The Case of Julie and Susan

The case of Julie and Susan is a common workplace scenario in which two clashing

personalities meet. In this case it involves; Julie, a hard working individual and very likeable

member of the staff within her workplace, and Susan, a demanding, often irritable woman. Julie

and Susan both worked under their boss, the chair of the department, Dr. Pat Griffiths. Pat was a

very hands-off leader whom empowered the individuals that worked beneath him. He allowed

the staff to work together to complete work and get through any problems they faced. The issue

faced in this case is that Julie and Susan apparently cannot work well together, and each is

becoming ever more irritated with the other. Susan is upset with Julie because she takes too long

to complete the work asked of her. Julie argues that Susan’s work is often much more difficult

than that of the others and therefore is more time consuming. Also when a problem arises, Susan

is much more difficult to get a hold of as she is frequently out of the office. Also Susan leaves

vague instructions and messages for Julie which causes even more confusion and increasing the

hostility between the two.

Julie:

Julie’s relationship with her co-workers is very social. She enjoys time outside of work

with them and gets along with everybody very well. They also give her feedback on her work,

which is always turns out positive. This feedback on her work gives her satisfaction because she

is a part of the assignments that her and her co-workers are given. Because her work is needed by

others to complete their work she is motivated to work hard and produce quality work.

The social aspect of her job provides job satisfaction because of her hierarchy of needs. It

can be seen that social time and time away from work is high on Julie’s personal needs due to the

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 statement from the case where it is said that she does not wish to take her work home with her.

Although attention from her co-workers is adequate, attention from her boss is not. It

was seen in the Hawthorne lighting experiment that more attention to workers creates a higher

level of output. Although Julie is seen in her eyes as well as some others that she is a good

worker, the self-serving bias may make Julie feel that the dissatisfaction of Susan is because of

external factors more so than internal. Due to this Julie may over emphasize the affects of her

internal factors, like not wanting to work above and beyond what is expected to achieve the work

assigned. She may also be over emphasizing the internal factors that contribute to her

unsuccessful relationship with Susan, causing her to make untrue accusations about Susan’s

involvement in Julie’s work.

Susan:

In relation to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs Susan has satisfied the majority of her needs;

however, she is lacking in the category of social and love needs. Susan doesn’t share the same

social relations with her co-workers as Julie seems to. She doesn’t create friendships with her co-

workers or make an effort to have any relations with them other than in the work force. She

doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the workers and is out casted by her coworkers. Susan has a

low need for affiliation with the rest of her colleagues. She feels as though Julie is incapable of

finishing her work in a timely manner and doesn’t understand why it takes her so long to

complete the task.

The job design in the work force is a broad span of control because there are certain tasks

that are performed by each individual routinely, and with the exception of Susan the rest of the

workforce is relatively close. All the staff within the university are fairly experienced and left to

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 finish their work without high supervision. The university has many subordinates working in a

flat organization with less emphasis on who is in control and more on satisfying the needs of

others.

Susan & Julie’s Relationship:

Both Julie and Susan blame each other for work not getting done. This can be explained by the

self serving bias, they both believe their individual achievements come from inner qualities and failures

are blamed on the external environment. Julie does not think it is her fault the paper was not ready in time

and she blames it on Susan. Susan’s emails and voice mail messages are not always helpful and are

sometimes confusing. To make things worse, Susan is often out of the office making it difficult for Julie

to get a hold of her when she has questions. Also, when Julie leaves messages for Susan it may take a day

for her to respond back causing even more delay. On the other hand, Susan blames Julie for the work not

being done and is upset because Julie is the only one that does not seem to be able to cope with her

workload demands.

Everyone in the workplace is always pleased with Julie and her work. The attribution theory tells

us that these accomplishments would be attributed to her inner qualities because she never has a problem

getting the work done. Since Susan’s paper is not done it would be attributed to the outer environment due

to Susan’s inability to communicate with Julie.

Susan makes an assumption that Julie is Theory X; she believes Julie must be supervised and

watched over at all times. Susan uses her research assistant as a link between herself and Julie as she

thinks Julie requires structure and direction in her work. On the other hand, the rest of the employees

make the assumption that Julie is Theory Y. She takes some direction from them but tends to manage her

own work and is allowed plenty of leeway in making her own decisions. Since Julie is used to having her

own space and doing what she wants it makes it difficult for her to get Susan’s work done when she is so

demanding and does not give her a chance to do it her own way.

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 Equity theory pertains to this case because Julie and Susan each had their own ideas of

how much work should be expected from Julie. Susan should be more realistic and lower the

expected outcomes from Julie, she has to realize that Julie does work for multiple faculty

members at the university and not just for her. One option would be for Julie to increase her

inputs, but the more realistic one would be to get Susan to lower her expectations of Julie. This is

more realistic because if Julie wasn’t doing much work, other faculty members would be

complaining about her however, they are not.

In relation to the expectancy theory Julie might not believe her compensation will increase with

more work completed. Susan doesn’t come across as the type of person that would recognize Julie’s hard

work with any fair compensation. In order for the motivational force to increase, the instrumentality

and/or valence have to increase and that would mean either give Julie more compensation if she reaches a

certain target level or try to increase the value of the compensation that Julie is receiving.

Recommendation:

Based on our analysis the best way to resolve the occurring conflict would be for the

supervisor, Dr. Pat Griffiths to step in. The situation has escalated to the point that there would

be no sense in Julie and Susan trying to work through the problem together. Their opinions

would be polar opposites and no arrangement would be able to be met. It is not Susan’s fault that

she is out of the office so often. That is out of her control. This however is the issue that results

in the lack of communication between her and Julie. As the supervisor in control, Pat should

step in and be able to provide direction on the assignments to be completed by the staff, and in

particular Julie, while Susan is out of the office. This way Julie would have all of the

information available to her when she needs it. This would result in her being able to complete

Susan’s work much quicker and would resolve the tension between the two, resulting in a much

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 healthier work environment and relationship. In addition reinforcement theory could also be used in

this case to help solve the dilemma by Susan showing positive reinforcement towards Julie’s work. Every

bit of encouragement will help. If Julie can get more comfortable with Susan, that will mean she will be

able to work freely on her assignments and not have to worry so much about making mistakes as she does

now. Susan could also show she cares about her co-workers by going out to lunch with them every now

and again. Positive reinforcement is the application of a valued consequence when the desired behavior is

exhibited, which in this case it could be just recognizing Julie’s good work in front of other staff. If these

two recommendations are followed, the conflict between Julie and Susan will be resolved.

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