MLDR 6010 Week 1 Popular vs Defensible Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Popular Choices and Defensible Choices

Popular Is Not the Same as Defensible: Testing a Lead Technician Appointment at a Veterinary Clinic by Writing Its Rationale as a Letter to the Technician Who Was Not Chosen

The Decision

I manage the Westerville clinic of Olentangy Animal Hospitals, a composite chain of seven clinics in central Ohio, and I am about to appoint our first lead technician. My inclination, and the floor's, is Kelsey, a senior technician of nine years whom every technician and most of our veterinarians recommend when asked.

What the Role Actually Asks

Set beside the duties, that inclination looks less settled. The lead will own the treatment board on surgery days, rebuild the schedule when someone calls out, cover gaps without leaving a procedure short and train new hires through their first month. Kelsey is the best clinician on our floor: her anesthesia monitoring and catheter placement are what new technicians try to copy. She has never built a schedule, and when the board goes wrong she tends to step into the surgery suite herself. Benson et al. (2019) found in a large sales dataset that firms promoted their best individual performers into management even though those performers went on to manage less well, so the pattern I am facing is common enough to have been measured.

The Letter Test

To check myself, I drafted the appointment rationale as a letter to Andrea, the technician who would not be chosen. Read that way, three of my sentences failed at once. "Kelsey has the team's respect" tells Andrea that she does not. "Kelsey has earned this after nine years" makes tenure the standard, which no one had said before. "The floor will follow her" predicts the team's mood rather than describing anything Kelsey has done. Only one sentence survived, the one about clinical skill, and clinical skill is the part of the job the lead does least.

Popular and Defensible

A popular choice is one the people around a decision would make; a defensible choice is one whose reasons the person who loses could read and accept as applying to them too. Colquitt (2001) separates fairness of outcomes from fairness of the procedure behind them, and my letter test is a rough check on the second: if the reasons cannot be stated to the losing candidate, the procedure was probably a feeling. I have not decided against Kelsey. I have decided that the decision needs a stated standard before it needs a name.

Reply to Brandon

Brandon, you promoted the shift supervisor with the highest call-handling scores, and you say the numbers made it fair. Here is the reason I think your runner-up could dispute most easily: the scores measure handling calls, while the supervisor role is mostly coaching others who handle calls. If the runner-up asked why the best caller should coach, what would you point to that measures coaching?

Reply to Lauren

Lauren, your post says you chose the candidate who "fit the culture best." Of all the reasons in your post, that is the one a losing candidate could most easily dispute, because it names no behavior they could have shown. Leventhal (1980) lists accuracy among the conditions people use to judge whether a procedure was fair, meaning decisions should rest on good information. What information told you about fit, and could the other candidates have supplied it too?

References

Benson, A., Li, D., & Shue, K. (2019). Promotions and the Peter principle. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(4), 2085-2134. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz022

Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386-400. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.386

Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research (pp. 27-55). Plenum Press.