Goodman Company Report

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changed the production plan, it is expected that shift one would remain as the most productive shift. However, production and quality of the good decreased drastically, as the change only exposed the shifts bottlenecks, job satisfaction decreased drastically.

Why did the production and the quality of this shift decreased drastically? This was because, the employees were not only offended by the Board of Directors approach of hiring an outsider to lead and direct the operation, but also because Ms. Bennett had the authority of determining their payment method without questioning.

Hiring an outside worker to lead and direct employees who are “one of the loyal employees who helped make the company what it is today” sparked attitudes in the organization. In this shift, the employees developed an instant negative attitude towards the company. To defend this assumption, signs of the main components of attitudes; cognitive, affective and behavioural attitudes were clearly displayed. Cognitive component is a description of or belief in the way things are. For instance, the workers of Goodman Company were regularly paid by the hour, but due to the change they are now being paid by the piece work system; likewise they felt that company has not been fair to them over the years by not sharing the profits earned with them. As a result the employees responded with an behavioural attitudes by organizing a union, representing signs of affective component. The installation of the piece rate pay also affected the workers’ motivation, as they felt unappreciated. In addition, there were signs of behavioural attitudes by the supervisor, for example, asking for early retirement. The cause and effect relationships can be seen in these behaviours of the workers on this shift as a result of the change. If things would have remained the same, behaviours like these would not have occured and certain bottlenecks would not have been exposed. However, what management failed to realize is that although the shift was the most productive, they were incurring cost to the company and they were inefficient. Reason being, it was clear that Clev never really did work during working hour, nor was he necessary on the job as he would look for his retirement destination during the hours “the department runs itself and he could do this unnoticed ” according to the case.

Overall shift one, was not actually the most productive shift. Seemingly because, the workers help set their work load, taking on only the amount they could manage and fixing it to make up for wasted time. Also this change showed the bottlenecks by the workers and their inefficiency which was a great benefit to the firm. This shift was not as productive as thought because workers were close to retirement and had a lot of years with the company, therefore they were relaxed and not as committed as they once were.