Rockwater Insurance Case Study

Rockwater Insurance Case Study

ORGA 316

Summary

Russell Campbell has been with Rockwater Insurance since it was founded in 1980. His wife died in March 2013 and his performance went down. In September 2013, Justin Bell became Russell’s supervisor. Justin is a 23 year old graduate of the UBC business program and is the eldest son of Rockwater’s president. He is also the nephew of the branch’s president, Frank. Justin had a meeting with Russell and put him on part time hours. Russell performance has not improved since he went to part time hours and he has started committing workplace deviance behaviors. Justin knows he needs to act, and is feeling stressed as he knows his decision will be closely scrutinized.

Problem

Russell Campbell performance at Rockwater has been unacceptable for several months. His supervisor Justin has taken steps to improve his performance, but he has so far been unsuccessful. His poor performance could lead to a loss of a client in addition to a poisonous workplace environment by emotional contagion.

Justin is new in the organization, so many of its employees might not feel he is up to his job. Since there have been issues with Russell’s performance for months, Frank has been informed about the situation. If Justin does not figure out how to motivate Russell, Frank is going to have to act, which will make it look like Justin cannot do his job. People will start to question whether Justin should have been giving his job at all, or whether he was given it solely due to who he is related to. His team might think he got his job unfairly due to interactional justice. If Justin isn’t able to do his job, it obviously wasn’t fair that he got it. People who think they are treated unfairly in an organization are more likely to commit WDB’s (workplace deviance behaviors). Neither Justin nor the organization want his team to have low job satisfaction and start engaging in WDB’s.

Cause

According to Kelley’s attribution theory, we can...