National Institute of Technology 2009 M.B.A Human Resource Management ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR - Question Paper

Q . four Are Work place Romances Unethical
A large percentage of married individuals 1st met in the workplace. A 2005 survey reveled that 58 percent of all employees have been in an office romance. provided the amount of time people spend at work, this isn’t terribly surprising. Yet office romances pose sensitive ethical problems for organizations and employees. What rights and responsibilities do organizations have to regulate the romantic lives of their employees?

Take the case of former General Electric CEO Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer. The 2 met while Wetlaufer was interviewing Welch for Harvard Business Review article, and Welch was still married. Once their relationship was out in the open, a few accused Wetlaufer of being unethical for refusing to disclose the relationship while working on the article. She eventually left the journal. Other accused Welch of letting his personal life get in the way of the interest of GE and its shareholders. a few even blamed the scandal for a drop in GE stock.

Welch and Wetlaufer didn’t even work for the identical company. What about when 2 people work together in the identical work unit? Chicago advertising firm, started dating Kevin, 1 of her account supervisors. Their innocent banter turned into going out for drinks, and then dinner, and soon they were dating. Kevin and Tasha’s bosses were in house competitors. The problem: Sometimes in meetings Kevin would make it seem that Tasha and Kevin were on the identical side of important problems even when they weren’t. In response, Tasha’s boss began to isolate her from key projects. Tasha said, “I remember times when I would be there all night photocopying hundreds of pages of my work to show that [Kevin’s] allegations [of her incompetence] were unfounded. It was just embarrassing because it became a ques. of my professional judgment. ”

These examples show that while workplace romances are personal matters, it’s hard to keep them out of the political complexities of organizational life.

1. Do you think organizations should have policies governing workplace romances? What would such policies stipulate?
2. Do you think romantic relationships would distract 2 employees from performing their jobs? Why or why not?
3. Is it ever improper for a supervisor to romantically pursue a subordinate under his or her supervision? Why or why not?
4. Some companies like Nike and Southwest Airlines openly try to recruit couples. Do you think this is a good idea? How would you feel working in a department with a “couple”?

Q.5
a) Relate goal-setting theory to the MBO process. How are they similar? Different?

b) Compare and contrast command, task, interest, and friendship groups.


Q6
A. A unique Training Program at UPS
Mark Colvard, a United Parcel Manager in San Ramon, California, recently faced a difficult decision. 1 of his drivers asked for two week off to help an ailing family member. But company rules stated this driver wasn’t eligible. If Colvard went by the book, the driver would probably take the days off anyway and be fired. On the other hand, Colvard chose to provide the driver the time off. Although he took a few heat for the decision, he also kept a valuable employee.

Had Colvard been faced with this decision six months earlier, he says he would have gone the other way. What changed his thinking was a month he spent residing in McAllen, Texas. It was part of a UPS management training experience called the Community Internship Program (CIP). During his month in McAllen, Colvard built housing for the poor, collected clothing for the Salvation Army, and worked in a drug rehab Center. Colvard provide the program credit for helping him empathize with employees facing crises back home. And he says that CIP has made him a better manager. “My goal was to make the numbers, and in a few cases that meant not looking at the individual but looking at the bottom line. After that 1 month stay, I Immediately started reaching out to people in a various way.”

CIP was established by UPS in the late 1960s to help open the eyes of the company’s predominantly white managers to the poverty and inequality in many cities. Today, the program takes 50 of the company’s most promising executives every summer and brings them to cities around the country. There they deal with a variety of issues from transportation to housing, education, and health care. The company’s goal is to awaken these managers to the challenges that many of their employees face, bridging the cultural divide that separates a white manager from an African American driver or an upper-income suburbanite from a worker raised in the rural South.

1. Do you think individuals can learn empathy from something like a 1-month CIP experience? discuss why or why not.
2. How could UPS’s CIP help the organization better manage work life conflicts?
3. How could UPS’s CIP help the Organization improve its response to diversity?
4. What negatives, if any can you envision resulting from CIP?
5. UPS has 2,400 managers. CIP includes only 50 every year. How can the program make a difference if it include only two percent of all managers? Does this suggest that the program is more public relations than management training?
6. How can UPS justify the cost of a program like CIP if competitors like FedEx, DHL, and the U.S. Postal Service don’t offer such programs? Does the program increase costs or decrease UPS profits?

Earning:   Approval pending.