Webster Industries: A Critical Analysis of Carter's Process for Decision Making There are several weaknesses in the process that Carter used for decision making. Perhaps the most severe of them all was the lack of sight with respect to the strategy of the Webster Industries. The financials for the company clearly show that by October 1975 the company was probably recovering from the downturn. If that was indeed the case, Carter should requested an adjustment to the anchoring bias of 15% downsizing target and examined the list of criteria that Stevens’ laid out in the light of sustained growth. Healthy growth requires people who are competent in their current job as well as people with potential. Consequently the group should have …show more content…

In order to prevent this, Carter should have formed an all inclusive team, especially since the furnishings group was one of the low-performing group. On a side note, Stevens had an excellent suggestion for reducing the head count by more than 43 and hire more competent people from sister departments into their group. However rather than focusing on identifying as many capable individuals to execute the organizational strategy, and then downsizing to meet the numbers, he suggested that they could hire 5 additional people by reducing their group by 48 people. I believe that by doing so he may have set up an anchoring bias. Carter could have used a method similar to the one that BP used in one of its reorganizations. The entire organizational structure was laid out by the top management and managers were asked to apply for jobs. This allowed the management to pick the best candidates for the job while still keeping the employee morale relatively high. Carter and his group deliberated on using PAS and audit systems for gauging the performance and potential. The audit system was too abbreviated but if used along with timely inputs from Jack Bryant would certainly be useful since it was being used by almost the entire workforce and because there was a mechanism in place to share the feedback from the system with the employees. On the other hand, the PAS system was