Dunder mifflin hierarchy

1. Being hired on to Dunder Mifflin as a management consultant has been a dream of mine for a long while. I have been watching over “The Office” for many years. All the while I have been observing Michael Scott and picking up on many instances in which Michael hasn’t been managing his team in the best and most effective way possible. Michael Scott is the regional manager of the Scantron Branch of Dunder Mifflin. Dunder Mifflin is a paper company in Pennsylvania. I have been in charge of watching over Dunder Mifflin and noting some of the things I could be of help on in terms of improving the quality of work going on in this office as well as helping lead Michael in a better direction when leading and managing his team.

Starting off with “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory” which is a theory that proposes that people are going to be motivated by five categories of types of needs. From bottom to top, these needs are physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem, and lastly self-actualization (pg.521). Being able to fulfill the lower levels of needs and progressing forward to the higher levels is something that most people are working towards on a daily basis. According to Saul McLeod in his online article, “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs,” McLeod addresses, “Every person is capable and has the desire to move up the hierarchy toward a level of self-actualization. Unfortunately, progress is often disrupted by a failure to meet lower level needs. Life experiences, including divorce and loss of a job, may cause an individual to fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy”(McLeod 1). In season 1, episode 1, Michael is trying to show Ryan Howard (a temporary employee) the type of environment that Dunder Mifflin displays and how they like to mix work and play together throughout their everyday work days. So, when Pam Beesly comes into Michael’s office to drop off a fax for him he asks her to take a seat in his office. He starts out with addressing that the company has to do some downsizing, as well as informing Pam how much easier she has been making Michael’s life as the office’s secretary. Just after his praising of Pam and all the help she gives Michael, he tells Pam that he is going to have to let her go because she has been stealing. Pam then questions Michael on this issue and he explains that she has been stealing post-it notes. Pam then begins to cry, which then results in Michael starting to laugh and revealing that her being fired was all a joke. This circumstance is a prime example of life experiences making an individual fluctuate between levels of the hierarchy. Being told she was fired, Pam’s safety needs had just been stripped from her for the time being. Making her reconsider even her physiological needs. As Dunder Mifflin’s management consultant, I cannot allow Michael to jokingly tamper with employee’s needs just for the fun of it. This is terrible managing and quite frankly just rude. No manager should put their employee’s and member of their team to reconsider their life’s needs and whether or not they have a secured job.

In every workplace environment, as well as everywhere you go in today’s world, ethics seem to be a very large issue that is impossible for people to see eye to eye with. Ethics is the code of moral principles and values that governs the behaviors of a person or group with respect to what is right or wrong. In episode 2 of season 1, there is a very big ethical issue that I had to address with Michael so that something like this would never end up happening again. The scenario began when Michael was leading a diversity training program in hopes of improving the teams’ ability when dealing with diversity and tolerance. Michael begins his diversity training with an insignificant video then proceeds to have the team stick index cards on their foreheads. These index cards are cards with a certain race on it. He then instructs them all to treat others however they might treat people of those races that have been displayed on one another's foreheads. When his employees don’t talk to each other how he envisioned them to, Michael gets irritated and decides to demonstrate what he wants people to do by himself. Michael then proceeds to turn around as Kelly (an Indian woman) has just got back from a separate meeting. Michael who is trying to prove some sort of point begins throwing himself into a really offensive Indian stereotype making Kelly uncomfortable until she decides to slap him in front of everyone in the office. Michael gets visibly upset. He then tells the employees how now Kelly knows what it's like to be a minority. This act displaying extreme racism and stereotypical behavior teaches the members of the office how not to act. Michael is one of the main reasons that this diversity training was required for their crew in the first place. Having good ethical practice in the workplace is very important. Discrimination and disrespect towards one and their culture can have many negative effects. In Yin Paradies and Amanuel Elias’ article, “How racism and a lack of diversity can harm productivity in our workplaces,” they explain that “A review of multiple studies indicates exposure to racism is detrimental to performance. This is due to its impact on job attitudes, mental and physical health, as well as organisational behaviour. Research also indicates that, by inflicting job stress, racism can reduce productivity”(Paradies 1). Not only does this harm productivity, but it also goes against “The Four Types of Ethical Manager Behaviors” addressed on page 149 exhibit 4.2 of the textbook. As the manager, Michael should be enforcing and communicating ethical standards through behavior, being fair in decisions and distribution of rewards, he should be displaying honesty and integrity as well as showing kindness, compassion, and concern for the needs and feelings of others. With this example of Michael displaying a racist act towards Kelly, he is displaying zero of the four behaviors he should be displaying in regards to managerial ethics. In this circumstance, I had to advise Michael in thinking about how his actions reflect his ethics and the ethical code he should be following as the manager. An ethical dilemma like this can be prevented. I worked with Michael and helped him understand how to avoid creating ethical dilemmas like this one with Kelly.

The next problem I had to work on with Michael was in regards to his decision making. Decision making is the process of identifying problems and opportunities and then proceeding to resolve these problems. On page 242 exhibit 6.3 shows the six steps in the managerial decision-making process. The first step in this managerial decision-making process is recognition of decision requirement. The second step is diagnosis and analysis of causes, third being the development of alternatives, the fourth step is the selection of the desired alternative. The fifth step is implementing the chosen alternatives, and the sixth and final step is to evaluate and give/receive feedback regarding the decision that was made. In season 1 episode 3, Michael is put in charge of choosing a health plan for his employees. With downsizing possible, it's crucial that Michael chooses an inexpensive plan for his employees. Michael being Michael, wanting to be liked, isn't very enthusiastic about cutting everyone’s benefits. When Michael’s boss Jan tells him that part of being a manager involves giving unpleasant news, he seems to panic. Michael decides to give the job of choosing the office’s healthcare plan to Jim who isn’t qualified to do so. Jim denies Michael and instead suggests that Dwight should choose the healthcare plan. Dwight, who doesn't have any health problems and who also strongly believes in cutting costs, chooses the cheapest plan with little to no benefits. Michael in effort to avoid his employees' complaints then hides out in his office. Where Michael went wrong here was when he didn’t even attempt step one of the managerial decision-making process. Decisions like these are very important to himself as well as the employees at Dunder Mifflin. For him to not even attempt to decide what healthcare plan to choose proves that maybe Michael hasn’t had to make many managerial decisions at this point in his career. Michael initially was able to identify and recognize the decision requirements but that was as far as he went then he handed the responsibility first to Jim, and then to Dwight. In, “6 Reasons Leaders Make Bad Decisions,” author Glenn Llopis identifies, “Leaders that don’t trust themselves enough become desperate and make abrupt decisions. They don’t think about the consequences when they make their decisions for the wrong reasons”(Llopis 1). This is a prime example of Michael not trusting himself enough to make the right decision for his employees so instead, he makes a rash choice in allowing Dwight to choose for him. The way I went about helping Michael in his decision-making process was by telling him not to just give away the responsibility of making the decision to someone else, just because the decision was a hard one to make. I walked him through the six steps as well as went in depth on how to work through those steps. Hopefully, when a new decision is needing to be made, Michael will have the trust and confidence in himself to perform the act of making decisions and using the steps provided to do so.

2. I have been hired as a Practice Manager at Head to Tails Veterinary hospital. The hospital is a day time practice where the doctors will see appointments, however, we also have a 24-hour emergency aspect to us creating a very fast-paced, high-risk decision-making environment. While we have appointment doctors Monday through Saturday, we also always have an emergency doctor ready to see hospitalized pets or any potential incomings. Heads to Tails is located in a small town making us a smaller hospital, much smaller than the corporate veterinary hospitals. My staff of 40 includes appointment and emergency doctors, nurses, client service representatives, and department leads.

As of right now, each department is in its own universe, meaning the departments rarely work together. With the emergency aspect, the staff has gotten used to an unorganized, chaotic environment. The doctors are slightly unethical when it comes to the financial aspect. They are currently going off of whether the owner has enough money to afford the treatment needed for the sick pet. They will have the client service representatives turn owners away, creating tension in the client service representative department. The nursing staff is underpaid and over-worked. The nursing staff attempts to recruit the help of the client service representative staff, however, the client service lead does not have enough staff members to spare to nursing. With the exception of two doctors, the hospital staff is fairly young. Many of the nurses are aspiring veterinarians. My overall assessment of the hospital staff is I can tell the staff wants to improve, there are just no steps to help them grow. So far, Head to Tails staff is hesitant towards my hands on, ethical, participative style of management. The last practice manager was very laissez-faire type of leader who did not interfere with attitude, work ethic, or how comfortable the hospital staff was, thus creating an unorganized chaotic environment.

Ethical Manager:

Before deciding how I will manage the Head to Tails staff I will need to decide what type of manager I want to be, and what I need to do to fulfill that role. There are four types of ethical management behavior: display honesty and integrity, show kindness and compassion, fair in decision making and reward distribution, and communicates and enforces ethical behavior throughout the organization. I believe this will assist the staff to be more open to each department and other opinions regarding the which course of medicine to take. Which will, in the end, create a cohesive flow throughout the hospital. I am aware that the ethical management approach is not the most common. In a recent Gallup Poll regarding Honesty and Ethics in different professions, only 17% of poll-takers rated business executives ethical standards as “high” or “very high”. This is because ego and greed get in the way for some managers.