Organization Development and Change of Peppercorn Dining Restaurant - Case Study Example

Peppercorn Dining: Organization Development and Change Name: Student Number: Course Title: Lecturer: Date: Table of contents Table of contents 1 Introduction 2 Discussion 3 Interviews and Observations 3 Conclusion 11 Bibliography 11 Introduction Peppercorn Dining is a restaurant on the all American University campus and serves students who have purchased meal plans as well as cash paying customers. A group of square one consultants were having lunch at Peppercorn Dining when they ran into Drew, Peppercorn’s manager. The consultants were eager to learn about Peppercorn and the changes Drew had alluded to. Drew told them that recruiting and retention of staff had been a constant challenge. The labor market had become tight in the county due to prosperous Reagan years and the University was having difficulty gaining employees. Drew openly discussed his perceptions of the dining unit with the consultants. He then inquired about their experience with situations like for Peppercorn and what advice they might offer. The consultants explained that they are usually contacted by organizations when management believes an external position could provide a fresh outlook on operations. They normally begin their work by performing an operations audit and the results are presented to the management. In addition, interventions are designed to facilitate the achievement of management objectives. The partners believe that it is essential to become familiar with an organization before appropriate suggestions can be made. After discussing Erica’s suggestion to observe Peppercorn’s operations, the group agreed that the first stage should be a preliminary evaluation of the unit followed by a feedback session with management. The management can then conduct a thorough operations audit based on the outcome. Drew concurred with them and stated that his goals for Peppercorn were to increase productivity and to improve morale among the workers. The partners agreed that three weeks should be an ample amount of time to gather the necessary data and to develop a presentation for the management of Peppercorn Dining (Sullivan, 2005). Discussion Interviews and Observations The skilled workers are on the same union contract as the unskilled workers in the kitchen. This arrangement holds back the skilled workers and helps the unskilled workers to move forward. It doesn’t work well and it’s even worse without a shop steward. The only way to move up in the organization is to become part of the management. Roger noticed that the line servers interacted a great deal with the customers and that there was no portion control. Each customer wanted the standard portions or combinations of food items altered to meet their personal needs and they were served. The overall atmosphere in the service area was relaxed. It took two or four minutes for a customer to enter the line and be served during a busy period. Only diners on the university meal plan were allowed in the noncash dining area. The workers choose their own positions on the line and they usually stick to the same spot. When it gets busy, additional student workers have to fill in. when a full time worker falls sick, a worker from another area fills in and sometimes they can’t find substitutes so they all have to work extra hard. Peppercorn was supposed to be staffed by students initially. The students would be grouped into three segments. That is, student managers, student supervisors and student workers. Since the supply of students has been diminishing over the years, more temps have had to fill the positions. There is a lot of tension between students and temps and also between students and full time workers. This results from students supervising the operations. There is a disagreement with age, economic status, and experience in many cases. The full timers and professional managers are the only ones who are not under the supervision of students. Students have a rough time supervising older people and older people have a difficult time taking orders from young people who they consider similar to their own children. There is a lot of joking, talking and interacting as the workers sort, and clean dishes, silverware, glasses and trays. Full dish trays are stacked at the rinse station and each rack is rinsed and sent through the dish washing machine. The dishes are sorted after they have completed their cycle by a worker (McLean, 2005). A cashier’s job is a full time nonunion position. Peppercorn’s cashier told Roger that the students are rude but she gets along with the management well. She is authorized for cash but it is difficult for her to leave her station. It gets cold during the winter since she is too close to the entrance and the wind blows in. The people’s biggest problem is the heat since there is inadequate ventilation or air flow. There is not enough room in the dining, kitchen and service areas because Peppercorn used to be a riding stable. There is only one cashier who has to call the secretary to assist her when it gets busy. The cashier also restocks silverware which entails shutting down the register, running to the dish room, and then restocking before the register line gets too long. During slow periods, she helps clean tables, do the menu board and look around for other things to do. The wages are based on job position and union membership. The nonunion positions include the secretary, cashier, supervisor and manager. The rest of the workers at peppercorn are temporary, union members or students and there are only five single people in the staff. There is a lot of pressure in the dish room because the student supervisors never send the student workers in to help. There was a new policy restricting the snacks that were allowed to eat. The workers were scheduled to work on special dining program which are always at dinner time. There is no student representative to complain to incase there is a problem. Kitchen workers seemed unhurried and attentive to their work which is highly professional and reflective of the long years the employees have worked together. Students told Lynn that Peppercorn used to be a better place to work. There were more students working there since it was cheerful and they bought beer and partied on Friday nights. Drew changed the situation because he is much tighter about things. The management is mainly concerned about the customers and not the workers. The workers can’t mop properly because they are short of supplies. Communication at Peppercorn is a major problem. Students write notes to the management expecting their problems to be solved. However, this is not the case since their complaints were not noted as being important. These problems are mostly repair and maintenance issues. Most things have to go through a lot of channels thus takes time resulting in delay of work. A lot of paperwork is also involved thus students make special notations when issues are agent so that priorities can be considered. There is also a problem with ordering which can result in workers in the kitchen getting burnt out. Workers are kept on the same pay grade because the raises push people back to starting point. The only workers who can benefit from such changes are the student managers. Student supervisors pay their meal plan tickets yet they work their way through school. There was three times the number of student workers four years ago than there are now at Peppercorn. Students made the work fun and the operation ran more efficiently. Peppercorn must become more special, more conducive in meeting students’ needs in order to attract student workers. Students have to be treated well to avoid the risk of alienating anyone thus they can’t afford to fire students or give them too many warnings. The relationship between temps and students is not great. Temps are less efficient than students because they probably have less loyalty to Peppercorn than the students. Temps are supposed to work under the student supervisors but it doesn’t work that way. They needed to fill in vacant positions even though they are less efficient than the students. Temps are trained by professional management but are supervised by students thus they have developed an attitude towards students. Therefore, it is hard for students to get cooperation and respect from temps. Most students think Drew is rude, cold and unapproachable but very patient. They also believe that Drew has no experience with food service operations and is more accessible to the full time and temporary workers than to the students (Thomas, 2008). Data analysis Crucial analytical approach of this research study will primarily centre on the proportion of each study group. The secondary analyses will mostly centre on the correlation between change and development at Peppercom restaurant. Likelihood ratio test as commonly applied will be used in testing of the hypotheses. It is my expectation that the experimental situation of the programme change and development at Peppercom restaurant will in some way impact the respondents in such a way that they may have higher scores in regard to knowledge as well as learning experiences. Descriptive studies involving change and development at Peppercom restaurant may have significant limitations, thus it may be subject to my own error as a researcher, personal bias my get way into the research, sample may not reflect the prevailing situation and lastly since the research undertaking calls for a complete human response, measuring it may pose a big problem hence resulting in production of hypothesized results. Data analysis Data analysis is a very rigorous activity that involves data organization, categorization and discovering what is vital and what needs to be learned. It is hectic in the sense that qualitative research undertaking generally the result in generation of voluminous as a researcher finds him/herself with a lot of both written and verbatim accounts of what transpired during the process of response to the questionnaires and interviews. For relative ease of interpretation, the process of data analysis can not be overemphasized. In this particular research undertaking, data analysis will be carried out careful examination of the responses of all the focus groups responses in relation to the research problem. When data will have been coded and categorized into themes, I will analyze and correctly analyze and interpret the themes to find suitable explanations to the research questions. Quantitative data will be used in analysis of data by using SPSS Software programme version 17. Statistics will be employed in the illustration of demographic trends of the sample. Presentation of results The results of the research study based on qualitative and quantitative data analysis will be presented based on the following criteria: Demographic nature of the research sample. Characteristics, magnitude and scope of change and development at Peppercom restaurant. Contributing factors in regard to the context of organizational change and development at Peppercom restaurant Effects as well as impact of change and development at Peppercom restaurant scenario. Individual, systematic and institutional responses to issues of change and development at Peppercom restaurant. Change and development at strategies at Peppercom restaurant strategies. Statistical Procedures In order to test for the hypotheses of the research study and substantially evaluate the research study questions, it is imperative to calculate descriptive statistics for the data, specifically, for the research question; the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (Pearson r) will be used in calculation of the correlation coefficients. The Pearson r will be significant in the calculation of correlation coefficients for the cumulative scores on the outcome of interviews and observations featuring nominal data. The cumulative of every interviews and observations will then be compared with every category as well as the comparison of all categories of the interviews and observations. The Pearson (r) correlation coefficients will then be evaluated to find out if change and development at Peppercom restaurant as presented by the results will be statistically significant for each of the relationships to be evaluated by the hypotheses. For the evaluation of other research questions and hypotheses testing, paired t-test will compare means of motivation variables against institutional performance tests will be applied in the determination of any existence of significant differences in relation to the interviews and observations means between the study groups. Besides, Spearman Rank correlation (R) will help rank change and development variables in the order or magnitude of which they influence Peppercom performance. Independent variable will eventually be transformed and related to the dependent variable for hypothesis testing. In order to compile the data, I will create a two pages summary sheet in order to score the interviews and observations of each respondent. Each interviews and observations will then be accorded a unique code of identification so as to be in line with the scoring sheet. This is done to enable easy matching in case of the occurrence of discrepancy. The scoring sheet will essentially reduce each research interviews and observations into four categorical scores. Each interviews and observations will be scored and carefully checked to eliminate problems of accuracy. It will also be determined that the most conspicuous readable from in regard to the raw data would essentially be a categorical mean for each interviews and observations. In order to display the raw data, charts will come in handy. Finally, I will supply the cover letter with all my contact information. The interviews and observations will be addressed specifically to individual Peppercom staff in secure sealed envelopes. In order to protect the identity of the participants, all other staffs will be coded using either numbers or letters. This coding will be used in the identification of each group of staffs during the process of data collection. The interviews and observations results will be delivered to the respective schools together with the physical collection time for timely return of interviews and observations. The interviews and observations outcomes will be placed in the participating teachers, mail boxes to maintain anonymity. Conclusion The earlier concerns about the willingness of the employees to speak with the consultants were unfounded. Larry was mentioned by all the workers. He seems to have a lot of power over other workers yet he governs by fear. The workers become timid in his presence but they don’t have much respect for him. The operations still seem to run smoothly even though the organization was highly stratified. The workers are timid around Larry and even fear Drew. The fact that operations are running smoothly and the workers appear to be loyal indicates that personality conflicts and role ambiguity is a recipe for disaster. Peppercorn has always had a reputation for being a social environment in the past because there was a strong culture at the unit. Bibliography Anderson, D. L. (2011). Organization development. Sage. Bradford, D. L. (2005). Reinventing Organization development. Wiley. Cummings, T. G. (2008). Handbook of Organization Development. Sage. Cummings, T. G. (2009). Organization development and change. cengage learning. McLean, G. N. (2005). Organization Development. Berret-Koehler publishers. Rothwell, W. J., Sullivan, R. L., & McLean, G. N. (2005). Practising organization development. Wiley. Sorensen, P. .., & Yaegar, T. F. (2009). Strategic Organization Development. IAP. Read More