Read this case and respond with your views as to what the Board of Directors should do in this case.

Robert Stevenson, chairman of the board of directors of Mangham Glass Corporation, had just been visited by several other directors of the company. The latter were obviously upset over the recent actions of the company president, Gerald O'Brien. They demanded that the board consider firing him.

O'Brien, recently appointed to the office, had tried to improve some management-employee labor relations problems by dealing directly with individuals and small groups as often as possible. He felt that in this way he could focus the personal concern of management for employees and let the employees realize that management considered them human beings rather than machines. One action of O'Brien had been to negotiate annual weekly wages of the foreman with each foreman.

For several months, Paul Kelly, one of the night-shift foremen, had been trying to arrange a late afternoon appointment to see O'Brien about his wages. He was highly disgruntled, not only over his failure to see the president, but also over the lack of discussion about his wage contract prior to its being effected. As a family man with six dependents, he felt his weekly income should be higher than that granted him.

Last Wednesday afternoon Paul Kelly stopped by the president's office and tried to see him. O'Brien's secretary refused his request on the grounds that O'Brien was too busy. Infuriated, Kelly stormed into the office anyway and confronted the startled president with demands for a better wage contract. When O'Brien stood up and told Kelly to get out of his office and go through organizational channels if he had complaints, Kelly took a swing at the president, who in turn struck the foreman and knocked him unconscious.