Introduction
Starbucks Coffee Company has been in operations since the year 1971. The company has shown deep commitment towards ethical business by sourcing the best Arabica coffee for its extensive customer base. The Starbucks Company has existed in China for more than one decade and has more than 600 outlets across the big cities of China.
Due to positive culture, the Starbucks Company has achieved rapid expansion and relatively stable profits despite competition from other brands. This analytical treatise reviews the effects of the external culture on the Starbucks Company’s organizational culture and performance in the Chinese market.
Effects of external culture
The Starbucks Company has demonstrated that there exists a complex network behind its formal organizational chart. The teamwork based organization structure actually identifies the hierarchy of the organization structure in order to understand the complex network. In addition, it provides myriad illustrations of persuasive importance of problem definition within communication contemporary context. Also, the strategies of investigation, ramification, and elements of the problem definition are addressed in its chain of command.
The external culture of the Starbucks Company may be categorized as brand culture, corporation culture, and coffee culture. The company’s corporation culture has been proactive in promoting transformational leadership and constant staff motivation. The company’s organization 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. For instance, the branches in China 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.
The physical structures of the Starbucks organization culture promotes 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 has 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 efficiency of the staff members.
The Starbucks Company 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 unity of purpose symbol designed to create the culture of efficiency and support among the employees. The employees are very proactive and approachable.
With the need to establish a proactive organization culture, the Starbucks Company 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 daily management and operation of the organization. In order for the productivity quotient to become an effective tool, it is appropriate to ensure that workers and the management team both understand the collective perspective of the institution.
The company has three building blocks of learning such as a supportive learning environment, concrete learning processes, and practices leadership that reinforce innovation. The managers play a significant role in setting up the learning environment for their employees. This culture has created an ideal climate for innovation and communication among the employees. This culture is meant to create an ideal climate for innovation and communication among the employees.
The company’s team work culture spells the rules of engagement, expected behavior, and repercussions for misconduct. These rules appreciate diversity and uphold integrity in judgment as enshrined in the company’s vision and mission statement. In the process, cases of prejudice are minimized as diversity develops into a positive aspect of the organization.
There is more to ethical leadership than the method of leading. Ethical leadership also involves the process of decision making which is dependent on heuristic since it provides assumptions, integration of options, and ethical control. Decision environment often experience dynamics and swings which create short and long term effect on chances of survival for two alternatives to solve a problem.
When faced with a decision dilemma that requires critical assessments, the management of the Starbucks Company resorts to analytical tools that ensure competitive positioning advantage. There is a very fine line between the rationally correct, economically viable, and ethically correct decision. Decisions made by the management team of this company are based on addressing all three aspects and not only one of them.
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. An ethical decision made by an ethical leader can be defined as a decision with moral and legal appeal to the wider community. For instance, ethical leadership practiced by the company considers the needs of customers when making decision on the coffee brands and prices within the Chinese market.
Knowing how to improve quality is crucial in growth of business enterprise. The improved quality has greatly rewarded the Starbucks Company’s operations in China. Since the production team is permanently employed in the company, they are engaged in the production process to ensure that the company optimizes labor as a factor of production towards efficiency.
This was achieved through quality planning of the use of labor hours of these employees in departments that are related to their specialization. This has improved on the quality of coffee served to customers.
Besides, the marketing team is constantly trained on the latest marketing models to ensure that they give their best in online and offline marketing of the company’s products. The HRM team has specialized training on efficient performance among the employees to minimize redundancy.
Quality planning of work specialization is an important policy at the Starbucks Company, which aims to promote long term success in business objectives since it is focused to enhance effective exploitation of human resources. As a result, the company has been able to penetrate the traditional Chinese market without much resistance due to existence of a functional and proactive team.
Conclusion
In summary, the Starbucks Company’s organization culture is very friendly, dynamic and proactive. The employees are absorbed and made to feel part of this structure. As a result, they always strive to give their best towards the organization and uphold the existing coffee culture with minimal struggle.