Conflict in the Courtroom
The Good Wife is a television series that previously aired on CBS from 2009-2016. The premise of the show concerns Alicia Florrick, a lawyer-turned-housewife, who has to return back to the workplace as a lawyer because her husband Peter, the former Illinois State's Attorney for Cook County, is in jail accused of corruption following a sex scandal. She had previously quit her job to allow her husband to focus on his political career, so she could raise the kids. Now that her husband is in jail, she becomes the breadwinner of the family by practicing law again at the firm, Lockhart Gardner. She gets this job because one of the name partners, Will Gardner, was a former classmate of hers at Georgetown Law School. However, because she's been out of practice for 13 years and only worked for a year before becoming a housewife, the firm places her as a first-year associate along with other recent law grad hires. She works alongside another first-year associate, Cary Agos, a fresh, young Harvard law grad.
As previously mentioned, the show starts out taking place in 2009 after the Great Recession, so like many law firms in Chicago, Lockhart Gardner is struggling and they have to make difficult decisions with hiring and firing in order to stay financially afloat. Both their positions as a first-year associates are only conditional because after a year, the firm has to decide which one of them to keep and which one of them to let go. This decision is obviously based on which associate, either Alicia or Cary, is more valuable to the firm.
Alicia and Cary have quite different personalities. Alicia, being out of touch from law for 13 years, has to get back in the game to provide for her two kids. She is also struggling to manage her husband's political and sex scandal. She is seen as "the good wife who stood by her husband" after a very public and televised press conference where he addressed stepping down as State's Attorney and his mistakes being unfaithful to his wife. This plays down on her morale and confidence. Alicia starts out being a bit naive and innocent for a lawyer. She also balances the responsibility of being the sole caretaker of her children while her husband is in jail. Alicia is the type of person who wants to do things the "right" way; she doesn't like using her political connections from her husband to further her own career because she thinks it's wrong and unfair and she also wants to distance herself from her husband as she starts to make a name for herself. She also has a close connection to her boss, Will, because of their history from college. As her work at Lockhart Gardner goes on, we see her transform into a smart and witty lawyer with her ambition starting to come back.
Cary, on the other hand, is your typical young, hotshot, ambitious lawyer who sees himself on the partner track. Hired by the other name partner at the firm, Diane Lockhart, Cary doesn't have as much baggage as Alicia. He doesn't have kids to take care of, so he could afford the long hours. He doesn't have a public scandal he needs to multitask handling, so he's able to give all his resources to his job. However, because he's so much younger to Alicia, his inexperience is shown when he chooses to take more risks and jump to decisions before thinking through them first. He also doesn't have the political connections that Alicia does, despite her husband being infamous at this point in the show.
Both Alicia and Cary prove to be great lawyers for the firm. They work together on cases and help each other out to further the advancements of the firm. However, they do this both knowing that after a year, either one of them will not have this job anymore, so they have to be careful to not give the other person an advantage over the other. Alicia, being naive, needs reminding of this from the firm's investigator, Kalinda, whom she forms a close bond with. Kalinda reminds her that Cary is young and ambitious and will do what he needs to do to keep his job, which includes things like brown nosing the boss, etc. Alicia understands that doing her job correctly isn't enough; she has to go above and beyond and out of her way to prove her value and that she is an asset to the company. Even though they're Alicia and Cary are both really great lawyers, the firm can only afford one of them. Alicia knows that Cary doesn't have responsibilities like kids, a family, a scandal, and other baggages holding him down, yet she does. Cary doesn't have commitments that could pull him away from work, but she does.
Realizing this, Alicia figures out what she needs to do. She needs to find out how she can be more valuable than Cary in spite of her own baggage and commitments. Alicia is Will's favorite because she's his hire, and Cary is Diane's favorite because he's her hire. Alicia starts to brown nose Diane to get on her good side. She asks Diane what she needs to do and how she can be more valuable to the company. Diane eventually gives her an ultimatum. Diane explains that because of the firm's current financial rockiness, it would be advantageous to Alicia and the firm if Alicia can use her connections from Peter (remember, her husband the former Cook County State's Attorney) to gain clients and network for good lawyers and contacts. Essentially, Alicia gets to keep her job if she can get a client she knows through Peter to sign a retainer with Lockhart Gardner.
Like I said before, Alicia doesn't like using her connections from Peter, but she decides to do so anyway in order to keep her job and provide for the family. She understand that she only got this job in the first place because of her friendship with Will and it is unlikely that any other firm will hire her because she's older and she had been out of practice for 13 years. She also is beginning to really enjoy working at Lockhart Gardner. Finally, she is able to get her husband's crisis manager to sign on as a client at the last minute, so she's able to keep her job.
Cary is unaware of Diane's ultimatum on Alicia. He assumes that because Alicia is older and has a family to take care of, she won't be able to dedicate herself to the job like he would, and thus that she will be the one to get laid off. Right before either one of them meet with the partners to hear their fates, he shakes her hand saying "good game" and "no hard feelings" because he is overconfident that he'll get the job. Diane and Will explain to him that he was still a great lawyer and they wish they weren't in the position to choose between either of them; they say they will write glowing recommendations for wherever he decides to go next. After learning he's not getting the job, he storms off, with hard feelings. Later, he is approached with an offer from the current State's Attorney's office to be an Assistant State's Attorney, and in the heat of the moment, he accepts it with the intent to make Alicia's job more difficult for when they will eventually see each other in court again, but this time on opposite sides.
Looking back on the whole situation, it is easy to see the show in Alicia's point of view and view the situation in her favor because she is the protagonist of the show. Obviously hiring two first-year associates with the intent of laying one of them off after a period of time will lead to this situation. I think some focus could've been done by either of the name partners to better their firm's financial situation so that they could keep them both. I'm not sure how much it makes sense to for a financially rocky firm to hire an out-of-practice lawyer as a first-year associate when there are other possible candidates who are younger, more ambitious, and who don't have commitments like Alicia does. On the other hand, it is possible that the potential benefits of hiring the wife of the former Cook County State's Attorney at your Chicago law firm outweigh the risks that come with hiring an older candidate. I'm also enthralled by the show's showcasing of giving a working mom a chance over someone like Cary, as there are plenty of other "Cary's" in the sea. I could see how in Diane and Will's point of view that having a little competition between Alicia and Cary benefits the firm. I also think that although working at the State's Attorney's office could is a good way for Cary to "get back" at Alicia, it would've been a smarter decision if he actually looked for jobs at other private firms that way he could also be opposite Alicia, but with a larger salary and with a potentially larger payoff working in civil suits against Lockhart Gardner. In the end, this conflict made for a pretty good storyline, and if translated to the real world, I could see it happening in a similar way, but with Cary moving to a private firm rather than a low public servant salary.
My wife was a fan of this show. I never watched it.
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting underlying issue that your post raises, which we should consider. That is whether conflict in an organization correlates (negatively) with the economic well being of the organization. In other words, in good times minor transgressions of organization members can be handled, but in bad times every little molehill turns into a mountain. I don't know if that is true or not, but it seems plausible.
That said, I didn't understand your story as conflict, as we will discuss it on Tuesday. What you seem to have described is a competition between Alicia and Cary. Most competition is not conflict. And much conflict is not competition. I'm going outside the context of the show, because I don't know it, but imagine one employee bullying another. Bullying is definitely conflict.
So I wonder if the example you've used fits the prompt. If it does, perhaps you can explain why in your reply.
Hi Professor, it seems that all the comments I posted a couple of weeks ago on this week's blog somehow never submitted so I'm having to redo the comments for Ostrom's and Williamson's blogs too as well as the reply here.
DeleteI think conflict in an organization is always inevitable because there are so many factors involved. We're constantly dealing with different people and different personalities so some of them clash, and we can't always rely that everyone's motivation stays the same. Another result of conflict, and perhaps a positive one, is that people in the organization can learn from the mistakes made and find more efficient solutions that will improve the organization in the long run. All of it probably depends on the size and the resources of the company. In a small organization, conflict has more weight while in a large organization conflict may not be as heavy. In an organization with a lot of resources, it can be easier to resolve the conflict. In businesses just starting out, conflict may be costly for them, but it is also a learning experience and might improve practices.
In one of the classes I'm taking, Economics in the Workplace, we learn a little bit about pay for performance incentives and promotion. Different theories of promotion and incentive pay are giving a bonus to the highest relative performer (relative to his coworkers) and giving a bonus when a worker reaches a set standard, regardless of the placement of other. The theories analyze which one is better; the relative performance evaluation can be a good incentive to increase productivity among workers, but might cause sabotage and misrepresentation of work produced. In a highly competitive setting, like the one with Cary and Alicia competing for the final spot and where the loser is out of a job, it might not always be best in the long run because by sabotaging another lawyer in the firm, the firm loses out on work product that could've been succeeded.
Additionally, creating competition in the workplace can be seen as a conflict because it could lead to other issues. The example I gave appeared as a conflict to me because by putting job security on the line, it puts workers in a stressed position. Alicia had to choose between what she felt was morally right and what would keep her job. By deviating from her values, she experienced a disutility of identity (as discussed in the Akerlof and Kranton paper), and made her feel like less of an insider. Lastly, putting Cary and Alicia in the position to compete with each other added to the office politics of where the equity partners wanted to see where the direction of the firm would be heading to.
I have never watched the good wife, but I have heard people talk about it. From your blog, it seems like a really interesting show. It has some some similarities to Suit which is also a law-based TV series. There are so many good shows out there which makes it very hard to keep up with all of them.
ReplyDeleteI must say that quitting my job to become a housewife is an absolute no for me. I can never understand the reasoning behind forfeiting all the years of establishing one's career unless one is close to the retirement age.
I feel issues like this helps one to think about the extent people would go to get what they want. This can either be good or bad, but it is always something to consider. The company's financial state is potentially a cause for conflict in the show. Especially when workers are aware that they can be laid off if they are not considered a strong asset to the company. Although the workers are team members, and they have to work together for the overall benefit of the company, one still has to find a way to stand out. From TV shows and even student organizations that I have been on, I have realized that tension tends to arise when competition is perceived.
Back to your post, I wonder if they gave Alicia a chance over Cary because of her husband's connections. Cary might seem more ambitious, but he cannot to offer the company what they want in a financially down time.
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ReplyDeleteThis really makes me want to start watching "The Good Wife" It kind of reminded of the competition between the students showed on "How to get away with murder". And it also reminded me of my internship. I believe that competition drives performance and in my case being an intern, you want to perform well and impress management in order to be rewarded with a full-time offer.
ReplyDeleteI have never watched the Good Wife, but I can only imagine whether Cary felt like Alicia got the job because she deserved it or because of her connections. I am sure that as the main character she is very likable and Cary the ambitious young guy was painted as the "bad character" but I can only imagine his frustration after working at the company. He apparently was very qualified for the job, and probably had different job opportunities when he chose to work at Lockhart Gardner. Now, a year later, he put all that effort into the job and thought this company could be the place where he started and settled his career but ended up unemployed.
I don't believe it is ethical for Diane to use Alicia for her personal connections, and also believe that is unethical for Alicia to use her connections to get the full time position. Of course things are not black and white, Alicia had kids, was older, facing an unstable financial situation and Carry still had his whole life ahead of him so I see where the justification comes from... With all that said, I wonder if Will deep down also hired her for her connections or if he knew that Diane gave Alicia that ultimatum and how he could have dealt with the conflict between the two.