HRMG 4203 Week 3 Symptom List and Ladder Example

Seen, Said or Believed? A Symptom List for the Commerce Street Hotel's Room Attendant Departures, With Every Assumption Placed on Argyris's Ladder of Inference

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Walden University

HRMG 4203: Human Resource Management: Analysis and Problems

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Month Day, Year

Seen, Said or Believed? A Symptom List for the Commerce Street Hotel's Room Attendant Departures, With Every Assumption Placed on Argyris's Ladder of Inference

Why Sort the Symptoms

Everyone in the Commerce Street Hotel case, built around a fictional downtown convention property, has an explanation for why room attendants are leaving, and most of those explanations arrived before the evidence. This list sorts each symptom into what the case shows someone observed, what a named person reported and what is being assumed. It then places each assumption on the ladder of inference that Argyris (1990) described, to show how many steps separate it from anything the case reports. Sorting matters because a list that mixes all three treats a guess with the same weight as an exhibit, and the first explanation spoken aloud in a meeting tends to become the one everyone repeats. The point is not to dismiss the assumptions. Some may later prove true. The point is to know which are standing on firm ground before the cause analysis begins.

Seen, With Exhibits

Four symptoms are tied directly to case exhibits.

1. Departures are concentrated on the weekend team: 19 of 26 departures from April to September came from the 30-person weekend team (Exhibit 4).

2. Most weekend leavers were new: 15 of the 19 had worked under six months (Exhibit 4).

3. Weekend overtime more than doubled between the first and third quarters, reaching 96 hours a weekend (Exhibit 5).

4. Sunday complaints about rooms not ready at the 3 p.m. check-in climbed roughly fivefold, to 21 a month (Exhibit 6).

Each item cites where the case shows it. Any item that could not be tied to an exhibit would move down a group.

Said, With Speakers

Two people in the case offer views. The executive housekeeper, Denise Hollis, says "the new hires just don't stick; they find out the job is hard and leave." She sees the department from its schedules and staffing reports. A front-desk lead, Marcus Bell, says "rooms on the convention floors are always the last ones ready on Sundays." He sees the problem from the lobby, where guests wait. Both views are evidence of what these people believe and have noticed, not proof of a cause. Keeping their names attached reminds a reader that the housekeeper sees the department from above and the desk lead sees only what reaches the front.

Believed, by Nobody's Observation

Three assumptions circulate in the case without any observation behind them. The first is that attendants leave because the pay is too low. The second is that new hires lack commitment to hotel work. The third is that the June room-assignment software confuses attendants. The case offers no local wage comparison, no measure of commitment and no record of software errors. These are listed without mockery; any of them could turn out to matter, and the cause weeks will need to treat them fairly.

How Far Each Belief Climbed

Argyris (1990) described a ladder that runs from observable data, through selected data, added meanings and assumptions, to conclusions and beliefs. Senge et al. (1994) popularized it as a way to slow down how quickly people reach conclusions. Table 1 places each of the three assumptions and the two reported views on the ladder.

Table 1

Symptoms and Assumptions on the Ladder of Inference

Composite case. Steps counted from the data the case actually provides.

Reading the Ladder

The ladder shows that the two reported views sit lowest. Bell's claim rests on something he sees every Sunday, though the case gives no floor-level data to confirm it. Hollis's claim starts from real data, short tenure among leavers, but climbs two steps to a conclusion about why. The three circulating assumptions climb highest, and one, lack of commitment, rests on no data at all. The pay belief has an awkward fact against it: pay is identical on both teams, yet departures are concentrated on one. The software belief has a similar problem, since the software reached every shift. Neither fact disproves these beliefs, but each lowers their standing until the cause analysis tests them.

Marked for Testing

Two assumptions rest on the least data: the commitment belief and the software belief. Both are marked for testing in the cause weeks, neither accepted nor thrown out. The pay belief is also marked, with a note that it must explain why one team loses far more people than the other on the same wage. Hom et al. (2017) note that turnover research has moved away from single-cause explanations, which is another reason to keep several beliefs in play while the evidence is gathered.

References

Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming organizational defenses: Facilitating organizational learning. Allyn and Bacon.

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530-545. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000103

Senge, P. M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R. B., & Smith, B. J. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. Currency Doubleday.