Dunns Emporium Experiences Growth - Case Study Example

Introduction/History of the companies

Transition management is one of the major areas that modern organizations have taken into consideration or accorded strong emphasis. The implication is that proper transition management determines or dictates how the organization is positioned to deal with change process (Cummings & Worley, 2014). As such, change management concerns what employees are set to experience personally whereby the executive management considers everything possible to help the employees to get used to how things were done and adopting the new ways of doing things. Therefore, for Dunn, the aim with the entire transition management is to help the employees get accustomed to the new ways of doing things. Notably, this report outlines some of the major areas that Dunn should consider with the acquiring of The Delhi. For one, the report describes some of the leadership considerations, explaining the role of Dun as the change agent, social architect, and relationship builder. To ensure cohesiveness within the team, one of the important aspects or roles of the leadership is to take up the task of developing or creating a culture of transition. Therefore, for this case, the report also outlines how the leadership can develop as well as implement the methods for establishing a constructive organizational structure and a culture that fosters positive relationship within the company. Particularly, this report is built on the justification that the proper management of transition within a company begins by assessing both internal and external factors that influence the entire leadership as well as the organizational practices.

Social architect observations

One of the social architect issues as concerns the leadership in Dunn Emporium is that the leadership has not been able to create or develop the necessary culture that fosters cohesiveness among the cross-cultural groups. More so, there is a major problem with the South American immigrants, all sticking together during the meals and avoiding mixing with others because of the cultural difference or language barrier. On the other hand, the failure to create or develop a cohesive culture within the group is evident from the increasing frustration with the original employees, the language barrier is making communication between the teams difficult besides making ordering a challenging. Nonetheless, a leader as a social architecture should embrace proper communication of his or her thoughts and ideas whereby the leadership does everything within its powers to inform everyone about what the organization is planning besides what must be done within the particular context (Daft, 2014). For instance, Dunn has not told anyone in the organization that he is planning to introduce new software for monitoring the staff hours, payroll and their business sales. For his role as the leader, the social architect issue is that the leadership has failed to inform or communicate what the organization plans to do. Earlier or proper communication of such incentives is necessary for effective transition management.

Although most of the social architect issues may be having a negative impact on the organizational structure and culture, one of the selling points of Dunn Emporium’s leadership is that it has recognized the talents of the new immigrant workers, from South America. As Dunn suggests, most of them showed strong work ethics, had excellent skills and talents and willing to work extra hours. In addition, an important social architect issue in the case study is that the leadership has not acted with the much-needed urgency as a role model and as such, influencing the workers in goal-oriented manner (Daft, 2014). For instance, the new chef may not have been inspired to accept the changes taking place in the organization with proper explanation of what goal the company strives to achieve with such changes. On the other hand, the resistance from some employees with the bringing in of the new manager is an indication that the proper leadership has not been applied in inspiring the entire team towards the goal-oriented transition to better ways of changing the menu to meet the customer needs.

Nonetheless, a leader creates a culture and structure in the organization that does not promote favoritism because such is a major impediment towards transition management (Cummings & Worley, 2014). Although Estaban has made a request to be promoted to be the leader of the night shift, the leadership is rather concerned with introducing a cousin to the position. As a fact, the leadership may be justified that giving the position to Estaban can be a major impediment towards cohesiveness of the team but for the sake of equality, the job should be openly advertised, and every employee should be highlighted of the job position. In this case, by attempting to deny Estaban the chance, the leadership seemingly tries to undermine his need for advancing to the higher rank of the organizational hierarchy.

Conclusions

From the above observation, the leadership has not done much regarding creating a culture that fosters cohesiveness within the team, particularly the failure to ensure that all the employees, irrespective of their cultures interact freely with each other. Nonetheless, the case shows that a culture of open communication lacks within the organization, with the leader failing to notify the entire organization about some of the plans he has for the company. A culture of trust and tolerance is also missing in the organization, with some of the employees showing their distaste towards the new management team, as in the case of ice cream chef showing his disregard towards John Levitz as the new manager. In addition, the management has failed in creating an organizational structure where the necessary steps are followed, especially with promotion and advancement of people up the hierarchy as exemplified with the Estoban’s situation.

The leadership issues in the company

One of the leadership issues, as it concerns transition management is the failure to build good and long lasting relationship within the members of the organization (Cummings & Worley, 2014). For instance, the new manager, John Levitz, as the head of the ice cream department, is seemingly having a bad relationship with the ice cream team, especially the chef who believes that the manager is so young. However, failure to build good relationships with the team explains why the members are belittling or holding one another with particular regards. On the other hand, it is the role of the leader to promote and encourage diversity within the team but for his case, the leader has failed a great deal, because there has not been any effort to include the South American workers as part of the entire team. Moreover, it is the role of every leader to create an organizational culture where team members get or have opportunities for training and development. In the above case, a leadership observation is that the management has not provided training opportunities for the South American workers to advance their skills in the English language, as this is necessary for them to understand the orders and apply their skills and talents.

Conclusions

From the leadership challenges, much can be concluded, and one of such inferences is that the leadership has done do much to build a strong relationship within the teams. As such, the poor relationships between the employees explains why there is too much mistrust among them, especially those from a different culture, South American immigrants, and the new people into the organization, like the new manager for ice cream. Moreover, there has been poor diversity management as of the internal and external factors bringing about major impediment in the team harmony. A proper culture to foster the provision of opportunities to the employees for training and development is lack, especially failure to present the

Recommendations for Social Architect Leadership Observations

Social architect observation recommendations

For Dunn emporium, it is imperative to note that leaders act as social architects because of the strong impact that they have on an organization’s social structure. For this case, it is highly recommendable for the leadership to influence the entire through inspiration or goal-oriented strivings that will help them achieve goals (Cummings & Worley, 2014). For instance, with the ice cream team, the role of the leadership as a social architect should be to inspire the team individually or embrace individualized consideration whereby each team member is encouraged and inspired according to his or her capacity and skills as such is necessary for transition management. As a social architect, the leader ought to be visionary and innovate ideas (García-Morales, Jiménez-Barrionuevo & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, 2012). Therefore, in the part of the leadership, one of the necessary considerations should be the emphasis on building a social structure for improving as well as encouraging interactions as this is a prerequisite for innovation as one of the necessities for transition management. The implication is that with a higher degree of interaction, culture is created in the organization whereby the followers can brainstorm ways of doing things and as such, adopting the best approaches that suit the particular change management or transition management situation (Daft, 2014). For instance, with the ice cream department, the entire team, including the head chef, should be encouraged to interact freely with the new head because despite being accused of refusing changes, John Levitz confirms to Dunn that he is ready to take the entire team through transition management and willing to accept changes whenever necessary or possible.

Moreover, the leadership as a social architect should embrace or develop a culture of proper communication between the executive team and those lower in the organizational structure (Cummings & Worley, 2014). For this case, the leadership should identify the best ways of communicating his thoughts and ideas. For instance, the best way to encourage proper communication is to develop or create a structure that allows bottom-up approach towards decision making in the entire organization. The implication is that with the approach, it will be much simpler to communicate the organizational goals. Likewise, for better performance of the social architect function, the leadership at Dunn Emporium ought to put more efforts in acting as role model and mentorship by encouraging the employees to perform beyond the expectations. In this regard, the leadership can focus on inspiring the team to exhaust their talents and skills. Notably, a leader can play the role of a social architecture by just identifying and recognizing the team's talents and potentials as Cummings and Worley (2014) recommend that this is the artistic aspect of leadership. According to Daft (2014), as part of the leadership roles, every leader is concerned with developing or creating the necessary culture as a group of values and norms that inspire how people should behave in the organization. For the leadership, there is a need to have an impact through culture by developing the direction as well as infusing the inspirational values for driving the entire team. More so, with change management situations, it is best or necessary for the leadership to have a sense of greater inspiration towards the team. Therefore, for the organization, the best that the leadership can do is creating a culture where people value having emulating better values within the company.

Recommendations from the leadership observations

For Dunn and his new vision of changing the entire organization, one of the ways of improving the organization culture as well as the structure is by focusing on relationship building. The implication is that relationship building has been considered as one of the skills directly related to the effectiveness of the particular leadership (Cummings & Worley, 2014). On the other hand, Daft (2014) confirms that leaders who have good experience with relationship building are the most useful as an implication that building, as well as maintaining relationships, is one of the critical competencies of a successful leader. One of the fundamental areas that Dunn should focus on a relationship builder is first developing real trust between the new manager, John Levitz and his new employees, in particular with the culinary team, the chef. If good relationship is established between John, as the new manager of ice cream, then the manager will understand how his actions and attitudes, including arrogance and boastfulness about his skills is affecting those in his department.

Another method through which Dunn can help build good relationship with the workforce is by cultivating an organizational culture that promotes diversity. During the management of the workplace transition, the development of workplace diversity should be based on the notion that people who have good relationship accept diverse people as well as their opinions (Daft, 2014). For this case, relationship building will depend on how the leadership creates a culture of tolerance, by encouraging both the new and old employees to accept diversity in opinions as well as embracing such in their decision-making. For Dunn Emporium the best way or method of starting to building relationships within the team is first encouraging a culture of cohesiveness because as noticed, the South Americans tend to converge on their during lunch breaks and to ease the tension, it is best to have the employees dining to together. Although there is a greater deal of language barrier with the Spanish speaking South American immigrants, the best the leadership can do is by creating a notion of togetherness so that the teams can develop trust with one another.

Nonetheless, open communication is a prerequisite to building stronger relationship within a team in an organizational context (Carter, Armenakis, Field & Mossholder, 2013). However, the role is restricted to the executive, in particular through the leadership that has to ensure that the groups communicate openly and that both people and the top and bottom of the organizational structure interact freely. Conversely, the best way that the organization should go about with the need to embrace or cultivate a culture of open relationship is by first offering opportunities for training. According to Cummings and Worley (2014), good leaders provide followers with the opportunities for training and development so that they can fit in within the social or organizational context. For this case, the leadership can only cultivate a culture of open relationship when the South American immigrants are trained in English language. As such, language training will be necessary since it will do away with language barrier that has been a major constraint to building open relationships with the team. Moreover, providing language training is a way of addressing the mistrust among the teams because for the South Americans, they fear being out of place with other employees because of the lack of knowledge in English language.

The right leadership approach, transformational leadership

The transition management in the company will depend on the extent to which the leadership works in close collaboration with the followers to identify the much-needed change, creating an inspired vision for guiding the change as well as included everyone in the entire change management process (Cummings & Worley, 2014). For this case, it is highly recommendable to use the most appropriate leadership approach, especially transformational leadership that has been lauded for being effective with change management situations (Carter, Armenakis, Field & Mossholder, 2013). Therefore, for the leadership of Dunn Emporium, the first and foremost consideration should be the creation of inspired vision whereby the employees understand the purpose of the organization and this is done concurrently with understanding their values, and as such, building a team based its capabilities. Secondly, through transformational leadership, it will be much easier to manage the transition situation by motivating the employees, thus Dunn should motive, even the South American teams and the wrangling ice cream team to work towards fulfilling the mission of providing unique customer experience. Another way through which transformational leadership can help the organization to manage the transition is through intellectual stimulation, because transformational leaders always strive at all costs to show their followers the new ways of doing things, challenging existing boundaries as well as providing idealized influence or acting as role models for the employees (Carter, Armenakis, Field & Mossholder, 2013).

Conclusion

In summary, for Dunn Emporium to move towards proper transition management, the report highlights some of the major areas of leadership that must be put into consideration. For one, it is imperative for the leadership to build strong leadership within the team as a way of fostering trust and working collaboratively. On the other hand, with diversity in cultures, proper diversity management is necessary, especially training the employees on the importance of cultural tolerance; cultural diversity is vital for the performance of the organization. The leadership as a social architect must work within its power to cultivate a culture of cultural tolerance, inspiring and motivating employees to adopt as well as implement the strategic vision, encouraging them to have a collaborative or collective approach when implementing the intended change. Besides, proper leadership style is required that suits the particular situation and for this case, transformational leadership is highly recommended because it advocates inspired motivation, the creation of compelling vision, and intellectual stimulation. Therefore, for the entire leadership to perform