As Advertising Manager for your company, you are responsible for making sure all ads produced for items on sale every week are accurate. This week however, you noticed that some items were mislabeled with the wrong prices and that the ads are being distributed nationwide instead of the regular targeted zones. To correct the problem would require your company to recall the old ads, print new ads and distribute them at a higher rate per piece. The overall cost in the end would be $125,000 over the budget. What would your decision be and how would you defend your actions to the CEO?

Answer and Explanation:

What I would do is to perform as much damage control as I can. Regardless of what I do, I know that we would go over budget with recalling and reprinting the ads, so the best thing to do is to see where we can be able to fix the issue without going that much over the budget. The next thing that I would do is find out where the miscommunication came from and who made the error that caused the issue. Once I have found out, I then would reprimand the employee. This is a big issue that occurs so a written disciplinary action would have to be performed so that the employee knows there seriousness of the mistake. After that is all taken care of I would then hold a meeting with my department about the situation so that everyone can be aware so that they do not repeat the same mistake. This type of situation is where good problem-solving skills come to play. A good decision maker searches concepts, solutions, or ideas that are novel in responding to a situation that has not occurred before. (Wierenga, B., & van Bruggen, G. H. 1997). I will apologize, also take responsibility and explain my actions on rectifying the issue with the CEO. I would assure him that something like that would never happen again and that measures have been taken to ensure that.