Critical Thinking Exercise

Abstract

For each case below, please do the following: 1. Identify the main “critical thinking questions” – that is, what are the key questions that you would want to have answered before making a decision. 2. Make some suggestions for solving the situation. Case #1: Input Supply Problem James M. has a very big dilemma. His company advertises that they sell bean seed, yet for three years in a row they have had problems meeting their customers’ demand. Each year they make a plan for their bean seed production, just before planting time, but they are never able to realize good tonnages from their outgrowers. Sometimes the tonnages they receive are only one quarter of what they have planned for! James’ staff member, Mwangi, who oversees the outgrowers, says that the reason is that the parent seed is poor, but James is not too sure. James wishes that he could increase the outgrower yields because been seed is in very short supply and farmers want it. Beans also sell for a very high price in the market – a price which has recently increased rather significantly – so farmers could make income from their crop if they had good seed. James, who is the MD of the company, is spending time overseeing the company’s maize and sorghum production on their own farmland so he is not able to look into the problem. He has heard from the local research station, which supplied the original parent seed two years ago, that it was good parent seed. Last year James planned to sell 40 t of bean seed at 40 Ksh a kg, but ultimately only had 16 t to sell. The small piece of good news was that he was able to sell the seed at 60 Ksh/kg because bean prices had risen so steeply.