Leadership and Organizational Behavior at McDonalds - Research Paper Example

 Abstract With an increased emphasis for companies to come up with some key behavioral changes to ensure their operations run well, my research paper has keenly focused on how McDonalds can come up with effective behavioral changes to solve some key issues threatening to polarize the company activities. Some key issues that the company has to address include improving the employees’ welfare, helping its employees achieve a balanced work-private life, and also ensuring its employees work together despite their ethnic or cultural differences. Some of behavioral changes and structures the company should keenly integrate in its operations include issues like effective motivation policies to its employees, collective company operational change and improvement of its promotion and reward system. Introduction McDonalds is an organization which comprises over 30, 0000 local restaurants all over the world. The organization has hired almost 53 million employees in over a hundred countries that it does operate in. Being the largest world food retailer, McDonalds Company operates mostly under the American way of life. In its effort to retain its competitive edge over its rivals, the organization has come up with effective strategies to motivate its employees (Cooper and Rousseau, 2001, pp234). Being the number one fast food chain stores in the world, McDonalds raises over 75% of its total revenue from developed countries like Germany, France, Canada and the United States. McDonald’s Business Situation The company’s corporate management highly believes in the power of training and leadership at all levels of operation. The company has hugely invested a lot of money in search of talents and training of its employees. This vividly indicates that McDonalds company hugely believes in the potential of it employees. The company values and respects it employees. This is clearly evidenced with training which is offered not only to senior managers, but also to all other employees irrespective of their rank. Through this, the company has been able to reinforce and spread it culture and its core values and philosophy in all directions, not just downwards, but also vertically and horizontally (Cooper and Rousseau 2001, p.290). The main pillar of McDonald’s corporate values is its employees. McDonald’s corporate values encourage payment for the company employees at a rate above the local market rates. The company also ensures that employees’ payment and benefits are valued and adhered to. This act of McDonalds to fully address employees’ higher needs through provision of training makes employees feel important and valued (Johansen 2012, p.132). It creates a conducive organization relation thus, enhancing the company’s image which serves as a crucial factor behind its success. At McDonald’s restaurants, the business culture is always conducive to employees. McDonald’s culture presents a laid back environment to all its employees (Knights and Willmot 2007, p.146). The employees are always subjected to a relaxed environment, where they tend not to fear their managers and other senior employees. This in returns serves as a strength to the company as it is clearly known that fear in a working environment leads to diminishing of trust and communication, thus becoming a major hindrances to employees’ personal performance. At McDonald’s enterprises, workers are motivated with the social opportunity provided to them by the management. Managers always ensure that employees are subjected to a very casual environment where they can talk, chat, communicate, interact, and relate with other employees at their will (Knights and Willmott 2012, p.342). Many of the McDonald’s employees working during the evening shifts are mainly college students. Being of the same age, these students mostly share common cultural interests. McDonald’s management always presents them with opportunity to meet new people and socialize. At McDonald’s, the young employees are allowed a very conducive opportunities to interact and even if possible develop romantic relationship with their fellow employees, because doing so is not seen as a problem by the management. Issues Facing McDonald in Relation to Organizational Behavior Mainly, organizational behavior refers to the overall accepted and practiced culture by an organization. It highly influences how company employees interact, relate and associate with each other (Martin and Fellenz 2010, p.287). To some extent, organizational behavior influences the employees’ feelings towards the company. Some key organizational behavioral issues McDonald’s is facing include: problem of overcoming ethnic differences, problem of actually getting the correct manpower to provide both the skilled and semi skilled labor required by the company within its set standards and culture, the challenge of maximizing the employees productivity as well as allowing them adequate time to deal with their private life outside work place, and also ensuring that the company will maximize its productivity within the set ethical and cultural standards. (Walker 2011, p.163). McDonald’s Company is faced with a challenge to overcome ethnic and cultural diversity among its employees. The company has various employees from different regions. Each of its 53 million employees has different beliefs, opinions, and methods of working (Knights and Willmott 2012, p.342). This has proved to be a key challenge as different employees have found it difficult to work together because of their outstanding differences. This key problem can be solved through the application of theory X concepts. The theory states that people will only exercise self direction only if they are committed to company’s objectives, and the only way to make people get committed to firm’s objectives is through rewarding their achievement (Walker 2011, p.163). So McDonald’s should employ effective means to motivate its employees. This way, they will be able to get their employees’ commitment to the company’s objectives thus, making them forget their cultural outstanding differences. McDonald’s Company also faces a problem on how to ensure that all its employees are fairly treated and cared for at their respective work place. For a very long time, McDonald’s Company has been lucky to recruit very loyal employees who normally work very hard for the success of the organization (Johansen, 2012, pp222). This has posed a great challenge to the organization, as it tries to adopt appropriate measures to ensure these employees are well treated and rewarded for their effort. Fredrick Herzberg theory perfectly best offers solution to this crucial problem. In his theory, Herzberg explains how an employee can be motivated. His two factors theory explains the two set of factors that can be used to motivate employees. Using motivational factors like promotion and recognition as explained in this theory, any firm can motivate its employees. In our case, McDonald’s has to apply both motivational factors, like promotion of loyal employees, and hygiene factors, like pay and benefits, to motivate its employees and make them feel more appreciated. These two factors will keep employees on their toes to work even harder for the company as they will be seeking to earn required trust to get promotions and higher benefits (Johansen 2012, p.232). Another key challenge the McDonald’s Company is facing in relation to organizational behavior is how to ensure its operations are run out successfully and at the same time make its employees feel that they are cared for (Johansen 2012, p.142). Though, many McDonald’s employees receive conducive remunerations, majority of them have failed to achieve the right work-life balance. They tend to devote more of their energy to the operations of the company, forgetting their family chores. Herzberg theory offers variety of solutions to this problem too. In his motivation-hygiene theory, Herzberg gives two crucial methods that can be adopted by companies to help workers balance their work-private life. A hygiene factor like company policy administration can be adopted to solve this kind of a problem. In its policies, McDonalds may opt to include provision of day care services around the working premise for employees. This will hugely help female workers to have chance to breastfeed their young babies while at work (Cooper and Rousseau 2001, p.201). With such a facility in the company premises, many workers will have a chance to monitor their young children instead of leaving them with strangers back at their homes to be taken care of. This way many workers will feel attached to their families while being still at work. Alternative Solutions to the Above Issues An alternative solution that will overcome the problem of ethnic and cultural diversity is for all the branches under the umbrella of McDonalds Company to ensure they effectively control and even, to an extent, punish employees who try to divide employees in the line of race, culture or ethnicity. This is a concept from theory X, which states that to some extent employees need to be coerced, directed and even threatened with punishment incase they intend to disrupt organizational operations by either inciting other employees or creating unacceptable environment to others (Cooper and Rousseau, 2001, pp201). This will ensure that the workers employed by these outlets maintain unity and are purposed to achieve the company’s goals despite their cultural differences. The best solutions the company needs to adopt so as to solve its organizational behavior challenges mainly is the creation of programs to train employees on how to overcome their cultural differences and work together as a team. Secondly, the company should also consider provision of day care so as to cater for the personal welfare of majority of its employees (Cooper and Rousseau 2001, p.201).These two options are best placed to solve the key problems facing McDonalds. Conclusion Despite these organizational behavior problems facing by McDonald’s, the company still holds a cheer corporate image that prides itself on quality and cleanliness. In addition to this, the working culture displayed in McDonald’s Company is perfectly aligned to the firm’s corporate values, thus enabling it to perform better in the markets despite the prevailing challenges. Works Cited Cooper, Cary L, and Denise M. Rousseau. Employee Versus Owner Issues in Organisations. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2001. Print. Johansen, Robert. Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012. Print. Knights, David, and Hugh Willmott. Introducing Organizational Behavior and Management. Australia: Thomson, 2007. Print. Knights, David, and Hugh Willmott. Organizational Behaviour & Management. Andover: Cengage Learning, 2012. Print. Martin, John, and Martin R. Fellenz. Organizational Behaviour & Management. London: Suth-Western, Cengage Learning EMEA, 2010. Print. Walker, Anthony. Organizational Behaviour in Construction. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print. Read More