The decision
Peter is my elder brother who is 32 years old and he was a group leader of an assembling factory. He had worked there 3 years and had enough experience and work skills. His group had 5 members and they were responsible for a machine which was used to assemble components. Their manager Amy allocated them an big order which worth $10,000 and asked them to finish the order in a week.
At the first several days, everything was going well. However, at the 4th day of almost finishing, the machine stopped working and no one knew the reasons of interruption. After Peter checked the machine, he found there was a key place of the machine had been damaged and that must be the reason of machine’s interruption. Peter thought it was possible David’s fault. David was a senior worker with an ordinary performance in work. Peter said David was the last one to use the machine. Moreover, David was a person who often excessive drinking. Another team member Jack suggested Peter check the machine more detail and tried to fix the problem, but Peter refuse that and continuing to blame David. Then Peter made a decision that report to manager that he thought David broken the machine.
The result of the decision is that manager sent a maintainer and fix the problem. It was rare faults of machine and not David’s fault. David felt angry about Peter’s doubt. He was unable to work hardly because he was no longer care about the team. Team failed to accomplish their task on time and the company had suffered a loss.
Analysis of the Decision
The Peter’s individual acting is very good example, which base on the bounded rationality model, which sited by Simon in 1957. (as cited in Tolbert & Hall, 2008)
The meaning of the notion is that when people are beginning to make decisions something will be limited. For example, their rationality is limited by what information they own, their realization limits their minds, and sometimes they have to make decisions in a very limited time. Herbert Simon (1957) represented it and treated it as a foundation of the mathematical modeling decision-making. In addition, it is used in economics and other related disciplines. It considers rationality as optimization, which means decision making is a completely rational process of researching a best choice relying on the limited information.(Herbert, 1957)
Peter’s decision seems rational for himself, most of company have policy which employee have to be the first time reported to their superiors if any problems happen in the course of work.Peter made the decision base on self psychological measurement. This role owns the highest position in his mind, so he refuse the other possible reason and serious result. His acting could damaged team member’s relationship, also team work process could be delayed since mistrust between team members. There are lots of reason cause the machine stop working specially the machine itself problem. So Peter’s judgement was not rational for the team.
Limited by infomation at hand. in that he did not have all available knowledge and awareness of risk, which are the conditions of normative models
Time constrains is also a very important reason in this case. It is Impossibility of unfamiliar optimization when decision time is scarce
The key reason cause Peter made this decision is that he wanted to escape responsibility. The machine failure case probably cause the work can not accomplished on time, he will be accountable by company after work. He had worked for the company 3 years and he cherish this job for certain. If some one in team broken the machine, he can not expected to bear the main responsibility of the fault. In this case, a series of “evidences” shade the rational of Peter, he think those evidences in the negative way and stubborn think he is right with a careless judgement.
Later, the truth proved that David was innocent. It also
