Product details

This human resource/career management case focuses on a newly-promoted mid-level manager in the US Social Security Administration who finds that what he thought was good news - his appointment as director of the administrative and matching staff in the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Finance, Assessment and Management - actually leads to tension with his superiors and concerns about the future of his career in the agency. The case highlights how appointments are made in a major public bureaucracy and the difficult interpersonal issues that can arise in their wake. Those issues include, in this case, a number of interracial and inter-ethnic tensions encountered by the employee on whom the narrative is centered, as well as the question of how to manage employees whose competence and integrity are questionable. This rich case provides a window into the subtle political and interpersonal issues with which public employees must deal.