Case Analysis: A drop in the bucket

Description

Case Study Assignment Instructions

Overview

Case Study Assignments are self–administered, guided problems that follow each of the readings. The purpose is to walk you through the readings, emphasizing the points that will provide the foundation for understanding the overall importance of storytelling and touching narratives in communicating the benefits of an organization and/or its products and processes. The information sets emphasized in the Case Study Assignments follow the readings of each Module: Week and highlight the key parts of the chapters. Think of each exercise as Interactive Mental Highlights (IMH).

Instructions

You will read each case study and the corresponding questions in MindTap and submit your responses to the questions by uploading a Word.doc or similar format into Canvas.

• Length of assignment – at least 1 paragraph per case study question (no specific word or page count)
• Format of assignment – current APA
• At least 1 citation from textbook
• At least 1 integration of a Biblical principle
• Acceptable sources – Textbook, Bible

Case Analysis Questions

1. How can we understand the history of The Prep and the meetings described in this case in terms of The Four Flows that constitute organization? Which flows are highlighted in this description? Which flows have most strongly influenced the change that has occurred at The Prep? How have flows such as membership negotiation and self-structuring influenced institutional positioning?
2. This case describes a number of specific interaction episodes. Can these episodes be understood as conversation in the terminology of the Montreal School? What texts are drawn on during these conversations? Do different participants draw on different texts? Do other interactants in the conversation accept the authority of the texts that are drawn on?
3. What are the implications of the bucket drawing in terms of textual agency? Relatedly, how can we understand events in this case using the concept of ventriloquism? Can we see either the bucket drawing or Owen as a dummy who speaks for others in the organization? If so, whom is being spoken for, and what are the implications of anonymous author in the case of the bucket?

Case Study A Drop in the Bucket

Unlike most of the case studies in this textbook, this one is a true story. It is a story that I first heard through an academic paper written by Owen Lynch and Zach Schaefer (Lynch & Schaefer, 2012), and it recounts the events of several years earlier when Owen was working as a teacher at a private preparatory school while he was in his PhD program. Owen and Zach describe a series of tumultuous meetings that occur over a several month period at the high school and relate them to the larger ideas of this chapter—the interplay of conversation and text and how organizations are constituted through flows of communication. In the space available here, I won’t be able to do justice to all the complexities of this case and will just highlight a few crucial scenes. But let’s start with an understanding of the setting—a place Lynch and Schaefer call “The Prep.”

The Prep was founded on a picturesque deeply wooded 400-acre property just on the outskirts of a small southwestern city. The school was a boarding community where faculty, their families and the students all learned, worshipped, ate and lived together on the same campus. The Prep was founded on the ideals of social and environmental progressivism with a motto of developing the entire student: spiritually, academically, and athletically. The experiment was a success and The Prep is now considered one of the top academic prep schools in the nation. A large part of this academic success comes from the small informal classes and the engaged learning philosophy but most of all the close relationship between students and teachers. (Lynch & Schaeffer, 2012)

Sounds idyllic, right? Unfortunately, times change and The Prep changed, too. By the time Owen worked there as a teacher, 70% of the students were day students, the city had grown up around the school, and the economy and a series of bad investment decisions had led to a serious fiscal crisis. To deal with these issues, The Prep brought in a new Headmaster, hired a new chief financial officer (CFO), and convened a “benefits review committee” that included members of the Board of Trustees, community members, school administrators, and one faculty representative—Owen. The committee met a number of times, discussing topics including school history and culture, relationships to donors, comparisons of The Prep with other high-quality preparatory schools, hiring practices, and benefits issues such as how much should be contributed to 401K packages. The discussions were wide-ranging, but for the sake of this case, we’ll settle in on one particular issue raised during a meeting several weeks into the ongoing work of the benefits review committee.

At this meeting, the topic under discussion was tuition waivers for the children of faculty and staff. Owen suspected coming into the meeting that this issue would be contentious, and he was right. As the discussion ensued, two camps emerged. On one side were faculty members who wanted to maintain the tuition waiver. These individuals argued that the tuition waiver was part of the school’s history and culture and that many faculty and staff chose to work at The Prep in part because they were “investing in their children’s future.” During a meeting break, Owen asked the CFO, “Was not every person here promised the dependent tuition waiver when they were hired? I know I was.” The head of the high school produced letters from teachers pleading that the benefit not be cut and examples of job offers teachers had turned down because they were counting on the tuition waiver at The Prep.

On the other side of this argument were members of the Board of Trustees and the CFO. One trustee pointed out that the tuition waiver was not a “formal policy” and that sometimes difficult decisions needed to be made in the name of fiscal responsibility. Another argued that “the policy is not equitable to the faculty members who do not have dependents,” and the CFO brushed off concerns about faculty leaving by saying that “a little turnover is healthy.” The CFO then followed up on the issue of affordability by noting that the children of many teachers and staff could qualify for financial aid. The conversation became extremely heated as the two sides confronted each other on a variety of issues. Before they came to blows, though, the head of the committee called the session to a close, noting that it had been a “productive meeting” and that “we will not reach a consensus on this topic in this room.” After requesting further feedback from faculty, the meeting was adjourned.

The opportunity to gather that feedback occurred at a meeting of the entire faculty designed as an “informative town hall” to review the work of the committee. The CFO presented the case for the reductions to the staff benefits package—including the elimination of the tuition benefit—using facts and figures to demonstrate the scope of the crisis. He was making a clear argument that something needed to be done if The Prep were to successfully weather the storm, and that the “something” needed to include sacrifice on the part of the faculty. He also noted, however, that many faculty and staff children would be eligible for financial aid and would hence still be able to attend The Prep as their parents desired. The discussion that followed clearly indicated that many members of the faculty were not buying the CFO’s logic. In the midst of the discussion, the head of the middle school raised her hand and asked a question: “In the big scheme of things, how much money would be saved by cutting the tuition benefit as many of the staff and teachers’ kids would receive financial aid?” The CFO responded: “In the big scheme of things, it is only a drop in the bucket.” At that comment, shock, indignation, and heated discussion ensued.

So we have examined two crucial scenes in the drama of The Prep and its fiscal crisis; one scene a committee meeting, the other a faculty meeting. The final scenes of this case took place across a wide swath of locations at The Prep, including the mail room, the parking lot, bathrooms, and offices. In these scenes, the starring role was played by a photocopy of a bucket into which a single drop is about to fall. The artist who created this rendering was a mystery, but its meaning was clear, and Owen recounts that the image spread quickly: “It was posted in clever places all over the school, on the wall of the faculty lounge, on the door of the stall in the men’s bathroom next to the CFO’s office. I personally observed a teacher who, finding the bucket picture in his box, laughed, and then, as he walked past the new headmaster’s car, put it under the wiper like a ticket.” In short, the bucket could not be avoided.

We could go further in recounting events at The Prep. There followed yet more discussion and another concluding meeting of the benefits review committee. Eventually a compromise was reached in which tuition benefits would be cut for future hires but maintained for current faculty and staff. In short, there were more conversations, but the enduring text of the case is clear: A bucket that speaks for itself.