Reference no: EM132969253

In 2004, Kristine, along with her two friends Andrea and Tracy, had started a small business to sell silver jewellery that they had designed and made themselves. Kristine had always dreamed of owning her own business and had been following some successful female entrepreneurs on the internet. Inspired by their stories, Kristine decided to quit her job to set up her own business. She loved silver as a medium and was passionate about jewellery. She had delved into designing and making jewellery mainly as a hobby and had ended up selling a few pieces to friends and acquaintances. This was a path that appealed to her.
She had often worked 14 hours a day setting up the shop, located in a busy shopping strip in Melbourne. Although Andrea and Tracy continued with their jobs, they worked at the shop in the evenings and on weekends. The business had taken off much faster than anyone had anticipated and soon they were sourcing silver products from other artisans in Australia. Their product lines expanded from jewellery to homeware, such as decorative pieces, boxes, candlesticks, plates and bowls, etc. Eighteen months later, they decided to open up another shop in Melbourne. A third shop followed soon after, and at this time Andrea and Tracy left their jobs to join forces with Kristine.
Kristine was the creative person responsible for sourcing products and identifying suppliers. Andrea was the management and IT expert, who managed their inventory system and supplier database. Tracy was responsible for managing relationships with shops in regional Victoria that carried their products, as well as looking for expansion opportunities. Success came in leaps and bounds and by 2009, the business had expanded and the group owned eight shops in shopping strips and shopping centres across metropolitan Melbourne plus two shops in New South Wales. Additionally, some small boutique shops in regional Victoria carried their merchandise.
The three partners were joined by Chin to form the management team. Chin was the finance and accounts manager. Bedazzled now employed about 55 staff, with each shop having a shop manager and four to six shift-based shop floor staff. The management team worked well together as they had developed a strong bond. Given the expansion of the business and their different roles, they tended to be out and about a lot. As the business had grown and as the founders had started families, they had made a commitment that they would all work flexibly in order to meet their family and parenting responsibilities. This flexible culture was a key ingredient in the team members' satisfaction with their jobs.
Within this flexible work culture, a key to their effective management and business success was the fact that they had open and effective communication systems in place. For example, the management team met twice a month and rotated their meetings at each shop. This enabled them to stay in touch with shop staff as well as running their management meeting. This way they were able to keep everyone connected. In addition, they used emails, texts and phone calls to discuss any urgent matters. In the past year, however, it had become increasingly difficult to hold these meetings at different venues, and the last two meetings in the New South Wales shops had had to be cancelled as most the members could not travel due to some personal family commitments.
They had also recently started holding an 'expo-meet' once a year at which they brought all of their existing and potential suppliers, designers and artisans together. This they had found to be a very good way of developing and maintaining their ties with these important business associates. The expo-meet was a two-day event that started with a dinner the night before followed by two days of exhibitions, talks, seminars and meetings. While Tracy spearheaded the management of these events, they took up quite a bit of the entire management team's time. Around the time of the annual expo, they usually ended up meeting every week and sometimes twice a week. While they were planning the 2012 expo-meet, however, attendance of the management team at these meetings had started to lag and Tracy had found this extremely frustrating. A couple of things had gone wrong at the 2012 expo-meet because it hadn't been as immaculately planned as usual by the team.
Given these issues, Andrea suggested that they should try out video conferencing, using Skype as a way to ensure attendance at meetings. Everyone liked the idea and once the initial teething and technical issues were resolved, virtual meetings using Skype became the norm. They found that they were able to get a lot more done and were saving travelling time and money as a result. Once they were comfortable with the system, they started including shop staff on a rotational basis. A few weeks later, though, Kristine began to notice that the shop staff were not as forthcoming with their comments and feedback as they had been previously in the face-to-face meetings. This was particularly true of one of the Melbourne and one of the Sydney shops, where they had recently recruited new staff.
At one of the meetings with the Sydney staff, Kristine asked whether the order that they had discussed at the previous meeting had arrived and how the sales were going. Surprised at the question, the shop manager Priyanka asked which order she was referring to. It soon became clear to everyone that Priyanka had not known that she was meant to follow up on the order. She said she remembered the conversation, but had thought that Kristine was talking to Tracy about the order and not to her. Kristine was shocked to hear this and was worried that they may have lost some very good business as a result of this confusion.
In the coming months, the management team realised that they were beginning to lose business and that some valuable external relationships were being affected. Every time this was questioned, it turned out that something had been misunderstood or misinterpreted. Staff members appeared confused about who was doing what, who was being addressed and who was taking what responsibility. There was some irritability and frustration building up, and at times this spilled into anger. The staff's contribution in meetings was also no longer as vibrant as it used to be. Ingrid, who was a long-standing shop manager, felt that the process of meetings had changed and that management often seemed to be in a hurry to discuss and close off agenda items. There was a growing sense of unrest in the team, and team issues were not being discussed as before.
It was now the opening day of the 2013 expo-meet, which was being held at a town hall in Melbourne. There, they discovered that no one had booked the smaller rooms needed for the concurrent morning seminars. Tracy panicked on learning this and called Kristine out of the opening session to tell her what had happened. Kristine was equally shocked but kept her cool and started to consider what could be done. Together, Tracy and Kristine decided to hold one seminar in the available room and the rest of the three seminars in different corners of the big hall where the opening session was held and the display stalls were laid out. While the seminars had taken place, they had received a few complaints from participants, who had found it difficult to hear the discussions. The management team was very upset and angry, and they felt that Bedazzled's reputation had been tarnished. They discovered that once again there had been miscommunication among them over who was going to book the seminar rooms. The planning for the event had been done primarily through Skype meetings and telephone communication. Kristine sat there thinking that they needed to get back to meeting face-to-face: 'Clearly this new technology has worsened things for us!'

Questions

-Explain MARS model theory in this case study with examples related to case
-Workplace attitudes and emotions are critical factors in developing a successful organisation . Use theoretical base.
-Us the Five Factor Personality Model in the case study with examples related to the case.