Organizational Behavior

Case 1B: Getting the Evidence:

Leadership Training Dilemma

By John R. Schermerhorn

Student Name: Othman Abahussain

MONTANA TECH INSTITUTE

 Summary

Shane Alexander is the HR director of the Central State Medical Center and she has to

take care of the leadership training program also in the medical center. She was invited in one

conference in which she saw a package of training program. In one package there were books

and videotaped lectures which were offered for training the professionals. Most of the lectures

were for teaching the leadership styles, performance appraisal and for teaching the

communication skills, and Shane found it a very attractive package to buy for the medical center,

because hiring a professional trainer for training the people of the Center, was a very expensive

option. So she found it a cheaper option. The cost of the program was $3500 USD in which she

could get the video tapes of the training program and fifty workbooks in this price, which she

found a very attractive option. $8 per book was going to be charged per extra book if she was

going to purchase this package. She got a very bad response during the meeting when she gave

this idea to the board of the hospital. President and vice presidents were not happy with the idea

of Shane, and they claimed that this is an unwise decision and according to their point of view

nothing can substitute the professional trainer. She was issued $1000 USD so that she can buy

some books from this package and for proving that this program will be beneficial for this

medical Center.

Analysis

Question no 1:

If I were Shane, then I would use the field experiment to test this program. Field experiment is

such an experiment which is done in a realistic environment/setting. This field experiment is also

good because in this, variables are checked in extremely natural environment. In this real life
experimental setup, researcher cannot control the effect of any variable on another variable. Most

importantly in such setup, participants do not know that they are being observed or studied thus

totally original results can be obtained in this way. Uhl-Bien et al (2014)

Question no 2:

In a hospital setting, the selected design will be implemented. After implementing the

design, the reactions of people of workplace will be observed. Observation plays an important

role in field experiment. Then in this real life environment, the real reactions will be observed

which will explain the whole story of effectiveness of the design. Moreover, the impact of

implementing the design will be measured and the impact of the employee who did not

participate in the program will be compared with the employees who had participated in the

program. Thus this before and after implementing the program will be measured in order to

present some evidence before administrative authority. (Emaa, 2018)

Question no 3:

My research hypothesis would be that, the special packaged training program would

prove to be the best and more effective as compare to hiring any external consultant for training.

My dependent variable will be “effectiveness of training” and independent variable would be

“employees trained via packaged training” and “employees trained via external consultant”.

These variables will be used to measure and test the hypothesis. This data will be gathered by

asking from the employees about the satisfaction level of training. Also the cost of implementing

the program will also be measured to know that which program is cheaper.

Question no 5:
 Yeah! I agreed the idea of administrators’ request for “proof before purchase” and it was

totally reasonable. It was a reasonable idea because it was necessary for the administrative block

to check the worth and benefits of this newly recommended plan in the company. Also it was

necessary for the administrative authority because this is the matter of monetary investment.

Recommendations

In this case some identified problems were that, first Shane solely proposed the idea of

“training through videotaping” without taking other colleagues in trust with her. Second and the

most important identified problem was that, Shane did not presented any proofs or evidences of

the companies where such videotaping training has been given to the employees and the results

of the videotaping training due to which administrative authority was unable to view the

consequences of this training in terms of its effectiveness and its total cost of implementation

which gave a non-professional touch to the proposal of Shane.

Thus as per my recommendations, when an employee is going to suggest something then

it should take in trust to some of its colleagues to give weightage to your suggestion. Then such

proposals/suggestions require solid evidences and proofs to check the results of its

implementations to anticipate the results of implementations. Presentation of evidences gives

some professional touch and worth to your ideas and enables the higher authority to convince

because in that case they have proofs and some historical results of implementing a program

which make the decision easy and less risky as well. Uhl-Bien et al (2014)
 Reference

1. Uhl-Bien, M., & Schermerhorn, J. R. (n.d.). Organizational Behavior (13th ed., Vol. 1). Wiley.

2. E. (2018, April 11). How YouTube Can Help You Deliver Better Training. Retrieved July 07,

2018, from https://www.learnupon.com/blog/use-youtube-online-training/