Martha Rinaldi Case

Martha Rinaldi recently graduated with her MBA and accepted a position as assistant PM at Potomac Waters, turning down a higher paying job at Deep Dive. Her rationale was that Potomac was a more stable firm where marketing was essential. Potomac would be “fast-paced and demanding” (pg. 3 Rinaldi case) and had a “solid reputation for training its new hires” (pg. 3). But upon beginning employment, her boss’ lack of interest in her and her co-workers dislike of young MBAs made her rethink her choice. Rinaldi’s boss, Follet, was newly promoted to PM. While talented, Follet lacks managerial skills and appears too busy to help Rinaldi develop her marketing skills. Vaughan, Rinaldi’s co-worker, has a reputation for treating Rinaldi too harshly.

Rinaldi has skill variety but she is not given any work that provided task significance. Rinaldi has her own goals but they do not seem to be set in stone so she moves into a role of trying to please the people in her difficult situation by being a team player. Rinaldi’s hard work on a project impresses her upper management. Follet and Vaughan do not acknowledge her work, and fail to give her the recognition she feels she deserves. Rinaldi’s motivation to excel and her drive to successfully find a marketing career has made her rethink her decision to take the Potomac job over the Deep Dive position.

Problems:

Martha Rinaldi has experienced significant difficulty integrating herself into the organizational culture and environment at Potomac Waters. Some of the problems that Martha is currently facing in her current position at Potomac Waters are:

Lack of proper on-boarding and training: Martha is unaware of her own position within the company, the current organizational culture does not provide proper on-boarding and training procedures to new employees.

The current social structure of Potomac Waters does not give Martha the