Two Bosses at the Loom
Kamrup Handloom Cooperative in Guwahati has 40 weavers, three supervisors and one secretary. All weavers work in a single production department, and the cooperative sells through two wholesalers. It now plans a retail showroom and online sales within 45 days. One member proposes departmentalising by function - production, marketing and finance. Another proposes departmentalising by product - mekhela chador and shawls - because the designs, looms and buyers differ. Meanwhile, the secretary's nephew, who is not on the payroll, visits the loom shed and tells weavers to change designs, bypassing the supervisors. Weavers now take design instructions from three people. Absenteeism is 18 per cent and rejections are 9 per cent, against a cooperative norm of 4 per cent. Each supervisor handles about 13 weavers.
1. Which basis of departmentalisation would you recommend, and why? Consider size, product differences and coordination costs.
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Recommendation: functional departmentalisation, with product-based work teams inside production, rather than a full product structure.
Reasoning:
- Size: 40 weavers and two products are too small for separate product departments, each needing its own marketing and finance staff. Duplication would raise costs without enough volume to absorb them.
- Product differences: mekhela chador and shawls do differ in design, loom setting and buyers, so design and quality control need product-specific attention. This can be provided by two product foremen inside the production department, not by separate marketing departments.
- Coordination: the cooperative is opening one showroom and one online channel. A single marketing department gives one brand and one price policy. Splitting marketing by product at this stage would create two competing sales voices.
- Control: a product structure would require more managers than the cooperative can afford, and it already has unclear design authority.
Proposed structure: Production (with mekhela chador and shawl teams), Marketing (showroom and online), and Finance. Revisit product departmentalisation only if one product line grows large enough, for example above 40% of turnover.
2. Explain the organisational problem created by the secretary's nephew and state two steps to correct it.
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The nephew creates a second, informal line of command. Weavers receive instructions from supervisors and from the nephew, so unity of command is broken. Consequences include role ambiguity, conflicting design changes, an inability to fix responsibility for the 9% rejection rate, and loss of credibility for supervisors who are accountable but not in control.
The nephew is also part of the informal organisation. Informal channels can spread ideas quickly and meet social needs, but they become damaging when they carry authority without accountability.
Steps to correct it:
- The secretary should issue a written instruction that all design changes are routed through the production supervisor, using a design approval note. This restores the scalar chain without ending informal contact.
- If the nephew's design knowledge is valuable, engage him formally as a design adviser with a defined reporting line and no power to instruct weavers. Record every design change in a register so each change can be traced to an approver.
3. Should a fourth supervisor be appointed? Use span of control and the given figures to argue.
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The average span is 40 ÷ 3 ≈ 13.3 weavers per supervisor. Numerically this is not extreme, but span of control depends on the complexity of the work: design changes, handloom setting, absenteeism and rejects make supervision demanding. Two points follow:
- High absenteeism (18%) and rejects (9%) suggest supervision is already stretched or unclear, not that 13 is automatically too many.
- The showroom and online channel will take supervisors' time for quality checks and design approvals.
Recommendation: appoint a fourth supervisor and create four teams of 10, but only after the reporting line is fixed; otherwise a fourth supervisor adds to the confusion.
Cost test: if monthly sales are ₹6 lakh, reducing rejects from 9% to 5% saves about 4% of ₹6 lakh, i.e. ₹24,000 a month in rework and returns, which can cover a supervisor's salary. If sales are much lower, first use a lead weaver as team coordinator to reduce the span before adding a paid post.