Rondell Data Corporation Case

4. Rondell Data Corporation Case:

Organizational Culture, Conflict and Power:

In the early years of its existence, Rondell Data Corporation (RDC) had a reputation for providing high quality and innovative product designs. The salespeople provided the challenges to the engineering department. Few of the engineers along with Ed "Doc" Reeves provided the solution to the challenges. However the company had grown from having 100 staff members to now having 800. As the number of employees increase, job specialization increased due to greater division of labour. The company departmentalized functionally. The sales team was separated from the engineering and research teams. This lead to more centralization and required elaborate coordinating mechanisms. The higher degree of centralization leads to more formalization. RDC however, was based on a relatively organic structure. The staff had informal communication with each other to get the job done. This worked when RDC was a small organization. As they grew to a larger outfit, they continued to have those informal communications instead of having a formal organized communication channel through which the problems could be solved. A high level of coordination between the functional group was required but that was not developed either. President Bill Hunt was dead set against red tape and stuck with the original organic way of functioning despite having created a more mechanistic structure. This lack of communication, coordination and formalization in a more mechanistic RDC has resulted in chaos and conflict.

Another issue that is quite important to note is, while all other teams were separated by function, the engineering team seems to be scattered all around. This adds to the communication and coordination problems faced in the engineering department. Additionally, this also creates interdepartmental coordination and communication issues.

Bill Hunt is the president and leader of RDC. He does not want to hear about the lack of interdepartmental communication when Frank Forbus tries to raise the issue. Leaders tend to set the tone or style in the organization. For the employees to buy into any idea, they have to believe that the authorities in the organization believe in it and strongly support it. Bill is thus creating a conflict in the organization culture.

Sometime during the growth of RDC a shift from a relatively organic to a mechanistic structure took place. This change was not realized and managed properly by management. Once a more functional departmentalization took place each team also seem to work in silos rather than communicate and coordinate with each other. This has resulted in each team blaming the other for the failures. Each team perceives the other as an impediment to their success and instead of working together they clashed thus creating conflict with