Bella CASE Study PDF

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BELLA’S CASE STUDYPrepared forKerry D. Couet, Organizational Behavior InstructorNorthern Alberta Institute of Technology Edmonton, AlbertaPrepared ByIntroduction Bella's is a full-service day spa and hair salon that also has a small retail department that sells custom jewelry. It was established twe...

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BELLA’S CASE STUDY

Prepared for Kerry D. Couet, Organizational Behavior Instructor Northern Alberta Institute of Technology Edmonton, Alberta

Prepared By

Introduction Bella's is a full-service day spa and hair salon that also has a small retail department that sells custom jewelry. It was established twelve years ago by owner Illa Fitzgerald and currently has five locations in the southern United States which employ approximately a hundred and twenty-five employees. Its annual sales in the last fiscal year were three million dollars, which was a twelve percent decrease over the previous year. This decrease lead to Bella's suffering its first financial loss since its inception. Beyond lagging sales Bella's is also going through a transition period at the managerial level. Long time general manager Lynne Gibson, who had been with the company since the beginning was stepping down so that she could return to school. Lynne was responsible for managing Bella's flagship store as well as making operational based decisions for the other four stores. She was replaced by an outside hire with extensive cosmetology and business management experience name Kris Jenkins. Kris was initially excited for the opportunity to work alongside owner Illa Fitzgerald but after a lengthy discussion with Lynne and other Bella's staff Kris realized that Bella's drop-in revenue was just a symptom of a much larger issue that primarily stemmed from owner Illa. Her first act of business was handing out a survey to staff so that she could pinpoint the problems within Bella's organization. Problem statement The main problem that exits from Illa Fitzgerald’s lack of openness and the fear to adapt along with the changing environment which often lead to wrong management decisions.

ANALYSIS Bella's work place had begun to exhibit deviant group behaviors due to managements poor handling and development of their employees. If their work environment does not improve they will certainly continue to lose both skilled staff and long time customers. It is the responsibility of group leadership to define the roles that a group member must conform to. Without such guidance individual members will not be able to form a role perception and others will not be able to judge them on role expectations. This prevents the group from establishing group norms and as such prevents it from becoming a stable and productive working unit. This problem is highlighted by the salon managers answers given in the survey to the question " I know what is expected of me at work." They answered with a two out of seven meaning that they were just short of strongly disagreeing with the statement. This meant that Bella's management had very little idea of what they were required to do on a day to day basis. This is troubling as most of the managers had been employed at Bella's for a number of years and really should of know what their role was by then. Although the non-management employees scored much higher when asked the same question it is most likely that the employees actually did not have a clear understanding of their role. This is because role expectations would primarily be developed by management, and management did not seem to have a clear understanding of their own role. It appears another problem plaguing Bella's was their lack of group cohesiveness. According to the survey non-management employees seemed to have strong bonds with one another. It was when the survey questioned what they thought of management and the owner that the divide became very noticeable. This breakdown of cohesiveness was

also noted from the managers towards the owner Illa Fitzgerald, both through the survey and by the direct questioning of Kris Jenkins. It is worth noting that the question " I am very satisfied with the owner" was given a one or strongly disagree from every category of employee. A primary reason for such a low score towards the owner may of been caused by the owners own political deviant workplace behavior, were she would interject herself into staff problems that she had little or no information on. This behavior not only caused resentment amongst employees but also brought into question the salon managers authority. Such negativity towards the owner and management then possibly manifested itself into deviant workplace behavior such as absenteeism and lowered job performance, two symptoms that were beginning to become very apparent at Bella's. Most companies attempt to create an effective team amongst their staff. This does not seem to be a focus at Bella's, which is lacking many of the basic contextual factors that are required to have an effective team. One of the main factors that was absent from the company was a climate of trust. None of the workers surveyed seemed to have faith in their management nor did they feel that management valued their opinions. This lack of validation from leaders lowered the employees overall team efficacy which made obtaining the companies specific goals that much harder to reach. Another contextual factor was the complete lack of evaluation and reward systems within the company. Without the ability to track progress through metrics and performance the management had no way to evaluate and reward high performing teams. This lack of group incentive did not only prevent an environment that encouraged team players, it in fact actually may of created an atmosphere that discouraged anything beyond the bare minimum

effort from individuals or teams. This most likely was one of the reasons the previous GM had thought that her staff " were performing significantly below their capabilities". A drop in sales to a service based company like Bella's is usually directly related to the quality of service offered. A salon is highly dependent on regular customers and a customer will only return if they find the atmosphere and staff enjoyable. The staff must be pleasant, knowledgeable and eager to serve the client's needs. Offering such high quality service is completely dependent on an employee's job attitude. If a company were to neglect it employees beyond the bare minimum of paying a wage it would begin to see a drop off in the quality of customer care. This unfortunately appears to be the situation at Bella's. According to the survey when asked " At work, my opinions seem to count.'' staff answered with either a strongly disagree or disagree. This lack of perceived organizational support (POS) would lower the loyalty that a employee had for its business and after time can trigger the neglect response, and if the issue remained unaddressed it could lead to the employee enacting the exit response. There is a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the quality of work a employee does. The summation of job facets is a model that is used to measure job satisfaction. It is divided into five categories: Pay, work, promotion, supervision, and co-workers. Through the survey and the questioning by Kris it is learned that Bella's scored low on pay, promotion, and supervision. As supervision had already been covered previously the focus of this section will be on pay and promotion. Bella's had four Salon managers and a GM, three out of four of the managers had degrees and all four of them had been with the company for four years or more. This level of education, experience and loyalty was inadequately compensated with a salary of thirty two

thousand dollars a year and an industry standard benefits package. Though money is not the only driving force towards employee satisfaction it does factor in, and without a doubt Bella's was under valuing its managers. Beyond pay humans need something to strive for to stay satisfied and unfortunately there was very little room for growth at Bella's, even less so if you take into account that the new general manager wasn't even promoted from within but in fact was an outside hire. With all of the salon managers staying at their positions for years with no place to advance to, the employees under them were all stuck at their positions as well. This inability to advance within Bella's was clearly known to staff judging by their survey answer on the question of advancement in which they answered that they disagreed that there was room for advancement at Bella's. Also this lack of incentive and promotions was a direct contradiction to what owner Illa Fitzgerald had previously promised when she had said "as we grow and become more and more successful, I'll make sure you're rewarded for your contribution." If the owner of a company is to have an active role in the organization beyond just providing capital it is imperative that they display strong emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions in the self and others, understand the meaning of these emotions, and regulate his or her emotions accordingly. A person in a position of power with low emotional intelligence is much more likely to create negative moods in their employees, this mood then creates negative social interactions with customers. Though it is not possible to be completely certain that Illa Fitzgerald lacks emotional intelligence based on the information given it is almost

assured given how all of her staff feel about her. The reasoning being that a person with high a emotional intelligence is very unlikely to be so universally disliked. They say that a mood "hangs in the air" as if it were a physical object, and just as an object can be placed so can a mood. In the case of Bella's it was Illa Fitzgerald and her management team that placed a mood of negativity upon their organization. Kris Jenkins noted this mood when she spent time with Bella's staff and got the impression that " the majority of Bella's employees simply did not feel good about their jobs or the company". This mood had far reaching consequences across the company. Without positivity and enthusiasm in the work place staff would have a hard time staying motivated. A lack of motivation made it difficult for employees to fulfill their emotional labour obligations. Emotional labour being defined as an employee's expression of organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal interactions at work. Since Bella's is a service based company emotional labour ( upbeat customer service) is nearly as important as the technical services being offered. It also contributed to the rise in deviant workplace behavior. According to the Affective events theory (AET) Illa Fitzgerald was a creator of negative work events. This is supported by Lynn Gibson when she told Kris Jenkins that Illa would "unexpectedly interfere with only limited information about the issues or problems". These events then would be compounded by the negative mood of her staff, a mood that she and her managers were largely responsible for as well. From there staff would have an emotional reaction that would adversely affect their job satisfaction and performance. This chain of events would ultimately lead to a decline in customer service and in turn less repeat business.

For every role in a business there is a person with a personality that bests fits it. This belief is supported by John Holland's personality-job fit theory. When we put the wrong personalities in the wrong roles it is the equivalent of throwing a wrench into the gears of a machine. At best it will slow it down and at worst completely break it. These mismatches happen often in companies but usually the problem is recognized and corrected. But what happens when the person in question cannot be removed because of a status such as ownership? This is one of the biggest problems facing Bella's today. Owner Illa Fitzgerald does not display the personality traits that are required of a leader. According the to the big five model she is lacking in openness and conscientiousness. Both of which are important traits for leading. Her lack of openness is Cleary shown by the way she handles change. It is stated in the case study that she was " one who was not only hesitant to and often paralyzed by change". Even more troubling was the fact that all strategic operations were left to her. It goes without saying that having someone who is afraid of change in charge of the directing the company is a bad idea. True leadership not only adapts to changing environments but welcomes it as change can lead to new opportunities. A conscientious leader would never do anything to unwittingly sabotage their own business. Illa was completely unaware of the effect her actions were having upon the company. This is illustrated by the general managers admission that the owner had a " tendency to regularly monopolize the manager's time on trivial or personal matters thus keeping the manager from focusing on the needs of the salon." It is not only the absence of positive personality traits that makes Illa Fitzgerald an unfit leader but also the fact that she exhibits narcissistic traits. Though there are some positive aspects of narcissism in regards to leadership it is generally accepted that on the whole

narcissism is a negative trait. A person in her position must be capable of understanding the needs of both her customers and her staff where as a narcissist is only capable of focusing on their own needs. A leader must also be able to admit wrong and correct their course, this is something a narcissist is unable to do. The way that Illa wasted so much of Lynn Gibson's valuable time on trivial and personal matters highlights how incapable she was at understanding needs outside her own. Another sign that she may have this negative trait was how her staff perceived their relationship with her, on the survey one of the questions was "the owner cares about me as a person" which they felt was untrue. Decision making is possibly the most important aspect of being a leader. A leaders choices have far reaching consequences that ripple across the organization that they are in charge of. That is why any decision must be made without perceived bias and instead be based on objective reality. Such unbiased perception is another short coming of Illa Fitzgerald. When she would insert herself into problems without fully understanding the problem she was exhibiting selective perception. This lead her to make decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information. Actions like that not only frustrated her general manager but also potentially alienated her from her staff. It is also likely that since she would make decisions quickly and without fully understanding the problem that she was using intuition instead of following the rational decision making model. By coming to a conclusion without following the proper steps it is most likely that most of her decisions were made in error. The more information a person has the more closely their perception will align with objective reality. That is why a person must always strive to collect as much information as they can before making a decision. As a manager there are many ways of collecting information related to the job but one of the best sources at their disposal is listening to their staff. This

unfortunately does not seem to be a concept that Bella's owner or managers understood. As stated by the survey non management employees strongly disagreed that their opinion mattered. Even the managers felt their opinion didn't matter. How can a company ever hope to improve if they are not listening to their front line staff?...