Thomas Green :

Power, office politics, and a career in crisis

Submitted by group 9
Rahul Arora(PGP09221)
Neha Khedkar(PGP09209)
Ritu Singh(PGP09225)
Shray Yadav(PGP09236)
Swadheen Jain(PGP09241)
Neha Singh(PGP09212)
Shubham Divyanshu(PGP09238)
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 Dynamic Display
Division: Travel
Key People: Shannon McDonald(Vice President)
FRANK DAVIS(Marketing Director)
THOMAS GREEN(Senior Marketing specialist)

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 Thomas Green

• In march 2007, Thomas green was hired by Dynamic Displays as an account

executive
• He was promoted to the position of senior market specialist in September 2007
• He was responsible for identifying industry trends and getting sales growth for
the company
• He was ambitious and innovative and liked challenges in his work
• Green was more concerned with the end result rather than the details and
means of achieving the plan
• he focused on the short term rather than long term strategic plans

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 Frank Davis

• Frank Davis was Thomas green’s boss and held the

Marketing director position
• He went through all the possibilities for the job and focused
on details
• He had a 17 year work experience at Dynamic Displays and
had strong analytical skills
• He was concerned with initiating structure and rigid
guidelines
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 COMPARISION
THOMAS GREEN FRANK DAVIS

• Values team work

• Prefers to work independently • Values good
• Poor work communication
with boss
• Less structured (does not
provide data while consulting
his clients) and is outspoken
• Poor leader and has no
experience in management
• Green is individualistic
communication status
updates
• Structured, detailed and
oriented (provides hard
facts and physical data)
• Has a transactional
leadership style (sets
goals and expectations)
• Davis is participative

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 THE TUSSLE

• Davis not overly receptive of having green on his team

• Unreceptive target set by Davis which Green opposed
• Green having a biased view of Davis
• Green suspected that differences with Davis could lead to
his release

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 Reason of tussle

• Both established individual power over one another

• Political war due to conflict of power which also involved people
outside the individual work group
• Proposition that they possessed the position to outperform the
other
• Difference between individual values and beliefs
• This also created a trust a relationship issue between the two.
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 Problems at Dynamic Display

• Low trust environment

• Unclear performance evaluation system
• High pressure performance expectations
• Zero reward allocation practices

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 Affective Events Theory

• Green reacts emotionally to things happening at work

and this influences his job satisfaction.
• This in turn affects his performance and expectations from
the organization

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 McClelland’s Theory of Needs

• Need for power (nPow):

Need for power is most dominant in this case with power
tussle going on between the two.
Need for achievement (nAch):Also, Green is achievement
oriented and has been successful in very little time period

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 WHAT SHOULD THOMAS GREEN
DO?

• Green must reflect on the mistakes he has done

• Acknowledge the concerns raised by McDonald and request a
face to face meeting with him
• Be calm and persuasive
• Be visibly present in office and spend time with other senior
marketing specialists in order to round his understanding of
position
• Show accountability and take responsibility
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Steps for Dynamic Display to tackle
power tussles

• Structured organizational policy to take care of power tussles

• Concept of rational persuation must be understood
• Involve inspirational appeal and discussions
• Set goals to govern over power and initiate work flow
• For future, create a transparent review and promotion system
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Thank you

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