Case Analysis: Jensen Shoe

Introduction Jensen Shoe explains a situation between an employee (Lyndon Brooks) and his immediate supervisor (Jane Kravitz). Here, both parties came into a situation with different motivations and perceptions. Brooks felt that he was being demoted by being taken off the line management and this interfered with his plans of advancing within the company. While, Kravitz also wanted to be a successful manager and have her team complete their task at hand. The initial working conditions started off well however, it took a turn for the worse once Brooks voiced his concern with his ability to complete both of his s.o.’s. This led to more discussions and they renegotiating how much work Brooks was to …show more content…

However, her immediate supervisor, Chuck expressed his reservations about Brooks and his work ethics. But, Kravitz realized that Chuck is quick to judge and went into the situation open minded. This self awareness is one of the ways that was discussed in class in how a manager can avoid the pitfalls on forming these biases. In addition, her initial judgment of Brooks was formed back when they worked together. However, even though she came into the situation open minded, the initial conversation between the two caught her off guard. He stated that he should be part of line management and not working as part of someone else team. Kravitz emphasized with him because she had previously been in the same situation. She wanted to help him get to where he wanted to be. However, once she saw that he was not going to finish his tasks, and then she started to question Brooks’ work ethics, and started to feel like perhaps Chuck was right. She desperately tried to find a way to motivate him and tried to work with him in coming to an acceptable conclusion. Since her position has changed, confirmation bias plays a factor in which she might only gather the information that appears to conform to her beliefs about Brooks. One example is during the conversation about the San Diego trip, she only selected the information that he was trying to be sneaky in combining a business/ personal trip and trying to get