Success Enterprises is a sanitation company that is owned and managed by Mrs. Karen Deen who started the business from the ground up with her own savings ad family loans in 1978. She had shown a deep interest for this type of business from the young age of 9 as she observed her father in his very successful cane hauling and heavy equipment company in the 1960s. After she received a yearly sanitation contract from the government and purchased five compactors from her brother she was able to manage her company with a small staff of 21 persons until 1981.
As the business grew more profitable, within three years the company was registered as a limited liability company with 75 employees. However, in the late 1980s, there was shrinkage in government expenditure which meant that she had to make cutbacks in staff, routes and vehicles.
The company has two supervisors Mrs. Julien and Mr. Sing who are to oversee the day to day tasks being done by the employees of the company meanwhile Mrs.
Deen carries out the more administrative side of things in the company. Mrs. Deen wants the company to maintain a family-oriented feel to it and in order to do so she has made herself too soft which has made her employees think of her as more of a mother figure and less of a boss.
“The core problem of Success Enterprises is a lack of proper leadership” Leadership can be defined as “the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision of a set of goals” CITATION Jud13 l 1033 (Robbins & Judge, 2013).
It is clearly seen throughout the case that Mrs. Deen’s poor leadership skills cause her to struggle to run the company smoothly and keep all of her employees in check. One of the main challenges that managers face is developing managerial effectiveness in which they lack the relevant skills to be more effective at work, such as time management prioritization, strategic thinking and decision making CITATION Jac16 l 2057 (Jackson, 2016).
Mrs. Deen’s vision for the company is that it is a family-friendly business however in attempts to make that vision a reality she has adopted traits of the paternalistic leadership style. Paternalistic leadership characteristics include things such as the leader being seen as a father or mother figure, having a likeliness to consult with employees before making a decision and their belief in the need to support their staff. These characteristics are not bad for a leader to have however they may not be very effective when dealing with delinquent employees because they do not see their leader as an authoritative figure and therefore do not take them seriously. Because of this it makes the leader or manager an easy target for the employees to take advantage of them in order to get what they desire or get away with criminal activities in the workplace.
In the “Journal of Business Ethics,” it speaks about the relationship between paternalistic leadership and organizational commitment and the data which was collected showed a result that there was a strong relationship between the ethical climate and affective commitment of employees (Erben, 2008). It is clearly seen in this case that Mrs. Deen’s paternalistic characteristics and lack of proper leadership skills is resulting in some of Success Enterprises’ employees to steal and get away with it as well as not completing their tasks at hand.
AnalysisLeadership has been identified as the core problem however there are secondary issues that are dependent on the core problem, these secondary issues are also known as satellite problems. The satellite problems, in this case, are motivation and communication.
Motivation can be described as “the processes that account for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal.” CITATION Jud13 l 1033 (Robbins & Judge, 2013). It is “the set of internal and external forces that initiate work-related behavior, and determine its form, direction, intensity, and duration.” CITATION Cra08 l 1033 (Pinder, 1998). There are two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic motivation deals with the non-financial aspects of rewards. It caters to the “psychological rewards that employees get from doing meaningful work and performing it well” CITATION Ken09 l 1033 (Thomas, 2009). Success Enterprises only provided one minimal component, which was being treated in a caring and considerate manner, which was seen throughout the case by Mrs. Deen’s paternalistic characteristics. An example of this was when Mr. Julien told her that something must be done about the delinquent employees and instead of taking action upon the employees her response was “We’ll see, Anthony. I know performance must improve, but I worry that these men have families.”
Extrinsic motivation is associated with tangible rewards, such as salary and fringe benefits, security, promotions, the work environment and its conditions. Some of the extrinsic rewards that Success Enterprises provided their employees with were workmen’s compensation, uniforms, good working conditions and relationships with management.
Motivation is a critical issue in this case because although the majority of generic extrinsic rewards were being provided to the staff of Success Enterprises there were still multiple complaints being made about staff being idle on the job, not returning to the office at the end of their route and valuable equipment going missing and being found at the homes of the employees.
These problems could have stemmed from commitment issues to the job, as the business recently had to issue job cuts and reduced staff from seventy-five to sixty persons. Hence, whereas the case stated that a majority of the workers felt content and satisfied with the job benefits, an essential element of extrinsic rewards would be regarded as unfulfilled, because job security could not be guaranteed due to the overall contraction of the economy.
These problems also could have been a result of the fact that there was no incentive of reward given to differentiate between the workers who did exceptionally well and those who did little to no work. Due to the fact that the delinquent workers were not being punished and the exceptional workers were not being rewarded, the employees most likely didn’t feel the need for them to work so hard and not be recognized for it because Mrs. Deen basically saw all her employees on the same level.
Communication can be defined as the process of transmitting information and common understanding from one person to another CITATION Key11 l 1033 (Keyton, 2011). Communication is a key element in ensuring that a company is run smoothly and successfully therefore it is the manager’s job to ensure that the company is engaging in proper communication. There are two forms of communication, formal and informal. Formal communication follows the chain of command whereas informal is not defined by the organization’s hierarchy.
Formal communication was not used in Success Enterprises. They seemed to be using an All Channel Communication Network as it broke the traditional upward downward communication flow. This is shown when employees would go directly to Mrs.Deen if need be to discuss various issues, give suggestions, communicate with each other and the supervisors. This is where every employee has but one boss to whom he or she reports and from whom they take orders and instructions.
Unity of command means that no individual employee should be subject to orders of more than one immediate supervisor. Thus it means that each individual employee would have only one man or woman as their superior and will receive orders only from him CITATION Pif93 l 1033 (Piffner & Robert, 1893). A successful organization should have formal guidelines for its employees to follow on a daily basis however that is not the case for Success Enterprises. There is an unclear unity of command because the company is being run solely by Mrs. Deen even though she has two supervisors, who of which were rotated on a weekly basic between the maintenance staff, 10 persons, and the route persons, 48 persons. This has proven to be an unethical operation put in place by Mrs. Deen because it is not possible for one superisor to monitor 48 persons who are on different routes. Proof of this is seen in the case where it states that “The route supervisor generally stayed at the office and monitored distress calls on a CB network. Sometimes he accompanied crews, but the areas were so wide that often instances of idling on the job by work crews went unnoticed until a complaint was lodged by a government checker.”
When these complaints were made to Mrs. Deen she has no policies in place for disciplining the delinquent employees, instead she gave multiple warnings and relocated them to other routes where the problems continued to occur because they employees figured their jobs weren’t at risk and that they could get away with anything.
Along with the lack of policies, another problem is that the supervisors had different managerial methods which meant that the employees had to adapt to a different method each week. This was proving to be confusing and frustrating for the employees as shown by Lee who stated, “I cyah take order from Mr. Singh one day and den Julien saying not so de next day, and den de boss lady saying someting else.” This is why the employees felt a disconnect in terms of their commitment towards the instructions of either supervisor and it could also be the reason that the supervisors were not gaining respect from the employees as they were constantly moving from one staff group to the next, therefore they felt no loyalty or reassurance to them. “Leader communication is the bridge that transmits behavioral intent to employees, thus creating the foundation for trust.” CITATION Jac02 l 1033 (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2002).
In order for the unfortunate circumstances at Success Enterprises to improve Mrs. Deen should try to implement these recommendations into her company. Implementing a change in leadership style, company rules, regulations and policies, repositioning of duties, intrinsic rewards and adding a clock-in/ clock-out system in the company are all useful factors that could help improve the current state of Success Enterprises.
It was clearly stated that the core problem at Success Enterprises was a lack of proper leadership due to the fact that Mrs. Deens paternalistic style of leadership was proving to be very ineffective and causing multiple issues in the company to arise. In order to deal with this core problem the recommendation would be for Mrs. Deen as well as her supervisors to attend leadership workshops and seminars in order to further educate themselves on how to improve on their leadership skills and make the proper adjustments in order for them to run Success Enterprises and its employees in an effective manner.
The downfall to this recommendation is that it could time a long time to implement due to the fact that it will be difficult for Mrs. Deen and the employees to adapt to the new leadership style. It is almost impossible for a mange to change their leadership style overnight because it something that they have grown accustomed to over the years and is somewhat part of who they are so there will be a long adjustment period associated with the implementation of this.
As previously mentioned in the analysis a successful organization should have formal guidelines for its employees to follow on a daily basis, by implementing this it would ensure that the company would have a guideline to refer to, so that in any case when issues and problems may arise there would be a set guide entailing the proper procedure and consequences to follow in order to effectively deal with the issue at hand. The employees stealing valuable equipment was a major issue that was mentioned in the analysis and it was clear that the employees only did this because they knew that they could get away with it due to the fact that there was no rules, regulations or consequences put in place to prevent them from doing it. By implementing these rules, regulations and policies it could help to improve the attitudes and behaviours of current and future employees because it would make it very clear as to what behaviours and actions are not tolerated at the company and that if these rules were not followed that there would be consequences for their actions or misbehaviours.
The downfall to this recommendation is that employees may not agree with the sudden change of order in the company and rebel instead of following the newly set rules.
One of the issues at Success Enterprises was that one supervisor was not enough to effectively oversee the route staff because there were multiple areas that the staff were working at and obviously one person cannot be in more than one place at a time, therefore the supervisors cannot properly fulfill their role. This was issue was even brought to Mrs. Deen’s attention by one of the supervisors. The recommendation to fix this problem is that the business should hire additional supervisory staff so that more than one supervisor can be on the job at once and the workload can be evenly shared between them, therefore making the job more manageable and more likely for the company to reach their requirements.
The downfall of this recommendation is that the company may not currently be able to afford to hire any extra employees at the moment therefore the company would need to wait until they have sufficient funds in order to implement this.
As previously stated in the analysis the employees at Success Enterprises were very unmotivated to do their jobs which was made obvious when they would not finish their required route and just stop when they got closest to their homes. All employees at the company were also seen as equal therefore those who were actually doing their job exceptionally well did not receive any appreciation for it which could have been the reason they felt no need to work hard if they weren’t being recognized. This recommendation can help to motivate these employees because they would have something to work harder for and it is something that can very easily be implemented into the company and it would have little to no costs. The company could provide recognition for their employees achievements simply through things, such as announcing an Employee of the Month, providing positive feedback or even giving them personalized “Thank You” gifts.
The final recommendation for Success Enterprises is for them to implement a clock-in/clock-out system into the company in order to ensure that employees fulfill their daily tasks instead of stopping when they got closest to home and to also reduce the risk of employees stealing. It was easy for employees to steal from the company and to go home early because there was no record of who was at the company and at what time, therefore implementing this will ensure that employees would have to get to work on time to clock-in and be present to leave work on time to clock-out and because there would now be a record of who was the company and when it would make it far more risky for employees to steal from the company and most likely discourage them from doing it because their chances of getting caught would be much higher.
The disadvantages to implementing this into the company are that the employees are not accustomed to be monitored like this therefore it would take some time for the employees to get accustomed to this new system since they are used to a more lenient workplace environment and may need to make adjustments in their personal lives in order to make suit.
In conclusion, the recommendation which Mrs. Deen should make an effort to implement into her business is to make a change in the overall leadership style of both herself and her supervisors due to the fact that a lack of proper leadership skills was the core problem of the case and if the core problem is dealt with it will be much easier to address the secondary issues which developed because of it. Implementing this recommendation into her business is also an affordable solution therefore it could be easily perused.
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