1995, the City of Carlsbad,

¶ … 1995, the city of Carlsbad, California, divided the government of their city into five major services that included community development, safety services, and public works in order to effect civic improvement.

The largest department - that of Public Works -- had six independent divisions under its control responsible for the following tasks: engineering, parks and recreation, facilities maintenance, fleet maintenance, street maintenance, and the water system belonging to Carlsbad. The manager of the Public works department, however, had difficulty in interesting the other five departments in the notion of change for the following key reasons:

Each of the departments had their own specific way of doing things and not all were eager for embracing change.

Most of the departments lacked goals and objectives to reaching these goals.

In other matters, however, disparity was less obvious as most of the employees of all divisions were content with their job and eager to stay. Growth too was expected in several departments with the greatest amount of growth expected in the engineering department.

The essential issue in this case lies with the manager of the Public Works department attempting to win over the managers of the other departments who share different visions to him. The manager has the challenge of finding a manner of working well together, and of sitting down together to formulate a shared goals and objectives that all can agree with.

Analysis: What are the causes/factors producing the situation described in the case?

The key problems center around the fact that the different departments have different ways of doing things and that many of them seem to work in a disorganized manner without plan structure or goals to direct them. The two issues are linked in that each department has its own peculiar work ethos and 'culture', and the manager now has the task of making things work so that the departments work as one whole. Doing so would also be beneficial for the project as a whole, from holistic point-of-view, since it would grant a certain unity of direction and perspective with all working towards one desired end: the good of the city. What the manager has to prevent is outbreak of conflict and power-struggle from entering the equation and formation of a team environment where each, with its own partial qualities can work for the good of the City.

Action: What course of action would you adopt if you were involved in this situation? Why?

I would adopt a conflict resolution strategy, focusing on sitting the key managers of each team around the table and openly discussing the various issues. It is preferable that the manager do this independently without outside help, but if the challenge is too great it may mean the manager bringing in a professional to help the departments see face-to-face on the various key issues. Endeavor too would go into creating a set of goals and plans to reach those goals that would be acceptable to all. Creating these goals would, therefore, take the input and opinion of each of the key members of each department.

My goal throughout would be to build trust and to work towards having the five different departments build their communication. Dealing with the individuals in a dignified, respectful way, and allowing the different parties to air their concerns is recommended. Once done, the units can focus on productivity.

This case is also similar to the merger of two companies and therefore a lesson, congruent to mergence, may be applied here: Organizations, like people, possess personalities: mergence of two companies with different cultural backgrounds involves the settling of operational issues such as politics, personnel policies, management structure, and the organization's philosophy towards organizational and staff management. The manager, too, in this case may have to resolve all of this by around -- the -table discussion if he aims for convergence of goals and direction. Once done, the remaining issues are comparatively minor.