Seminar 4 - The case of the invited trespasser

Happy New Year! 2009 is here and the time has come to thaw out from the ice cold Xmas that has passed and actually get on with some work.

Seminar 4 was interesting to myself more in terms of my ability to understand the content from an alternative perspective rather than the actual content itself. I surprised myself at how natural it is becoming to question the taken-for-granted within a piece of writing and try to look it from many angles.
The case of the invited trespasser enabled us to put managing change into action (somewhat). It described a difficult situation that had formed between a younger manager and a more established employee. We were tasked to alleviate the situation and asked to present how we would approach this:

Where: Pub

When: Afterwork

Opening conversation: Offering to get in the first round - a peace offering. Then addressing the pitooiuoroblems without blaming anyone.

Myself and Dawn justified the informal pub setting as it was away from work and also decided to set it afterwork so that the disgruntled guy could have time to reflect on the conversation, rather than have influencing opinions inflicted on him from his colleagues.

It was interesting also to look back to my own personal experience, which is related to the first seminar, regarding a similar situation I had on placement.
I do not think even if I had tried to sit down and address the situation with Mr X it would have made a difference. Mr X had the same problems with the majority of people in the organisation (except of course for the people had the ability to fire him!). Even though I made an extra effort of nicetys (knowing thouroughly well that he did not deserve them) Mr X was still rude and obnoxious.
This leads me to question: can some people be so bitter and stuck in their ways that it is out of your power to improve the situation?

The social constructionist argument would argue, no, a personality is not fixed, but in my experience of this situation, i would beg to differ.