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The Sundale Club Case Analysis

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Background

The Sundale Club is the largest athletic/social club in the city. It has been established for many years and has a prestigious reputation. Currently, the membership is slightly under 1,000. Sundale once had a waiting list for those wishing to join, but in the past few months the list has been exhausted and the director, Bob Watts, is considering a membership drive to fill unexpected membership vacancies.
Alice Smith was thinking about her modeling job on her way home that evening. Today had been dandy. Ted Ellis, the athletic director, had fired Pat Franklin, who had worked for Sundale for nearly nine years.

The Problem

The whole mess started five months ago when Ellis hired Chuck Johnson to become the men’s activity manager. Shortly after Johnson arrived, rumors started that he was a homosexual. Two of the members complained to Frank Havens, the assistant athletic director, that Johnson had made verbal passes at them.
Ted Ellis and Johnson were close friends, so Havens was reluctant to approach his boss with this problem. During the next few years more incidents involving Johnson’s behavior were reported by various staff members to Havens, in addition to complaints from club members.
Havens could sense that his staff was wondering why he had not done something about the situation, and he was aware that seven of the male members had withdrawn from the club. Finally, he requested a meeting with Ted Ellis.

The Meeting

The meeting with Ellis did not go well. Ted Ellis was extremely defensive about Johnson and shouted, “Chuck Johnson has more savvy about this business in his little finger than the whole bunch of you put together.”
That night, Frank decided to go over Ellis’s head and talk to Bob Watts. Watts was due to retire next year, so he did not want to rock the boat in the final days of his tenure with Sundale. Watts tried to convince

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