The Oil Spill

Read the following problem, taken from Victor Vroom’s Leadership Styles Analysis program, and then choose which leadership style you would use to make a decision:

The Oil Spill

Setting: Ecology Protection Company; Your Position: Regional Manager

You are a regional manager in a large company specializing in ecological control systems. Your work runs the gamut from removal and disposal of toxic waste to cleaning up spills of oil and other contaminants. Typically you work on contracts with organizations both public and private, but occasionally you are called upon to deal with situations not covered by existing contracts.

This morning you received a phone call from the police in a nearby town. They asked for your assistance in dealing with an oil spill which threatened a nearby river. You drove to the site with four summer interns recently hired from a nearby university. Within an hour the five of you had obtained the following picture of what happened. While filling an oil tanker, the driver had gone into the cab and had fallen asleep. Before it was noticed, 10,000 gallons of crude oil had escaped and began making its way on a downward path to the river. By the time your group got there, the oil had already made its way five miles downstream and was within six hours of reaching a wildlife sanctuary.

While the potential for environmental damage is clear, the liability is not. The driver was an employee of a small subcontractor who was uninsured and who would be forced into bankruptcy if deemed liable. The oil company contacted their insurance company who denied any responsibility for claims that might be made against them. Representatives of the two relevant governmental agencies were contacted, and they offered moral support, but neither had the half million dollars that you estimate would be necessary to contain and clean up the spill.

A decision must be made soon as to whether to risk the company’s money in a matter in which reimbursement, if any, may have to be decided by the courts. The decision is yours to make. While each of the interns has all of the relevant information and is ready to implement whatever is decided, you know from past experience with college students that their strong preference would be to act quickly in order to prevent further environmental damage. Given the signal, you would need each to jump into action and supervise about 20 laborers doing the actual work of the cleanup. On the other hand, your neck would be on the line if the company were not paid for its services.

Leadership Styles

Adapted with permission from R. Tannenbaum and W. Schmidt, How to Choose a Leadership Pattern, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1958, 95-101

Decide
You make the decision alone and either announce or sell
it to the group. You may use your expertise in collecting
information from the group or others that you deem relevant to the problem.


Consult (Individually)                                                     
You present the problem to group members individually,
get their suggestions, and then make the decision.


Consult (Group)                                                    
You present the problem to group members in a meeting,
get their suggestions, and then make the decision.


Facilitate
You present the problem to the group in a meeting. You act
as facilitator, defining the problem to be solved and the
boundaries within which the decision must be made. Your
objective is to get concurrence on a decision. Above all, you
take care to ensure that your ideas are not given any greater
weight than those of others simply because of your position.


Delegate                                                                          

You permit the group to make the decision within prescribed
limits. The group undertakes the identification and diagnosis
of the problem, developing alternative procedures for solving it, and deciding on one or more alternative solutions.


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