DECISION MAKING ---- DISCRETION Vs PERSPECTIVE

Perspective is a bundle of viewpoints with choice of angles for individuals. Prudence, maturity and good judgment are the ingredients of discretion. In decision making involving discretion there is always a battle with perspective. A decision is viewed as bad, prejudiced, favor or disfavor  based on perspective on which it is seen. Here below is a classic case of a decision viewed as blatant favoritism but having another perspective.

                               

Again Ram escaped a transfer from Bombay and people who were transferred far away were fuming. Complaints flowed to the Officers' Union on partiality, favoritism, nepotism and what not and even some of the top executives received appeals to intervene and render justice. It is a perennial issue for the bank, having more branches in rural/village/town or urban areas with the staff preferring to settle in metro cities.  "It is like distribution of poverty" was the statement of the leader of Union who did his best to pacify the agitated officers and requested them to focus on work.

The bank did have a policy on transfer but also made exceptions. When exceptions favor select individuals repeatedly it naturally raises questions of bias. While 'connections at the top' do help people to get favors, it is a universal phenomenon and tolerated by the mass with a sense of resignation as acceptable or tolerable injustice. But when repeatedly one individual gets the exception it becomes an eyesore and hence this fuming by the majority.

When persons in the same city were chosen for transfer on completion of five years, Ram was exempted as a "specialist'' officer. Again after a few years during the ten years criteria he escaped since he was convener of a Committee that had Board of Directors and the Chairman as members and the continuity of Ram with the Committee was considered essential and he was exempted. But people were aghast when again the ten years criteria was invoked after a few more years and Ram had completed seventeen years in the same city and yet he escaped.

When confronted by colleagues he decided to reveal the truth. Ram does not belong to Bombay but is from Orissa. When he joined the bank he lived in a dormitory and occupied a cot in a room of ten sharing the bathroom with many more and also struggled for his native food. He repeatedly requested and begged the bank almost every six months for a transfer to native state giving reasons of food, shelter, aged parents, delay of his marriage due to housing issues etc but was rejected and dejected. Even on completion of five years when others got native place posting he was denied as there was no vacancy in Orissa.

Finally when he was thirty four years of age he decided to marry and got a working girl and the two together decided to settle down in Bombay (which became Mumbai by then) more out of compulsion than desire. The search for house both for rent as well as for purchase was either elusive or beyond their means for a couple of more years forcing the newly married couple to live in their respective hostels. It is hardly five years since the two live in a house of their own in Mumbai with a willingness to live in Mumbai with their children just put in school after making heavy donations.

Now comes the rule for transferring Ram from Mumbai on a criteria stating you enjoyed posting at one place for more than ten years. The decision making authority was bold enough to exempt Ram after he explained his perspective of enjoying posting at place of choice for ten or more years.

Do you agree with the decision to exempt Ram?

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