Executive summary
Both Henry Owen and Fiona founded Rosalind’s cafe, and it started its operations in Rosalind Street in 2006. In 2008, Henry Owen and Fiona developed the cafe, and it had to extend to College Street. Of late, the two extended the cafe to Brick Lane branch in London. The culture maintained by Rosalind’s cafe is to “keep it simple”. Caffe Nero denotes a coffee shop chain that has its key operations in the UK. Caffe Nero, founded by Gerry Ford, it presently operates over 500 shops, and it has extended its functions to Turkey and the UAE. Outstanding management seems to be powerfully associated with brilliant operations, and it could be rational to expect all businesses to achieve exceptional functions as precedence. The management of communication and guaranteeing open communication ensures that workers are ready to exchange their deliberations and suggestions, albeit the considerations could be in opposition to the grain of the trendy view. Research has established that managing open communication is a chief aspect related to interpersonal reliance. Companies like Caffe Nero that function in dissimilar nations have to decide on the degree to which they will contain their organisational culture in addition to associated management progressions to suit the host nation and attempt to retain constancy and standardisation. Change is a constant aspect of organisational survival. Due to inconsistencies in some stores of Caffe Nero, customers are from time to time inconvenienced. Nevertheless, Caffe Nero is better than Rosalind’s cafe in the application of management techniques, which eases the work for employees at Caffe Nero. This report shows that Rosalind’s cafe would be preferable to customers as compared to Caffe Nero while employees would prefer Caffe Nero as compared to Rosalind’s cafe.
Introduction
In a city roughly 40 miles away from London, which is famous for its institutions of higher learning as well as its gorgeous structural design that draws tourists from all corners of the universe, lies Rosalind’s cafe (a small business). Rosalind’s cafe, founded by Henry Owen and Fiona, started its operations in Rosalind Street in 2006. In 2008, Henry Owen and Fiona expanded the cafe to College Street at a small site that was opposite a famous landmark. Recently, the two extended the cafe to Brick Lane branch in London. During its starting of operations, Rosalind’s cafe offered branded coffee and ready-made foods, among others. The branded coffee was thought to catch the attention of clients.
Nevertheless, Rosalind’s cafe changed the supplier of their coffee to a company that was little known, and that was situated in a nearby county. It rapidly started making their food in a bid to surpass other similar cafes. Every food and foodstuff provided by Rosalind’s cafe is prepared at its premises. The culture of Rosalind’s cafe is to “keep it simple”. Some of the foods offered by Rosalind’s Street cafe include salt beef and cakes. Both College Street cafe and Brick Lane cafe provide ice cream in different flavours with numerous of them being very imaginative. The ice cream at these cafes is produced in small machines that are of equal size with a normal domestic refrigerator.
Caffe Nero (a large, global business) denotes a coffee shop chain that has its main operations in the United Kingdom. The expression Caffe Nero is an Italian word and means black coffee in English. Gerry Ford established Caffe Nero in London in 1997, it presently operates over 500 shops countrywide, and it has extended its functions to Turkey in the UAE. As a Public Limited Company, the shares of Caffe Nero were traded in the Stock Exchange with the use of the symbol CFN (Buchanan & Huczynski 2010). This paper compares and contrasts the operations of Rosalind’s cafe and Caffe Nero. Additionally, this report discusses the business (out of those above two) that is preferable for a customer and the one that is preferable for an employee. Lastly, this report offers recommendations for the betterment of the companies in the areas that they have some flaws.
Management and what Managers accomplish
Management denotes the practice of attaining organisational goals in a dynamic setting by balancing efficacy, competence, and impartiality, seizing the most from scarce resources and operating with and through different individuals. Excellent management seems to be powerfully associated with excellent operations that it could be sensible to expect all businesses to achieve excellent functions as precedence. The methods of excellent functions are, even so, accessible in the public realm in a broad scope of simply reachable types. However, many businesses are still badly administered. International corporations have been obliged to take a methodical advance to administration. For the case of Rosalind’s cafe and Caffe Nero, they have succeeded to maintain excellent levels of operation in varying locations, cultures, and marketplaces due to powerful and efficient management processes (Hales 2006). Currently, these businesses are enjoying the fruits of this attempt in the way of improved productivity, high returns on capital, and evident growth. Similar benefits are easily available to other companies, where they function. Nonetheless, unpredictably a small number of businesses have made any endeavour to obtain discernment into the excellence of their management conducts. The ones that excel offer themselves the chance to attain swift, cost-efficient, and maintainable competitive advantage.
It is widely perceived that excellent management raises output, but no scholar or researcher has ever confirmed this assertion. Nevertheless, studies show an obvious connection between the two. Some of the things that managers can do to better the operations of their businesses include supported management techniques that contribute to the excellence of their businesses. Management techniques could encompass talent management, where managers endeavour to draw and maintain competent individuals (Hales 2006). Another management technique underscores cases where managers seek to award workers that attain set objectives. In a bid to investigate and gauge the influence of management techniques, managers from both Caffe Nero and Rosalind’s cafe in the United Kingdom were interviewed. This practice of the interview mentioned above was double-blind for the interviewees were not conscious of the way their management practices were to be investigated and gauged, and the interviewer (myself) was not conscious of the financial performances of the companies. Each company was given a score for application or non-application of every management technique. In the provided score, the least was 1, which affirmed that the technique in question was not applied and the highest score was 5 to show the most excellent application. After comparison, it was established that Caffe Nero was better in the application of management techniques as compared to Rosalind’s cafe. The correspondence between the applications of management techniques by a company and its financial performance was noteworthy.
Since management practices influence the fiscal performance of a business, it is anticipated that they also have an influence on the yield of the business. Moreover, the business with a better application of management techniques and a greater fiscal performance was proved better in treating its employees. In this case, it is better to work in Caffe Nero than to work in Rosalind’s cafe. Correlations were clear that one per cent rise in the excellence of application of management techniques reflected an eighty per cent rise in the overall output. For managers thinking of the way to boost their output, and thus their overall productivity, they had to manage their businesses better.
Additionally, a powerful connection was evident between the degree to which the application of management techniques in a company influences financial outcome and the degree of competitive strength. For the case of managers that were operating in less competitive settings, the news is not cheering at all. Irrespective of the efforts applied by the managers in these businesses, their endeavours reflect very little influence when judged against aspects like directives (Hales 2006). Nevertheless, there is a hope of relieve for if a government settles on a determination that the financial system demands competition, businesses with better application of management techniques will be prepared to lead the group. The major output intensities are probable to be attained just when governments formulate perfect competitive situations, and managers apply excellent management techniques.
All university town workers operate in shifts in the branches of Rosalind’s cafe. One of the sons of the founders, Ed, acts as the director of the cafe at the Rosalind Cafe. The cafe at College Street has James as its director from early 2010. The managers (directors) are accountable for workforce concerns (for instance, James conducts employee schedules for the two cafes) as well as ensuring access to adequate stock. The founders attempt not to be too watchful on the directors, but allow them to have full management of the cafes. On her part, Fiona possesses the required culinary expertise. Still, her fondness lies on administration instead of risking the company’s susceptibility that could emerge from dependence on her accessibility for daily cooking chores. Even as the store manager at Caffe Nero possessed the greatest knowledge concerning the company, there lacked vivid and sophisticated impression across the company.
In a bid to guarantee ideal outcomes, there was a need to establish an Electronic Point of Sale system (EPoS). This system had an excellent performance with the eradication of manual entry of data. The management of Caffe Nero rose from possessing little or no knowledge to a reasonable quantity of knowledge, like sales information. Nevertheless, the sales information was constant, and managers of Caffe Nero desired to have the capacity to disclose the tale behind the figures. The management team and the regional managers were enjoying the possession of information, though enquiries posed as many questions as compared to the provided answers. It was comprehended that more refined investigation and reporting was required to obtain every response that was essential concerning the fast-growing company.
Managing Communication
Managing communication and ensuring open communication goes a long way to make sure that workers are ready to exchange their considerations and suggestions. However, the considerations may be in opposition to the grain of the well-liked view. Research has proved that managing open communication is a major aspect associated with interpersonal reliance. Workers will be more wavering to engage themselves in backing organisational objectives when they have no confidence in their managers. Moreover, employees will not support organisational (and global) cultures when there is no open communication. Different studies have revealed a constructive association between the management of communication and organisational dedication, where openness acts as a means of enhancing organisational dedication. Information technology has boosted how communication in an organisation occurs by making individuals fully accessible, all the time, irrespective of their whereabouts (DeRidder 2004). Some of the ways that communication could take place, including through electronic mails, mobile phones, voice mail, and instant messaging, just to mention a few. Nevertheless, communication through information technology may encounter difficulties from legal and safety concerns like wrong use of electronic mail, information privacy, being hacked into and spam.
The excellence of information and communication is more significant than the quantity or sufficiency of communication because it connects with confidence between co-workers and confidence amongst managers. In short, when workers have a feeling that information from their managers and co-workers is being communicated in an appropriate, precise, and relevant manner, they are more liable of feeling less susceptible and more capable of relying on their managers and co-workers. On the contrary, when workers have a feeling that they are obtaining information that is inappropriate, imprecise, and irrelevant, they are liable to become more restrained and less confident. For Rosalind’s cafe is a family business, the co-founders (Henry and Fiona) have an excellent team of employees in the business, and they boast in ensuring superb communication with their employees, which in return makes the employees become engaged in the company (DeRidder 2004). In this regard, Rosalind’s cafe swop employees between their cafes due to the feeling that the two detached group of employees could cause segregation, thereby generating conflict.
In Rosalind’s cafe, notices are at times displayed to remind employees of what is expected of them. Both Henry and Fiona are present in the cafe as they treasure communication with employees and are simply capable of offering solutions to some problems or giving suggestions. Henry and Fiona engage the managers and at times, the employees and explain to them the reason behind something being carried out. For Fiona, the concern that managers acquire to encompass employees in the business progression is the spirit of natural management skills (Thomas, Zolin & Hartman 2009). This communication allows the employees of Rosalind’s cafe to be in a position to serve their customers diligently. For the case of Caffe Nero, the managers communicate with the employees, inform them of the expected opening hours for every store, and guide them on how to track the traffic at diverse times of the day. Information technology and communication allow regional managers to create awareness concerning the inconsistencies; for instance, a store that requires to be opened early or late and a store that due to some reasons has to close before time. To Caffe Nero, managing resources of employees and communicate with them is vital to its operation.
Additionally, a sufficient amount of staff is critical to satisfying the requirements of this strategy. Due to several inconsistencies in some stores of Caffe Nero, customers are at times inconvenienced. In this regard, Rosalind’s cafe is a better place for customers as compared to Caffe Nero.
Managing Organisational (and global) Cultures
Businesses like Caffe Nero that function in different nations have to decide on the extent to which they will localise their organisational culture as well as associated management processes to suit the host nation and endeavour to retain stability and standardisation. The setting for the businesses can vary in different nations in a range of aspects encompassing directives, institutions, and position of marketplaces, shared negotiating, workforce attributes, and customs. In cases where national dissimilarities are noteworthy, and they enforce restraints on what is expected of businesses to undertake, greater localisation would be anticipated. A resource-anchored perspective underscores the potential significance of distinguishing organisational culture as a channel to maintain a competitive advantage. On the contrary, the managers of Rosalind’s cafe are for the support of the contextual approach. The contextual approach affirms that organisational culture is extensively reliant on the environment, thus underscoring institutional obligations like national culture. From the analysis conducted by intellectuals, there is no support of assumed responsibility of national culture, as a restriction to organisational culture. Therefore, businesses might have more prudence in deciding if they will localise or standardise organisational culture in addition to associated management processes than proposed by conventional knowledge (French 2007). Researches seek to explain when national culture restricts organisational culture and times when it cannot restrict are inadequate, thus the need for future studies to address this inadequacy.
Management of Power and Politics
Power and politics in organisations are a certainty in the majority of organisations. Even though game playing could seem to be misused time, it is recommended in a bid to secure supplies, improve thoughts, realise personal objectives and frequently boost the status of an individual. An individual is not expected to anticipate being capable of standing detached from power and politics in an organisation. One might be revered for shunning power and politics in an organisation. Still, the progress of that individual will be restricted, and the individual will be perceived as a simple target. Researchers have argued that the sector of organisational power and politics remains mainly unsearched, especially with respect to the skewed occurrence (Tsui, Nifadkar & Ou 2007). Research into the discernment of power and politics proposes the commonness of such conducts in conjunction with ambivalence to the feature of the responsibility of management. The politicised character of change is extensively identified, but the function of power and politics in an organisation in change outfit is contentious. Whereas the managers of Rosalind’s cafe support relevance, the managers of Caffe Nero support avoidance. Additionally, some researchers connect the strength of political action to the level of change and back an indicative advance to organisational progress involvements.
Decision Making
The making of decisions in an organisation denotes a witting process of creating choices involving one or more options to progress toward several desired states of situations. This aspect allows an organisation to act as a compilation of selections searching for problems, concerns, and sentiments in search of decisions and conditions where they could be publicised, explanations searching for matters where they could act as the responses, and judgement-makers searching for responsibilities. Even though organisations could be seen as propellers for resolving definite difficulties or formations where disagreement is determined via negotiations and as well offer sets of practices through which contributors reach an understanding of their undertaking while in the course of doing it (Buchanan & Huczynski 2010). In this regard, an organisation acts as a merger of decision-makers ready to function. The decision-making perception of organisations concentrates on how the connotation of choices varies with time. Decision-making in organisations draws attention to the tactical influences of the clock, through the creation of choices and difficulties, the time interval of accessible energy, and the influence of the formation of the organisation. In a bid to comprehend the practices in organisations, an individual could perceive a selection chance like a garbage can where contributors deposit different types of difficulties and resolutions as they are formed.
The combination of garbage in one can rely on the combination of accessible cans, on the stickers at the substitute cans, on the garbage presently being generated, and the pace with which garbage is amassed and eliminated from the sight. This theory of decision making in organisations has to be associated with a moderately difficult interchange amid the creation of difficulties in organisations, the hiring of staff, the creation of explanations, and the chances for selection. It could be convenient to consider that selection chances initially bring about the creation of decision options, to an assessment of their outcomes, to a valuation of those outcomes about goals, and lastly to a decision (Buchanan & Huczynski 2010). This kind of model is frequently an underprivileged portrayal of what takes place. For the case of garbage can representation, in contrast, a decision denotes a result or explanation of numerous comparatively autonomous flows in an organisation.
Rosalind’s cafe is developing as a company, and the owners are constantly searching for advancements that can be achieved. Both Henry and Fiona first examine perceptions that they bear between themselves. After examining the ideas, these co-founders share the ideas to Ed, as they understand his different perspective. Afterwards, they share the ideas with James if the idea is associated with food. The founders hold management meetings for each worker after some weeks, and they go out together to have drinks and get unstrained.
Nevertheless, a number of the bigger resolutions, like the extension of the cafe that took place in 2010 are entirely arrived at by the co-founders alone. This relation between managers and employees in Rosalind’s cafe makes it a better place for workers (Buchanan & Huczynski 2010). On the other hand, despite opening approximately 200 branches and over 350 stores in a span of fewer than ten years, Caffe Nero does not have a suitable technology to assist in the analysis of business performance as well as in the decision making. The managers are the sole decision-makers in Caffe Nero and employees are not involved. Due to poor technology and lack of employee participation, the managers of Caffe Nero are forced to fax everyday takings to the headquarters where it is manually included in spreadsheets.
Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Business Ethics signifies contemplating on and suggesting perceptions of perfect and wrong conduct. For the variations of relations, the span of probable business settings, the uncertainty of daily living conditions, and restrained moral consistency, one certain thing concerning business ethics is that they are at all times prone to controversy. For business ethics in Rosalind’s cafe, what matters on a daily occurrence is the moral decrees being shaped in the personal and structural restraints of an organisation. As it occurs, the decrees might differ sharply relying on different aspects, like closeness to the marketplace, line or workforce accountabilities, or an individual’s rank in the chain of command. Real organisational moralities are thus appropriate, situational, very precise, and frequently implicit (Fisher & Lovell 2009).
In Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), organisations endeavour to satisfy or surpass legal and anticipated values by deeming the greater excellence of the broadest possible society with both local and international stipulations. This move takes place for the economic, ecological, lawful, social, ethical, and benevolent influence of how an organisation carries out businesses and actions. Corporate Social Responsibility, as applied in Caffe Nero, is a practice propelled by internalisation, deregulation, and denationalisation. The supporters of CSR are devoted to illustrating that companies have accountabilities past the manufacture of goods and income generation (Fisher & Lovell 2009). Socially responsible companies can assist in the resolution of significant social and ecological difficulties. On the contrary, arguments against CSR endeavour to demonstrate that CSR deforms the marketplace by averting companies from their basic operations of income generation and this element is perceived to be potentially extremely risky.
Also, counterarguments affirm that the operations of business verify its accountabilities. In this regard, companies lack social responsibility past conformity with the regulation. The opponents make it more significant for people to be vivid on what they have a conviction of being an instance of corporate responsibility (Fisher & Lovell 2009). The expression on the business instance for Corporate Social Responsibility has indubitably outperformed comprehension, not to mention progression. Even if there exists strong prospective for CSR to arrive at constructive participation in tackling the requirements of underprivileged societies, there are manners through which CSR may harm the same societies, whether by error or design.
Management of change
Management of change in an organisation has been described as the practice of constantly renewing the course of an organisation, formation, and capacities to serve the ever-varying requirements of internal and external clients. Change is a persistent aspect of organisational existence. Therefore, there ought to be certain concerning the significance of any organisation’s capacity to recognise the ranking it requires to achieve in the future and how to administer the essential change. Accordingly, the management of change in an organisation cannot be detached from the organisational policy. Due to the significance of the organisational change, managing it is turning out to be highly essential administrative expertise. There are two main theories that help to manage change in an organisational. These theories include Planned and Emergent theories (Van Dierendonck 2011).
Planned management of change is intended to boost the function and efficiency of the individual phase of the organisation via participative and collection-based schemes of change. Even though the planed approach is deep-rooted and taken to be highly efficient, it has been highly criticised. Rosalind’s cafe employs the planned approach in the management of change. The planned approach focuses on small-scale and increasing change and is thus not relevant in conditions that necessitate swift and transformational change. Additionally, this approach disregards conditions where commanding approaches are necessitated.
On the other hand, Caffe Nero employs the Emergent approach to change management. The emergent approach is the ambiguity of both the internal and external setting that leads to this approach being more applicable when judged against the planned approach. In a bid to handle the intricacy of the situation, it is proposed that the organisation should become open erudition structures. The emergent approach emphasises support of far-reaching and exhaustive comprehension of policy, coordination, culture, and individuals, and how these elements can operate be it as a supply of inertia that could obstruct change, or otherwise, as levers to promote an efficient change progression.
Leadership
Leadership denotes the practice of guiding, managing, motivating, and encouraging employees towards the attainment of declared organisational objectives. Leadership in Rosalind’s cafe is transactional while that of Caffe Nero is transformational leadership. Transactional leadership is anchored in an exchange practice, and it considers the present intentions and objectives of followers as specified and rigid. Transformational leadership has been suggested by intellectuals to illustrate and elucidate how leaders are in a position to realise large-scale transformation in organisations. Transformational leadership proposes that particular leaders, out of their individual attributes and their relations with followers, surpass an easy swap over of supplies and efficiency (Van Dierendonck 2011). The theory of transformational leadership suggests that leaders employ more intricate conducts than deliberation and instigating coordination. Transformational leadership performs in an excellent way to boost the productivity of an organisation as compared to transactional leadership. Due to improved relations between managers and employees, transformational leadership is capable of making Caffe Nero a better business for customers.
Management of knowledge and erudition
Managing knowledge and learning in an organisation concerns human relations, elucidations, practices, possessions and culture. Through the concentration of computer-based expertise as the key to knowledge and learning management, recognition viewpoint tends being distorted, thus providing insufficient attention to the numerous human aspects of knowledge and learning management. Some of the human aspects of knowledge and learning management consist of confidence, culture, inventiveness and novelty, proficiency, and human effectiveness. In Caffe Nero, inter-personal relations occur between the initiator (giver) and the recipient stores, thereby influencing the results of knowledge and learning management and transfer. The structural position of one store about other stores in the connection could influence its capacity to obtain knowledge; for example, it could have an impact on the capacity to obtain information from the connection. When fresh notions are created and transferred into a different store, intra-organisational knowledge, and learning sharing is essential for management and commercialisation of novelty (Jones 2007). However, Caffe Nero fails in the intra-organisation knowledge transfer, thereby allowing some stores to perform better than others do. The management of Rosalind’s cafe actualises the significance of physical closeness and industrial constellations to enable local perspectives to constitute localised systems. The managers of Rosalind’s cafe propose that knowledge streams more efficiently in territorial structures as compared to non-localised inter-company coordination.
Conclusion
Rosalind’s cafe was founded by Henry Owen and Fiona, and it started its processes in Rosalind Street in 2006. Rosalind’s cafe has two cafes, namely College Street cafe and Brick Lane cafe. Caffe Nero denotes a coffee shop chain that has its central operations in the United Kingdom. While the store manager at Caffe Nero possesses the utmost knowledge concerning the company. There lacked flamboyant and sophisticated consciousness across the company. Henry and Fiona first scrutinise perceptions that they bear between themselves before discussing them with their employees. For Caffe Nero, the managers are the exclusive decision-makers and workers are not engaged. Corporate Social Responsibility, as utilised in Caffe Nero, is an exercise propelled by internalisation, deregulation, and denationalisation. Whereas Rosalind’s cafe employs the planned approach in the management of change, Caffe Nero employs the Emergent approach of change management. One would prefer to be a customer in Rosalind’s cafe, but an employee in Caffe Nero.
Recommendations
- Rosalind’s cafe should implement better ways of improving their application of management techniques to make it a better place for employees. This move will, in return improve the financial performance of the company.
- Caffe Nero should strive to avoid inconsistencies in its stores in a bid to avoid inconveniencing its customers. In this regard, Caffe Nero will better its relations with customers.
- The managers of Caffe Nero should involve employees in decision making in the quest to instil significance and trustworthiness in the workers. Additionally, this move will go along the way in ensuring that the decisions made are well-considered and thus are the best for bettering the performance of the company.
- Caffe Nero should endeavour to apply for intra-organisation knowledge transfer in a bid to allow stores, which are not performing well, to improve in their performance.
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