Tough Situation at MagRec Inc.: How Can Dinah Be wrong?
MagRec is a company that manufactured magnetic recording heads, an essential device used in the early days of technology “for reading, writing, and erasing data on tapes and disks” (Uhl-Bien, p.W-102). MagRec sold some recording heads to Partco that had half the useful life due to error in calculation and design. A decision made by senior officers within the company to sell the product with a lesser lifetime to make the numbers, years ago and Pat’s (Dinah’s immediate manager) decision to ignore what happened in the past, led dysfunctional institution and employees and layoffs.
Dinah discovered a report from the then Vice President of Operations, Rich Grillo, to the Director of Marketing,
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In MagRec case, there are a few inconsistencies between attitude and behavior. In Dinah’s case, she was not convinced selling “low-life” product was the right thing to do in those circumstances. Once she discovered the document, she then realizes it was wrong, and took it to her manager. She received the response and she did not find the response to satisfy the outcome she was anticipating. Now she does not have the same comfort as she once had and it changed her behavior, i.e. call the customer to have the relief she was seeking since she discovered the issue. Fred was comfortable with the decision he made and nothing changed his approach about the situation. Fred kept it quite once and persuaded Pat to understand the situation and the action of the company as he does. In my opinion, Fred never experienced or had the inconsistency in his attitude of selling the product of less quality, so it never changed his behavior. Pat in other hand, is not sure about what is right and wrong. He respected Dinah’s issues with the situation and took it to Fred, but also believes Fred’s arguments to be valid as well. He is not comfortable with the situation, but does not have the discomfort about the sales made years ago to change the behavior, i.e. do the right thing. What is the right thing to