Interpersonal conflict at homebuy case study

Interpersonal conflict at homebuy case study



Interpersonal conflict at homebuy case study

Stephanie Barnes had a problem. She was one of the two supervisors of a large team of clerks at the headquarters of Homebuy mail order shopping company. One of the clerks who reported to Stephanie, Martin Warner, was being very disruptive. He seemed to have a grudge against her. On checking her records, Stephanie was surprised to find that his timekeeping was as good as anybody's, and so was his work. But he could be very rude and abrupt towards Stephanie. She found conflict hard to handle at the best of times, and could not understand why Martin apparently disliked her so much. (Atkinson, D. R., Worthington, R. L., Dana, D. M., & Good, G, 1999, 62-76)

None of the other clerks seemed to find it necessary to behave like that towards her. As far as Stephanie could see from observing Martin unobtrusively at his desk and in the canteen, he was perfectly civil and friendly to other people. He was however rather cold towards Michael Butcher, who was the other supervisor of Stephanie's grade. Interestingly, Martin seemed to be at his worst when she was trying to check a query about his work. At other times (for example when Stephanie was assigning work or answering a question he asked) he didn't seem so bad. Things looked different from Martin's point of view. This was the third job he had held since leaving school at the age of 17. In each of the previous two he had had trouble with his supervisor. In his experience, first-line managers were interfering bullies whose main aim was to make their subordinates feel small using all kinds of devious methods. It didn't help that in his first few weeks at Homebuy, Stephanie Barnes had repeatedly checked his work even though the tasks were quite straightforward and did not in his opinion need checking. (Alexander, T. 1994, 73-89)

She seemed to do it less now, but still more often than he would like, and for all the types of work he handled, even the simple ones. She did not check up on the other clerks so often, and when she checked up on him she would pretend to be giving him a helping hand when she was really snooping. Michael Butler had supervised Martin for a few weeks when Stephanie had been on holiday or ill, but Martin had formed no particular impression of his supervisory style.

After almost a year of this, Stephanie had had enough. She felt that Martin was probably simply an aggressive young man with a chip on his shoulder. Yet somehow it did not all quite add up. Perhaps a quiet chat to show him she was not a threat would help. So Stephanie called Martin into her office. After carefully explaining what she saw as the problem, Stephanie asked Martin

whether there was any particular reason why he was such an aggressive ...