Management, Organisational Culture and Industrial Relations in Whitbread Plc - Admission/Application Essay Example

A critical examination of Whitbread Plc Business Summary Whitbread Plc is a company that delivers hospitality services and products to customers in the food and lodging industries. Whitbread has a diverse group of different business holdings, each with their own unique brand name. All of these businesses, in this report, will be considered as not only extensions of the Whitbread brand, but as a singular business entity controlled by Whitbread executive decision-makers. Whitbread must work within dynamic, service-focused sales environments in order to stay competitive with other long-standing or newly-launched food and lodging competitors. Therefore, maintaining focus on improving organisational culture, defining management roles and obligations, and improving industrial relations are some very important factors for this business. Because Whitbread is so service-focused and must cater to different demographic trends and preferences, with customers of vast socio-economic backgrounds, it was a logical choice for critical examination at the internal level. Management, organisational culture and industrial relations Whitbread operates in an environment where competition is intense and customers are willing to defect to different restaurants based on incentives and other marketing promotions. In 2004, Whitbread owned or held the licence to operate Pizza Hut, TGI Friday’s, Costa Coffee, Beefeater, and Dome (Cheverton, 2004). Without going into further detail about competition, it is necessary to identify that management must be equipped with the knowledge required to coordinate multiple operations. This involves establishing specific control measures to ensure that decision-making is being conducted in a way that meets with strategic goal setting and make senior-level decisions which move these businesses forward with unique internalised business strategies. Whitbread, under these conditions, must first consider the needs of all stakeholders, especially those who invest in the future of the company. Whitbread maintains a responsibility to the shareholders when determining strategic intent and forward operating goal-setting for different brand divisions. Currently, Whitbread is in discussion with Coffeeheaven, a central European chain of bars, to acquire the brand and expand the company’s portfolio of holdings (Blitz, 2009; Hughman, 2009). In order to accomplish this, Whitbread requires the management talent necessary to work with multiple levels of employees and business authority stemming from Poland, China, Russia and other central European countries in order to develop plans at the internal level that will lead to long-term business success. Therefore, investors are closely scrutinising the strategic decision-making of top leaders responsible for multiple brand investment and/or decision-making whilst requiring the interpersonal skills necessary to create meaningful relationships with peoples of diverse cultural backgrounds and professional needs. Because of these operating conditions and the external environment that places high demand on managers at Whitbread, the company requires a well-defined structure of power that segregates controls and clearly establishes lines of authority. Says one management theorist, in regards to management of the organisation, “If power lies in the strategic coordination of resources rather than mere possession of them, then a strategic conception of power offers the opportunity for subordinate groups to develop coalitions capable of challenging dominant groups and effecting a change at the corporate, industry or issue level” (Alvesson and Willmot, 2003, p.6). Whitbread does not necessarily seem to fit this definition of power and control simply because of its focus and structure toward service operations. For example, Whitbread actually maintains more of a unitarist type of business environment where all members of the organisation, at all levels, share a common and harmonious cooperation that promotes mutual cooperation and common purpose. Subordinate groups attempting to take dominion from dominant groups would, in so many ways, destroy the success of this service-minded company. Whitbread supports flexible working schedules, offers employee opinion surveys with feedback procedures in place, and a round-the-clock counselling service for employees and their family to ensure well-being in subordinate groups (Whitbread, 2009). The importance of developing strong sociological relationships, at the internal level, is the foundation of what management roles are built upon before most decision-making occurs. For example, at the planning level, managers at Whitbread must also consider recruitment and selection for overseas business divisions using local talent or expatriate business talent. Whitbread had been considering the sale of its Marriott UK hotels recently, a sale of over 52 different business units in the process (WBBE, 2005). This type of ongoing growth and/or divesting of different holdings make this environment highly dynamic where employee needs and the international business reputation of Whitbread brands is always in public scrutiny. How the business managers decide to deal with the process of divesting workers across international boundaries will create either positive or negative thoughts toward the business and its reputation. Because planning must regularly consider the needs of employees in both international and domestic environments, management style must remain human-resources focused and avoid the conflicts of group control efforts which might occur in a less service-focused business. Coordination of resources is key in this industry in order to achieve company success with each restaurant or lodging facility because the environment is highly dynamic. For instance, a consumer group that has been shown to offer high patronage to a Whitbread holding might quickly be turned to a different competitor because of innovative efforts to capture the consumers’ attention at the marketing level. In order to maintain a high level of quality customer service, which is at the heart of business success, it requires an internal organisational structure that is flexible and also focused on service dimensions. Budgets that are now devoted to a unanimous promotional strategy designed to build higher customer patronage could easily lead to a defunct advertising scheme, costing far more than the return on investment, leaving each business unit struggling for profitability and creating a need for rapid changes to marketing and promotional strategy. Under this stressful and often unpredictable type of environment, employee satisfaction becomes a key essential ingredient to ensure stability at the internal level so that employees are responsive to changing external trends. Whitbread has expanded its pension contributions to create an attractive benefits offering (Stapleton, 2009), only one example of the strategic obligations of managers to avoid negative employee sentiment in regards to their role within the organisation or their perception of unity that managers definitely want employees to carry at Whitbread. Strategy, for these business leaders, is focusing on securing positive perceptions of the business and its leadership, using terminology and action which is relevant to, sometimes, unsophisticated employee groups. If employees perceive that they have gained a higher element of control within the organisation, or consider that their just-off-the-mark concepts of business momentum can be justified over that of the decision-making of senior officials, managers would have immediate difficulty satisfying customers due to disruption at the internal, sociological level. Another organisational theorist provides, “Contemporary sociology is weakened by the rise of views of society as an agent-less system of total domination” (Casey, 2001, p.13). What does this mean and how is it applied to Whitbread? When sociologists consider that work groups can be classified and categorised, ensuring that each demographic group fits within some variety of profile, either behavioural or sociological, this suggests that society is actually a fixed and unchanging principle of behaviour that can be predicted. The view of this fixed and rigid society weakens organisational sociology to the degree that it becomes difficult for a singular business model to ensure sales and profit success for businesses that choose to benchmark. This is what is occurring at Whitbread at the organisational level and the management level, where changing social dimensions are the actual reality of whether or not the business will achieve higher consumer following. In this service environment, society is not a predictable and fixed variable in the business equation, it is an external characteristic that exerts considerable pressure on how the business structures itself internally. This shows a type of innovation in leadership at Whitbread where the managers have become transfixed by ever-changing social categories and preferences to the degree that they no longer consider this aspect of society to be impossible to work within. They have become multi-adaptable leaders that understand how to reach sophisticated and unsophisticated employees and clients whilst creating an air of unity within each power level at the organisation (even when fraudulent for the sake of business stability). It is quite likely that the need for round-the-clock counselling services would be rejected by employees at a less service-focused organisation that worked under constant professional obligations and expectations for behaviour. Again, this indicates that Whitbread management understands what drives action and emotional response in employees to avoid the internalised struggles for power domination that could create havoc to the company profit margin and future brand power. A previous marketing executive of one of the organisations’ holdings offers, “Running Whitbread beer turned out to be one of the best periods of my life” (Templeman, 2009, p.21). Top executive testimonials such as this identify that Whitbread, for its focus on human resources and, when necessary, silk-screening of employees to ensure an air of ongoing unification are brilliant management and organisational manoeuvres to ensure that control is achieved. Any organisation that fits within the profile of conflict organisation, always unable to remove the disruptive pathogen of intergroup agitation, would consider the efforts of Whitbread leadership to be worthy of examination to keep social unity at multiple tiers of employee role and job function. This report was intended to be a critical examination of Whitbread, taking into consideration the role of management and how it fits within the broader inter-organisational context of employee relations and organisational culture. In areas of control, Whitbread leadership have developed a series of unique employee satisfaction tools at the internal marketing level that, when presented to customers in a unified fashion that focuses on sociological connections with buyers in multiple market environments, provides considerable strategic growth opportunity for Whitbread units. This is a market environment that, in real-life and real-time, runs many different risks at the employee level, especially in low-level service roles such as wait staff or other customer-oriented business roles. These risks include instant alienation of clients through improper body language or other suggestive behaviours, inconsistency in food or lodging preparations that are noticeably different from one visit to the next, causing negative damage to the Whitbread name. Therefore, since it is unreasonable for senior decision-makers to be present to control the customer environment in each business unit, making promotional strategies at the senior-level, for use to appease the subordinate groups, ensures that employees remain focused on their representational job duties as a contributor to securing the Whitbread family of names. Relying on individual in-unit leadership talent to coordinate such broad unification campaigns would likely lead to failures in organisational culture and industrial relations. The goal of leadership in this particular business unit is to keep this unitarist environment, or at least perceptions of it, as a foundational strategic planning, coordination and forward strategy tool. If transparency in this managerial action were to occur, the aforementioned perceptions of power and control would begin to manifest in these low-level groups, creating internal friction at the sociological level that could undo recent positive business gains. What should Whitbread do? It would not seem, at first glance, that Whitbread Plc management understands the importance of maintaining a unitarist business environment where goal-attainment is on the mind of each and every employee at multiple authority levels. Why? When glancing through public relations releases and other secondary corporate literature on the business, it shows an organisation that simply bends its knee for clients to ensure broad stakeholder satisfaction for all units representing the Whitbread brand. To the individual not particularly educated in theories of management, culture and industrial relations, Whitbread might look to fit the classic definition and description of an organisation where employee gratuities are stacked so highly that the power in this business actually has been shifted to favour the subordinate groups. However, maintaining managerial control over employees is accomplished through brilliant internalised promotional materials that give the impression of authority to less sophisticated workers within the business. Whitbread, if it could accomplish it successfully, would likely prefer to have a more transparent leadership group which demands compliance through employee behavioural policies where failure to meet customer service obligations meets with immediate, stern reprimand. When the ability to make a profit rests almost solely on the satisfaction levels of diners and guests, management control is the highest priority action required on behalf of Whitbread managers. However, authoritarian posturing in this manner, in groups that fit sociological profiles of sporadic rationale and unpredictable social behaviour, will lead to control struggles and Whitbread would lose much of its competitive edge in relation to service and quality. Whitbread should continue on its internalised promotional strategy to ensure that there are perceptions of power in subordinate groups, even though in reality very little exists. To allow this type of conflict to begin at Whitbread would unravel the current successes and profitability for its many units. Employees in many service markets, today, deem the importance of complying with basic job obligations to be the grounds for an emotional crisis. In reality, these are basic job requirements and guidelines that have been developed through years of business experience and leadership at the higher levels of Whitbread. Whitbread has used its keen knowledge of working class social demographic groups to its advantage, developing a counselling and crisis hotline so that the responsibility of ensuring the emotional well-being of employees who might be quick to claim crisis without putting this burden on the senior managers and decision-makers. This is a promotional tool that, when backed by senior management with hefty approval and applause in certain internal public relations channels, curbs the damage caused by worker emotional crisis and allows the company to function as a well-respected, public service organisation. Offers the current Chief Executive of Whitbread, “Our relentless customer focus and drive to offer both value for money and quality, together with our robust financial position, mean that Whitbread is well placed for these tougher times” (Whitbread, 2009, p.4). During a time where other service organisations across the globe are not capable of claiming their ability to endure through a difficult economy, it is due to the company’s strong focus on management control (foremost), using this as a tool for keeping a stable internal culture, and then developing policies to sustain needs and prevent crisis in employee groups that keeps it outperforming some competition. This critical review of Whitbread was undertaken with a very unbiased perspective, using both knowledge in the domain of management and the organisation along with simple observation of trends which were being reported as occurring in the company’s real-time business environment. It is the dimension of understanding how subordinate groups interact and respond to management intervention at this business that keeps it fitting the unitarist profile and identifying with both employees and other stakeholders. The recent increases in the company’s investor share values offer further proof of the business’ ability to effectively manage in this dynamic, unpredictable environment. References Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. 2003. Studying Management Critically, London: Sage. Blitz, R. 2009. Whitbread in talks to buy Coffeeheaven. Financial Times, London. 12 Dec, p.18. Casey, C. 2001. Critical Analysis of Organisation: Theory, practice, revitalisation. London: Sage. Cheverton, P. 2004. Key Marketing Skills: Strategies, Tools and Techniques for Marketing Success, 2nd ed. London: Kogan Page. Hughman, J. 2009. Whitbread wakes up to Coffeeheaven. Investor’s Chronicle,London. 16 Dec. Stapleton, J. 2009. UK’s Whitbread to close DB scheme to future accrual. Global Pensions, London. Oct., p.10. Templeman, M. 2009. Miles Templeman: If I had to start again… Management Today, London. May, p.21. WBBE. 2005. Britain: Whitbread may sell hotels. The New York Times, 12 March, p.C3. Whitbread. 2009. A year in the life of Whitbread. Annual Review and Summary Report. http://www.whitbreadannualreport0809.co.uk/images/Whitbread_Annual_Review_0809.pdf. (accessed 12 Jan 2009). Read More