ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a Mary Beckerle Case in which Mary Beckerle was fired by a group overseeing the work of her unit, the Huntsman Cancer Center at the University of Utah. The University president and the health care unit's CEO fired her. However, after considerable backlash for this decision, from employees as well as from a major donor, she was reinstated. The major donor and employees had considerable respect and trust in her, and they recognized that her superiors were dismissing her for reasons unrelated to her performance. They were losing trust in the executives who made the decision to fire her. This case illustrates various issues embedded with communication within the Level 5 Hierarchy. As with most of the other cases in this book, much of it occurs at Levels 3–5. The health care unit CEO wanted to bring about a change in vision, but she was unable to do it within a team environment.