Organizational Behavior at Kudler Fine Foods

Organizational Behavior at Kudler Fine Foods

Companies continuously evolve and change over time. This paper analyzes Kudler Fine Foods’ readiness for change by assessing the company’s apparent culture, organizational structure, leadership style, as well as internal and external happenings that may drive such change.

Apparent Culture

“Commonly thought of as ‘the way things are done around here,’” company culture is a “key factor in long-term organizational success” (Hunt, 2006). Kudler Fine Foods unique offering to the public parallels with its unique organizational culture. According to Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s four types of organizational cultures, KFF best takes on the appearance of the “academy culture” (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002). The academy culture encourages employees to become experts in their field with rewards based upon mastery of skills. Within this academy culture, Kudler Fine Food employees are loyal and climbing up the company ladder as opportunity manifests itself. The strength of this culture is established by KFF’s commitment to promote from within the company, to make every new employee a success by providing excellent training resources as well as by providing extended training for employees advancing within the company. In congruence with the academy model, KFF managers give discretionary spot bonuses for outstanding employee performance.

Another aspect of culture identification for Kudler Fine Foods comes from key concepts found in the company mission statement including the idea of helpful and knowledgeable staff working to give the consumer a delightful experience. Daly and Kabanoff explain that companies reflect what “senior managers actually believed their organizations to be like” (2002). Kathy Kudler’s vision for KFF is to be a professional atmosphere of customer care and fine foods. This requires that the entire company model a culture of self-management, pride, professionalism, and open communication. The company handbook reflects the Kudler vision and encourages everyone to be on the same page. Company pride is modeled through the employee dress code that encourages a neat appearance and a company uniform showing unity as well as a means of identifying workers who can provide customer service. While there is a chain of command recognized through the delegation of duties and pay scale, the lines of communication do not follow such a stringent structure. Open communication is not only modeled between the customer and KFF associate but also within the company structure as employees are encouraged to give direct feedback to management and President Kathy Kudler about new products and other store improvements. Even the structure of employee evaluations is produced in a manner of open communication allowing employees to discuss personal goals and challenges and gives the employee the opportunity to agree or disagree with their management review. KFF encourages self-management of their delegated tasks by allowing each store manager to negotiate orders according to their store needs.

Organizational Structure

“Organizational structure is a formal system of relationships that determines lines of authority and tasks assigned to individuals and units” (Balkin & Gomez-Mejia, 2002). There are two dimensions of organizational structure: the vertical dimension looks at who has authority to make decisions and delegate duties and the horizontal dimension looks at dividing tasks into departments and teams. Both are vital to a success of a business. Kudler Fine Foods’ organizational structure can be analyzed by identifying its span of control, formalization, centralization, and departmentalization (Balkin & Gomez-Mejia, 2002).

Span Of Control

Span of control, which refers to the “number of subordinates who report to a manager”, is a vertical dimension in organizational structure (Balkin & Gomez-Mejia, 2002). For Kudler, the span of control is flat with the CEO Kathy Kudler in a direct relationship with each store manager. The store managers along with the assistant store managers provide control for the stockers, baggers, and clerks. While staff authority relates to staff managers who indirectly provide advice to the line managers, line authority “is based on the superior-subordinate authority relationship that starts at the top of the organization hierarchy and extends to the lowest levels, providing the chain of command” (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002). Kudler illustrates this form of organizational structure from owner to assistant store manager. At Kudler, staff authority is demonstrated through operations where department managers work with Kathy in purchasing and inventory management of store supplies.

Kudler