- What is the context within which Sonia Miller feels Arnie Winthrop’s actions are calculated to undermine her? Reflect on the nature of her job, why she assumed her current role, the nature of her business, and her firm’s location. You can enumerate the context in a bulleted list.
Organizations establish policies and laws to guide the behaviour of employees and ensure a smooth flow of operations. In the context of Sonia Miller, the company that she works for also has set specific ground rules such as having IT division approval before making any purchases. This policy prevents waste of resources and ensures a workplace environment where employee behaviour is controlled. However, some of her colleagues, in particular Winthrop, appear to be politically motivated to disrespect this rule and undermine her position as a leader in the IT division. Millar intends to run for the CEO position. If she appears to demonstrate that she cannot control and earn respect from her colleagues, she could be deemed unsuitable for the highest position in the company. Moreover, Winthrop is also portrayed to want a position which further explains why his action may be influenced by the need to demonstrate his competitor as an incapable CEO and therefore get the position.
Miller held the CIO leadership position of the company’s IT department. This department played a critical role as the central department that made approvals and gave consents to purchases and other decisions of the company. Any decisions regarding IT were centralized and had to be approved by the IT group where Millar was the leader. There was even a drafted policy that required all organizational departments to acquire approval for any purchases they planned. However, Winthrop chose to ignore this policy and rules and went ahead to purchase without the consent of Millar and the group. His actions appear to undermine the existing policy and regulations that Millar and her group had drafted to guide purchases within the company.