Scenario Tree

Exercise 21: Survey of Workers

A scenario tree lays out how decisions and events can lead to different outcomes. Its design depends on the question being analyzed: the “best” tree is the one that makes the relevant alternatives clear. Use the following survey report to sketch possible arrangements for employee participation. Try different designs if the first obscures an important distinction.

Groping Toward a Way to Share the Reins Major Survey Finds Most Employees Want Cooperation and a Voice, if Not a Union, on the Job by Frank Swoboda WASHINGTON POST STAFF WRITER

If most American workers don’t want to belong to a union, but they don’t really trust their boss to protect their interests, just what do they want? The answer may lie in the fog of statistics compiled in a new survey of employee attitudes toward workplace decision making. The authors interviewed 2,400 workers nationwide to find out whether employees want greater participation in the workplace; what kind of involvement and representation they desire; and whether they have any ideas for closing the gap between their desires to participate and the reality of their own jobs.

A major finding is the existence of a “participation gap” between the representation workers have on the job and what they want. According to the study, “most employees want more say in how their companies are run and how key decisions affecting them are made. They want more individual say, and more say as a group, and believe greater worker involvement in firm decision making is good for the company as well as for them.” While 40 percent said they would vote to join a union, the majority of workers said they believed it was essential to have employee work organizations on the job even if those organizations had no real power to determine the outcome of decision making.

But the survey shows a substantial majority of workers would prefer a weak employee involvement program that had management’s approval to a strong organization, such as a union, that management opposed. This simply reflects the reality of most modern work sites, where management sets the rules. It doesn’t mean the average worker wants to be a doormat. When workers in the survey were asked to specify the attributes they would like to see in an employee organization, “most employees want cooperative joint committees with some independent standing inside their companies, and many want unions or union-like organizations.” In a question format offering laws, joint committees, or unions that negotiate or bargain with management over issues, 63 percent chose joint committees, 20 percent chose unions, and 15 percent chose laws.

Asked to consider any kind of employee organizations on the assumption that it was the respondents’ decision alone to make and everybody went along with it, 85 percent opted for an organization run jointly by employees and management, and only 10 percent chose one run by employees alone. Union members involved in the survey split almost identically on the issue. How would workers involved in these joint committees propose settling decision-making disputes with management? Nearly 60 percent said in such cases an outside arbitrator should make final decisions. In a nutshell, the survey shows that most American employees want more involvement and greater say in their jobs, some form of workplace organization or policy that provides them with group as well as individual voice. Employees wish such organization or policy to give them independent input into workplace decisions.

For Exercise 21, distinguish the degree of employee involvement from the means of representation or bargaining. Then build a tree in four steps:

1. Identify the problem you are trying to analyze.
2. Identify the major factors or issues—the key decisions and events that will drive the different scenarios.
3. Identify the alternatives for each factor or issue. Use Yes and No branches for genuinely binary questions. Use additional branches when the alternatives require them.
4. Construct the tree portraying all the important alternative scenarios. At each branch, ensure that the decisions or events are mutually exclusive (no overlap between the branches) and collectively exhaustive (all possibilities are covered).

The book illustrates this process with the case of a middle-aged employee fired for alleged unsatisfactory performance. A week later, armed with an automatic rifle, he returned to the plant and shot his former supervisor to death. The employee pleaded innocent by reason of temporary insanity. Three major issues dominated his trial: (1) whether he was by nature prone to violence; (2) whether the supervisor’s allegedly cruel and unwarranted treatment could have destabilized his mind; and (3) whether, from the moment he seized the rifle until the killing, he was in such a state of dementia that he was unaware of his actions and unable to distinguish right from wrong.

A tree can place the three issues in sequence, with Yes/No branches for each. This separates the questions and shows which combinations of conclusions remain possible. For either side, the diagram can identify where the evidence is strong or weak; it does not establish what the evidence proves.

The book describes the defense as establishing that the defendant had not been prone to violence. In the proposed tree, that would remove the “Yes” branches under the first issue. It then describes evidence that the supervisor’s treatment could have caused temporary derangement, leaving the defendant’s state of mind during the killing as the central question. The reported verdict was not guilty. The tree illustrates how accepting evidence can narrow the scenarios; the diagram itself neither proves the facts nor explains the verdict.

For the workers’ survey, sketch the main alternatives before judging which arrangement is preferable. Evaluating one attractive scenario too early can cause you to neglect other possibilities. Keep the initial tree focused on factors relevant to the question, then revise it if closer analysis reveals a missing alternative or an impossible combination.

To “diagram” a problem usefully, explain what each branch means and why the alternatives matter. A tree can reveal missing options, dependencies, and questions that require evidence. It cannot make an incomplete set of assumptions exhaustive merely by displaying it.