leadership, and the problem with adequate training leads to the next organizational behavior topic in this case.

AllBusiness.com listed some helpful tips to help employers successfully train their employees. One tip is to “get management on board.” They say, “Once you have developed a prioritized list of training topics that address key needs within your company, you need to convince management to rally behind the initiative.” In the Elmdale case both Heather and Matt claim to support the notion of training workshops for their RA’s through their demand that all RA’s attend. However, due to the fact that both Residence Managers have been absent at some of these “mandatory” sessions, many of the RA’s feel that neither RM is “walking the talk”, which is precisely how Matt described his leadership style. Another suggestion from this article is to “clarify connections” because “some employees may feel that the training they're receiving isn't relevant to their job. It’s important to help them understand the connection early on, so they don’t view the training sessions as a waste of valuable time.” (http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/careers-job-training/1465-1.html) Based on the complaints of some of the RA’s this is their exact attitude towards the workshops. Heather and Matt each need to invest more time into explaining the benefits of these sessions for the entire residence community and also need to “lead by example” by making the attendance of these meetings a top priority.

There were no formal procedures of reprimand set up in disciplining RAs’ behavior except dismissal. The goal of discipline is to assist the person in improving behavior to meet the established standards. Establishing standards for conduct is ineffectual without the tools to measure and correct the unwanted behavior.

Discipline in the work place can be a good tactic to solving continuous problems that employees maybe involved in. “Discipline in the workplace is the means by which supervisory personnel correct behavioral deficiencies and ensure adherence to established company rules.” (http://www.hr.ubc.ca/adv_srv/er/discipline.html) The first thing that Heather Casey need to do is have all the rules and policies posted for all the R.A.s and H.R.A.s to see and review.