Case Study #2 Like every company Initech has a matrix organization starting with the CEO, regional managers, and according to peter 8 managers. When the workers like Peter work their butts off they do not get any of reward for it but the company gets to sell more units. There is no motivation so he just doesn’t care about. Peter feels his only “motivation is not to be hassled” by the eight bosses when he makes a mistake. In another situation, Bill Lumbergh the manager did not tell his employee Milton Waddams that he got laid off five years ago but still got a paycheck. The consultants hired by the company, which no employee knew about, to layoff people just went and fixed the glitch in accounting that allowed him to get his paychecks. Based on these issues, the core issue in the communication that Lumbergh has with his employees. His inability to be clear with Waddams causes the company a five-year salary cost and fails to communicate with the employee, demonstration a lack of importance to their well being. Communication in organizations is the way information is passed on and understood between groups of people. Messages are formed, encoded and sent. Noise makes the message sent questionable it the receiver was actually listening. The lack of motivation affects how good the responses are between two or more people. Legitimate Power can be used for either good or bad, just like any other power. Legitimate power entitles the person to give others orders as the person has been working there for a long time or is the CEO. When an employee is done with a task, the manager can assign a different task that the manager has knowledge on incase the employee needs help. The lack of communication starts with Lumbergh not talking with the other 7 managers that Peter has to listen to. The lack of communication within in other leads to every single manager to repeat to peter about the TSP report not being submitted. Their lack of active listening when peter informs all of them that he had taken care of the problem leads to them thinking he is a slacker that doesn’t read the company memos. They did not allow peter to finish talking, simply cut him off and told him to read the memo. The problem continues when the company brought in consultants to evaluate each employee, Lumbergh did not think about the well being of the employees and how a consultant looks to the employees, he simply started his announcements without mentioning the consultant that was standing right next to him. Lumbergh’s lack of communication stops him from getting his message across. When he and the consultants got together to talk about his employees, he questions who Waddams is, a long time employee that was laid off but never got the message. He didn’t say the message in an effective time, so Lumbergh used his legitimate power to move Waddams desk from one corner to the next until he eventually ended up in a storage unit. The way that Lumbergh uses his legitimate power is in a way to cover his lack of communication. He tells Peter on a Friday afternoon that Peter will “need to go ahead and come in Saturday and Sunday” because of lack of employees. Lumbergh fails to deliver the message at a good time but still makes Peter come in. The motivation that Peter and the rest of the employees have is shot down when they feel they cannot trust the manager for the lack of communication. Lumbergh ignores what Peter has to say making Peter not care about the company. Lumbergh later fails to communicate on time that Peter has to work the weekend and uses his legitimate power to get Peter to come agree to come in. This just motivates Peter in the worst way possible because less work will be done. Communication is an organizations key to success. Solving the problem at Initech can begin by Lumbergh having less legitimate power because of his lack of communication. Instead of being the manager he could be the assistant manager to the other managers who do communicate. This move will make Lumbergh a little more equal to the employees, hopefully respecting them more to earn the respect and in result communication will go up. A negative situation that may arise from this is that Lumbergh, not being a active listener, will not have heard the message the right way and still believe that he has as much legitimate power as he had. You can also increase communication between Lumbergh and his employees by choosing a communication channel that is the norm between everyone. If Lumbergh treated his employees with respect and listened to them, the employees would probably have more interest in their jobs and Peter would be able to get his point across that he fixed the TSP report problem and not having him lose his mind.