Resonus Corporation Case Study

GROUP 4 - RESONUS  CORPORATION CASE STUDY                                

1. What sources and contingencies of power existed among the executives and departments at Resonus?

Sources of power

Legitimate power

Legitimate power is an agreement in an organization where members in certain roles can request a set of behaviors from others. Here in Resonus, the Department Directors have the authority to request certain tasks to the employees. For example, whenever Doc gets a new idea, he immediately gets the employees to work on it. This has caused concerns to the ESD employees as they are always getting a product change order and always get the blame for production errors which is not entirely their fault. As the CEO also agrees to Doc’s changes, he employees have got no say but to follow orders.

Coercive Power

Coercive power is the ability to apply punishment. Almost every time the ESD employees are at the receiving end when there is a production error. The production supervisors regularly critique ESD staffs for the errors. This frustrates the ESD technicians where the fault is not entirely by the ESD team but because of the design change by the research team. Frank Choy has also been blamed for incompetency as the ESD department could not deliver the new product in time.

Expert Power

Expert power is when an individual or work unit can influence others by possessing knowledge or skill valued by others. Many people react to expertise the way they respond to authority, by mindlessly following the guidance of these experts. In this case, Doc Kalandry, the research director has this Expert Power, as the CEO thinks that he is a ‘living genius’. Anything Doc says or any change that he makes is always endorsed by the CEO. As he is the Research director, even his department is seen as higher status than the other departments. This can be seen when the production staff critique the ESD team but tend to accept the explanation by the research team.

Referent Power

Referent power is when others identify with them, like them or respect them. This could be tied to the Expert Power in this case.  Doc Kalandry’s charisma has resulted in everyone at Resonus to love his successful product, and also made it easier for him to get approval for almost everything from the CEO. This is also another reason for Doc’s special status in the organization where by looking at the chart, he reports to Frank Choy, but the research director only reports to Bill hunt, the CEO because he does not consider the Director of ESD as his boss.

Contigencies of power

Substitutability

Doc Kalandry is seen as an individual who is seen as the innovative genius by Bill Hunt is perceived to be non substitute. He is seen as an asset to keep the organization as the leader in the field of innovation. Apart from this, Doc Kalandry is the only one who has an authority over product management, and his constant idea changes to products has put strain on other departments such as the engineering department and also the production department. Controlling access to resource and knowledge increases non-substituality. This is seen in the research engineers’ attitude where they work with the production rather than the engineering, as they feel that they are losing something when the ESD engineer tries to help.