Case Study Analysis:

Thomas Green: Power, Office Politics, and a

Career in Crisis

Section E – Group 9

Roll No. Name

202231003 Aayush Paliwal

202231018 Ketan Badwe

202231020 Manas Singh

202231039 Surya Prakash

202231042 Vanshika Dev

Surya Prakash – 202231039

Introduction:

The case is all about Thomas Green, who get his full-time job in Dynamic Display as account
executive. In his first four months as an account executive, he completed a contract for one of the
largest airline carriers, Journey Airlines, to accelerate rollout of kiosks in 20 airports. But he
wanted more than an account executive and looking for the opportunity. And withing the five
shorts’ moths, Green got promoted to Senior market specialist. And when had been promoted, he
was a rising star. But he was finding difficult in adjusting with his boss Frank Davis. Because
Davis was not satisfied with the Green’s performance and work style. So, Davis sends two
scathing emails to McDonald for criticizing Green’s performance. And this made clear to Green
that his position as a senior market specialist is in jeopardy. The tension also risen when Green
openly challenged him at the meeting about impossible Davis’s 10% growth. While meeting with
Frank Davis, Davis asked many questions to Green, but Davis did not receive any update for
Green. On January 28, Davis held another performance review meeting with Green. After the
meeting, Davis sent an email to McDonald outlining his issues with Green. In response to
Davis’s complaints, McDonald sent a short email to Green asking for his point of view on the
situation. So, there are several questions persisted in the Green’s mind that what steps should he
take.

Ketan Badwe – 202231018

Objective: To understand that, it is very important to know how to tackle office politics in a
smart manner , failing to which will make our survival in the corporate world very difficult.

Main Issues:

1) What are the Work styles and personalities of Thomas Green and Frank Davis?
2) What is your analysis of Thomas Green’s actions and job performance in his first five
months?
3) What mistakes has he made?
4) What are the possible underlying agendas of Davis and McDonald?
5) What actions, if any, would you take if you were Thomas Green?

Vanshika Dev – 202231042

Theoretical Concepts:

1) Expectancy Theory: According to this theory, the strength of a tendency to act in a certain
way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given
outcome and on the effectiveness of that outcome to the individual.

In this case, Davis was emphasizing that Thomas was not working to the fullest extent
possible. Keeping this in mind, it's possible that because Davis kept pointing out his every
little mistake, he lost hope in the organization or Davis.

2) Interpersonal Justice: This theory reflects that whether employees are treated with dignity
and respect. As in this case, we saw that Davis was quite strict and dominating when it comes
to analyzing work of Thomas. He questions him on each and every delayed work and also on
work which he has not done by then.

Aayush Paliwal – 202231003

3) Responses to dissatisfaction: Employee when faced dissatisfaction towards his/her job

responses according to two dimensions: constructive/destructive and active/passive.
Exit: The exit response direct behavior towards leaving/resigning the job. Here the response
is destructive and active.
Voice: The voice response directs towards raising the voice attempting to improve condition
including suggesting improvements. Here response is active and constructive.
Loyalty: The loyalty response directs towards optimistically waiting for condition to
improve without doing anything. Here the response is passive and constructive.
Neglect: The neglect response allows condition to worsen includes absentee, reduce efforts.
Here the response is passive and destructive.
4) McClelland’s Theory of Needs: It states that achievement, power, and affiliation are the
three needs that are important motivating factors and different person will have these needs
in different order of preferences.
 Need for achievement (nAch): The need to achieve and excel to a particular goal or set
of standards.
 Need for power (nPow): The need to make others behave in such a way they would not
have otherwise.
 Need for affiliation (nAff): The need to make friendly and close interpersonal
relationship.

Solutions:

Vanshika Dev - 202231042

1) What are the Work styles and personalities of Thomas Green and Frank Davis?

Thomas Green

 Ambitious: Thomas Green demonstrates consistency in his work. He finished a contract

for one of the biggest airlines. Even after excelling as an account executive, he continued
to look for some great opportunities at corporate headquarters.
 Realistic: Thomas thought Davis prediction of 10% growth at the 2008 Budget Meeting
to be considerably off the mark. Thomas did not want to set a goal that they might not be
able to accomplish and for which they might fail.
 Quick Thinker: Thomas Green was highly effective at communicating his thoughts to
the people. One of the market experts claims that Thomas has a really quick way of
coming up with new ideas.

Frank Davis

 Dominating: Frank Davis has a very dominating working style. He wants his staff to act
in accordance with his instructions. At the 2008 Budget Meeting, Davis didn't like green's
contradictory behavior and thought it was an insult of him.
  Strict: Davis was quite strict when it comes to the completion of tasks and delay in work.
Davis made Thomas count all the work which has been delegated to him and he haven’t
completed till then.
Some of them were like, he wanted him to check why VIP Hotel Group had not
purchased any of their Kiosk, he asked for organizational chart on two client and many
other.
 Optimistic: Davis was somewhat optimistic that they would be able to achieve 10%
growth in the Eastern region, but the clients believe that the growth may be impacted by
the actual situation of the market.

Surya Prakash – 202231039

2) What is your analysis of Thomas Green’s actions and job performance in his first five
months?

Analysis of Green’s actions:

 Thomas Green got his job in Dynamic Display on march 2007 as an Account Executive as it
was like a great opportunity to climb up the managerial ladder.
 He wanted more than Account Executive, so he starts looking for the opportunity by showing
his ability at work.
 In very short period of time, Green developed a good reputation and understanding of the
market which helped him to achieve good opportunity in the company.

Analysis of Green’s job performance:

 In his first four months, he completed a contract for one of the largest airline carriers to
accelerate rollout of kiosks in 20 airports.
 As he had good understanding about the market, he had a good rapport with his clients.
 And by the end of first five months, he was promoted to Senior Market Specialist by looking
his efforts.
Ketan Badwe – 202231018

3) What mistakes has he made?

 He openly challenged Frank Davis in the budget planning meeting by concluding his sales
goals to be unrealistic. Green should have shown some patience at that point of time as
there were many other employees in the meeting. This incident hurt the ego of Davis and also
it triggered Davis for using more power politics against him.
 One-on-one communication is one of the most important factors while working in the
corporate. Green met one-on-one with McDonald only twice ,if he would have interacted
more with Davis then he would have got much more clarity about the office politics and also
he would have known ,to whom will McDonald side with if the conditions become more
tough for Green.
 After the informal evaluation of Thomas Green which was conducted on October
15,2007 ,Green was quite disappointed with Davis reviews. He started avoiding the
interactions with Davis but instead of it if he would have had one-to-one communication with
Davis giving some genuine reasons for his performance and for not supporting Davis’s
budget then it was might be possible that Davis’s perception for Green would have changed.
 Davis was not expecting McDonald to promote Green at the position of Senior Market
Specialist. Knowing to this fact Green should not have done the following mistakes which
provided an opportunity to Davis for criticizing him-
 He failed to update Davis about his schedule.
 He does not follow up when information was requested to him.
 He challenged the budget made by Davis openly in the Budget Plan Meeting.

Manas Singh – 202231020

4) What are the possible underlying agendas of Davis and McDonald?

Thomas Green being an excellent sales person is a little weak in dealing with the corporate
culture and that is communicated to him upfront by his boss, Frank Davis. Moreover, division
Director Shannon McDonald, who promoted Thomas to the position of Senior Market Specialist
also wants an explanation from Thomas for his poor performance. There might be different
underlying agendas for Davis and McDonald for communicating their displeasure to Thomas.

Frank Davis

1) Frank Davis was supposed to choose and promote the Senior Market Specialist, but
Shannon McDonald chose Thomas for the same. This might have bruised Frank’s ego
and made him look at Thomas more critically than he usually would have. The
underlying agenda might have been to prove McDonald wrong about her decision to
promote Thomas since he was not Frank’s choice for the role.
2) Thomas’s outright disagreement about the sales projections made by Frank during the
Budget Plan Meeting might have taken him by surprise. Frank must have felt
disrespected in front of other employees of Dynamic Display. This might have urged
Davis to take matter into his hands by indulging into Office Politics and portraying him
as a lousy employee just because his way of working was different than usual.

Shannon McDonald

1) Being Vice President of the division, Shannon cannot just take Thomas Green’s side and
shutdown all claims made by the Marketing Director, Frank Davis. McDonald’s email to
Thomas asking for an explanation and measures of improvement might be to display
importance to Davis’s opinion as he holds a powerful position in the organization.
2) The case also mentions that Thomas neglected his relationship with McDonald after
getting the promotion. This might make McDonald feel that all the relationship building
and greetings was just to get a promotion. This could have put a doubt in McDonald’s
mind about Thomas and urged her to email him wanting an explanation and plans to
improve.
3) An employee’s overall performance is measured by his performance on field clubbed
with his attitude with their bosses and employees. Davis and McDonald both faced issues
of negligence with Thomas and as his boss it was their job to inform Thomas of the same
and ask for his plans to improve on the same.
Aayush Paliwal – 202231003

5) What actions, if any, would you take if you were Thomas Green?

If I were to be put in the Thomas Green shoes first and foremost, I will directly talk to Frank
Davis about the situation and how can we improve it instead of making perception of him as rude
and trying everything in his control to throw him out of this organization

Secondly, I will avoid the mistake that Thomas Green does by not putting his perspective in
front of the McDonalds (Vice President). Initially when Thomas was an account executive he is
in constant touch with the McDonalds with various informal meetings. Thomas aggressively
campaigned to be considered for senior market specialist position. But when Frank Davis is
doing the politics as he wants someone else for this post by underline the mistake of Thomas
Green to McDonalds in a negative way without considering Thomas opinion. Thomas should
have talked about it with the McDonald earlier instead of complaining about Frank with his
colleagues.

Manas Singh - 202231020

Managerial Learnings:

1) It is important for a manager to know what his boss thinks of him and act accordingly. A
manager should gain trust of his boss and then expect considerations in terms of autonomy in
work.
2) Merely communications of disagreement is not enough for anyone to change their decisions,
presentation of hard facts and proofs are very important in an corporate environment for
things to work out.
3) Disagreements might be welcomed by one’s boss in an office but there is a proper way to
communicate it humbly.
4) Networking to get opportunities might be the first thing taught to a manager, but it is of
utmost importance that those connections are maintained for benefits in the long run.
Networking is not a one-time thing.
5) One may believe that hierarchy does not matter in today’s corporate culture, but bosses still
appreciate a little importance given by their subordinates and that sense of validations keeps
them to support one in troubling situations.