MGT324 Public Management

Apply critical thinking to make and defend business decisions(Lo 2.4)

PROBLEM SOLVING & DECISION MAKING CASESTUDY

The following case has been extracted from theSouth-East Asia

Change is always inevitable. People were hopeful that in thenext general elections, the opposition party will get a clearmandate of the people and they will be able to form a populargovernment. People were hopeful that it will be the rule of thepeople. The time came and the government changed, new policies wereintroduced, to the dismay of the people demonetization wasimplemented first. This resulted in slowing down of the economy.Businesses were affected, people were out of job, and there was hueand cry all over the country. Reforms in tax rates were introduced,which resulted in the higher tax rates. Times were slow for theeconomy. The economy was trying to revive, then again a newdecision was taken by the government that was the implementation ofGST (Goods and service tax), that stunned the economy.

The situation

Your company was no exception right now, with the economicslowdown and the rising costs of materials and wages, your profitsare going down and is at an all-time low. Because of theseunfortunate happenings, you have to let some employees go. Thesenior management team, of which you are a member, has prepared alist of employees whose employment will be terminated within twoweeks from today. It is kept confidential and the people on thelist will not know until the day of the termination.

You have called a meeting of your department managers andsupervisors. The managers and supervisors are not aware that atermination list has been prepared, so you will need to let themknow this at some point in the meeting. Also, they will not be ableto see the list until the day of the terminations. Apparently, thisis a very confidential topic and must not be shared with anybodyoutside of this meeting.

Your purpose of today’s meeting is to tell the group andconvince them that none of them are on the list. You also want toget their responses & feedback on how the affected generalemployee will react to the termination in two weeks. Next, you’dlike to understand and anticipate any questions that they believewill arise so that appropriate answers can be prepared.

Finally, you would like to prepare an action plan for the dayafter the event. What you can tell the managers is the number ofpeople they will each be losing. Here is the breakdown:

Marketing and Order Processing department will lose 5 of its 12people Finance and Human Resources will lose three of its sixpeople Operations & Production will lose eight of its 40people.

Questions:

Q1: Critically examine the situation in this case andits impact on the company. (Learning Outcome 2.4)

Q2: What can be the issues in initiating andimplementing the management decision? (Learning Outcome2.4)

Q3: What steps should be undertaken by departmentalmanagers for an effective plan? (Learning Outcome 2.4)