Consolidated Life Case Study
Joe Nitchals
University of Saint Mary

Consolidated Life Cultural Issues

Problem

Consolidated Life, a prestigious insurance firm, has gone through a state of reorganization within its management team. Stability in the organization is fully dependent upon the management staff. Jack Greely, the new division senior vice president, has a reputation of being tough and fair. Jack prefers that his employees do things his way and to keep the work moving. Employees now identify Consolidated Life as a prison setting. Employees are not allowed to have opinions or to bring forth any ideas that do not conform to the culture set by the management staff within Consolidated Life. The quality of work now reflects the poor attitudes of the employees.
During a previous restructure of the organization, an employee first and results driven manager, Mike Wilson, was able to streamline work-flow in multiple business process. Mike left for a different department of Consolidated Life, before Jack Greely was brought on. Mike is now back ready to help his old department as leader of a 14-person unit, however his management style now clashes with the new vice presidents ideals.

The Conflict

Upper level management at Consolidated Life is behind its VP Jack Greely. Previous management tolerated Mike Wilson’s employee focused management style, because he was able to increase productivity, reduce errors, and reduce lost time. Mike was labeled as free spirited and unorthodox (Ivancevich, 2005, pg 1). With Jack Greely now in place management is much less forgiving and willing to allow its middle management the ability to make decisions that do not match up with their ideals.
Upon Mike’s return to Consolidated Life he saw that all of the improvements that he had helped implement prior to his transfer had all been cut and wiped out. Mike had to feel a sense of unease at this point. Knowing that even when improvements had been made that management would still not tolerate challenging ideas can further put employees into a poor working mood. Still, Mike brought back his same great ideas and convinced his fellow middle managers that one of their biggest issues was lack of training and the ability to generate ideas. Mike helped develop a manager’s forum to help with both of these issues. Jack Greely was dissatisfied with his middle managers trying to start a union and met to find a way to squash the forum.
The manager’s forum put a target on Mike Wilson back. It labeled him further with management as being loose, thus beginning limitations for Mike’s upward movement within Consolidated Life. Mike’s results didn’t matter to Jack. Mr.