Question

Sayan, a recent MBA graduate with a specialization in sales and marketing, applied for the position of sales manager in a firm producing industrial fabrication tools. The management of the company took pride in its non-discriminatory recruitment policy. In offering Sayan the position, the management made it clear that an indispensable feature of the job involved entertaining purchasing agents, and that a certain amount of social drinking was necessary. Sayan assured them that he was a moderate drinker with no moral or religious prejudices against drinking.

During the following two years Sayan became a successful manager and, on two occasions, received awards for achieving the highest sales for the quarter. However, he found that he was encountering a problem resulting from the necessity of entertaining customers at least two or three times a week. He felt that he was becoming an alcoholic, since he had recently been overindulging even when not entertaining customers. The problem became progressively worse until he found himself in a constantly inebriated condition, unable to work without resorting to drinking at work.

On reporting his problem to the management, Sayan was sent, at company expense, to an alcoholic rehabilitation centre, from which he was discharged after six weeks of rest and recuperation. However, within two months of resuming duties, Sayan was arrested in a local pub and charged with drunkenness and assault. The victim of his assault was a customer whom he had taken to the pub to discuss a sale.

The management viewed the incident extremely negatively and fired Sayan. Shortly thereafter, a lawyer representing Sayan informed the management that Sayan intended to bring legal action against the company. Sayan felt the company was liable since his alcoholism was a result of his employment. He argued that drinking was a requirement of his job, and therefore alcoholism represented an occupational hazard. The management decided to form a committee to discuss the matter and recommend a course of action, one that would prevent a recurrence of such a situation.

Question: As the management decides this situation, it also has to appoint a replacement for Sayan. The management is exploring the following options so that such a fiasco is not repeated:
A. Do not go to business schools. Hire an experienced sales manager from the market, and attract him or her by offering a higher remuneration package.
B. State the requirements of the job, including the necessity of social drinking, explicitly in the employment offer letter. A signed copy of the employment offer letter would indicate that the employee has accepted the terms of employment with complete knowledge of job details.
C. Social drinking does not imply that a person has to drink excessively. So select only mature persons, those who are high in self-esteem, who do not give in to social pressures, and who know how to exert self-control.
D. Provide guidance to all sales managers, both experienced and newly appointed, on how to behave during social occasions. This will help those who are otherwise moderate drinkers but end up drinking beyond their capacity because of suggestions from peers and friends.
E. Test the validity of claims of being moderate drinkers during the selection process itself. This will screen out persons who only claim to be moderate drinkers to obtain the job.
From management's point of view, the options in descending order of ease of implementation would be:

• A. A + B, C, D + E
• B. C + D, B + E, A + E
• C. C + E, B + D, B + E
• D. A + B, B + D, B + E

Hint:

Rank each pairing by what it actually takes to implement: paperwork and hiring choices are easiest, a new training programme is harder, and a reliable drinking-habit test is hardest; personality screening in C is not practically implementable at all.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is D

Step 1: Understanding the Question:
We must rank three groupings of the five options, A through E, by how easy each grouping is for management to actually put into practice, from easiest down to hardest.

Step 2: Key Approach:
Judge each option on its own first: does it need only a hiring decision and paperwork, or does it need a new training programme, or does it need some hard to build assessment tool. Group difficulty follows from the hardest option inside that group.

Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
A (hire an experienced manager from the market) and B (state the drinking requirement in the offer letter) are both simple administrative actions: a hiring preference and a paperwork clause. Nothing new needs to be built, so A + B is the easiest group.
D (run guidance sessions for all sales managers on how to behave at social occasions) needs a training programme to be designed and delivered, which takes more effort than paperwork but is a well understood HR activity. Paired with B, this gives a moderately harder group, B + D.
E (test the validity of a candidate's claim of being a moderate drinker, during selection) is the hardest of all: there is no reliable, fair test for how someone will behave with alcohol months into a stressful job, so building this into the selection process is impractical to design and defend. Paired with B, this gives the hardest group, B + E.
C (screen for maturity, high self-esteem, and self-control) is left out of the ranking altogether, because judging personality traits like self-esteem and self-control reliably at interview stage is even less practeable than E, so it does not fit into a realistic, implementable ease ranking at all.

Step 4: Final Answer:
In descending order of ease: A + B (simplest, just hiring and paperwork), then B + D (add a training programme), then B + E (hardest, needs an unreliable selection test). This is option 4 after the option fold.