CHARTING A COURSE FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION—“IT’S A POLICY

CASE: CHARTING A COURSE FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION—“IT’S A POLICY” Read the case below from Chapter 10 in your textbook: Background The setting is an 82-bed hospital located in a small city. One day an employee of the maintenance department asked the supervisor, George Mann, for an hour or two off to take care of some personal business. Mann agreed, and he asked the employee to stop at the garden equipment dealership and buy several small lawnmower parts that the department required. While transacting business at a local bank, the employee was seen by Sally Carter, the supervisor of both human resources and payroll, who was in the bank on hospital business. Carter asked the employee what he was doing there and was told the visit was personal. On returning to the hospital, Sally Carter examined the employee’s time card. The employee had not punched out to indicate when he had left the hospital. Carter noted the time the employee returned, and after the normal working day she marked the card to indicate an absence of 2 hours on personal business. Carter advised the chief executive officer (CEO), Jane Arnold, of what she had done, citing a long-standing policy (in their dusty, and some would say infrequently used, policy manual) requiring an employee to punch out when leaving the premises on personal business. The CEO agreed with Sally Carter’s action. Carter advised Mann of the action and stated that the employee would not be paid for the 2 hours he was gone. Mann was angry. He said he had told the employee not to punch out because he had asked him to pick up some parts on his trip; however, he conceded that the employee’s personal business was probably the greater part of the trip. Carter replied that Mann had no business doing what he had done and that it was his—Mann’s—poor management that had caused the employee to suffer. Mann appealed to the CEO to reopen the matter based on his claim that there was an important side to the story that she had not yet heard. Jane Arnold agreed to hear both managers state their position.