Critically review the situation at RestaurantCo Essay Example for Free

Critically review the situation at RestaurantCo EssayThis essay analyses the grounds of RestaurantCo, a large non-unionised restaurant company with over 300 forkes across the UK, and more than 7000 employed staff members (Suter Marchington 2011). match to Brad and Gold (2012, p.401) the term non-unionised is a workplace, where double-deckers have flexibility in designing work, selecting, promotion and training people, and determining rewards and other human resources (HR) practices. As briefly defined managers carry out numerous duties and responsibilities for the business. In roam to have a better understanding of the consumption of line managers and employee relations at RestaurantCo it would be necessary to explore and outline the strengths and weaknesses of the company. To be more specific, this essay will explore and outline the main strengths and weaknesses in the working style of growth managers and the structural centralisation within the organisation, the tak e a hopal and intimate employee involvement and participation (EIP) practices, the working alliances between front line managers and employees, and the matched effectiveness of the organisational HRM system and capability framework for disunite managers. This case study of RestaurantCo foc employments on the organisational problems that stems from the centralisation of corporate termination making and monitoring. The company regarded itself as a high quality restaurant business with a strong focus on positive employee relations thus reflected in their history of in radiation patternal employment relations approach (Suter Marchington 2011).However, since the change in ownership the company had to implement wise business strategies and HR practices as well as make further enhancements to the restaurant environment. For instance, the changes in the restaurant environment included refurbishments, expanded food and drinks menus, and speak to savings by integrating the supply chai n with otherrestaurants owned by the group (Suter Marchington 2011). Consequently, some of these changes were seen as quite extensive and problematic for restaurant managers. For instance, some of these organisational changes were somewhat inefficient and pricy in terms of deliveries and that mistakes were frequently made in the order and supply of ingredients (Suter Marchington 2011). Managers were no longer able to order directly from suppliers but instead were instructed to direct their orders through the supply chain department, whose understanding of the needs of exclusive offsetes were seen as limited (Suter Marchington 2011).There were also supererogatory changes in improving customer service such as the introduction to the Mystery Customer initiative (Suter Marchington 2011, p.213). This program initiative was seen as a form of corporate centralised monitoring and see to it of service, which somewhat contradicts the supposed given liberty to kickoff managers. This demonstrates superior management distrust in its counterbalance managers abilities to get through or fulfil their duties and responsibilities. This form of control violates the psychological convey between the branch managers and employers which is also known as a two-way exchanged of sensed promises and obligations between employees and their employer (Bratton Gold, 2012, p. 12). In this case, cured management had infringed on the trust between its branch managers by having a centralised monitoring system in primed(p) to gather customer education and business bring aboutance, thus in beat violating their psychological contract (Suter Marchington 2011).Consequently, creating a negative low-trust and low-commitment relationship compared to a high-trust and high-commitment participatory relationship between senior management and branch managers (Bratton Gold, 2012, p. 160). Nevertheless, control is seen as somewhat necessary by senior management, but too much control sup erpower be counter originative (Dant Nasr, 1998, p. 7). Hence, excessive levels of control should be carefully considered as it will impact on business performance levels (Dant Nasr, 1998, p. 7). As stated in Dant and Nasr (1998, p.7) tight control is generally not perceived well by managers who are driven by a strong desire for independence and autonomy, they may withheld authentic and helpful information from senior management or employers in order to preserve some indirect form of control as they might believe that their input would not be valued or validated. In thisparticular case, tight control would lead to less cooperation between branch managers and senior management.Furthermore, feedback from mystery customers to senior management may not be as useful or informative compared to the managers vast degree of knowledge and hear regarding its local business restaurant market environment and business performance levels. Rather than just rewarding performance related bonus to managers who receive an boilers suit satisfactory rating from mystery customers there should also be incentives or reward schemes in placed for managers who actually provide authentic and helpful information to senior management (Michael, 2002, p. 329). This sort of privileged information could further enhance the organisations productivity and performance. For instance, the organisation would have a greater competitive advantage through new strategic opportunities and awareness of new threats as mentioned by its branch managers (Michael, 2002, p. 329).This upward bunk of information decentralises the tight monitoring and control of senior management but more greatly strengthens the communication, commitment, trust and employee relations between senior management and its branch managers through reciprocal cooperation and reward schemes (Michael, 2002, p. 329). It is all important(p) in service industries that branch managers be given more autonomy to make operable decisions as their understanding of the business environment surrounding their individual branches is relatively more extensive compare to senior management and management countenance, who have limited understanding of the business environment. This process is referred to as decentralisation (Dant Nasr, 1998). According to Suter and Marchington (2011), each(prenominal) restaurant establishment was usually run by a branch manager and two assistants.The subroutine of supervisory responsibilities was shared between the branch manager and assistant manager due to the long operating hours and the shift system, hence, the manager on duty would take on the contribution of supervising employees (Suter Marchington 2011). The manager on duty dealt primarily with problems and issues in regards to employees, and that wider issues were assigned to the branch manager. The branch managers in addition carried out a number of HR functions such as employment appraisals, pay reviews, and personal development plans (Suter Marchington 2011). These branch managers had described their work as being more intensified and that the HR policies had become more train and full-dressised (Suter Marchington 2011). Branch managers were supposedly allowed a fair degree of autonomy in how they could manage the restaurant.A bring out element of the capability framework modifyd branch managers to take charge of their own delivery and performance. However, managers experienced great difficulty in making operational decisions regarding their restaurant. Some of the reasons were due to the fact that the management support aggroup were not always readily available to branch managers but also that company-wide operational decisions were being implemented at branch levels, in turn conflicting with branch managers operational decisions (Suter Marchington 2011). Branch managers should be provided with support throughout the restaurant operational hours from the management support office except, the resta urant support team operates on a 9-5 office-based workplace arrangement (Suter Marchington 2011). This would lead to signifi arouset problems when the restaurant requires assistance after the support office ends operation, therefore ca using an inconvenience when decision and support is needed.It might also affect the organisations reputation if issues are not promptly resolved. Without proper support and facilitation from the support management team, branch managers are unable to perform their role efficiently. Under the influence of senior management, branch managers were pressured into implementing formal relationship practices with their employees (Suter Marchington 2011). However, one of the core components of a psychological contract is workplace communication which will generally help to minimize the false consensus effect, meaning that people assume that they share the same perceptions (Bratton Gold, 2012, p. 433). For instance, branch managers perceived the restaurant an d its employment relations as internal whereas head office had expressed the need for more professional management and more importantly had over-rated the formality of form _or_ system of government implementation at branch level (Suter Marchington 2011).Notably, communication is a significant component of a psychological contrast as it is quite evident that branch managers and senior management had conflicting views on how the restaurant business needed to be operated. Alternatively, It would be beneficial for senior management and branch managers to effectively communicate their views across to one another in order to minimize the false consensus effect (Bratton Gold, 2012, p. 433). Again, to ensure that this can actually happen, senior managementwould need to be more readily available to branch managers and vice versa in order to strengthen the psychological contract between them. According to the branch managers the organisational change brought close to more job responsib ilities, intensified workload and more expectations from senior management (Suter Marchington 2011).Whilst handling their supervisory responsibilities, the dayto-day HR functions and operational responsibilities such as order and control of stock/supplies, forecasting labour budgets and marketing initiatives were devolved into the roles of branch managers (Suter Marchington 2011). This devolvement of HR functions into the role of branch managers goes beyond the parameters of what is required of branch managers. Despite this, senior management have not provided their branch manager with further additional training in their new responsibilities and duties neither has it been outlined in their legal spine contract. Even though the assistant managers and branch managers shared the same responsibilities of supervising the employees, employees still reported directly to the branch managers (Suter Marchington 2011).Instead of sharing this supervisory state of employees, it would be m ore efficient and productive to delegate this responsibility to the assistant manager so that branch managers can focus more on the operational responsibilities and HR functions. Another obstacle branch managers had identified was their inability to make operational decisions regarding the day-to-day running of the branch due to the lack of coordination or coaction in the senior management company-wide operational decision-making process (Suter Marchington 2011). This in effect reinforces senior management distrust in its branch managers ability to fulfil their role and therefore, causing resentment and animosity towards senior management from its branch managers. According to Dant and Gundlach (1998, p.37) excessive controls aimed at monitoring employees can be costly as it can generate motivational and morale problems among employees.It is important from a management perspective to balance the forces of dependence and autonomy within the business in order to plead the long run viability of the business organisation (Dant Gundlach, 1998, p. 37). In terms of achieving overall effectiveness senior management need to contribute to a more productive relationship between branch managers and employees in their organisation. Another important feeling to consider isthat the company and branch units have contrasting economic and managerial characteristics (Bradach, 1997, p. 276) whereby, the senior management of the company must meet two key management challenges maintaining consent and system-wide adaptability (Bradach, 1997, p. 277). With reference to RestaurantCo, units in a chain share a super C identity by operating under the RestaurantCo trademark (Bradach, 1997, p. 277).There are five central categories of uniformity in an organisation and they are, the line manager, organisational systems, learning culture, role and responsibility and HR department and professionalism (Harrison, 2011, p. 921). In order to preserve the integrity and value, the company m ust enforce uniformity across these five underlying categories through bureaucratic control and standardisation (Bradach, 1997, p. 277). Furthermore, in order to ensure the sustainability of the company, it must be able to adapt to the opportunities and threats (Bradach, 1997, p. 282). In addition, senior managers must separate and implement system-wide adaptation processes and practices that will fit to some extent across all of the individual branches, except the main challenge of this is to ensure that all the branches behave in the same direction. The plural form model of management proposed by Bradach (1997) can be used to effectively address the uniformity and system-wide adaptability problems.The plural form consists of 4 processes which are as followed modelling process, ratcheting process, socialisation process and shared learning process (Bradach, 1997, p. 283). Through these processes the company can pursue greater uniformity and improve system-wide adaptation across the restaurant chains (Bradach, 1997, p. 283). The modelling process is focused on the structural element of the management by increasing the use of common practices across the organisation and the restaurant chains (Bradach, 1997, p. 283). The ratcheting process is part of the control system of management which enables both branch managers and senior managers to influence each other as well as increase the level of uniformity and performance of the chain overall (Bradach, 1997, p. 283).The socialisation process reflects the career path aspect of management, which essentially helps to create a shared understanding of what is required to operate a restaurant, thus will increase the uniformity across the chain (Bradach, 1997, p. 283). Lastly, the mutual learning process is also referred to as the strategy makingprocess, which focuses on improving the system-wide adaptability by providing performance data and demonstrating new ideas to help persuade branch managers to adopt the propose d system-wide adaptations (Bradach, 1997, p. 283). Overall the plural form is used to overcome some of the control problems associated with managing restaurant branches and maintaining uniformity across the chain (Bradach, 1997).Another important key issue highlighted from this case study is how formal and informal employee involvement and participation (EIP) practices are implemented by management. According to the RestaurantCo capability framework which consisted of eight capabilities, four related specifically to informal EIP (Suter Marchington 2011). EIP is influenced or shaped by four dimensional factors which are, the two type of forms of EIP (formal and informal EIP), degree of involvement of the employees (ranged from very dinky to a considerable amount), different levels of EIP within the organisation (head office to branch level) and scope of subject matter (long term plans that are central to the organisation and trivial term issues regarding the restaurant) (Marchingt on Kynighou, 2012, p. 3338). RestaurantCo depend heavily on their employees interaction with customers, for this reason it is noticeably best to implement informal EIP because their engagement with customers is instrumental to the organisational performance levels and profitability.By using informal EIP branch managers are able to gain employees affective commitment to the organisation (Rodrigues, 1994). Although, branch managers must take into consideration the contextual circumstances in relation to the restaurant and the four contingencies outlined above to assist in determining the appropriate EIP to implement for their given work situation (Rodrigues, 1994). More specifically, formal EIP was utilised in the larger and busier restaurant branches as branch managers had less time to involve employees informally and formal EIP was the most effective way of livery staff members up to date with important information and news (Suter Marchington 2011). On the other hand, informal EI P was utilised or practised more predominately in the small branch restaurants (Suter Marchington 2011). However, effective co-existence of formal and informal EIP is essential for the organisations long term sustainability (Denton, 1994).Informality at RestaurantCo is an effective instrument of recognising and managing employee voice (Denton, 1994). Therole of informality is to give employees an open channel for informal communications with managers, so that they can address their concerns and to give informative feedback on work related issues (Beattie, 2006). The aeonian changeability and flexibility of the workplace environment, illustrates the need for informal day-to-day communications in comparison to official formalised meetings with employees, which can be more costly and time consuming. Above all, the flexibility and diversity of organisational arrangements in the service industry reinforces the need for the implementation of informal EIP practices (Beattie, 2006). In s ummary, the RestaurantCo case study illustrated some important strengths and weaknesses in the HR management practices and organisational frameworks.Overall, several weaknesses were identified such as the need for informal relations between line managers and employees, the importance of decentralisation to enable cooperation and collaboration between branch managers and senior management through the plural form model. Furthermore, it was exemplified that there should be a co-existence and implementation of both formal and informal EIP in the workplace. Evidently, business performance levels can be improved by balancing the dependency and autonomy of branch managers, so that they can efficiently perform to their capabilities. In conclusion, this essay highlighted some positive and negative issues regarding operational responsibilities of senior management and branch managers.ReferencesBeattie, RS 2006, Line Managers and Workplace Learning Learning from the voluntary sector, mankind mental imagery Developmental International, vol.9, no.1, pp. 99-119, viewed 2 Setptember 2013, Ebsco database. Bradach, JL 1997, Using the plural form in the management of restaurant chains, Administrativ.e Science Quarterly, vol.42, no.2, pp. 276-303 viewed 2 September 2013, Ebsco database. Bratton, J Gold, J 2012 Human choice Management theory and practice, 5th edn, Palgrave Macmillan, London. Dant, RP Gundlach, GT 1998, Dependence in Franchised Channels of Distribution, Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 14, pp. 35-67 viewed on 2 September 2013, Ebsco database. 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