Development of a Quality Decision-Making Scenario to Measure How Employees Handle Out-of-Condition Grain

Quality management systems have been shown to improve inventory management, increase internal efficiencies, and enhance the ability of businesses to meet customer specifications, but little work has explored the role of employee decisions in the success of such systems. This work used the methodology of process-tracing to examine the decision-making process of grain elevator employees (n=164) as they determined how to handle out-of-condition corn. Employees overwhelmingly chose to either follow management orders or to make a "non-choice" rather than to make a decision which would preserve the quality of the grain. Employees equally emphasized decision-making dimensions of storage risk and company policy in their decision process, suggesting a conflict in how employees approach the quality decision task.