Question

Read the following caselet and answer the question that follows.

Mr. Rajiv Singhal, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Loha India Ltd. (a steel manufacturing company), had just been visited by several other directors of the company. The directors were upset with the recent actions of the company president, Mr. Ganesh Thakur. They demanded that the board consider firing the president.

Mr. Thakur, recently appointed as president, had undertaken to solve some of the management-employee problems by dealing directly with individuals as often as possible. The company did not have a history of strikes or any other form of collective action and was considered to have a good work culture. However, Mr. Thakur felt that by dealing directly with individuals, he could show the management's concern for the employees. An important step Mr. Thakur took was to negotiate the wages of the supervisors with each supervisor one on one. In these negotiation meetings he did not involve anyone else, including the Personnel Department which reported to him, so that he could take an unbiased decision. After negotiation, a wage contract was drawn up for each supervisor. He felt this would recognise and reward the better performers. Mr. Thakur carried out this process for most of the supervisors, except those working the night shift. For them he drew up the contracts on his own, benchmarking the night shift supervisors' wages against the day shift supervisors' wages.

For several days, Ram Lal, a night shift supervisor, had been trying to get an appointment with Mr. Thakur about his wages. He was upset, not only because he could not see the president, but also because there had been no discussion about his wage contract before it was put into effect. As a family man with six dependents, he felt his weekly wage should be higher than what he had been given.

Last Thursday afternoon, Ram Lal stopped by the president's office and tried to see him. Mr. Thakur's secretary refused his request on the grounds that Mr. Thakur was busy. Angry, Ram Lal walked into the president's office and confronted the startled Mr. Thakur with his demand for a better wage. Mr. Thakur stood up and told Ram Lal to get out of his office and raise his grievance through the official channel. Ram Lal took a swing at the president, who in turn punched Ram Lal on the jaw and knocked him unconscious.

Apart from the supervisors working the night shift, executives of which department will have the most justified reasons to be unhappy with Mr. Thakur's initiative?
1. Production department, for not being consulted regarding the behaviour of the supervisors on the shop floor.
2. Finance department, for not being taken into confidence regarding the financial consequences of the wage contracts.
3. Marketing department, for not being consulted on the likely impact of the wage contracts on the image of the company.
4. Quality control, for not being able to give inputs to Mr. Thakur on how to improve the quality of the steel making process.
5. Personnel department, since it was their job to oversee wage policies for employees, and they had been ignored by Mr. Thakur.

• A. 1 + 2 + 3
• B. 1 + 4 + 5
• C. 1 + 3 + 4
• D. 1 + 2 + 5

Hint:

Ask which departments have a direct stake in wage contracts or supervisor performance, based only on what the caselet states.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Step 1: Understanding the Question.
We must find which departments, other than the night shift supervisors themselves, have a genuine, caselet-backed reason to resent how Mr. Thakur handled the wage negotiations.

Step 2: Key Formula or Approach.
A department's grievance is justified only if the caselet gives it direct responsibility over something Mr. Thakur bypassed. Departments whose link to wage contracts is only indirect or invented do not qualify.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation.
The Personnel department is stated in the caselet to report to Mr. Thakur and would normally be involved in wage matters, yet he deliberately left them out of the one-on-one negotiations. This is a direct, textually supported reason for Personnel to be upset.
The Finance department is not named in the caselet, but any wage contract has a real, direct financial cost to the company, so a department responsible for financial planning would reasonably expect to be consulted before individual wage contracts are signed off. This is a logical extension of the caselet's facts about wage negotiation.
The Production department also has a strong claim, since supervisors run daily shop floor operations, and how supervisors are treated and paid affects their performance and behaviour on the floor, which is Production's direct concern.
Marketing has no real connection here, the caselet is about internal wage contracts with supervisors, not about the company's public image or customer-facing decisions, so pulling Marketing in is a stretch not backed by the case.
Quality control's link to 'how to improve the steel making process' is also not something the caselet ties to wage negotiation at all, this option invents a connection that is not there.
So the departments with a real, justified grievance are Production, Finance, and Personnel, matching 1 + 2 + 5.

Step 4: Final Answer.
The most justified departments to be upset with Mr. Thakur's initiative are Production, Finance, and Personnel, that is, 1 + 2 + 5.