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- INDIVIDUAL EXERCISE
- GROUP EXERCISE
- Chapter 11
- Empowered Decision Making: The Case of Ingar Skaug
10.7 ExercisesETHICAL DILEMMAImagine that you are part of a bargaining team that has been engaged in negotiations for 6 long months. One night, as you are getting ready to leave and are gathering your things, you notice a piece of green paper on the ground near where Devin, a member of the opposite negotiation team, was sitting just a few minutes earlier. When you pick it up, you realize that it is a list of the ideal outcome for the other team. At first you are ecstatic—this is the information you need to end these negotiations! Then you begin to recall your organizational behavior course and all those ethical dilemmas that seemed so easy back then. What should you do? Should you use the information for your team? I mean, why not, they were careless enough to leave it behind? On the other hand, would that be ethical? Thinking back to that OB course, you recall some key questions you should ask yourself during negotiations:
As you are pondering these questions, you also realize that this is a key decision. There are some additional questions you should ask yourself around making ethical decisions if you plan on using this information to help your team:
Just as you think you’ve made your decision, Devin from the opposing team walks back in and asks you if you’ve seen a green piece of paper.
INDIVIDUAL EXERCISEA Case of Listening: When Silence Is Golden [1] Listening can be an effective tool during negotiations. William Devine was representing a client on a land purchase. “The owner and I spent 2 hours on the phone horse-trading contract issues, then turned to the price,” Devine explained. “We were $100,000 apart.” The owner then said, “The price your client proposes will leave us well short of our projections. That makes it very tough on us.” The line went silent. “My impulse was to say something in response to the silence, and I started to speak, then stopped. As I hesitated, I sensed that if I said, ‘My client can pay all cash,’ or ‘It’s still a good deal for you,’ then the owner would take my comment as an invitation to joust, we would battle over the hundred grand, and my client would end up having to pay some or all of that sum. The owner had not asked a question or proposed a compromise, so no response was required from me at that moment. I decided to remain silent. After what felt like days but was probably less than 30 seconds, I heard, ‘But I guess it’s good for us [i.e., his company] to just get this deal done, so we’ll do it.’” Devine saved his client $100,000 by staying silent. Questions to Think About
GROUP EXERCISESalary Negotiations Thinking about negotiations is a lot easier than actually engaging in them. In order to give you some practice with the information in this chapter, you will engage in a salary negotiation.
Chapter 11Making DecisionsLEARNING OBJECTIVESAfter reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
Empowered Decision Making: The Case of Ingar Skaug“If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got,” according to Ingar Skaug—and he should know. Skaug is president and CEO of Wilh. Wilhelmsen, ASA, a leading global maritime industry company based in Norway with 23,000 employees and 516 offices worldwide. He faced major challenges when he began his job at Wilhelmsen Lines in 1989. The entire top management team of the company had been killed in an airplane crash while returning from a ship dedication ceremony. As you can imagine, employees were mourning the loss of their friends and leadership team. While Skaug knew that changes needed to be made within the organization, he also knew that he had to proceed slowly and carefully in implementing any changes. The biggest challenge he saw was the decision-making style within the company. Skaug recalls this dilemma as follows. “I found myself in a situation in Wilhelmsen Lines where everyone was coming to my office in the morning and they expected me to take all the decisions. I said to people, ‘Those are not my decisions. I don’t want to take those decisions. You take those decisions.’ So for half a year they were screaming about that I was very afraid of making decisions. So I had a little bit of a struggle with the organization, with the people there at the time. They thought I was a very poor manager because I didn’t dare to make decisions. I had to teach them. I had to force the people to make their own decisions.” His lessons paid off over the years. The company has now invented a cargo ship capable of transporting 10,000 vehicles while running exclusively on renewable energy via the power of the sun, wind, and water. He and others within the company cite the freedom that employees feel to make decisions and mistakes on their way to making discoveries in improved methods as a major factor in their success in revolutionizing the shipping industry one innovation at a time. Sources: McCathy, J. F., O’Connell, D. J., & Hall, D. T. (2005). Leading beyond tragedy: The balance of personal identity and adaptability. Leadership & Organizational Development Journal, 26, 458–475; Skaug, I. (2007, July). Breaking free in turbulent times: The intersection of turbulence, innovation and leadership: Unleashing creativity and driving positive change. Business Leadership Review, 4, 1–7; Furness, V. (2005). Interview with Ingar Skaug. European Business Forum. Retrieved April 4, 2008, from http://www.ebfonline.com/article.aspx?extraid=30; Norwegian executive Ingar Skaug named chairman of Center for Creative Leadership (2006). Retrieved April 4, 2008, from http://www.ccl.org/leadership/news/2006/skaug.aspx. Directory: site -> textbooks textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface Introduction and Background textbooks -> Chapter 1 Introduction to Law textbooks -> 1. 1 Why Launch! textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Preface textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License textbooks -> Chapter 1 What Is Economics? textbooks -> This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 0 License Download 2.98 Mb. Share with your friends:
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