Case Study: Maureen's HR Challenges - Salary, Morale & Negotiation

This case study analyzes the human resource challenges faced by Maureen, a managing director, focusing on the disparity in her salary compared to her colleagues, despite her hard work and capabilities. The disparity stems from accepting a small cost-of-living raise, senior management's restrictions on raises, and situational cues influencing negotiation outcomes. Additionally, the case highlights the declining performance of the parent company, low morale among overworked research analysts, and the request for significant pay raises from top performers. Maureen's efforts to advocate for her team led to incentives for the analysts, but also revealed a potential future earnings gap between her and her reports. This situation underscores the complexities of HR management, negotiation, and maintaining employee morale in challenging organizational contexts. Desklib provides resources like past papers and solved assignments to help students understand similar case studies.

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Running head: ISSUES DEALING WITH HUMAN RESOURCE
Issues Dealing with Human Resource
Name
Institution
Author’s Note

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ISSUES DEALING WITH HUMAN RESOURCE
Maureen appears to be a hard-working employee with the capability of performing
various tasks without putting some issues into questions. Moreover, quite some reasons can
indicate why Maureen is known to be having such a difference in her salary compared to the rest
(Wright, 2018). One of the main reasons as to why Maureen has such a disparity in her pay is
because she had earlier accepted a small cost of living raise that was presented to her. To make
matters worse, she accepted the cost of living rise that was offered to her. Disparity occurs due to
various factors (Schuler & MacMillan, 2016).The difference that was seen in Maureen's salary
also emerged as a result of the senior management team of the organization. Earlier on, the
management had instructed her that the only raises she was allowed to offer on behalf of the
organization were the cost of living raises; this made it difficult for her to get a raise within the
organization as far as her duties were concerned. Additionally, Maureen's disparity in her salary
is also connected to the situational cues in quite some ambiguous situations that were able to
trigger the emergence of different behaviors. Negotiation processes usually come up with quite
some differences as far as the outcomes are concerned (Laurent, 2016).
People tend to realize issues according to what is taking place in the surrounding environment
(Wright & McMahan, 2011). Maureen was able to notice the various problems that emerged
within her workplace as a result of certain factors. The last few months have always been trying
for her. She as the managing director of her company is clearly noticing that the parent company
that is attached to the firm, is actually performing below the predicted level.
The performance appears to be a severe situation that needs a lot of concern since when it is not
adequately addressed; there is a high probability that most of the firm's operations will be altered.
This will therefore prevent it from attaining most of its future goals. At the same time, Maureen
is also noticing that all her understaffed team of research personnel who also appear to be

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ISSUES DEALING WITH HUMAN RESOURCE
overworked, are experiencing a reduction in their morale, something that scales down their
performance together with the achievement of various goals within the boundaries of the
organization. To make matters worse, both of the two analyses decided to come on board and
request a significant pay rise right after the implementation of all their annual reviews. Finally,
Maureen realizes that right after she decided to fight for her top performers, the senior
management team for the organization who also appear to be her superiors chose to come up
with a conclusion thus offering reasonable incentives to the two analysis who earlier on made a
request, a situation that made Park to realize that a total of three of her seven personal different
types of reports have got higher chances of producing more than she would make in the coming
future.

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ISSUES DEALING WITH HUMAN RESOURCE
References
Laurent, A. (2016). The cross‐cultural puzzle of international human resource management.
Human resource management, 25(1), 91-102.
Schuler, R. S., & MacMillan, I. C. (2016). Gaining competitive advantage through human
resource management practices. Human Resource Management, 23(3), 241-255.
Wright, P. (2018). Fundamentals of human resource management. Management, 5, 27.
Wright, P. M., & McMahan, G. C. (2011). Exploring human capital: putting ‘human’back into
strategic human resource management. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(2),
93-104.