This exercise is designed to help you understand the contingencies of employee involvement.

Assume you are the manager or person in charge. For this scenario, identify the preferred level of employee involvement from one of the five levels described below. For this scenario, identify and justify what factors led you to choose this level of employee involvement rather than the others. Also, be prepared to discuss what problems might occur with less or more involvement in this case (where possible).

1. Decide alone. Use your personal knowledge and insight to complete the entire decision process without conferring with anyone else.
2. Receive information from individuals. Ask specific individuals for information. They do not make recommendations and might not even know what the problem is about.
3. Consult with individuals. Describe the problem to selected individuals and seek both their information and recommendations. The final decision is made by you, and you may or may not take the advice from others into account.
4. Consult with the team. You bring together a team of people (all department staff or a representation of them if the department is large), who are told about the problem and provide their ideas and recommendations. You make the final decision, which may or may not reflect the teams information.
5. Facilitate the teams decision. The entire decision-making process is handed over to a team or committee of subordinates. You serve only as a facilitator to guide the decision process and keep everyone on track. The team identifies the problem, discovers alternative solutions, chooses the best alternative, and implements their choice.

For this incident, students or teams should be prepared to answer the following questions:

1. What factors led you to choose this level of employee involvement rather than the others?

2. What problems might occur if less or more involvement occurred in this case (where possible)?

SCENARIO 2: THE SUGAR SUBSTITUTE RESEARCH DECISION You are the head of research and development (R&D) for a major beer company. While working on a new beer product, one of the scientists in your unit seems to have tentatively identified a new chemical compound that has few calories but tastes closer to sugar than current sugar substitutes. The company has no foreseeable need for this product, but it could be patented and licensed to manufacturers in the food industry. The sugar-substitute discovery is in its preliminary stages and would require considerable time and resources before it would be commercially viable. This means that it would necessarily take some resources away from other projects in the lab. The sugar substitute project is beyond your technical expertise, but some of the R&D lab researchers are familiar with that field of chemistry. It is difficult determine the amount of research required to further identify and perfect the sugar substitute. You do not know how much demand is expected for this product. Your department has a decision process for funding projects that are behind schedule. However, there are no rules or precedents about funding projects that would be licensed but not used by the organization. Page 197 The company's R&D budget is limited, and other scientists in your work group have recently complained that they require more resources and financial support to get their projects completed. Some of these R&D projects hold promise for future beer sales. You believe that most researchers in the R&D unit are committed to ensuring that the company's interests are achieved