MGMT 8425M Week 5 Authority Memo Example

Memorandum

To: Regional Director of Operations, Latin America

From: Site Manager, Querétaro Packaging Plant

Date: February 9, 2026

Re: How the site will handle dissent in production planning, and why an open invitation to challenge would not work here

Recommendation

Starting in March, each of the four shift supervisors will submit in writing, the day before the weekly production meeting, one risk they see in the coming week's plan. I will read every submission aloud at the start of the meeting, without names, before discussion begins, and record what we decide about each. I recommend against the more obvious step of announcing that everyone is welcome to challenge me in the meeting.

Background

In my first production meeting on December 2, the senior process engineer, Ingeniero Ramírez, told me in front of the group that my proposed changeover sequence would overload the extrusion line. He was right, and I said so and changed the plan. I took the exchange as healthy. Afterward, two shift supervisors told me privately that Ramírez had been disrespectful and that I should not allow it. In the six weekly meetings since, no supervisor or junior engineer has raised a single objection to any plan, including one week when a scheduling error cost us a shift of output that a supervisor later told me he had seen coming.

Three Explanations, Weighed

The first explanation is cultural in the broad sense: the supervisors may share a strong expectation that a site manager's plan is not contested in public, the kind of difference Hofstede (2001) summarized as power distance. This fits the supervisors' reaction to Ramírez, but it does not explain why Ramírez himself spoke freely, nor why the same supervisors, according to the plant's own records, raised safety issues openly with my predecessor's predecessor.

The second explanation is a set of beliefs about when speaking up is risky. Detert and Edmondson (2011) identified implicit voice theories, taken-for-granted rules such as "do not embarrass the boss in public" and "do not speak up without a solution," and found that these beliefs are widely held and help explain silence beyond other factors. This fits the supervisors' comments closely: their objection to Ramírez was that he had embarrassed me in front of others.

The third explanation is local history. In 2023, under the previous owner, an operator who raised a guarding concern in a meeting was moved off his shift within a month. Every supervisor I have spoken to mentions it. Morrison (2014) concluded from the research that people weigh the expected personal cost of speaking up, and that past consequences are among the strongest signals of that cost.

I believe the second and third explanations carry most of the weight, with the first contributing. The recommendation does not depend on choosing among them, because written, anonymous submission addresses each: it avoids public contradiction, removes the need to arrive with a solution and protects the person raising the risk.

The Open Invitation, Answered

The obvious step is to tell the group that I want to be challenged and that no one will be punished for it. I do want that, and I will say it. But an invitation alone shifts the risk of speaking onto the people least protected from its consequences. Ramírez can afford to contradict me; a junior engineer or a supervisor who remembers 2023 cannot know that I mean it until someone has tested it. An invitation that only the most secure people accept would reproduce the current pattern under a more open name.

What I Will Measure This Quarter

I will track the number of written risks submitted each week, the share that lead to a change in the plan and whether any risk raised in writing is later raised aloud by its author. If submissions are steady and some authors begin speaking in the meeting by June, I will propose moving to open discussion. If submissions dwindle, the written channel is not enough, and I will report that to you.

References

Detert, J. R., & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). Implicit voice theories: Taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship at work. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461-488. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.61967925

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Sage.

Morrison, E. W. (2014). Employee voice and silence. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 1, 173-197. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091328