Organizational Behaviour Case Study – Cheap Research Essays

Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. Judge; Organizational Behavior, 16th Edition, Pearson Education, Prentice Hall, 2015 (ISBN-10:

129205655-X, ISBN-13: 9781292056555).
Arabia Lights – A Comprehensive Case
on Human Behavior at Work
Arabia Lights is a family owned enterprise producing and selling compact fluorescent lamps
(CFLs). The company is a small organization, which has three departments – Production,
Finance & Accounting, and Marketing. At the moment, the company is producing only four
verities of CFLs but has ideas and capacity to expand their product line despite the fact that the
company is facing a lot of competition from big players in the market.
Currently, the owner, designated himself as the Managing Director (MD), heads the company.
The company has plans to convert itself into a Public Ltd. Corporation. With this idea in mind,
the MD has instructed Mr. Abdullah to prepare a vision, mission and a strategic plan for the
company coordinating with other departments. Practically, the MD does not find much time to
spend on the affairs of the company, and he views Mr. Abdullah to be the CEO of the company,
once its expansion plan works out the way it is envisaged. The MD gave such a hint to Mr.
Abdullah during a couple of their interactions.
Currently, Mr. Abdullah is the Marketing Manager of Arabia Lights, who joined the company
only three years back. He is known in the company as an efficient manger, who is very strict
with his subordinates. He was a graduate in marketing from a reputed university in the United
States, and had 12 years’ experience mainly in sales in two other companies. Having joined
Arabia Lights, within a short span of time, he could achieve excellent sales results. Some of his
efforts in sales planning and customer segmentation produced commendable results. A recent
advertisement campaign he lounged was also well received by the customers shooting up the
customer enquiries on the company’s products substantially and the sales moderately.
The Marketing Department consists of three sub-units namely Sales Division, Marketing
Research Center and Promotion Unit. In its Sales Division, five Sales Executives are working
who are reporting directly to the Marketing Manager. The Marketing Research Center is just a
nominal unit, which has only two employees, who do not have any noticeable qualification or
expertise in Marketing Research although they are graduates in Business studies. The only major
function that the unit does is to prepare area-wise sales reports in statistical and graphical forms,
which has become more or less a routine job. Similarly, the promotion unit as well has only two
employees. They interact with a leading advertising company, whose service is contracted by
Arabia Lights for all its promotional activities. The interactions are at a minimal and routine
level unless and until Mr. Abdullah specifically instructs the unit to do something special. In fact,
Mr. Abdullah does not pay much attention to any other unit than the Sales Division. It seems that
he did not have much expectation from the other two units, and he did not put much effort to test
their abilities either.
The Production Department of Arabia Lights is headed by Ted Robbins, who was an American
with an engineering background and five years’ supervisory experience in an American company
producing bulbs and CFLs and similar other products. In comparison with other heads of
departments in Arabia Lights, he enjoys higher pay and benefits. It appeared that the other two
heads of departments have unpleasant feeing about such a special treatment given to Mr.
Robbins, although they have not specifically mentioned about it to the MD.

Whenever issues of coordination mattered, particularly Mr. Abdullah had a little reservation to
entertain the views of Mr. Robbins, and used to point out that knowledge of Middle-Eastern
culture is important to be successful in business in this region. The head of the Finance &
Accounting department Mr. Sultan used to agree with such comments of Mr. Abdullah as if there
was a little collusion between the two against the other. Mr. Robbins always asserted that
whatever products Arabia Lights needs with any quality and quantity specifications would be
provided by his department, if it is given the required financial support. He normally adds,
“Marketing Department is the one who must say what products it needs, and Finance department
should get me the required fund to produce the products; then take it from me that the products
are ready for the market.”
What is special about Mr. Abdullah is that he strongly sticks with his plans; for example: he does
not allow any of the Sales Executives to alter the sales plans. Abdullah, being a responsible
manager, regularly visits each sales territory of the company, gives the Executives strict
directions, and keeps away from any social engagement with them. Although he was very
humane, social, and lively a person by nature, he purposefully pretended to be very strict a boss
to all his subordinates. There was a very specific reason behind his pretension. The previous
Marketing Manager of the Company, Mr. Faris was fired by the company for being so friendly
with the Sales Executives, and thus failing to control them effectively. Mr. Faris was a family
man, who could only rarely visit the different sales territories. He behaved in a manner as if he
strongly believed in the Sales Executives, and didn’t appreciate the idea of strictly controlling
them. He often said, “Controlling is a game of the past.” Most of the Sales Executives really
loved him that upon his resignation, some of them visited him in his residence and said, “The
only man in the company with a human heart is leaving it; it is really sad”. However, the
company was so unhappy with him because he couldn’t achieve even a satisfactory marketing
result.
As was stated earlier, the MD looked at Mr. Abdullah as the future head of the company. He
wanted Mr. Abdullah to play a total leadership role than just being the Marketing Manager.
Therefore, he sometimes reminded Mr. Abdullah to coordinate all the departments and required
staff to prepare a vision and strategic plan for the company. Mr. Abdullah made some individual
efforts and homework towards the preparation of the strategic plan, and had even a meeting with
the other heads of departments almost a year back. He tried to involve the employees in the
Marketing Research Center also for this mission. However, only little progress has been
achieved thus far on this front. The MD made a casual remark about this failure in a recent
meeting with Mr. Abdullah, when he (Abdullah) smiled and said, “I was really busy with several
things, hope you know” and the MD said, “Okay….”
The major emphasis of Mr. Abdullah was on improving the sales. To the Sales Executive, the
oft-repeated usage of Mr. Abdullah was “We work as a team.” Under him, all the Executives
improved their performance, though only one of them could achieve the monthly sales target
regularly. Three other executives achieved the
targets off and on. He came down so heavily on all those who failed to achieve the target but that
was done very secretly on a one to one basis and never in public. However, he often avoided
appreciating the achievers because he feared that it might result in losing control over them, and
might make the Executives feel complacent about their performance. Instead, he kept on

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informing his appreciation about the achievers to the MD through the confidential performance
appraisal reports.
The Executive who regularly achieved the target was Mr. Yasser. Mr. Abdullah, many a times,
increased his target but Yasser never failed to achieve it. Mr. Abdullah was very happy and
proud of Mr. Yasser though he did not reveal it at all to Yasser. Once Mr. Abdullah gave him a
special assignment to study about two new territories and then to submit a report within a month.
The secret purpose of this assignment was to understand Yasser’s capabilities to be
recommended for a promotion as the Head of the Sales Division. Although Mr. Yasser was not
aware of this secret purpose, he produced and submitted an excellent report. While submitting it,
Mr. Yasser said, “This is my heart and brain, and in this you can see the pain of my children
losing their father’s care”. Mr. Abdullah did not respond in any way to this comment or about the
report to Mr. Yasser. However, Mr. Abdullah studied the report and found it so exciting that he
said to himself, “Yes, it is his heart and brain”. Without any further delay, he recommended to
the MD to promote Mr. Yasser as the Head of the Sales Division, a position that did not exist
before. Mr. Abdullah did not inform Mr. Yasser about this because he wanted the letter of
promotion to reach him (Yasser) as a surprise.
After a few weeks, in order to prepare a new sales plan, Mr. Abdullah asked Mr. Yasser to
collect some more details about the new areas that he had studied. Mr. Yasser responded quite
strangely in an angry and heavy tone, “Read the report carefully, whatever information you
require, you would see in that”. He added further, “What would you like me to do?……to do
business in my area or to study about another area…..; it is humanly impossible for one to do
both!” He was really furious. Mr. Abdullah was so embarrassed that he categorically said, “I am
the manager, I know what is right and wrong; if you have to work under me, do it or forget about
your job ……..”. Yasser said “Arabia Lights is not the only company on earth”.
Despite this nasty episode, since Mr. Abdullah was a man good-at-heart, he did not report it to
the MD. However, he was wondering as to how to face and work with Mr. Yasser when he
would be appointed as the Head of the Sales Division. Fortunately or unfortunately, by the time
the MD took the promotion decision for Mr. Yasser, he (Yasser) submitted his resignation and
left the company.