The Travel-tour case study 1.1.0
The Travel-tours firm is a tour operator having two agencies, TRO1 and TRO2, situated in Trouville. These last months, the results of the TRO1 agency increase, as the ones of TRO2 agency stay stable, or even decrease. The regional director decides to reward the TRO1 agency for its merits. He proposes then to regularize the situation of Agnès, the secretary of the agency and to affect her exclusively to TRO1. As she is temporary employed for several months, and even if she is attached to TRO1, she works half time in each one of the agencies and this obliges her to move between two jobs.
Both Agnès and the TRO1 agency’s director, Paul, should be glad with this proposal. Agnès will have a permanent job contract and will be relieved to split her work in two parts, while Paul will have a full-time secretary at his disposal in the agency. But each one of them refuses vigorously the proposal. How to understand this matter of fact? The strategic analysis by identifying the uncertainty zones shows that both of them are rationally right to be opposed to this organizational change, because it would decrease their respective power. Indeed, a more attentive analysis of the case reveals that:
• The TRO2 agency is more inventive than TRO1 in designing travel packages, while the TRO1 agency includes a very efficient commercial staff; being aware of the TRO2 agency’s activity, the secretary provides information to the director so that the TRO1 agency takes full advantage of finalizing the TRO2’s ideas.
• For personal reasons, to get a steady job is not a short-time objective of the secretary. On the other hand, she is very cool in her working relations with the other employees of TRO1, and she greatly appreciates that none of the TRO1 and TRO2 directors has the possibility to exert a precise control on her work
Thus the situation shift would increase the control of the director on the secretary’s activities (that is what she does not want), and the director would loose the information given by the secretary on TRO2 (that is what he does not want).