Cato Russel B. Kresnik
Case: Arctic Mining Consultants
Background of the Problem
Tom Parker is a geological field technician and field coordinator with Arctic Mining Consultants.
He was given a job that involved staking 15 claims near Eagle Lake, Alaska and worked with
three field assistants (John Talbot, Greg Boyce, and Brian Millar). Unfortunately there was
negative behavior from his team members and they did not get the job done on time.
Two members of the team (Boyce and Millar) often did not reach the average that Parker had set
leading Parker to get angry with both of them, but most of the time Parker would argue and yell
at Millar. As the days past by Millar and Boyce still wasn’t able to reach the average and leading
to more fighting
with Parker and Millar on the 7
th
day Millar gave up on the end-goal which
resulted in the team coming up short and not getting the 300$ bonus.
Parker’s expectations for the timeline and completion of the project were unrealistic from the
start but still Parker had decided to try and do it. As days went on the team was no longer
motivated, Parker took to yelling as a form of reinforcement and the difficulty of task resulted in
team members un-committing to the end goal seeing that the 300$ was not worth it anymore. The
project wasn’t completed on time and there was no 300$ bonus received.
Statement of the Problem
The company has two major problems, Tom Parker holds too many positions in the company and
he lacks skills needed to be a middle-manager. Tom Parker is a geological field technician and
field coordinator for the company but he also has been given the responsibilities of hiring,
training and supervising field assistants. The company relies heavily on Parker and is centered
too much on him this makes it worse considering that he also lacks the capabilities of functioning
as a manager like planning, organizing, leading and controlling. This two major problems played
key factors in the job that Parker and his team was given.
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Areas for Consideration
Parker sometimes acts as a project manager.
Many of the programs are operated by a project manager who reports to Parker but in this
project/job Parker acted as the project manager who planned everything from how long the
job would take, order in which areas were to be staked, possible helicopter landing spots and
areas that might be difficult to stake. Parker was also the one who picked his crew members
- Summer '18
