THE CASE

Ravenclaw Inc., a sports car manufacturing company, has a long history of

running on a hierarchical culture. It sets sales target for its sales
executives. The company declares regular incentives for successfully
reaching the target in time. In the April-May-June period of the year 2014,
5 of its sales executives were successful in achieving the target mark.
Besides, couple of the lot moved into another company which led
Ravenclaw Inc. to take a decision to hire 7 sales executive under Joe
Harrison, one of the sales supervisor of the company. Although the reason
for hiring was simple: all the sales executives under Joe Harrison were
performing well in their jobs got promoted or moved to other companies
and thus vacancies for new posts were created; but the consequences
that it brought about wasnt that simple to cope with.
For the recruitment process, the company arranged a selection test which
contained competency tests including Cognitive Ability Test and took
interviews of the candidates. The company formed a committee to
administer the whole recruitment procedure. The committee was
comprised of the managers and supervisors from the HR department. Joe
initially voiced his opinion on how the selection process, especially the
interviewing of the candidates, should also include him; but apparently,
his ideas were overlooked as the company thought the HR department
had a lot more knowledge on the recruitment procedure and can come up
with better choices. So the decision of the company didnt provide Joe with
an opportunity to test the candidates nor was any input taken from him in
the final hiring decision. But the recruitment committee did its best to find
out the candidates with the most knowledge about the job. The newly
recruited employees CVs were then sent to Joe. Looking over the CVs, he
tried to grasp an overall view on his new sub-ordinates. As they joined the
company, Joe came to know about them more.
The company unveiled a new change in its human resource management.
The company wanted to adopt a more nurturing environment for its new
employees through mentoring to adapt with the changing market
conditions. It promoted the managers and supervisors to reduce the
strictness and control over employees and implement flexibility and
acceptance. This new change was particularly hard for Joe to cope with as
he ran his team on high control and regulation to maintain efficiency.

As what happens in case of almost every newly recruited employees, Joe

tried to objectify their jobs and the hows and whats of the tasks. But as
the days passed by, Joe found out it is becoming more tough to meet the
companys target inside the deadline. The new force wasnt working as
efficiently as the previous ones. The authority was posing more pressures
on Joe to drive the work force more effectively. Joe was trying his best and
he even hold a workshop between the new sales executives and the
previous ones who are still working in the company so that the new ones
get to learn what has been missing. But failing to fulfill the target in two
consecutive time period was only proving Joes work being fruitless. As Joe
was struggling to get a grip on his new workforce, the Company even
started taking the idea of locating Joe elsewhere into account.
Joe did realize that these people, who were hired, arent good enough to
suit the department. But why? That was the question he couldnt find an
answer to. They all proved to have quite a bit of knowledge about the job
but something was missing. To look into the matters more closely, he tried
to scrutinize every bit of work done by them. Soon he found out that some
of the new employees are not adaptable to various stressful situations
faced in sales. This finding was attained followed by a number of incidents
of unexpected arguments occurred between the sales executives and the
customers.
Joe had to give more instructions now. He understood that not only some
of these new people lacked in their capabilities, but also some little efforts
and works were missing which no one was willing to perform. Joe was
summoned by the accounting department quite often for almost similar
cases of miscalculation found in the documentation. As he investigated,
he found that the new sales executives are not documenting the petty
cash spent in sales negotiations and don't bother to get clearance from
accounting and finance department. Again, One day, Joe asked Rob
Marley, a new sales-executive, about why their new products and services
catalogs were not delivered to the nearby office of a very old and loyal
customer of the company, and as a response he received a complaint
from Rob about the task being not his responsibility to perform. Joe was
clearly experiencing a great lacking of willingness to perform the corelated tasks of the job among his new staffs. There was a complete gap
of communication and dedication visible.
Later Joe went to the HR department to consult about the situation. He
told them that these incidents are occurring which have caused the
downfall of output for the company. He pointed out the communication
gap between them and the defect of hiring employees only on the basis of
knowledge. He also told he wanted to go back to running his team as he

did before because he cant assume the new HR policy in such a haste
and without any help from the companys part.
Upon reviewing the situation, the company thought that it would be best
to fire Joe Harrison and hire a friendlier face in his place who can embrace
the companys new HR policies and maintain the sales team more
effectively.

Question 01. What do you think are the key reasons for the role
ambiguity in the sales executive position of Ravenclaw Inc.? What
steps were/are necessary to reduce the problem?
Question 02. What were the oversights that led to the problem in
the recruitment of the new sales executives?
Question 03. What are the challenges the company will face in
implementing the change in culture and how should they address
the problems?

Solution
#1. What do you think are the key reasons for the role ambiguity
in the sales executive position of Ravenclaw Inc.? What steps
were/are necessary to reduce the problem?
The key reasons behind the problems arose of role ambiguity can be
traced back to one major flaw in the selection and recruitment process
and that is Vague or ill-defined Job description.
After studying the case, it has come to our mind that in the process of
selection, the interviewers (in this case HR officials) were possibly not
clear about the job definition to the new recruits. Perhaps it was their
failure to describe and define what tasks and responsibilities the job
entails. As the role or job definition was vague/unclear, the new recruits
couldnt possibly know about the tasks and the responsibilities the
authorities expected them to perform.

The problem can be faced and reduced in two ways:

1. What the company should have done in the first place
2. What steps they could take now to reduce the role ambiguity among
the newly recruited sales executives.
The answer to the first problem the company should have done a job
analysis before starting the recruitment process to bring out even the
smallest of tasks performed by the sales executives, as some of these
tasks play a major role in the workflow of the company. Then, when the
company advertised for the job or even at the point when they
interviewed potential recruits, they should have been clear and up front
with them about the job description. They should been clear with them
about job definition as well as job delineation.
The answer to the second question: Firstly, the company can arrange
corporate meetings where the senior executives can persuasively come to
an understanding about the actual jobs and tasks the company needs
them to perform. They can't do a job analysis but they can do a workflow
analysis of the company and explain to the new recruits how some of the
tasks, though left out in the job description, actually are a part of their
major responsibility and should be completed with equal importance.
Another way is that the company officials can impose a reinforcement
system. Doing the necessary tasks outside JD should reflect positively and
thus result in incentives. However, the drawback is this method would
cost the company a lot of money when it shouldnt.
Thirdly, The Company could arrange training sessions where the trainers
could prepare them according to the needs of the company. In the training
sessions, the newly recruited executives could be told that jobs are everchanging and roles of the jobs shifts as the trend in technology and other
aspects shifts. Thus, they can be motivated. The drawback in this policy is
not everyone will comply with such notion and thus a difference of opinion
among the workforce may be cultivated.
Lastly, the company officials as a last resort can issue a statement to their
new recruits explaining their faults in selection process and can do a
restructuring of the job sales executive. This process is very time
consuming and costly for the organization but it showcases the companys
transparency and will incite loyalty and accountability in the employees.

#2. What were the oversights that led to the problem in the
recruitment of the new sales executives?
The companys heads directed the new recruitment process and, it turned
out to be a major problem for the company. Though they gave the HR
department to handle the recruitment process, the department did not
notice some key things about this specific job that pushed the company
back.

The first thing the overlooked was the importance of a specialist of

the field in the recruitment process. Though Joe Harrison urged to be
in the selection process the HR department bluntly ignored him.
The selection process itself was faulty. One cannot evaluate a sales
executives competency by a cognitive ability test and an interview
without an expert. They also should have arranged a job sample test
which they didnt. The HR department overlooked these things and
ran a general selection process for a specialized job.
Another oversight by the company was to promote nearly all of the
previous executives. By doing it, the company couldnt give the new
employees the option to learn from the experienced sales
executives.
The company also overlooked one huge aspect. It didnt organize a
training session for its new sales executives. The company thought
they would be as good as the previous executives. This hit the
company hard.

All these things that were overlooked by the company and the HR
department led to the problem the company is now dealing with.

#3. What are the challenges the company will face in

implementing the change in culture and how should they address
the problems?
Challenges:
1. Long standing successful culture of hierarchy. So all the employees will be
skeptical of the change.
2. Many successful managers and supervisors will not want to change how
they manage their subordinates
3. Sudden change will leave no room for coping up with the mechanisms of
Clan based culture
4. There will be an initial performance drop as most of the managers and
their subordinates will be trying to get used to the new system
5. The company will need to set a new system and standard for evaluating
employees.

Solutions:
1. Hold workshop for managers and supervisors on how to manage a team
with lesser control and more flexibility
2. Rather than implementing a sudden change, the company should go for a
step-by-step plan for introducing new policies
3. Focus on team based performance and evaluate teams on achieving team
specific goals
4. Keep financial provisions for the initial performance drop