Organizational Behavior - Kudler Fine Foods

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Organizational Behavior: Kudler Fine Foods
Brenda Wagner, human resources manager for Kudler Fine Foods has asked for a review of employee files and other documents in order to assess readiness for change. To make a proper assessment, an examination of the organizational culture and structure and an analysis of the leadership style will be explored. In addition, an examination of how the leadership style determines employee motivation will also be looked at. The analysis will also include both external and internal drivers of change for Kudler Fine Foods. In addition to this assessment, an attempt to incorporate appropriate benchmarking examples will be done in order to provide some background for the management team at Kudler.
Organizational culture
Kudler Fine Foods has created a team culture. The organizational fit for Kudler could best be described as a baseball team culture. Baseball team culture is found in organizations in rapidly changing environments, with short product life cycles, with high-risk decision making, and dependent on continuous innovation for survival. (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002.) All retail organizations need to move quickly. Consumers are fickle and are constantly searching for the next new thing.
Employees who are attracted to this type of environment are typically a risk-taker, enjoy being a "free agent", show little commitment to one employer, and thrive on time pressures and stress. (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002.) Kudler's work force is perfectly ready for change. This type of culture will easily support and envision a change. This type of culture is also easily empowered.
Even though the culture at Kudler's is naturally fit for change, certain key points of transition will need to be employed in order to make change successful in this baseball team type of organizational culture. It may be more difficult to incorporate the change as a piece of the culture due to difficulties retaining this type employee. The employees may not stay with the company long enough to incorporate the change part into the corporate culture. This lack of employee retention would additionally impact the consolidation of improvements and additional change.
Cisco Systems is a company that produces routers for Internet traffic. It is also a very fast, changing retail environment. Cisco has created the same form of corporate culture as Kudler. Kudlers is still a relatively small company. Corporate executives are still very involved with employees and day-to-day decisions. At a time of change, it will be important to retain the employee merit increases, paid for performance bonuses, and the spot bonus programs that are currently in place.
The CEO of Cisco, John Chambers, has fostered an open environment. He is very close to his people, even to the point of not having an office, but sharing a cubicle with the other employees. John Chamber's motto: Never ask your employees to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself. (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002.) Kudler's management needs to stay very involved on all levels of employment in order to make change successful in the current organizational culture, much like Cisco management.
Organizational structure
There is definitely a vertical organizational structure at Kudler, due to the structure of the ...