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Product Overview

What happens when strained relationships develop between two people you value in your organization and they come to you for advice? David Walker was a senior attorney in a bustling white-shoe law practice. During an especially busy time, Walker became party to an in-office dispute between his trusted administrative assistant, Susan Emson, and a respected colleague, Ramya Kumar. He had spent numerous hours listening to both sides tell their stories and was left with an impending sense that he had no answers. How was he ever going to help two people he valued greatly work out a compromise between their extremely polar positions? How did the dispute get to such a point? The case provides opportunities to explore the sources of interpersonal conflict, causes of escalation, and ways of diffusing and resolving it.

Learning Objectives

The learning objectives are to introduce students to core performance-management topics, such as equity theory and employee value; give students practice having difficult conversations in a safe environment; facilitate a discussion on workplace diversity and discrimination; allow students to wrestle with the challenges of nurturing work relationships and building trust; highlight the need to foster performance and to understand levels one, two, and three in leadership techniques; and help students understand that organizational design (OD) decisions are powerful and persuasive. They would benefit from understanding how OD shapes the way work gets done in organizations.