MGMT 8009M Week 1 Process Critique Example

A Calendar That Chose: A Process Critique of How a Grocery Chain Closed Its Eastern Warehouse, Testing the Rational Model Against Eleven Dated Documents and Defending a Routine-Based Reading

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8009M: Organizational Decision Making and Judgment

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Calendar That Chose: A Process Critique of How a Grocery Chain Closed Its Eastern Warehouse, Testing the Rational Model Against Eleven Dated Documents and Defending a Routine-Based Reading

The Rational Model at Its Strongest

Textbook accounts of organizational choice begin with a clean sequence. A problem is defined, objectives are set, a full set of alternatives is generated, each alternative is evaluated against the objectives and the best is chosen. Defenders of this model do not claim that managers always follow it; they claim that it describes what good choice looks like and that departures from it are departures from quality. The model's promise is a complete comparison: whatever was chosen was chosen over something, for reasons that can be stated. That promise is what this critique tests, using the closure of the eastern distribution center at Pellston Market, a composite regional grocery chain of 64 stores, as the case.

The Exhibit

[after]

The table is the critique's evidence base. Every later claim cites a row, and the sequence of rows carries more of the argument than any single document.

Table 1

Documents in the Eastern Warehouse Closure, in Order

Stage by Stage

If the rational model describes this decision, each stage should have left a mark. Problem definition does leave one: the lease notice and the facilities calendar entry define the question as what to do about an expiring lease. Evaluation also leaves a partial trace, in the finance analyst's cost summary. But two stages leave nothing. No document lists alternatives side by side. Renewal on new terms, a shorter lease, a smaller building in the same county and partial consolidation all appear nowhere in the record. And no minutes record a weighing: the capital committee asked one question about delivery windows and approved, and the board's minutes show a resolution adopted without discussion of options.

A defender could reply that the comparison happened informally, in conversations that were never written down. That is possible, but it cannot be assumed. A stage of choice that leaves no document, in a firm that documents its capital decisions carefully, is more plausibly a stage that did not occur. The critique reports the absence plainly and declines to fill it with charitable guesses.

A Routine That Set Timing and Form

Allison (1969) proposed that many organizational outcomes are better explained as outputs of standard procedures than as choices by a unitary actor. In his organizational process model, what an organization does at a given moment reflects routines that were in place before the moment arrived. The Pellston record fits that account closely. The lease notice did not create a decision; the facilities calendar did, by placing the lease in the October capital cycle. The capital request template then set the form of the choice. It allowed one proposal per line, with a single savings figure, so the request could not present renewal and closure as competing options even if its author had wanted to. The committee reviewed what the template delivered. In this reading, the calendar chose the moment and the template chose the shape of the question.

Muddling Through

Lindblom (1959) argued that administrators rarely compare all options against fixed goals; they compare a few options that differ only slightly from current policy, and they judge each by its consequences rather than by a ranking of values. The board's implicit comparison at Pellston was between the closure and the status quo of renewing at existing terms, which the lease notice had already made unavailable. That narrow comparison is exactly what Lindblom described, and it explains why the board's minutes show no discussion: the only alternative in view was one that had already disappeared.

What the Garbage Can Gets Right

Cohen et al. (1972) described organizations as places where problems, solutions, participants and choice opportunities flow somewhat independently and meet by timing. The consultant's network study fits this picture well. It existed eighteen months before the lease notice, a solution waiting for a problem, and its three-center savings model was carried into the capital request almost unchanged. The finance analyst did not build a new model for the eastern decision; the old one was at hand. That element of the case is a garbage can coupling.

Yet the garbage can model, taken as the whole account, implies more randomness than the record shows. The meeting of solution and problem at Pellston was not accidental; it was arranged by the facilities calendar, which reliably routes lease events into the capital cycle. The routine explains why the study surfaced when it did. The critique therefore grants the garbage can its coupling and assigns the rest of the outcome to Allison's procedures.

What the Chain's Routine Would Need to Change

Three changes follow from the reading. First, the facilities calendar should place lease events into the capital cycle at least eighteen months before expiry, rather than twelve, so that renewal on new terms remains open when the decision is made. Second, the capital request template should require at least two alternatives for any facility decision above a set value, each with its own cost summary. Third, any savings estimate drawn from a study older than a year should be refreshed before it reaches the committee. None of these changes requires a better executive. Each changes the procedure that produced the outcome.

What the Critique Does Not Claim

The critique does not argue that the closure was wrong. The June 2025 service review shows late deliveries in eleven eastern stores, but a renewal might have had its own costs, and judging the decision by its later results would be the hindsight the course warns against. Nor does the critique blame the vice president who filed the request. The claim is narrower: the record does not show the comparison the rational model promises, and an organizational process reading explains the record better than any account built on one person's deliberation.

Limits

Pellston is a composite, assembled from the sorts of records a regional grocer files, and a real record might include an informal option memo this one lacks. The critique's method, checking each stage for its trace, would still apply, and a discovered memo would change the finding for the alternatives stage only.

References

Allison, G. T. (1969). Conceptual models and the Cuban missile crisis. American Political Science Review, 63(3), 689-718. https://doi.org/10.2307/1954423

Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.2307/2392088

Lindblom, C. E. (1959). The science of "muddling through." Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79-88. https://doi.org/10.2307/973677