Introduction
Coffee Planet LLC is based in the city of Dubai in the UAE. The company was established in the year 2004 and has been dominant in the UAE coffee brewing sector. The company has a very dynamic culture, riddled with rituals, symbols, and proactive organizational behavior. To survive and control a sizable share of the coffee brewing sector in Dubai, Coffee Planet LLC has endeavored to remain competitive through the non-competitive strategy of provocative organization behavior control and strategic negotiation. Thus, this reflective treatise attempts to explicitly review the organization symbol and ritual of the Coffee Planet LLC and its influence on the company’s organizational culture.
Symbol
Organization symbols are “visible, physical manifestations of organizations and indicators of organizational life. Symbols take on important meanings in organizations, meanings that are defined by cultural and social conventions and interactions” (Sylvia & Kowalczyk, 2008, p. 36). In the case of Coffee Planet LLC, the main organization symbol is the unity of purpose. Coffee Planet LLC has identified that the key driver of productivity is employees’ morale. It is revealed that engaged and productive workers are more likely to be creative and interested in their work commitments. Satisfied workers are more eager to create positive results in their work.
This element has been embedded in the company’s unity of purpose symbol designed to create a culture of efficiency and support among the employees (Kelly, 2008). Coffee Planet LLC has demonstrated that there exists a complex network behind its formal organizational chart. The teamwork-based organization structure identifies the hierarchy of the organization structure to understand the complex network. It also provides myriad illustrations of the persuasive importance of problem definition within communication contemporary context (Appelbaum, Bartolomucci, Beaumier, & Boulanger, 2004). Also, the strategies of investigation, ramification, and elements of the problem definition are addressed in its chain of command.
The symbol of the Coffee Planet LLC may be categorized as brand culture, corporation culture, and coffee culture. The company’s corporate culture has been proactive in promoting transformational leadership and constant staff motivation. The company’s organizational structure is characterized by servant leadership. Reflectively, servant leadership is characterized by the ability to demonstrate authenticity, value people, develop people, build community, provide leadership, and share leadership with a team or a unit in an organization (Bolman & Deal, 2013).
For instance, the branches in Dubai have sales team managers who are servant leaders since their role within the sales teams are to proactively provide direction while participating alongside the team in making critical decisions. As a result, the company has experienced rapid expansion. Specifically, a business cannot survive without the customer who must be made to feel part of the business endeavors to win the aspects of brand loyalty, acceptability, and support (Narver, 2009). For instance, the unity of purpose symbol is customized to motivate the employees to give their best in serving customers within minimal supervision since the symbol has been transformed into a service delivery culture.
Since every employee in the Coffee Planet LLC is his or her boss, the company’s cultural symbol has spurred a continuous growth in the competitive market. Related to changes in organizational structure are the variations in job design and new structures that provide the employees with an opportunity within the work activities as part of the unity of purpose symbol. Moreover, the Coffee Planet LLC organization exhibits flexibility in its organizational structure that enables jobs to be redesigned; thus, facilitating work-based innovations in performing within the organization symbol (Hofstede, 2009).
The ordinary employees are grouped into team cells consisting of four employees within the same area of specialization. Thus, whenever there is a need to communicate an issue to the chairperson, the team cells will pass the information to the supervisors. The hierarchal procedure will be repeated until the chairperson gets the information. For the self-motivated people, this approach allows them to do much more spectacular things as a team and not as human machines.
I chose the unity of purpose symbol at the Coffee Planet LLC since it is organized to promote a positive relationship between favorable and effective job performance and work environment as attributes of motivation and congenial conditions. The structure encourages security, comfort and safety, and prevailing physical convenience among the staff members. Measuring factors such as interpersonal relations, working conditions, support and trust, welfare provisions, and work environment have greatly contributed to the organizational effectiveness as well as employees’ behaviors at the Starbucks.
As a result, the company has been in a position to expand its market operations due to the efficiency of the staff members due to motivation by the unity of purpose symbol. Coffee Planet LLC has identified that the key driver of productivity is employees’ morale. It is revealed that engaged and productive workers are more likely to be creative and interested in their work commitments. Satisfied workers are more eager to create positive results in their work. The unity of purpose symbol has been embedded in an organizational culture designed to create a culture of efficiency and support. The employees are very proactive and approachable.
Rituals
Organization rituals are unique activities or behavior that is associated with a company. The rituals are often designed to create an organizational culture identity that makes such an organization peculiar amidst other establishments. The rituals are designed to motivate employees and create a common organizational behavior orientation. Concerning the Coffee Planet LLC, the sales and marketing have highlighted the organization’s ritual as an initiation ceremony performed during weekly employee training and interaction meetings. Each employee is given a minute to recite a loyalty pledge to customer satisfaction.
With the need to establish a proactive organization culture through the ritual at the training camp, the Coffee Planet LLC has developed a discursive approach in explaining and exploring shared and coordinated actions on roles and channels through which organizational framework functions in the exchange of information formally. This is of great essence towards understanding its organizational communication. Employees are also allowed to contribute their viewpoints regarding the organization’s daily management and operation during the training. For the productivity quotient to become an effective tool, it is appropriate to ensure that workers and the management team understand the institution’s collective perspective.
The Coffee Planet LLC has three building blocks of learning: a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes, and practices leadership that reinforce innovation as internalized in the lively training sessions that are unique to the coffee brewer. The managers play a significant role in setting up the learning environment for their employees in performing this ritual as the team leader in each of the unique training sessions.
This ritual has created an ideal climate for innovation and communication among the employees. This ritual is meant to create an ideal climate for innovation and communication among the employees (Kelly, 2008). The company’s teamwork ritual spells the rules of engagement, expected behavior, and understanding of the organization’s culture. These rules appreciate diversity and uphold integrity in judgment as enshrined in its vision and mission statement. In the process, cases of prejudice are minimized as diversity develops into a positive aspect of the organization.
I chose the unique recital ritual at the Coffee Planet LLC because it has created an environment of dynamic, consultative, and proactive decision making for the employees as part of a family unit. The decision environment often experiences dynamics and swings which create short and long-term effects on chances of survival for two alternatives to solve a problem. When faced with a decision dilemma that requires critical assessments, the ritual ensures a competitive positioning advantage. Each employee is inspired to internalize the need to give the best in this family unit when serving customers. The ritual also defines the line between the rationally correct, economically viable, and ethically correct decision. Decisions made by the employees of this company are based on addressing all three aspects and not only one of them.
Performing Culture
Organizational culture is the blueprint for sustainable competitive advantage since it controls employees’ behavior and actions. A performing culture “creates an environment with a unique personality, soul, and with a passion for performance-so that people make the right decisions and do the right thing wherever they are in the business” (Flamholtz & Randle, 2011, p. 52). A performing culture promotes a positive relationship between favorable and effective job performance and works environment as attributes of motivation and congenial conditions.
The structure encourages security, comfort and safety, and prevailing physical convenience. Measuring factors such as interpersonal relations, working conditions, support and trust, welfare provisions, and work environment ensure that the performance culture results in organizational effectiveness as well as positive employees’ behavior. Irrespective of the size of a company, a proactive performance culture is a manner in which people in a company operate both unconsciously and consciously in their daily activities.
Through understanding the performance culture, an establishment can understand the culture that prevails, drives, and supports essential programs within its workforce to accomplish the strategic objectives. For instance, in managing each employee’s optimal output, it is important to establish a formal employee performance motivation system that integrates the rituals and symbols as part of the service charter. The charter can be made up of formal systems of monitoring operations, reviewing performance, and rewarding achievements. Employees’ behaviors in the company are influenced by the mutual interests between the company and its workers (Kelly, 2008).
This mutual interest offers a superordinate objective which can be achieved only through the combined determination of the organization (employer) and individual workers in a formalized productivity control system. Therefore, such an establishment must be critical in balancing the feedback with the performance goals as a remedy towards inclusiveness and active participation, which translates into desirable performance. Through training, evaluation, and performance reviews, it is possible to establish a clear performing culture, fostering a unique culture among employees. The process should be inclusive of structured evaluation and progress reporting tools.
Concerning the Coffee Planet LLC, as part of the performing culture, the marketing team is constantly trained on the latest marketing models to ensure that they give their best online and offline marketing. The HRM team has specialized training on efficient performance among the employees to minimize redundancy. The quality planning of work specialization is an important policy at Coffee Planet LLC, aiming to promote long-term success in business objectives since it focuses on enhancing the effective exploitation of human resources.
As a result, the company has been able to penetrate the traditional Dubai coffee brewing market without much resistance due to a functional and proactive team that has created an ideal performing culture. This performing culture has created a healthy work environment, and personal growth perspectives that apply to all situations since all the vital controls’ organs are centralized (Griffin & Moorhead, 2013). Through centralized and properly designed training procedures, talent promotion, and motivation, productive behavior internalization has presented the best alternative ways of solving role execution. Since the Coffee Planet LLC employees have taken a positive attitude to embrace change and create an environment that motivates change, quantifiable change has become a reality.
References
Appelbaum, S., Bartolomucci, N., Beaumier, E., & Boulanger, J. (2004). Organizational citizenship behavior: A case study of culture, leadership and trust. Management Decision, 42(1/2), 13-43.
Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2013). Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Cavusgil, S., Knight, G., & Riesenberger, J. (2013). A framework of international business. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Flamholtz, E., & Randle, Y. (2011). Corporate culture: The ultimate strategic asset. Stanford, UK: Stanford business Books.
Griffin, R., & Moorhead, G. (2013). Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Hofstede, G. (2009). Cultural constraints in management theories. Academy of Management Executive, 7(1), 81-94.
International Monetary Fund. (2014). World economic outlook: Advanced structural reforms. Washington, DC: IMF.
Kelly, P. (2008). International business and management. Alabama, Al: Cengage Learning.
Narver, D. (2009). Cultural differences: Impacts to international business strategy. Web.
Sylvia, F., & Kowalczyk, S. (2008). Creating competitive advantage through intangible assets: The direct and indirect effects of corporate culture and reputation. Advances in competitiveness research, 16(2), 34-38.