Please read and consider the Two-Boss Problem case study in the Kerzner Case Study text and respond to the question below. Question 1: How would you resolve the Two-Boss Problem? Document Preview: The...

The Two-Boss Problem On May 15, 1991, Brian Richards was assigned full-time to Project Turnbolt by Fred Taylor, manager of the thermodynamics department. All work went smoothly for four and one-half of the five months necessary to complete this ef- fort. During this period of successful performance Brian Richards had good working relations with Edward Compton (the Project Turnbolt engineer) and Fred Taylor. Fred treated Brian as a Theory Y employee. Once a week Fred and Brian would chat about the status of Brian's work. Fred would always conclude their brief meeting with, "You're doing a fine job, Brian. Keep it up. Do anything you have to do to finish the project." During the last month of the project Brian began receiving conflicting re- quests from the project office and the department manager as to the preparation of the final report. Compton told Brian Richards that the final report was to be as- sembled in viewgraph format (i.e., "bullet" charts) for presentation to the cus- tomer at the next technical interchange meeting. The project did not have the funding necessary for a comprehensive engineering report. The thermodynamics department, on the other hand, had a policy that all en- gineering work done on new projects would be documented in a full and com- prehensive report. This new policy had been implemented about one year ago when Fred Taylor became department manager. Rumor had it that Fred wanted formal reports so that he could put his name on them and either publish or384 THE TWO-BOSS PROBLEM present them at technical meetings. All work performed in the thermodynamics department required Taylor's signature before it could be released to the project office as an official company position. Upper-level management did not want its people to publish and therefore did not maintain a large editorial or graphic arts department. Personnel desiring to publish had to get the department manager's approval and, on approval, had to...