Resonus Corporation: A Case Study on Leadership and Behavior

This case study examines the organizational behavior within Resonus Corporation, highlighting the challenges posed by the CEO's leadership style and its impact on departmental relationships. The case focuses on the Engineering Director, Frank Choy, and his frustrations with the company's culture, which favors certain employees, particularly those in the research department, leading to conflicts and inefficiencies. The CEO's bias towards a favored employee, along with a lack of effective communication and coordination between departments, results in poor project outcomes and employee dissatisfaction. The analysis underscores the importance of impartial leadership, effective conflict resolution, and the need for a cohesive organizational structure to ensure project success and foster a positive work environment. The case details the negative consequences of the CEO’s actions, including delayed product development, and a decline in employee morale. The study reveals how informal relationships and favoritism can undermine organizational effectiveness and lead to significant challenges.

Organizational Behavior 1
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
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Organizational Behavior 2
Organizational Behavior
The case is about departmental problems in Resonus Corporation. Frank Choy an
engineering director responsible for ESD and research department felt that the interdepartmental
battles were wearing him down. He realized that employees got most of the blame rather than
credit for issues that could be avoided if the right protocol was followed. He tracked the problem
to the corporate’s CEO, Bill Hunt, who responded to the problems with a lack of urgency, urging
employees to remain civil and telling them to learn to get along better. He even fired the previous
engineering director due to constant disputes in the office. He thought that the problem was not
on how the departments were run but how people learn to fit into the existing organizational
culture.
Hunt insisted on promoting informal relationships between managers since the
company’s founder had groomed him to maintain organization’s family spirit. The informal
relationships has led to poor organizational response to departmental heads. For instance, a
research director in the corporation who directly reports to the CEO, ‘Doc’ Kalandry has never
felt the need to acknowledge Chow as his director. Hunt had a close relationship with Doc since
his first job in the company was in the research team and he is still very connected to Doc and
most employees are aware of it. Hunt even refers to Doc as a living genius and sees his
innovations as the company’s get way to success. Although everyone seemed to love Doc’s over
enthusiasm about his innovations a few ESD staff felt like his director needed to manage him
better.
Choy and his team felt that they undergo through constant critique on their work from the
production supervisors unlike the higher research team whose explanations are taken without any
complaint. ESD team believe that those critiques should be directed to the research team since
they are responsible for the design changes. They argue that with the work experience that they

Organizational Behavior 3
have they shouldn’t be constantly put in a position to defend their abilities rather they should be
getting work done. Latest trouble began when Doc came up with one of his last minute
innovation which Hunt endorsed without consulting other departments which were going to be
involved in the development and manufacturing process. The innovation was a new nano
processor technology that was to be installed in the hearing-aid product.
The case demonstrates that the departments in the organization lacked coordination and
unity in identifying new inventions that were efficient and cost effective. Hunt’s leadership was
biased and he lacked impartiality when it came to dealing with his cronies such as Doc. Even
with proven failures in Doc’s previous innovations Hunt kept on endorsing and favouring him,
which brought about agitations from employees. Anyone who brought up the issue was viewed
as being aggressive, this was the very reason that Choy’s predecessor got fired. This resulted to
employees getting along with Doc’s innovations even though they knew it was not possible to
deliver the product on time. This kind of behavior eventually led to poor organizational relations
that had huge implications to the success of the organization.