Reference no: EM132897255

Progress Rail Services inspects railcars at terminal island in the port of Los Angeles where cargo is unloaded from ships and moved across the country. Over 10,000 railcars each month are found in the port and most are inspected by progress rail services. When progress rail services employees find problems, they repair the railcars and charge the owners. The workers, known as car men, are paid between $15 and $29.00 per hour. The job includes late night shifts and often working in wind and rain. Car men need to work quickly, spending about two minutes looking at each rail car. Some car men have smashed brake parts with hammers, gouged wheels, and used chains to tear off handles to make repairs necessary. Also, car men make "green repairs," which means replacing parts that are not broken and hiding the old parts or throwing them in the ocean so that company auditors cannot find then.

Progress Rail Services, a subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc, is being investigated by a federal prosecutor for criminal charges stemming from allegations of unnecessary repair work. Caterpillar is cooperating with the investigation, which it considers serious because it suggests employee have not behaved in a way consistent with company values. Workers blame their managers who say that they never got negative performance feedback that indicated unnecessary repairs or of any wrongdoing.

According to one manager, "there is really no getting around the fact that whenever I evaluate one of my people, I stop and think about the impact of negative performance feedback, ramifications of my decisions on my working relationship with the guy and his and my future here. I'd be stupid not to. Call it being politically minded, or using managerial discretion, or fine tuning the guy's ratings, but in the end I've got to work with him, and I'm not going to rate a guy without thinking about the fallout. The car men are unionized and there is a pressure from the leadership to produce sufficient repair revenue. There are a lot of games played in the rating process and whether we [managers] admit it or not we are all guilty of playing them at our discretion.

Questions:

-Do you think progress rail services have a performance culture? Why or why not? (Answer in two to three sentences).

-How could managers have stopped the car men from making bogus repairs? (Answer in two to three sentences).

-You are hired as a consultant to train managers on delivering effective performance feedback to car men. Using Aguinis, Gottfredson, & Joo (2012) article, which approach would you adopt to train the managers and why? Explain how would you do that. (Answer in two to three paragraphs).