Magrec IncorporatedSummary of the CaseMagrec Incorporated manufactures tape heads. One of its customers is Partco. One day, Dinah, a secretary of the Sales Manager, discovered a memo showing that nine years ago, Magrec Incorporated fraudulently sold low-life heads to Partco instead of the ordered long-life heads.
The upper management took little note of the memo stating that there were no complaints received during that time. Overall, nobody was harmed by the low-life heads. Thus they told Dinah and the Sales Manager to let go of the issue.However, Dinah refused to settle down.
She called Partco herself and told them about the memo. Partco’s vice-president went over the matter. The end result was that Partco took away 40% of its business with Magrec Incorporated and was able to get lower prices for orders. Then a domino effect occurred causing all other customers to ask lowered prices too.
This caused Magrec Inc’s sales to go down and for Magrec Inc. incur great losses.Because of this devastating incident, the Sales Manager was told to fire Dinah for her conduct and also because her presence in the company damps on company morale. The Sales Manager, however, is morally burdened over firing Dinah because there is no valid ground for her termination.
Moreover, Dinah has accomplishments in the company and is a valuable asset and is a close friend.1. Place yourself in the role of the manager. What should you do now? After considering what happened, would you change any of your behaviors?I will fire Dinah.
An objective perspective about things will show us that it was her act of disclosing the memo which caused the company its losses. She started a snowball which hit the company with so huge an impact that the closure of business became a real possibility. For her part, she may feel that she was just doing the right thing. However, what she did was in direct violation of a superior’s order.
She was told to let go of the matter since nobody was harmed over the incident yet she persisted on making her “moral stand” about the matter. Her conduct shows a defiant frame of mind. It would do the company good to let her go. Her conduct also shows that she has no loyalty to the company.
She weighed her loyalty against an antiquated memo with no bearing to anything and she found out that the memo was more weighty. Her level of loyalty is so disheartening. It would do good the company if she would be let go. Moreover, her presence makes the company morale go down.
Her co-workers are infuriated by her very presence. Nobody wants to work with her anymore. Morale is a dangerous thing. So is the lack of it.
She should be fired.2. Do you think Dinah was right? Why or why not? If you were she and you had it to do all over again, would you do anything differently? If so, what and why?I do not think Dinah was right. The memo is already inconsequential.
Nobody was hurt because of the low-life heads. Therefore, there is no more reason to make an issue out of it. Moreover, she was already told to let go of the matter. She never did.
Her conduct was defiant, and with utter lack of loyalty. She did not follow her superiors and she did not care for her company or her co-workers. No, Dinah was not right.If I were Dinah, I would stop at being told that nobody was injured and would already let go of the issue from that moment.
My moral burden will already be appeased from that moment. Like Dinah, I will still raise the memo after I discover it but my conscience will already be cleared after I am assured that nobody was harmed after all.3. Using cognitive dissonance theory, explain the actions of Pat, Dinah, and Fred.
Dinah was the most resistant in filtering information. She stood by what she thought was right and never even gave a budge when she was told to adopt a different attitude towards the memo. Pat and Fred somehow had the same reaction to the dissonant information given them. They filtered it a little less and in fact accepted it as proper when they were told to adopt the new line of thinking.
Under the cognitive dissonance theory, Dinah is incapable of reducing the amount of the dissonance and will outrightly reject any mindset which she perceives to be wrong. Pat and Fred, on the other hand, are capable of handling the dissonance so as to harmonize it with their current thought pattern in order to adjust the dissonance to an acceptable state.
