Decision Making at Keystone Tech.

Background

It was another hot day in Austin, Texas. Anita Bose, the CEO and self$-$styled $$head$-$coach$$ of a small but rapidly growing firm looked out through her office window over the brown hills. They reminded her of her home$-$town, Pune, which she had left behind almost two decades ago to pursue her PhD in chemistry at the UT$,$ Austin. Her first job was with a large, publicly owned company involved in the design and production of specialized equipment used in chromatography $($a set of laboratory techniques for the analysis and separation of complex mixtures.$)$ She had enjoyed the technical challenges of her job but had found the experience of working for a large corporation to be a frustrating one. There were layers of bureaucracy to navigate. Good ideas seldom saw the light of day. After six years of working for $$the man,$$ Anita decided to start her own company, focused on the production of specialized chromatography columns and accessories. The company provided analysts in an increasingly global marketplace with cutting$-$edge equipment to monitor the quality of water, air, soil, and pharmaceuticals. Even though the company, Keystone Tech., competed with much larger firms $($e$.$g$.,$ H$.$P$.),$ the single$-$minded dedication to customer service, quality, and research was paying off. Started in $2005,$ Keystone now had $102$ employees and annual sales that topped $$20$ million in $2010.$ Anita had instituted an employee stock ownership plan in $2006$ driven by the conviction that employees would go the extra mile if they felt they had a stake in the company. Although her training was in chemistry, Anita was keenly interested in human psychology. It was not uncommon to see management consultants from UT$$s business school hanging out in the beautiful atrium at Keystone, collecting data and chatting