Read the case entitled "John A. Clendin and Manning Xerox Multinational Development Center" in the electronic course pack. What have John Clendenin's Objectives been at Xerox?Do you see similarities with yourselves on these objectives?Do you agree with his objectives?What obstacles did he confront in accomplishing these objectives?What interpersonal and Organizational strategies did he utilize to accomplish these objectives?What actions should Clendenin take now?

Those who worked with John Clendenin in Xerox's building and saw him walking down the hall after lunch on March 16, 1989, would not have noticed anything unusual. Few would have guessed that Clendenin was weighing key decisions about his career and future at Xerox. Earlier that aemoon, his boss, Fred Hewitt, had just proposed to Clendenin a lateral move from head of Xerox's Multinational Development Center (MDC), responsible for enhancing Xerox's worldwide logistics and inventory management, to a staff support position on Hewitt's staff. Hewitt had also given Clendenin the option of remaining in his current job if he would make an additional two-year commitment to the MDC. Clendenin was impressed by the quality of Hewitt's other direct reports and by Hewitt's enthusiasm in describing the new position. He wondered, however, if Hewitt might also be sending him another message. Clendenin knew that the MDC's growth had created resentment among those who had not been as successil in getting additional resources for their organizations. He suspected that these people, and possibly others, might read his lateral shift into a staff position as a forced move off the fast track. 0n the other hand, they might come to the same conclusion if he remained for another two years at the MDC. Clendenin's Early Career at Xerox: John Clendenin rst came to work at Xerox in 1983, after his rst year at Harvard Business School. Clendenin spent the summer as a productivity consultant in the parts and supply area of Xerox U.S. Marketing Group (USMG). He showed how Xerox was over-packaging in distribution, an analysis which saved Xerox $300,000 a year. He also found that the company could save $2 million a year by having vendors ship directly to end users in Xerox rather than through central corporate warehouses. Building the MDC: While Clendenin had just been promoted, he was not allowed to transfer any of the rest of his staff from parts and supplies administration into the MDC: I got this little group, the MDC. I have no formal authority. It is me and four peopke. I just lost 40 people and $62 million of budget responsibility, but I went up a level. So here I am reporting to a vice president. Clendenin decided that to accomplish the MDC's new objectives he had to increase the group's size. When he asked ija}; about adding staff, he was told that he could do anything he wanted, as long as: any headcount you get is from one of your peers [on Wstaf. They have to go down one for you to go up one. You can spend as much money as you want, but you have to come up with a proposal that saves that same amount of money this scal year for Xerox US, and then I don't care how much you save for the rest of the world. The rst meetings of these two committees occurred in the early part of 1986. Prior to these meetings, Clendenin spent time on the phone, coordinating schedules, and getting to know the secretaries of group members, as well as traveling to Europe and Japan to meet some key members in person. In his role as secretary to the multinational steering committee, he organized and set that group's agenda. One important result of these meetings was a list of 42 potential opportunities for productivity improvement. Each member of the working group was given primary responsibility for implementing a few of the items on this list. When members returned to their organizations with these agendas they realized that it was often easier to fund Clendenin to complete these projects than to find the manpower to do the projects on their own