Megalith: The Case of the disappearing financial managers

 

Because of John Boyd’s concern that the top financial managers at Megalith were leaving due to inadequate compensation, consultants from Hay Associates were called in to assess the internal and external pay equity for these managers. Exhibit 8 in the case shows the salary survey data.

 

Still not convinced that pay was a problem, Frank Nicodemus, the HR VP called in another consultant group, Personnel and Organizational Psychologists, Incorporated  (POP, Inc.) to get another opinion on the matter of turnover among financial managers. This organization has established an excellent reputation as a problem solver for organizational issues ever since they devised their slogan, “You can always trust POP.”

 

As psychologists, POP consultants naturally looked to psychological issues. They decided to assess the nature of the management folks at Megalith to determine the relative importance that external rewards and intrinsic rewards played in the motivation to stay.

 

Relying on Deci and Ryan’s SDT Theory, they assessed 70 managers on the General Causality Orientation scale to get a better sense of where these managers stood on the three dimensions measured by this scale.

 

Psychometric information on this measure can be obtained from: http://www.psych.rochester.edu/SDT/measures/caus.html

 

The POP consultant matched scores for 70 top managers with their current pay scales to determine if pay was related to any of the three dimensions of GCOS. They hoped that results from a data analysis would shed some light on the turnover issue. The data were made available about a week ago to POP junior consultant teams working on the case. Megalith management is expecting a report by December 4th on the issue.