“Who’s in Charge?”

1. In one sentence, what is the fundamental issue underlying this case? The fundamental issue underlying this case is that how can managers use their power more efficiently to achieve organizational, group, and individual goals.

2. Analyze the assumptions held by relevant individuals and groups in the case.
a) Jim Davis is only 23 years old. Before he join Hereford National Bank in October, his worked as a sales representative in IDS. Because of his professional knowledge in financial field, Jim was placed in charge of the Retirement Division after his five-week training session. After few month, he is promoted to business development manager and meanwhile he also needs to keep up with the Retirement Division. Jim doesn’t has any experience in management and he is the only person in his department. So, he doesn’t have adequate opportunities to learn what power does he has and how to use them. His position needs Jim to work with different people in different departments, and this is a huge challenge for him. Whenever he face a problem, Jim always go to finds his boss and asks for help. He only considers how to use formal power to solve problem. But once his formal power is inefficient, he doesn’t know what he should does next. He don’t know how to communicate with people who are in other departments. He also don’t know how to build and use personal power to influences others behavior to achieve his goals. Sometimes he may only care about his own interest but ignore the company’s interest, because he is a very cautious man. For example: when he finds there is a leak after “balance accident”, he just let it pass. He also never talk about business matters with friends to avoids fall into office politics.
b) Allen Jones is a branch manager coordinator in Hereford National Bank. He is the directly boss for eight branch managers. But he is very young compared with