Decision making is a crucial element in every organization. Even though some decisions may seem to appear as minute in the time of making them, they can escalate to something bigger, either positive or negative, in the near or later future. Decisions made every day define an organization. They determine whether an organization stays stagnant, grows, or crumbles to its knees. Decisions made may be compelled by various reasons and the implementation may be faced with challenges or support from the stakeholders that may have varying interests. The challenges can also come from the person making the decision. Decision makers in organizations therefore, need to analyze possible repercussions that may follow certain decisions before enacting them.

In my current organization, the company does not offer lunch to employees but instead gives a one hour lunch break. It has been observed however that a majority of the employees do not find the foods offered in nearby food establishments preferable in one way or another including price, type and health. In their quest to getting their lunch time meals, majority of employees get back to work late after the lunch break. This translates to a great loss in production time for the organization. The change being effected is the facilitation of food during the lunch period, with a refrigerator and microwave for any employee that might opt to carry food from home to preserve or heat their packed lunch respectively. Following this decision, employees will not be allowed to leave the company premises during lunch break and the break reduced to half an hour. The decision as expected will face opposition and other challenges. The challenges will be both from the management, especially the finance department and also from employees.

One of the challenges expected is protest from employees that prefer the status quo. Given that this change completely overhauls the existing policy on lunch break it will not favor a number of employees. People are known to prefer decisions that maintain the existing underlying conditions for various reasons. There may be employees who might be using the one hour break to engage in personal businesses and other personal activities that was causing the lateness and not the food issue and would find this move as blocking their endeavors. The status quo problem would also arise from the finance department. Making the adjustments of building a cafeteria and a dining place would need an input of financial resources in constructing and once that is done, new employees would need to be recruited to work in the cafeteria. Therefore there is a one tome huge cost followed by a small salary cost for a life time. Financial challenges are therefore inevitable in this case and the management may opt for status quo.

A number of after effects may follow. The attitude of the employees will greatly determine the success of this decision. If positive towards this decision, the employees will end up reducing the loss of production time but if a negative attitude develops among them, they may end developing cold feet and engage in neglectful behavior which will result to more loss of production time. This then beats the logic of introducing this decision in the first place. In the case that this happens, given that resources have already been engaged in the construction process and hiring of employees, there is a danger that more resources would be needed to try and change the attitudes of the employees through other incentives and so forth to try and justify the initial use of resources on the decision.

In the organization, there exist complains of insufficient appraisal percentages in during the last performance appraisals which sets a bias in terms of framing the introduction of the decision. With employees already having a negative feeling about the management, the employees will only focus on the part where the time for the break is reduced and not consider the food to be offered by the company or seeing this decision as a two way beneficial activity. This will set the implementation of the decision on a wrong path and may bring up protests. Another bias existing in the organization that would prevent this change from taking place is the engaging of company’s resources in multiple projects. The organization is in the process of setting up a new plant in a different town. The resources used in setting up a new plant is significantly high and therefore constructing a cafeteria may be viewed as an unnecessary addition of burden to the already straining financial department and may therefore not take place.

The decision will affect all the employees in the company. Providing lunch will take away the headache of employees thinking of where to buy food in a limited period or having to pack lunch from home every morning. The decision will in the long run affect the company as the employees will not be losing production time going out to get food or thinking about where to get food during working hours. The stakeholders here are the employees and the management, the human resources department and the finance department to be specific.

As seen above, decisions determine how effective an organization runs. For this particular case, a decision is made to cut down on the lunch time break but in turn provide lunch for the employees. The decision may face a number of challenges but from a management point of view, it is a decision that may have great benefits in preventing the loss of production time.