Perkins Component

Perkins Component is medium-sized producer of highly technical industrial machinery. The company is separated in two main departments: engineering and manufacturing.  

The conflict that the company is facing exists for several years but has deteriorated over the past months and became a major issue for the whole company. This was caused by the fact that the industrial engineering department introduced a series of changes in several products, which were not properly communicated to all of the involved parties. In order to solve this problem, Jerry, the Plant Manager, made a firm commitment to engineering that the factory would adhere to the drawings and would make no changes or deviations without any approval. The commitment was approved and agreed by each department.  One morning Ralph and Frank had a discussion at machine shop. They were arguing that Tom, the responsible for the industrial design, made some changes on the drawings without seeking any approvals. Frank, who is actually in charge of the drawings, was really mad about it, considering the fact that an agreement has been made. 

After analyzing the text, we believe that the main problem is that Tom usually deviates from the drawings that Frank sends to him.  In fact, Tom's ideas are supported by the VP of manufacturing, Ted, who is in a personal conflict with Fred, the VP of engineering. 

1st Solution: Jerry could go to Tom. Jerry will try to make Tom understand that he did not follow the agreement that has been established. In this case Jerry can use the informal resource of information (Harel-Giasson, 1977), which he got with the meetings that he had with Bob as well as Ralph. Especially knowing that Bob is put in the middle of the problem helps Jerry, as he knows that he has the informal power to go to talk to Tom and knowing he has the endorsement of the production foremen as well as the foremen of the engineering. Jerry has to emphasize that point, making Tom see that if all the parties follow what was agreed on, the whole company could profit from it by achieving a higher degree of cooperation. Furthermore this solution would lead to an easier understanding and consequently, more alterations will be done, which would benefit them. At the same time, Jerry should remind him and underline that the agreement was supervised and signed by Ted Luther. Using his power of "selling" ideas to others (Harel-Giasson, 1999), that Jerry had already proven with the launch of a new system, he would also find Toms endorsement.  At the same time, Jerry has to know that both of them, Jerry and Tom, are at the same level of the hierarchy, so he rather needs to use his informal power over Tom. Hormans describes in his research that the informal power could also come from information that a specific person has and therefore differentiates himself as a leader in comparison to the other group members. (Harel-Giasson, 1977) After showing Tom the different point of view and carry conviction to him, Ted needs to be informed that the situation of an unauthorized change had occurred and that this is why the engineering might reject the project of the parts. With the support of Tom we will ask Ted to talk to Fred about the situation, to calm things down. In this case Jerry is forming a coalition (Harel-Giasson, 1977) in order to convince Ted to talk to Fred, in order to make sure that the project will not be dropped because of the unauthorized change, as this is their common goal as a coalition. (Harel-Giasson, 1977)