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Essay on Webster Industries

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Webster Industries: A Critical Analysis of Carter's Process for Decision Making There are several weaknesses in the process that Carter used for decision making. Perhaps the most severe of them all was the lack of sight with respect to the strategy of the Webster Industries. The financials for the company clearly show that by October 1975 the company was probably recovering from the downturn. If that was indeed the case, Carter should requested an adjustment to the anchoring bias of 15% downsizing target and examined the list of criteria that Stevens’ laid out in the light of sustained growth. Healthy growth requires people who are competent in their current job as well as people with potential. Consequently the group should have …show more content…

Simultaneously BP’s HR set up a massive redeployment process which ultimately allowed 83% employees laid off to get equivalent or better jobs and this kept the morale strong. Carter’s group should have involved Webster Industries HR in the process to take a similar approach especially since Clearwater was a “Webster company town”. Carter Racing and NASA examples discussed in the class taught us the value of the voice of dissension. While Stevens acts like the character of Tom from Carter Racing, Jack Bryant from Personnel Audit team would have been the voice of Paul. Carter should have included him on the team and listened to his experiences while talking to the employees and their managers. After all, his “on-the-ground” experience and intuition gained through the audit process was more likely to reveal the real situation than PAS or the brief audit reports. Just as NASA, after the Challenger Disaster instituted a rule that a launch could be vetoed by anyone in the team, including Jack in the conversation would have served as an antidote to overconfidence bias that would otherwise creep in. I am also reminded of an example we discussed in class of a mechanical engineer supervisor identifying more with other mechanical engineers in her group than software engineers. Similar confirmation as well as

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