business

BUSA 305 Behavior in Organizations Summer 2016 Final Exam Mini-Case for Analysis

You are a professional consultant and partner at the respected firm of Cascadia Consulting. You love what you do and your professional services are much in demand by clients. You personally have more consulting business than you can handle. You are also on the elected Executive Leadership Team of three partners (you, Silas, and Anna) that advise the CEO. You are respected by most of your fellow professional consultants for your strong sense of ethics, professional competence, and ability to work well with others. You are good at organizing work and motivating others to drive an agenda for the larger group. You have a strong work ethic but often struggle with finding balance between work and personal life.

The CEO of Cascadia Consulting is Steven Webb. He was brought in a year ago by the partners to bring about change and help the firm move forward from reasonably successful to even more successful. Webb has had a lot of ideas but has not been able to mobilize the energies of the people towards change.

There are 43 partners with various consulting specialties. About 10 of the partners have not kept up to date with their skills or their fields are now obsolete. As a result, these 10 partners are not contributing much to the bottom line. However, because of their positions they have power to affect decision-making on possible changes. There are some in this group actively resisting change. Some of the 10 are your good friends. There are different perceptions about the need to change including some biases that influence thinking. There is nothing to push a partner out the door for poor performance except for the 60% majority vote of the other partners. In essence, the partners collectively own the firm.

In addition to the partners, there are 92 associates. For the most part, the associates are well qualified and hardworking. As a group they are younger and more diverse than the partners. They seek to advance their careers and may need to navigate the maze of communication issues, the occasional Machiavellian-style partner who is their supervisor, and sometimes open conflict. Partners and associates work together in bringing in business and billable hours. When a partnership opens up through retirement, resignation, or forced exit, the partners vote and invite an associate to become partner. The associates need $200,000 to buy in as partner when invited. Associates come and go in the firm. The high-performing partners and those with power encourage the best ones to stay. The underperforming associates are asked to move on to another organization. The remaining 29 employees are staff members who perform a variety of support functions. Additional stakeholders include retired partners still interested in the firm, clients, and an advisory board of external executives. The media follows the actions of your firm and has both praised and criticized you at times.

In general, the corporate culture is one that values high-performance, strong ethics, emotional intelligence, and self-motivation.

This past year with CEO Steven Webb has been chaotic. There has been a lot of talk about change and some preliminary planning but it all seems somewhat unclear. There are multiple messages floating around about where the firm is headed and what is most important.

The real shock was yesterday when Steven Webb unexpectedly left the firm without notice to start a joint venture. Today, the Executive Leadership Team is planning for the afternoon meeting with the rest of the partners to decide what to do next. Silas and Anna have each approached you individually asking you to consider becoming CEO. Other employees from various parts of the firm have asked you what is happening, whether they have a job, and are generally seeking answers.

You have never aspired to CEO. You feel you have great strengths in helping others make things happen but you do not feel especially visionary. You care about the organization and your clients. You know that with Silas and Anna’s recommendation, the partners are likely to ask you to become CEO. You are willing to do this for three to four years to help the firm in its time of need; however, you have no desire to be CEO for a longer period. As you look around the firm, you do not see anyone else currently prepared to lead the firm as well as you could. With time however, either Anna or Dale (also a partner) could be prepared to become CEO.

You predict that there will be those who will resist any change agenda to move the firm forward in areas of personnel, market position, and financial success. Some are comfortable with the way things are now however the external business environment is changing rapidly. The underperforming partners will be a drain until they are pushed out by a vote. You know that the firm really cannot stay the way it is now because of competitive market forces. You truly want Cascadia Consulting to become even more successful and are willing to work to make it happen.

After pondering, you decide to accept the CEO position if voted so by the partners. What will you say to the partners and to the rest of the employees if you are formally asked to be CEO?

What will you say and do? What is your plan of action over the next three to five years to lead Cascadia Consulting forward?

Please apply organization behavior theory to this scenario. Although there are many possibilities, you may wish to consider some of the following: perception, leadership, dark triad, motivation, change, organizational culture, values, decision-making, emotions, power and politics, conflict, and/or negotiation theory.