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

Instead of judging the five combination options directly, it helps to first decide, one department at a time, whether that department's stated reason actually holds up against the caselet.

1. Production, for not being consulted on supervisor behaviour on the shop floor: supervisors are the frontline managers of shop floor work, so a change in how their wages and morale are handled affects Production directly. This reason holds.
2. Finance, for not being told about the financial consequences of the wage contracts: any wage contract is a cost commitment, so the department that tracks company finances would reasonably expect a say before such commitments are individually signed. This reason holds too, even though Finance is not directly named in the passage, the logic follows naturally from what wage contracts are.
3. Marketing, for the impact on the company's image: the caselet is about internal wage talks with supervisors, and never links this to public image or brand perception. This reason is invented and does not hold.
4. Quality control, for not giving input on the steel making process: nothing in the case connects wage negotiation to production quality methods. This reason also does not hold.
5. Personnel, since overseeing wage policy was their job and they were ignored: the caselet explicitly says Personnel reported to Mr. Thakur and was deliberately left out of the negotiations. This is the strongest and most directly stated reason of all five.

Only Production, Finance, and Personnel survive this check, so the combination that includes exactly these three, 1 + 2 + 5, is the answer; Marketing and Quality control do not belong in the set.

Let's summarize:

• Test each department separately for a real, caselet-backed stake before combining them.
• Reject departments whose reason relies on a link the passage never draws, like image or product quality here.

So the departments most justified in being upset are Production, Finance, and Personnel.