ABSTRACT
The relevant background is that the director had been a fairly recent outside appointment, chosen over one of the managers who had applied as an internal applicant for the director's position. There was bad feeling between them. The director said that she wanted to help to improve the relationship between her and the manager. One can see from the way this case was presented that the problem, as defined by the director, was socially constructed out of many different conversations and actions that had taken place among different members of the system: the director and the manager, the manager and his staff, and the director and the Board. Interestingly, during the individual interviews many gender issues arose. The director, who was probing her own experience to figure out what was going on, spoke about a difficult relationship with her father and speculated about whether this exacerbated the conflict with the manager; the manager, who was much less inclined to self-exploration.
