My case study begins with an individual named Rachna Chaudhuri receiving a new job as a designer at a company named High-Style Limited. Before getting into this case I must provide some background information to establish a setting for this case study. High-Style Limited is a company that manufactures high-end designer clothes for women and was established in 1975. Rachna Chaudhuri is a well-qualified individual that received her M. Sc in Textile Engineering from a reputed institute in Ahmedabad. Additionally she underwent a 6 month certified fashion design course in the U.S. Rachna came on to Hi-Style through her 4 month summer training where she impressed management with her creativity and ability to see future trends. Shortly after, Rachna was recommended for the designer’s position when a former employee named Sharma quit. Rachna joined a team of designers that was led by Ajit Sinha, who was a 38-year-old alumnus of the same institute Rachna graduated from. Rachna joined the team which consisted of 3 other colleagues that had experience at Hi-Style Limited, their names were Shilpa, Deepa, and Sandya. These employees were close to Sharma who had quit because of differing views with Ajit. Rachna was aware that she would face resentment from her new co-workers, because she was taking the position of an employee that the others were close to, but Rachna was confident that she could win over their hearts through hard work and dedication. This did not turn out to be as easy as she had thought.
A year and a half passed and Rachna was well acquainted with the organizational culture of her work. Rachna was an excellent employee and she got along well with her co-worker Shilpa, but she still faced deep hostility from Deepa and Sandhya. Rachna got along especially well with Ajit who gave her much praise and seemed to be extremely impressed with her work. This only added increased resentment from Deepa and Sandhya. Even though a good amount of time had passed Deepa and Sandhya never took the chance to get to know Rachna, they gave her the cold shoulder and whenever Rachna had a good idea Deepa and Sandhya would always have something sarcastic to say and try to shoot it down. Deepa and Sandhya never acknowledged Rachna’s hard work they rationalized that her success in Hi-Style was due to unfair treatment from Ajit. The underlying problem seemed to be jealousy. They believed that Ajit was treating Rachna with favoritism because they studied at the same institution. They took out their frustrations by treating Rachna rudely. Ajit and Rachna did have a good relationship that was supported by the aspect of them studying at the same institution. Deepa and Sandhya were becoming more intolerant everyday. They wanted the same promotions and appraisal that Rachna was getting. It became clear that Deepa and Sanhya’s resentment towards Rachna was only getting worse. It started to affect their job productivity. Ajit’s job approval of Rachna finally became unacceptable to Deepa when Ajit decided that Rachna was going to be the chief designer of the fashion show they would be putting on in Paris. Deepa expressed her disapproval to Ajit and it was clear that Rachna and Deepa simply could not work together anymore unless this resentment was resolved.
There are many factors in this case study that must first be analyzed before looking for a solution. First we see that Ajit and Rachna do have a connection that may appear as favoritism towards other employees in the company. This is a common issue in the work place and the only way we can actually rationalize their connection as something other than favoritism is that it seems Rachna really did display hard work and dedication while we do not know about Deepa’s work ethic because it is left out in the case study. All we really know about Deepa is that she has been with the company longer which should make her more experienced. Next we should acknowledge that Deepa has seen favoritism in her past that ended up causing her to resign from her former job. Deepa’s emotions from her last issue like this are probably re-surfacing. Ajit should be more aware of his treatment towards his employees. If Ajit had been more involved with his employees he would have known about Deepa and Sandhya’s frustrations that had been going on for a rather long time.