Original article from the Flevy business blog can be found here: http://flevy.com/blog/the-organizational-skill-compathy/ Note from the Editor: This is the first of series of 6 articles written by the author, Vardar Çobanoğlu. The full series is a compelling piece on Organizational Behavior, Human Resources, and Corporate Management. You can find the author’s other articles here . * * * * F.J. Roethlisberger addressed his audience at his Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture for the Institute of General Semantics, in New York April 24, 1953 and subsequently wrote his HBR article of the same year based on this lecture. The case, “Mr. Hart and Bing” (names and places disguised) he had used in his article, was adapted from a case in the files of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Based on the present author’s live observations as a corporate executive and consultant as well as others’ similar experiences, this case still bears relevance with the depth and wealth of its content in terms of both the apparent problem and the hidden facts . This is why it is regarded as a classic case in management studies. A brief review of the case, with some inclusions in 1979 by the Organizational Behavior professor F. Bartolomé at INSEAD based on the original text, would be useful in providing a point of departure. A Case of Misunderstanding, Only? The shop situation reported in this case occurred in a work group of four men and three women who were engaged in testing and inspecting panels for electronic equipment. The employees were paid on a piecework incentive basis. The personnel organization of the company included a counselor whose duty it was to become acquainted with the workers and talk over any problems which they wished to discuss with him. The summarized statements of “Bing”, the employee, and Mr. Hart, the supervisor, are excerpts from five interviews the counselor had with each of them within a period of about two weeks. A summarized statement of how “Bing” felt: “ According to the system ‘round here, as I understand it, I am allowed so much ‘set-up’ time to get these panels from the racks, carry them over here to the bench and place them in this jig here, which holds them in position while I inspect them. For convenience’ sake and also to save time, I sometimes manage to carry two or three over at the same time and inspect them all at the same time. This is a perfectly legal thing to do.