PROBLEM SOLVING AND DECISION MAKING CASE STUDY
The following case has been extracted from the South-East Asia
Change is always inevitable. People were hopeful that in the next general elections, the opposition party will get a clear mandate of the people and they will be able to form a popular government. People were hopeful that it will be the rule of the people. The time came and the government changed, new policies were introduced, to the dismay of the people demonetization was implemented first. This resulted in slowing down of the economy. Businesses were affected, people were out of job, and there was hue and cry all over the country. Reforms in tax rates were introduced, which resulted in the higher tax rates. Times were slow for the economy. The economy was trying to revive, then again a new decision was taken by the government that was the implementation of GST (Goods and service tax), that stunned the economy.
The situation
Your company was no exception right now, with the economic slowdown and the rising costs of materials and wages, your profits are going down and is at an all-time low. Because of these unfortunate happenings, you have to let some employees go. The senior management team, of which you are a member has prepared a list of employees whose employment will be terminated within two weeks from today. It is kept confidential and the people on the list will not know until the day of the termination.
You have called a meeting of your department managers and supervisors. The managers and supervisors are not aware that a termination list has been prepared, so you will need to let them know this at some point in the meeting. Also, they will not be able to see the list until the day of the terminations. Apparently, this is a very confidential topic and must not be shared with anybody outside of this meeting.
Your purpose of today’s meeting is to tell the group and convince them that none of them are on the list. You also want to get their responses & feedback on how the affected general employee will react to the termination in two weeks. Next, you’d like to understand and anticipate any questions that they believe will arise so that appropriate answers can be prepared.
Finally, you would like to prepare an action plan for the day after the event. What you can tell the managers is the number of people they will each be losing. Here is the breakdown:
Marketing and Order Processing department will lose 5 of its 12 people
Finance and Human Resources will lose three of its six people
Operations & Production will lose eight of its 40 people.
Questions:
1. Critically examine the situation in this case and its impact on the company.
2. How will the management decision impact the functioning of the company? Justify it.
3. What steps should be undertaken by departmental managers for an effective plan?