Case Study 2: Sticker Shock in an Organization That Will Not Stick Together Barbara A. Ritter

Read the case below and consider the following questions:

1. What are the sources of conflict on this team?
2. Which of the issues are personal or interpersonal?
3. Do you see larger systemic or organizational problems?
4. Do you think this team can reconcile this conflict, or has this team reached a point where it is beyond repair?
5. Based on what you know about OD, what do you think an organization development practitioner could do to help Jared and this team?

Judy Thorson, executive director of a local not-for-profit organization called Helping Hands, sat in her office pondering the events that she expected to occur at the management meeting this afternoon. Recently, she had brought in an external consulting team to get a fresh perspective on some ongoing organizational problems regarding the internal conflicts at Helping Hands. The consulting team had indeed identified several underlying issues in specific departments, and Judy dreaded confronting her managers with the results of the report.

Helping Hands was established in the 1980s to assist people in poverty to manage their finances and work their way toward home ownership. The growing organization consisted of about 30 employees in six functional divisions (finance, resource development, community relations, volunteer coordination, client services, and thrift shop; see figure below). Recently, Erin Moore, an employee at Helping Hands for 3 years as volunteer director, had been promoted to the job of assistant director in charge of four of these divisions (community relations, volunteer coordination, client services, and thrift store). Although Judy was technically in charge of the financial health of the organization (finance and resource development departments), she was still dealing with people issues on a daily basis. In fact, Judy felt that too much of her time was taken up with dealing with internal conflicts and interpersonal politics, which was why she hired an external consultant to examine the organizational dynamics.