Case Study Of Golden North Ice Cream Company

Background

Discuss about the Case study Of Golden North Ice Cream Company.

The organization I work for, is Golden North, an ice cream selling company, that offers rich and creamy ice cream products, made from the freshest milk and cream products of Australia. The company is headquartered in Laura, South Australia, and was established long back in 1923 (Golden North 2017).  The 90 year old company has emerged to be the favorite ice cream brand for so many Australians, simply because it refuses to compromise with the quality of the product offered. A wide range of new flavors such as Krazy Kolors and Lime Ice Cream, and the nutritious ingredient each of these products made from, account for the huge popularity of the company.

Mission Statement:

• The mission of the company is to offer natural and healthy ice cream products to the consumers, and to ensure the purest and finest fresh ingredients reach the consumers. Since we care for each of our consumers, our mission is to ensure the provision of the finest and healthiest products to them.
• Our mission is to ignite passion for fresh dairy products amongst the people of Australia.
• Our mission is to ensure that our annual revenue is shared amongst all the managers and the personnel according to their value, effort and contribution.

Vision Statement:

The vision of the company is to offer more innovative products in the market, and expand outside Australia, so as to emerge as the leading company in the ice cream retail industry.

Purpose:

The purpose of the company is to offer fresh, and 100% healthy ice cream products that will take care of the health of the consumer, while also managing the trusted brand reputation of Golden North Company as well.

Objectives:

To offer innovative ice cream flavors to the ice cream lovers and achieve product differentiation in a competitive market.

To raise the annual profit, of the company by 12% by 2018 (Love 2013).

To discover new opportunities for sustainable production of the products.

The organizational culture followed at my company is Adhocracy. As a result, as per the culture, each employee, managers as well as staffs and personnel, are encouraged to introduce innovative ideas, make free recommendations and work upon them. A creative, flexible and employee-friendly culture at workplace allows each employee to take work in a highly dynamic work environment (Alvesson 2016). The managers are instructed to encourage the growth of enthusiasm and innovative mindset amongst the employees that in turn would increase their engagement. Consequently, as a Retail Manager, I employ the use of Transactional Leadership style. This allows me to engage myself fully with the ideas and recommendations of my staffs, motivating them to make new suggestions, while also keeping a track of their performance and guiding them, when necessary (McCleskey 2014).

The diverse and inclusive culture is believed to be critical to our business. The company hires the indigenous group of Australians, apart from the Chinese and the Singaporean people are hired. Some Indian students who work part-time with our companies are also provided with equal pay opportunities. No cultural discrimination is shown towards recruitment and retention of employees belonging to diverse backgrounds. However, most of the leadership positions are occupied by the Australians only.

In order to communicate with the indigenous Australians, I often need to use sign languages and symbols to make myself understood, as most of them do not understand English. I also need to speak slowly and distinctly. While speaking with the Chinese and Singaporean employees, I prefer to communicate as per their corporate culture. I need to speak slowly and adopt a polite and refined approach while speaking. Thus, instead of saying “Finish the work within the deadline”, I need to say “Would you like to complete the work within the deadline?”. Due to limited body language, they appear unresponsive at times, and hence I need to clear out if I am understood or not (Kuriki et al. 2015)

I have scored a total of 100 in the workplace integrity self-assessment test. This test helped me realize that the chief strengths of my company are motivated workforce, democratic leadership style and innovative culture. However, the weaknesses include lack of control and supervision at times, leading to poor performance, and absence of open communication and coordination amongst the culturally diverse staffs.

This problem of absence of workplace coordination is present in the Marketing Team, that is comprising of 20 employees, out of which 7 are Chinese, and 5 are Singaporeans. Each one of them formulates creative ideas, and yet the marketing efforts are often impeded by lack of communication amongst them.

The objectives of the Marketing Team are:

• To promote the products on digital media
• To highlight the unique features of the product through eye-catching advertisements
• To boost the sale growth.

Action Plan:

Action	Objectives	Time Scale
Set up a intercultural communication training session.	This will help the employees become aware of and respect each other’s cultural backgrounds.	2 months.
Organize in-house seminars.	This will help in explaining the shared responsibility of each employee within the department.	Once a week, a month.
Weekly meetings to be organized with the team members.	This will help them bond well, exchange opinions and understand the company’s mission.	Every week for 2 months.

References:

Alvesson, M. ed., 2016. Organizational culture. Sage.

Golden North., 2017. Home – Golden North Ice Cream. [online] Available at: https://goldennorth.com.au/ [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].

Kuriki, S., Ricoh Company, Ltd., 2015. Wireless communication with diversity control. U.S. Patent 8,934,355.

Love, T. 2017. Lifeline for a sweet SA favourite. [online] Adelaidenow.com.au. Available at: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/lifeline-for-a-sweet-sa-favourite/news-story/8bb294822c898188e34f779ecb201f53 [Accessed 7 Sep. 2017].

McCleskey, J.A., 2014. Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), p.117.