JudgeAardvark2958
Purpose This assignment provides you with the opportunity to apply…
Purpose
This assignment provides you with the opportunity to apply what you have learned about organizational behaviour to a practical case. You will analyze organizational culture, examine organizational decisions through the ethical lens, and propose ways to manage teams in ways that best meet the needs of the situation.
How to Proceed
Review the case study and respond to the following questions:
Did Helen choose the correct communication medium (meeting) to share her message? Explain why you agree or disagree with her choice.
b. Which organizational culture type is It Still Fits!, and what organizational characteristics lead you to that determination?
Is it ethical of Helen to not tell her employees that she was the one who she requested to close the store in 30 days, rather than within five months? Explain your reasoning behind your answer.
If Helen wanted to work with her employees through a decision making process to decide to close or move the store, which strategy development technique (brainstorming, delphi or nominal) would you recommend she use and why?
Submit your paper, including your full name at the top, to the Individual Case Study dropbox on UM Learn by the due date specified in the course schedule, provided in the Course Outline.
Case study
Second Hand Store Shuts its Doors
Vintage second hand hat and clothes rail showing colourful vintage clothes on coat hangers.
Helen has been operating a small, second hand boutique in a storefront in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods for the past twelve years. Her shop, It Still Fits!, sits between a bookstore and a café, and she has benefited from the foot traffic of the shoppers who visit either of her neighbours. Business has stayed steady, with the majority of her sales divided almost equally between professional clothing and children’s clothing. Over the years, Helen has made some adjustments to her business model, taking on more part-time staff and installing washers and dryers to freshen clothes before displaying them for sale. Helen was on the early edge of the reduce – reuse – recycle approach to keeping products out of landfills. She also believes that her business contributes to helping people find affordable and good quality clothing.
When Helen founded her small business, she was looking for something meaningful to do once her own children were grown and moved onto their own careers. She is still passionate about the business, but never intended for her success to be measured in terms of fiscal growth. Her definition of success was based upon ensuring that there was enough income to pay the bills each month, keep her small number of staff working regular hours, and have enough money left over at the end of each month to pay herself a regular, albeit modest, salary.
Helen’s commitment to the community is obvious, and she provided her customers with personalized service. Her clientele was full of repeat customers. Helen believed that every customer was a friend, and she wanted them to return with their own friends to do more shopping in her store. Over the years, her employee pool grew to where she had eight women on her payroll, all working part-time, flexible hours, as needed, to meet the business and their own scheduling needs. Most of her staff were empty-nesters, like Helen or stay-at-home moms looking to work a few hours each week. Helen often wondered if her staff were working for a paycheque or coming to work for the experience of spending a few hours amongst friends.
Helen worked hard to maintain a culture that was open, friendly, and personal. There were no specific job roles. Everyone worked unpacking the donations, cleaning clothes, creating new window displays, rotating the clothing to match the season, serving customers and operating the cash register and point of sale machines. There was always fresh coffee on the table in the back of the store, which had become a bit of a gathering place for conversation at the start of each day or whenever one of the staff came into the store to start their shift. Her employees were like family, and she cared about them deeply.
To ensure that the business culture stayed family oriented, Helen worked a few weekends a month to keep in touch with her weekend staff and enjoyed spending weekday mornings in the store. She was everyone’s shoulder to cry on and knew that Rose was planning to have another baby and that Karen’s daughter had been accepted at a college on the coast and would be moving away from home in the fall. Helen welcomed students from the local high school to fulfill their community service credit, by helping in the store to either clean the clothes or to perform small maintenance projects, like painting the walls or replacing the baseboards.
A surprise was delivered in the mail one day to Helen. Her landlord and owner of the small strip mall where the coffee shop, bookstore and It Still Fits! were located had sold the property to a land developer and would not be renewing any leases. The landlord offered her two options:
Close the business at the end of her current lease when it expires in 5 months; or
Move her business to one of her landlord’s other properties a few blocks away, where she would have a similar store size and pay the same monthly rent.
The landlord explained in the lease termination and eviction notice that Helen had 90 days to consider her options and then must inform her landlord of her decision. If she chose to close the business, her landlord would waive the last three months’ rent. If she chose to move her business, her landlord would pay for renovations in the new space up to an amount equivalent to three months’ rent.
Helen considered the options for several days and then called her landlord. She explained that she was feeling overwhelmed by the news and knew that she didn’t want to move her store to a new location, but also didn’t feel that she could manage watching her business crumble slowly over the next five months. She asked to be given permission to break her lease without penalty and promised to vacate the premises within 30 days. Her landlord agreed.
Helen called a staff coffee break for 4:00 pm on the following Wednesday when all of the day staff and most of the part time staff were already working and requested the weekend staff to also attend. She announced that just a few days prior she had received an eviction notice of 30 days, and therefore was giving notice of termination to all of her employees effective in three weeks. She thanked everyone for their hard work over the years and told them that they would always be a family. She advised them that she was holding a ‘going out of business sale’ for the next two weeks and would spend the remaining week in the month packing any unsold inventory to donate to a shelter. Helen said that she had posted a sign-up sheet by the coffee table and asked anyone who was able to take on a few extra shifts this month to help manage the closing sale and packing to please sign up for a shift. She closed the meeting by telling everyone that she had planned a staff party for them and their families for the final day she would have access to the store and that there would be food and music for dancing, since they would have an empty space.
