Question

Parks and Recreation: A Case Study

Pace is a beautiful, peaceful, and rapidly growing county in the heart of the Sunbelt. One winter day, Joseph Andraseli, MPA, an assistant city manager in a northeastern town, decided that he would answer an ad for the position of county manager in Pace. The county commission liked him, and he liked what he saw of the area.

At 9 a.m. on his 10th day on the job, his secretary, Meg, came into the office and said, “Mr. Andraseli, there are five park employees here waiting to see you. They seem angry.” Andraseli had a busy schedule, and besides, he was six organizational levels removed from the park employees. But he reconsidered, as he had interviewed on the notion that he had an “open-door” policy. He asked Meg to send them in.

Parks and recreation workers were among the lowest paid and least skilled workers on the county’s payroll. Their occupation most of the time involved working outdoors. These five workers, all of whom were older employees, wished to complain that their supervisor, who was much younger, always assigned them to the worst parks in the county. The younger employees, who also were “friends” with the supervisor, were able to choose the parks in which they worked. The older employees never were given any say on their assignments, and they wanted this changed.

Andraseli obviously was in a tough position. The grievance had clear overtones of discrimination and had the potential to escalate. Yet he did not want to undermine the authority of the managers and supervisors that stood between him and the five angry men seated across from him. He had not met the supervisor and had only had a limited introduction to the department director.

The union that represented the parks and recreation workers also was a possibility for these employees, but Andraseli did not want the union to represent these workers if he could solve the problem. These workers obviously had not gone through the chain of command, but what could he do to keep this from escalating?

Please answer the following questions thoughtfully on a 2 paged memo.

In this case you are Andraseli. What will you do next?

1. First, diagnose what the specific problem is. Who are the stakeholders, and what roles do they play? What assumptions or attributions are you making about the problem and the circumstances under which it occurs?

2. Second, are there secondary problems? identify the facts and what special considerations must be taken into account. What are the strategic factors that must be satisfied to solve the problem.

3. Third, determine what are the options (recommended procedures, practices, and techniques) for dealing with or solving the problem.

4. Fourth, make a recommendation or decision. These decisions need to be provided with supporting analysis and evidence that explains or justifies why the decision was made.

5. Fifth, focus on the generalizable assessment of the case study or simulation reflecting on the takeaways, lessons and insights derived from it.

Answer 1

The issue presented here is one of dissatisfaction of a certain set of employees in the organization with certain conditions in their daily work. In specific it is a set of senior employees at the parks and recreations department. The complaint was that they were facing undue discrimination in responsibilities assigned to them by their supervisor, probably due to their age.

There are several stakeholders here - Mr.Andreseli himself as the central decision maker, the complainant group of senior staff, the immediate supervisor against whom the complaints have been made and also the union that the employees are part of. The assumption here is that the senior workers have been around for sometime and their experience is valued to an extent. This can be inferred by the fact that they chose to directly take up the matter with Mr.Andreseli before going through the levels of the chain of command. One of the key priorities for Mr.Andreseli is to ensure that the issue does not escalate ot a level where it comes into external focus. In such a case the complexity and associated stress with the issue only balloons further.

The fact that the workers have directly approached Mr.Andreseli who is at least a few levels removed is a cause for concern. It could mean one of severalthings and these may be secondary issues to the problem. It is possible that they do not trust the intermediate levels to hear them out and solve their problems. It could also mean that they are trying to curry attention with a boss who is new and may not know the nuances of how they work. The nature of the complaints are not very complex and can easily be handled in a few conversation if parties are willing to grant each other an audience. However that has not happened, which could also mean a breakdown of communication between the complainants and their superiors. This could be a serious secondar issue as well.

Mr.Andreseli will need to proactively solve the issue since it is a test of his capability very early into the assignment and he will be evaluated on how he responds to this. The first step is to acknowledge a problem and have a conversation with all immediate affected parties so that he has the right perspective on the issue. He should also be able to bring to the table the opinion and understanding of intermediate managers who have been skipped by the complainants. How he keeps the Union at bay on this issue is also critical since he would not want undue involvement from their end to complicate matters. Yet they cannot be bypassed since the re are elements of an organizational problem, not just a one-off issue.

The recommended approach is to certainly at least ensure a dialogue between the affected parties and be part of this dialogue to see if the issue can be resolved there itself. Usually if the parties are amenable, some kind of an agreed approach will usually materialize in such a meeting. In case this doesn't work, there would need to be a more formal approach towards the resolution. It may involve more members of the senior leadership team as well.

Given all the information at hand one cn then try and make a decision. It could be one of a few steps - setting transparent norms for work assignments, proper documentation of job responsibilities, rerating of supervisor performance (if , indeed , he is guilty of discrimination) etc. This would depend on the outcme of all the information gathered in due course by Mr.Andraseli