Reaction Paper – 2 “The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource

shortages”

Effective resource management is a key aspect of managerial decision making process which a
plays important role in determining the efficient execution of production process in any industry. It has
been evidently elaborated by B. Morrison in his article titled “The problem with workarounds is that they
work: The persistence of resource shortages”. The core ideas of the study up on a professional production
facility for a certain time period has led to the authors analysis of several critical elements of resource
management issues, how they affect the agents who translate the design into implementation, what roles
the other stakeholders in the production process has to play and what governs the end results of the
system when a workaround is adopted for performing certain task for which effective resource
management is not implemented.
Most organizations in the modern world face key issues and challenges in resource management
and depicted by resource shortages. Every organization has their own personalized context within which
they thrive to identify and sort out these issues. In fact, it is the aim of any profitable organization to “do
more with less”. As the phrase suggests, organizational values are inspired by the effective e use of
available resources and the implementation of workarounds to solve critical resource shortage problems.
However, the author focuses on two primary resources in an organization, the shortage of which creates a
confusion in the systematic performance of tasks through established production processes and the front
line workers who have to directly fabricate solutions to on job problems are most affected . It is evident
that the author considers these two main resources as constraint based and limited in nature. In addition to
intriguing resource shortage problems, changes in the economic climate is leading to the staff reduction
policies of major organizations to keep the profitability margin intact while incurring minimum costs.
What lies undiscovered is the fact that the decrease of available resources not only creates a void in the
functional aspects of any system, but also poses major challenges to the advocators of the system who
must efficiently address the issues immediately to propose and implement innovative solutions. These
solutions to issues raised in the assembly line due to shortage of available resources that do not
collaborate with or adhere to popular systematic trends and processes but are rather fabricated as
temporary approaches to cope up with a situation by forefront members of a production line are called
workarounds.
The author has presented a strong literature review in support of the perilous dangers of resource
shortage issues and how they can affect any production line and its performance in the long run. The
author maintains that even though these workarounds are temporary intervention that aid in the instant
problem solving process, these are merely short term solutions and have a major impact on the industry in
the long run. Supportive literature review based on the impact of poor resource management on
production design has indicated that workarounds are merely masks for the lack of effective revision in
system gaps and an overall failure of the system. Therefore, resource shortage as a result of poor resource

CARLITO G. GABRIEL, JR.

Reaction Paper – 2 “The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource
shortages”

management has directed towards diverse range of process failure characterized by lack of process
improvement like omission of Total Quality Management (TQM) in the assembly line, increase of errors
thereby increasing capability traps, overall degradation of the design and development processes, lack of
consistent quality management as well as organizational culture issues like degradation of standards,
indiscipline in process implementation ,insubordination and violation of rules. Citing reliable sources
from The Overworked American, the author has established a host of organizational issues related to
fatigue, work stress inducing absenteeism and insubordination that strain interpersonal relationship
between management and the work force.
The research methodology has been selectively categorized into several stages. At first, a
description of the background and setting of the research has been provided which has been extensively
interacted with to gather primary data for critical analysis. After successful data collection, complex
evaluative casual loop diagrams have been used throughout the research methodology to form graphical
interpretations of the data collected and their critical analysis results. This has been done through the
evaluation of ethnographic data collection that has been developed through a conceptual model.
Following this, a system dynamics model has been presented that has been used to simulate critical
system dynamics and highlights the crests and troughs in the system. Here, sufficient literature review and
background information has been incorporated to support the evaluative results of the system dynamics
model that emphasis on the on job learning protocol as an approach to workarounds in the industry.
Finally, critical evaluation of the key findings from the developed casual loop and system dynamic
models has been elaborative discussed.
The research setting has been of a manufacturing unit that produces and assembles internal
combustion engine parts and dispatches them to the same company’s other assembly facilities elsewhere.
Interaction with the general manager of the company illuminated the approach of the company to
intensify production based on the adoption of the Toyota Production System, framework which has been
known to be a highly successful. Since the GM of the said concern have had the opportunity to observe
the implementation of the approach and its working for a period of 20 years at a stretch, the setting of the
research has been most accurate and innovative in terms of relativity and compatibility.
While the initial interaction with other advocates of the production facility indicated to a positive
bargaining relationship between the managerial executives and the floor workers, it has been imperative
that the work floor was more comprised of workplace advisors rather than work place supervisors
rendering enough evidence that an unorthodox approach for workarounds has been adopted at the facility.
Data Collection has been facilitated through an effective and interactive approach in this setting
since the qualitative approach to understand core ideas of work culture, support of top authorities and
other stakeholders can be critically evaluated and understood. As the author suggests, integrated

CARLITO G. GABRIEL, JR.

Reaction Paper – 2 “The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource
shortages”

ethnographic material, documentation and collective data archival methods and integrated personal
interview and observation approach has formed the base for the data collection methods. The author
emphasizes on the effort given in developing a background understanding of the setting and then
comparing the same with the critical evaluation of the qualitative data obtained through extensive
interviews. The author elaborates that attending core meeting s of the production workers as well
meetings with top executives to discuss and review critical situations has formed a key resources in data
collection methods. For this, extensive audio recording and detailed field note taking has formed integral
part of the approach. In addition to this, follow up of the production process from scratch has been a
learning based data collection process for the author. Similarly, elaborative interviews with managers and
front line workers formed the core structure of the data collection method which spanned for 200 hours of
audio recordings and 1200 pages of documented field motes.
The author emphasized on the design of the data analysis process as a measure to form the key
theories of the system as well as develop core casual loop models for elaborative explanation of the
workaround concepts, their recurrence patterns, what causes them as any such unanswered questions.
Since most of the collected data has been in the form of extensive audio recording and
documented field notes as well as qualitative interview processes, the author has adopted a proper
qualitative approach for the data analysis process as well. Similarly, critical implementation of casual
closed loop models has been presented to evaluate core processes and their possible outcomes.
Critical data analysis characterized by the evaluation of available archival data, documentation,
audio tapes and interview responses has led to the identification of the core problem statement of the
study as synonymous with the challenges faced by the workers. Therefore, intensive interaction of the
various existing interactions between these stakeholders of the facility has led to the formulation of casual
loop models that can indicate possible outcomes of these interactions. As a result, the calculated casual
loop models reflected the most simplified projection of the facilities operational process in relation to the
stakeholders. When these critical developments were evaluated with the members of the plant members,
they immediately responded with a positive attitude towards the challenges and issues faced by them as
indicated by the casual loop models.
As evident from the data analysis process, it is evident that the recurrence of the resource
shortage issues is a major finding in this context. The author goes on to perform further data analysis by
selecting a list of critical comments and responses from interview which collectively forms an evaluative
and comparative element for the study. From a casual loop model of resource shortage in the production
facility, the approach to capability building was initiated with the front line workers engaging in activities
to do the salient work of producing their marketable output as expected b y the top executives. Further
evaluation of the model led to a critical finding that indicated toward the lack of support for the

CARLITO G. GABRIEL, JR.

Reaction Paper – 2 “The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource
shortages”

employees who were willing to undertake workarounds for uninterrupted production process. Even if
these workers generated improvement ideas, most of the time, these ideas of workarounds could not be
implemented on time due to the lack of support from other departments like maintenance, management or
engineers. Therefore maintenance of work rates required an increase in the Assigned workers. In this
context, few selective responses indicated that the managers were sometime unresponsive against requests
to increase assigned workers in order to promote uninterrupted processes. Responses to the resource
shortage issues indicated that t he workers however do not wait for these supportive element most of the
times and rely on their personal investment of time and human resource to get a job done.
The core idea therefore reflected through the research is that these workarounds howsoever useful
and convenient are not practical solutions and have long term challenges to the industry. Therefore,
effective research and development by undertaking real life situation has been identified as the scope of
research by the author.
The approach to the research design has been towards the development of grounded theoretical
background through innovative data collection and analysis methods to understand chronic resource
shortage issues in the industry. For this an engineering and production unit has been selected for analysis
which has adopted a lean production approach. The aim has been to perform intensive on field research
by interacting with the advocates of the production facility and thereby perform a robust data analysis to
obtain key findings. In this context, the author aims to identify how the interaction between various
groups within the industry characterized by managers, supervisors, team leaders and normal skilled as
well as unskilled workers have an impact on the already prevalent resource shortage issues in the
industry.
In order to address the above mentioned approach, the study has been categorized into a number of stages
of research methods through the formation of integrated closed loop models that can effectively explain
the operational aspects of the industry as well as provide a base for forming important theoretical
derivations from the study.

The analysis of the data according to the structured research methodology has evolved through
the adoption of two critical casual loop diagrams. These played a major role in graphically representing
the issues in the end results of the resource shortage and system dynamic processes and therefore added
an extra edge to draw important conclusions from them. Lot of major and minor intervention like
balancing of work rates with assigned workers, reducing the amount of collaboration leading to
encouragement of the workarounds in the work culture and the implementation of work around to
increase the work rates has evolved from the theoretical analysis of these casual loop models. The end
result is an evaluation of the interactive aspect between managers and workers that lead to the key

CARLITO G. GABRIEL, JR.

Reaction Paper – 2 “The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource
shortages”

findings of this study. However, further research into the impact of the system failures which lead to
increase in workarounds must be performed to understand to what extent the consideration of
workarounds is healthy for any production line and when necessary interventions are required for the
same.
VI. Reference
Morrison, B. (2015). The problem with workarounds is that they work: The persistence of resource
shortages. Journal of Operations Management, 39-40, pp.79-91.

CARLITO G. GABRIEL, JR.