Rajotal Restaurant Organisational Culture - Case Study Example

Rajotal Restaurant Organisational Culture Name: Course: Institution: Date: Introduction Organisational culture concept emerged as national culture implications in the period between 1985 through arguments developed by Deal and Kennedy. Later other social scientists such as Handy described organizational culture through four basic approaches namely power, role, task and person cultures. Subsequently, O’Reilly, Chatman and Caldwell (1991) expanded the organizational culture concept to incorporate and include seven key concepts namely innovation and risk taking, attention to detail, people orientation, team orientation, attention to detail, team orientation aggressiveness and stability (Barko & Nemati, 2004). In this regard, the social scientist theorists developed a basis for the modern day organizational cultures components and understanding. Currently, organizational can be defined, as the processes, approaches, and behaviours adopted by employees in an organization. As such, it implies and defines the approaches adopted both in formal and informal work setting in the respective organisations. In the wake of increased global competition, organisations embark on the development of organizational cultures as key among their market competitive strategies and approaches. Therefore, organizational culture can further be described as the process and approach distinguishing one organization form others in the market. As such, Schlosser (2012) argued that it serves as a sustainable competitive edge due to its hardship and difficult on emulation in the short run by competitors. This essay offers a cultural review of the Rajotal Restaurants limited. In this regard, it evaluates its key cultural components as well as their implications on the organizational performance. Organisational Overview The Rajotal Restaurants Limited is a chain of hotels and restaurants serving in the Australian hotel industry. The organization was set up in 200 with a single rented premise in Melbourne Australia. However, over the years, the organization has spread especially in northern Australia owning a total of 16 outlets, 5 of them within Melbourne. In its expansion approaches and strategy, the organization has adopted an approach of renting out premises in a bid to lower the initial start-up capital requirements. Further, the renting premise ownership approach increases the organizational outlets flexibility in that the organization can shift and transfer its business form one edge of a town to the other if survey forecast increased demands on the new locations. The organization is based on the organizational mission of providing high quality and affordable fast foods services. As such, it developed a vision of developing and evolving into an international and global market leader in the fast foods industry, competing with global market leaders such as McDonalds. In this regard, the organization operates on key organizational values and principles that seek to establish an organizational rand and market positioning in fast foods industry. An industrial analysis of the fast foods industry in Australia where the organization operates establishes that the changing consumer buying behaviour through increased economic activities as well as a growing 24 hours economy increases the organizational market penetration probabilities. However, the existing Australian culture, poses a major challenge to its expansion and long term growth. In this case, the Australian society, unlike the USA and European markets where fast foods are readily consumed, is reserved and hesitant to consume such foods, due to the registered increased health complication cases such as obesity congruence with the fast foods consumption. Further, the existing market competition in Northern Australia poses an operational challenge with both local and international competitors. As such, in a bid to oust the existing market and industry challenges, the organization developed its own fast foods brands for both the adults and children. In this regard, the organization markets its products as healthy and low sugar levels, to compete against the growing health needs in the fast food industry. The Organisational Culture Kumari (2013) argued that the organizational values and principles form part of their operational cultures. Therefore, this section explores the Rajotal Restaurants values that form its market operations costs. One among the organizational key values is customer care. In this regard, the organization seeks to establish and develop quality and high standards customer care services. The development of this operational approach is based on the argument that high quality consumer services increases an overall organizational market performance. Keaveney and Parthasarathy (2001) conducted a study to evaluate the role of customer care services to an organizational performance. The study developed a hypothesis that customer care directly implicated on consumer satisfaction and loyalty. In its analysis, it established that indeed the provision of high customer care services offers organisations increased market competitiveness. As such, its review established that organisations with better customer care services experienced an increased customer loyalty than counterparts with low customer care services and regard. Customer Services On its part, the Rajotal Restaurants has developed a customer care services culture. As already argued, the organization operates in a relatively competitive and volatile fast foods industry. Consequently, in its approach, the organization sought to counter competition through improved services. Therefore, the organization has over the years developed an organizational culture of customer car preference. In this regard and in a bid to increase its services quality, the organization has distinct customer care desks in their respective outlets. The desks collect consumers’ opinions, complaints and recommendations on a regular basis. As such, through such desk collection, the organization has developed superiors’ customer services systems. In addition, as an approach into building a superiors customer services team, the organization recruits and trains its employees on respective customer care services, promoting services delivery knowledge among employees both in the short and long runs. In the services delivery, the organization insists on prompt order processing as well as the development of consumer specific fast food products apart from the general supplied organizational brands. The adoption of this organizational culture, has served a great merit to the overall functioning and its expansion in the last 14 years since its inception. On one hand, increased customer care services have considerably increased the organizational and brands reputations in the market. As such, the organization has successfully branded and positioned itself in the market as a superior quality provider, allowing for the charging of relatively high prices, a major contributor to increasing profit margins. In addition, the adoption of this organizational culture and the subsequent customer loyalty has enabled the organization increase its demand against the soiling Australian fast food industry competition. As such, the organizational consumer service culture has enabled the corporation attain and develop a sustainable market competitive edge. Servicescape Culture The Rajotal organization has developed an increased emphasis on the development of a superior servicescape across its premises and outlets. A servicescape in services delivery is described as the nature of the external involvement through which respective organisations operate in. Miles, Miles and Cannon (2012) developed a study on the application of servicescape in the quality and nature of services delivery. In the analysis, the study established that the use of servicescape quality enhanced service delivery and quality perception. Therefore, Kapoor, Paul and Halder (2011) recommended that for organisations to enhance and facilitate the provision and delivery of their services, it is imperative that such organisations in the market t develop and improve their servicescape. Servicescape incorporates the development and enhancement of support services such as venue management through they are secondary to core services and products offered. In its enhancement and conformance to servicescape needs, the organization adopted standard premises features. In this regard, the organization has over the years established similar and coinciding restaurant settings. For instance, the organization has adopted a culture of providing playing fields outside its cafeterias. The playing fields provide avenues through which the consumers and children can relax as their unique orders are processed and products delivered. Moreover, a key servicescape feature in the organizational outlets is the provision of internet wifi services. As such, the organization has developed a culture of supporting technology development and conformance through offering internet access. Therefore, the organization has established a servicescape culture through which attracts an increased number of consumers. Moreover, the organization has enhanced its servicescape high standards status through its increased ambience in the interior décor. The organization has developed blue and red interior décor colours decorations, which characterize its restaurants across the Australian market. Moreover, the adoption and installation of techno surf ordering and payment features has increasingly served as distinguishing organizational culture feature. The adoption of this servicescape enhancement culture within Rajotal Restaurants has increased its market competitiveness and share in the Australian market. On one hand, the adoption and incorporation of a techno support culture, supports its attractiveness and branding initiatives that seeks to draw on the existing technology reliant population (Quartly, Swain & Cuthbert, 2013). The fact that a majority of the Australian middle level workers, who form part of the largest fast food industry market segment, access the internet regularly increases its internet provision influence. In this regard, the culture and operational modality adopted across the organizational chain has increased its appeal to this category as they can work online while their orders are processed, unlike other local Australian fast food restaurants. Further, the servicescape culture, has increasingly led to not only the attraction of consumers based on the product brand features, but also serves as a supplementary marketing tool to enhance consumer satisfaction in the market. Therefore, based on this analysis, it is apparent that the organization benefits from the adoption and incorporation of the servicescape concept in its operations. Centralized Decision Making Rajotal Restaurants' organization is a partnership business, operated and owned by three active partners. The partners serve as the CEO, Chief financial officer as well as the COO (Chief operations officer) respectively. All these organizational executives have their premises located at Melbourne Australia. Therefore, this is where strategic organizational decisions and strategies are developed. As such, decisions are developed and initiated from the headquarters and passed on to the respective outlets manages for implementation. The outlets managers have their mandate and powers restricted to operational decisions on supervision and lack executive powers on strategic organizational resources management such as recruitment, promotion or capital management. Therefore, the employees and their supervisors have no direct contribution in the organizational strategic management and decision making due to its centralized decision making process adoption culture. Bembenek, Jankowska-Mihulowicz and Piecuch (2014) develop an argument on the role and implications o an organisations decision making approach on the overall functioning and overall performance. As such, the authors argued that there exist two key strategic decision making platforms namely the centralized and decentralized systems. On one hand, a centralized system is characterized by controlled central management through which the executive develops key strategic decisions for the organization, often located at the headquarters. On the other hand, a decentralized decision making process is characterized with an increased duties and powers delegations to respective organizational units and branches, where the respective managers, supervisors and employees are actively involved in the decision making process. Although relatively involving and reduces resistance to developed policies and recommendations, the process is lengthy, time consuming as well as expensive in the long run. The adoption of a centralize decision making culture at Rajotal Restaurants has resulted into a mixture of both positive and negative implications on its overall performance. Positively, the approach has enhanced market flexibility (Saiyadain, 2003). With increased competition, and changing consumer dynamics, the industry is characterized by the need to flexibly respond to the changing needs. In this regard, the centralized decision making process enables the organization enjoy increased changing needs such as packaging shapes and sizes. This offers it a competitive advantage over global market competitors such as McDonalds. On the contrary, the centralized decision making process has led to a variance between the specific outlet needs and the developed policies. Although the Australian fast food industry shares common traits, respective market segments have distinct traits that require unique products and brand management approach. In addition, the centralized decision making negates the role of employees in the decision making process. As such, this has led to increased organizational resolution and strategies implementation resistance, subsequently slowing down the overall organizational performance and success rates. Zero Hours Employment Contracts The Zero hours employment contract is the employment system through which an employer enters into a contract with prospective and potential employees. However, the employer does not guarantee the employees any amount of work and functions are only delegated in times of need. On the other hand, the employees have the legal capacity to decline and reject work offers, if such does not fit in their other respective programs (Barnett & Scrope, 2008). Moreover, the employees have no definite wage and remunerations mounts and payment is based on amount of work performed within a given period of time. In this regard, Rajotal Restaurants adopts this employment approach. As such, 90% of its workforce bears the ‘workers’ tag and not the employees tag. Thus, due to the organizational employment terms, only the supervisors and managers are employed on a semi-permanent basis under the annual hour’s employment contract system (Pasfield, 1999). Therefore, the organization call on duty the number of employees required based on the overall demand trends and seasons, as the fast foods industry is categorized by seasonal demand fluctuations, alternating between peak and off-peak seasons. Hence, only the required number of employee is called on duty on a weekly basis. The adoption of this organizational employment culture results to both favourable and unfavourable outcomes on the organizational performances in the market. On one hand, the employment system has enabled increased employment costs reduction. The zero hours employment systems reduce on the benefits employed by the respective organizational workforce. For instance, the workforce does not enjoy paid sick offs as well as compensation on redundancy. Further, it allows the organization to alter and fluctuate its labour costs on the low seasons through engaging a reduced number of employees. On the other hand, the employment culture affects the ability of the organization to establish stable labour and employee behaviour cultures for instance an employee’s perception. This is caused by the drastic and regular changes in the organizational workforce making it relatively difficult for the respective managers and supervisors to impact personal cultures such as self discipline and motivation on their workforce. Consequently, the process denies the organization the much needed individual employee behaviours symmetry culture across the outlets. Conclusion In summary, this essay reviews the concept of organizational culture and its implications, both positive and negative. In order to develop a practical case study analysis of this theoretical issue, the essay evaluates the organizational culture application and implications on the Rajotal Restaurants. The organisations manufacture and supplies fast food products in the Australian market, with over 16 outlets. Over the 14 years of its operations, as the essay evidences, the organization has developed key organizational culture approaches. One among them is customer service quality enhancement as well as servicescape cultures. Both of these cultures seeks to increase consumers’ satisfaction as well as boost their loyalty, a key sustainable competitive edge in the highly competitive Australian fast foods industry. In addition, the organization applies the centralized decision making culture that increases its overall market flexibility, but increases policies application resistance. Moreover, the organization employs the zero hours employment contracts system where employees are paid on the basis of work performed rather than on permanent basis. However, despite its role n reducing labour costs, it poses the risk of workforce unreliability. References Barko, C. D., & Nemati, H. R. (2004). Organizational data mining: Leveraging enterprise data resources for optimal performance. Hershey, Pa.: Idea Group Publishers Barnett, D., Scrope, H., & Law Society (Great Britain). (2008). Employment law handbook. London: Law Society. Bembenek, B., Jankowska-Mihulowicz, M., & Piecuch, T. (2014). Strategic Decision Making Within the Cluster in the Context of Organisational Entrepreneurship. Paper presented at the 425-433. Kapoor, R., Paul, J., & Halder, B. (2011). Services marketing: Concepts & practices. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Education. Keaveney, S. M., & Parthasarathy, M. (2001). Customer switching behavior in online services: An exploratory study of the role of selected attitudinal, behavioral, and demographic factors. Academy of Marketing Science. Journal, 29(4), 374. Kumari, L. (2013). Bank’s employees' perception about quality of work life and its impact on job behaviour in district Ludhiana. Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, 4(2), 62-68. Miles, P., Miles, G., & Cannon, A. (2012). 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