Reference no: EM133334642

ASSIGNMENT: What criteria will you use to make your decision? The criteria may be qualitative or quantitative; however, it must be specific and clearly stated. These criteria will help you assess alternative solutions so that you will choose the best alternative. Your final recommendation must support your criteria established.

Given below is the organizational structure of one of the branches of ZAZZ's, a department store chain. The manager of the store reports to a General Manager located at head office. The merchandise buyers, consumer research staff, auditors, public relations manager, and many other staff specialists are also located at the head office.

ZAZZ's has many branch stores throughout Canada where they have achieved a reputation for good quality merchandise as well as excellent service. Financially, some branches are doing better than others, and in the case of one particular branch, the general manager has become quite concerned because of the downward trend of its sales figures. Under pressure from head office, the manager of this branch left the company, ZAZZ's general manager decided to hire someone younger with a university background to take over the position. The general manager was convinced that what the store needed was dynamic leadership and a different management style that would improve motivation and freedom to perform at lower levels. This would be in contrast to the prevailing autocratic approach in this organization.

A young woman by the name of Dara George, who was employed at head office, was transferred to this branch as its manager. Dara had a Commerce degree from University of Toronto with a specialization in Retail Management and was hired three years ago as a "management trainee." It was known to everyone that in three to four years she would be givenfull charge of a large store. Fortunately, the vacancy arose at an opportune moment-just when Dara had completed her training period. During the past three years, Dara had moved from store to store and had been exposed to many different functions at head office. Dara was a dynamic person and had already shown great promise in her performance so far. The GM was convinced that Dara was the kind of person that the ailing branch needed as its manager.

FIGURE 1. ORGANIZATIONAL CHART OF ZAZZ'S BRANCH STORE

Dara had 11 supervisors, or section heads, including 5 departmental managers, who reported to her directly. Reporting to the department managers were about 85 salespeople. In addition, there were another 120 employees. All in all, Dara had a fair-sized store to manage. She was responsible for the human, as well as economic, well-being of the organization. Obviously, as a leader, she had to make many decisions and take actions which might not please everybody. For all practical purposes Dara was on her own as the head office was far away and the GM did not interfere in the day-to-day decision making. Dara had, at least in theory, the assistance of an HR Officer in dealing with employee problems. However, in practice, the HR Officer was mainly

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concerned with the recruitment of sales and secretarial staff as well as their training. It was a "one-person department."

Jack Abbott, the Customer Relations Officer, had been with the store for many years. He was just over 40 years of age-considerably older than Dara George. In fact, he had been one of the candidates for the manager's post. Victor Newman, the Technical Writing Supervisor, was another person who had considered himself to be a candidate. He had been with the company for over 15 years and headed a group of 5 writers. He believed that the work done by his group was fundamentally important for the store and was of a nature that not many others could handle. Victor was a strong man, and to a certain extent disliked by the other section heads but his own group liked him as a boss. He could always be counted on to support the cause of his own group.

After Dara became the manager, one of the first problems she confronted was that of friction between Victor Newman and Phyllis Summers, the Catalogue Supervisor. Victor, in preparing the catalogue, tended to ignore requests made by the Catalogue Supervisor. He felt that the design and content of the catalogue was his responsibility and did the job that he thought best. Usually, he totally disagreed with the demands made by the catalogue workers as to the location of items, etc. There was no co-operation between these two groups. A week after Dara had taken over, the Catalogue Supervisor brought the matter to Dara's attention and requested that appropriate action be taken.

Another immediate problem that was brought to Dara's attention was that of Adam Kaur's attitude towards the department sales managers. As a group they complained to Dara about Adam's bad manners and ill treatment of salespeople and even sales managers. According to the sales managers, whenever Adam received customer complaints, he would make a big fuss including making the salespeople's lives miserable. Quite often he ignored the proper channels and went directly to the salesperson concerned and took it out on them. He also made a point of reporting these customer complaints to the store manager.

So far, Dara had held only one meeting with all the supervisors, or section heads. She was trying to get to know her employees and also to communicate to them her general managerial approach, policies and expectations. However, she felt that she had not been able to achieve much so far. She did, however, sense the friction between different supervisors. She also learned that some of her employees had close ties with certain members of the board of directors. She also realized that several of her staff aspired to replace her as store manager. She was also aware of the fact that Adam Kaur, as well as Victor Newman had direct access to head office and exercised a great deal of influence within the organization. Employees were quite accustomed to an easy-going approach to work and a "leniency" pattern of management. Most things (including reports and instructions) were done informally and in a rather casual manner.

Dara is determined to put an end to the present style of operations. In fact, she is going to lay things on the line. Copies of rules and reporting procedures have already been sent to every supervisor. She intends to "tighten things up" and run an efficient organization so that the improved earnings of the store will offset any detrimental influence with the board of directors that any of her subordinates might have.