Case Study – Thomas Motor Company

John Thomas is the Managing Director of the Thomas Motor Company. He succeeded to the position of Managing Director after his father’s untimely death in May 1978. Martin Thomas, the founder of the Thomas Motor Company, Started off as an apprentice mechanic in a suburban area of Melbourne when he was only eighteen working as an assistant to Fred Luthans. Martin learnt all he knew about automechanics from him. He was a keen and enthusiastic learner and Luthans like people like that. He saw a lot of potential in Martin and once remarked to a fellow worker after Martin completed a job in record time, “That kid is going to be someone someday. By the age of twenty-one, Martin had become one of the fastest and …show more content…
Hearing about this, Robbins spoke to Turner in his usual mild-mannered fashion. He basically advised Turner to be more careful with his work and to take his time. Turner acknowledged this with an unfriendly shrug of his shoulders.

Over the next few days, Turner’s dissatisfaction grew even more as he tried to hurry his work, yet making an effort to be careful. Unfortunately, he still missed his coffee-breaks. At lunch, he chose not to associate with the rest of the crew and there was little communication between him and the others.

Sooner Turner began complaining about various things. He went up to Robbins and told him that the workshop was too dirty. So dirty, that he found it hard to work in it. Robbins tried to explain to Turner that they were understaffed at the moment and, besides, workshops were naturally dirty. Turner responded by saying, ‘It was always clean at my father’s workshop’. Not long after that incident, Turner complained about the noise from the loudspeakers. The mean had always worked with the radio on so that they could keep up with the football and baseball scores. Turner once shouted, “Turn off that damn thing, willya? How’s a man supposed to work in this kind of noise?”

By this time the rest of the men had quite enough of Turner and his temperamental behaviour. They ostracised turner from their activities, which led him to believe that they were