This week’s assignment is a case analysis. This assignment should only be completed AFTER you have thoroughly read and reviewed this week’s assigned readings AND you have thoroughly read and reviewed the assignment instructions and criteria in the assignment grading rubric. As you develop your response throughout the week, be sure to continually review the instructions and grading rubric to ensure that your response takes ALL the included criteria into consideration. 

Your assignment response should be submitted in a single document with the response for each case clearly and separately delineated within the same document. Your responses to each question within the case should also be clearly numbered. The minimum word count for this assignment is 750.

Please keep the following in mind about your assignment response:

• Before you submit your assignment response, ensure that it includes the appropriate number and types of citations and references, presented in the appropriate format.
• Your submission will receive a Turnitin similarity score which must meet the required less than 20% threshold. This may take minutes, several hours and possibly up to 24 hours depending on Turnitin’s queue length so please ensure that you complete your submission within enough time to edit it and received a revised score prior to the due date. 
• If your score is greater than the 20% threshold, please redo your response and resubmit it here again. You will be able to edit and resubmit your response as many times as necessary until the deadline. Submissions that exceed the 20% threshold after the deadline on Sunday night at 11.55pm CST will be assigned a grade of zero.
• If you opt to reference the course text, this does NOT count as an external reference but is a reference that is internal to the course. It should be cited appropriately.
• Within this course, Wikipedia and other open source sites are NOT considered reputable sources.  Webster’s dictionary and other online dictionaries WILL NOT be counted as a valid external reference.
• Be sure to place a header “References” above your list of references to reduce the likelihood that Turnitin will include those items in your similarity score. 
• More detail is better than less. Be thorough in your responses and ensure that your submission reflects sufficient depth, analysis, and critical thinking consistent with a graduate-level business course. Look beyond the words provided in the case to assess what may have led to the situation presented and possible unidentified consequences.

ASSIGNMENT

To fully address this case assignment, please read and analyze each assigned case. Your response should be numbered and provide the following:

 1.     Define and summarize the key OB issues in the case relative to this week’s material (at least 2 key issues MUST be identified). Be sure to speak in OB language, using appropriate terminology to identify the concepts and issues you identify. OB issues MUST reflect concepts covered in this week’s chapters.

2.      Clearly link the key issues in the case back to relevant and specific course material covered. Be specific by identifying specific instances and scenarios in the case which demonstrate the OB issues and concepts identified. Explain how they are reflective of those specific OB issues.

3.      Make at least one recommendation(s) of how each of the key issues you identified should be handled at the organizational level of the case’s main character. Justify the merit of each of your recommendations and be sure to include your rationale for why you expect them to be effective in addressing the issues.

4.      Propose at least one executive or corporate level intervention for any one of your key issues to recommend how upper management can also play a part in addressing that issue. This response should be different from any of the recommendations offered in #3. Be sure to clearly identify which OB issue your organization level/executive level intervention is meant to address and how the intervention would be of benefit.

Case

A vice president’s position is about to open up at Ramsey Electronics, maker of components for audio and visual equipment and computers. Whoever fills the position will be one of the four most powerful people in the company and may one day become its CEO. So the whole company has been watching the political skirmishes among the three leading candidates: Arnie Sander, Laura Prove, and Billy Evans. 

Arnie Sander, currently head of the research and development division, worked his way up through the engineering ranks. Of the three candidates, he alone has a Ph.D. (in electrical engineering from MIT), and he is the acknowledged genius behind the company’s most innovative products. One of the current vice presidents—Harley Learner, himself an engineer— has been pushing hard for Sander’s case. 

Laura Prove spent five years on the road, earning a reputation as an outstanding salesperson of Ramsey products before coming to company headquarters and working her way up through the sales division. She knows only enough about what she calls the “guts” of Ramsey’s electronic parts to get by, but she is very good at selling them and at motivating the people who work for her. Frank Barnwood, another current vice president, has been filling the Chief’s ear with praise for Prove. 

Of the three candidates, Billy Evans is the youngest and has the least experience at Ramsey. Like the Chief, he has an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a very sharp mind for finances. The Chief has credited him with turning the company’s financial situation around, although others in the company believe Sander’s products or Prove’s selling ability really deserves the credit. Evans has no particular champion among Ramsey’s top executives, but he is the only other handball player the Chief has located in the company, and the two play every Tuesday and Thursday after work. Learner and Barnwood have noticed that the company’s financial decisions often get made during the cooling-off period following a handball game. 

In the month preceding the Chief’s decision, the two vice presidents have been busy. Learner, head of a national engineering association, worked to have Sander win an achievement award from the association, and two weeks before the naming of the new vice president, he threw the most lavish banquet in the company’s history to announce the award. When introducing Sander, Learner made a long, impassioned speech detailing Sander’s accomplishments and heralding him as “the future of Ramsey Electronics.” 

Frank Barnwood has moved more slowly and subtly. The Chief had asked Barnwood years before to keep him updated on “all these gripes by women and minorities and such,” and Barnwood did so by giving the Chief articles of particular interest. Recently he gave the Chief one from a psychology magazine about the cloning effect—the tendency of powerful executives to choose successors who are most like themselves. He also passed on to the Chief a Fortune article arguing that many American corporations are floundering because they are being run by financial people rather than by people who really know the company’s business. He also flooded bulletin boards and the Chief’s desk with news clippings about the value of having women and minorities at the top levels of a company. 

Billy Evans has seemed indifferent to the promotion. He spends his days on the phone and in front of the computer screen, reporting to the Chief every other week on the company’s latest financial successes—and never missing a handball game.