Reference no: EM132262557

You are the senior section manager for a medium-sized manufacturing firm producing high-tech devices. You've worked with this company for 8 years and supervise teams of materials engineers. As senior manager you manage these teams, Keep them working together effectively and find ways to cut costs and increase profits. Because of recent government regulations your manufacturing processes have undergone substantial changes. The firm has had to fire outside consultants to help with the manufacturing transition. The consultants have been taken with training the engineers on the new protocol and evaluating their performance, which has declined substantially since the transition. Although historically the engineers have been very productive and received high performance evaluations, this last quarter the majority received poor evaluations and has been formally reprimanded by upper management. You have also reprimanded for the reduced performance. The consultants have attributed the performance declines to poor leadership and poor motivation. You know that neither the leadership theses teams are given nor their motivation has changed.

Question: What role might fundamental attribution errors and self-serving bias be playing here? What are the potential consequences of these poor performance evaluations and formal reprimands, and what can you do to offset any negative? How might you explain the declining performance of the engineers, and what might you do to stop these declines?