Assignment:
Your task is to prepare a report for Andrea that lays out some potential courses of action to follow at the morning and after-noon briefings, as well as moving forward as the new count for the is charted. Be sure to provide not just specific recommendations, but also some thoughts that support those recommendations so that Andrea understands your reasoning. In particular, your report should touch on the following points.
1. Drawing on discussions of informational justice. How should Andrea approach the morning briefing? Should she be honest and informative in explaining corporate actions in the downsizing or should she be more guarded?
2. How could job characteristics theory guide Andrea as she considers ways of combining areas for the staffers? Is there a way to give the new versions of their jobs a higher satisfaction potential than the pre-downsizing version?
3. Assuming the staffers' personnel files have data on the Big Five, how could those data be used to inform the decisions about combining areas? What would be the profile of someone who could take on a lot more versus someone who can take on only a little more?
4. What advice would you give to Andrea in terms of ha use of the bigger compensation budget? Would you give everyone a short-term "retention bonus" or a more permanent raise? Or would you leverage those funds to support the changes in the work structure. especially for those staffers with an especially expanded workload? What would be the difficulties associated with those two options?
5. How much voice and input would you recommend Andrea give to the staffers as the Blaze transitions to its "new nor-mal"? What are the pluses of giving such input and what would be the dangers associated with it? How could those dangers be mitigated?
6. As you consider the broader challenges faced by the newspaper industry, what could Andrea do to maintain or restore the sense of meaning and significance that the Blue staffers connect to their work?