Overview of Case Content
The founding of Away, a luggage retailer, designer, and manufacturer company in 2015 by Stephanie Korey and Jennifer Rubio, was set to disrupt the market with affordable products. While they achieved their goals, including a $1.4bn valuation in 2019 the company CEO Stephanie Korey developed a reputation for promoting a poor work environment for the sake of margins and got fired (Kinicki & Soignet, 2021, p.544). Promises made to employees of inclusion and empowerment only translated to abuse of power, exploitation of workplace relationships, and overworking understaffed personnel. Further issues arise in the lack of privacy and open communication channels that involve brutal public internal criticism. After former employees criticized this behavior with evidence of cruelty, the company executive acknowledged the errs but later spun this into denial of said behavior. Eventually, Away reinstated their beleaguered CEO and attacked the media for publicizing the company’s hostile environment.
Concept, Theories, and Principles
The issue highlighted in the case study includes multiple negative interactions. They include violating employee privacy, making critical remarks on a public forum to embarrass the staff, creating a cut-throat competitive environment with no regard for employee preservation, and failing to live up to the promises and objectives set. The solution to these issues lies in applying several theories, concepts, and principles. The first is the positivist approach which explores the social reality of someone and how it may influence their future behavior. The other is Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior which predicts the intentions of someone based on their behavior and norms (Nair, 2021). Lastly, there is decision-Ade, a grounded research concept that builds and contributes to behavioral change and emotional response modeling. This latter concept aims to facilitate segmentation and better understand people’s thought processes from problem analysis to decision-making
Problem-Solving Perspective and Application of Chapter Content
Co-CEO Haselden’s appointment is a chance for Away to address the underlying problems from a fresh perspective, having seen things unfold from the outside. He would share the sentiment that Away was dealing with negative interactions within the company, and handling these issues was poor. Co-CEO Korey would have a different opinion as she got reinstated to the company’s executive and led the way to explore legal avenues against media outlets publishing employee criticism. Using the Big Five personality traits, Stephanie Korey appears to be a leader with low openness, extraversion, and agreeableness. Meanwhile, she exhibits high conscientiousness and neuroticism. Her low extraversion levels define her emotional intelligence as she lacks emotional expressiveness, sociability, and the ability to carefully think things through before speaking.
The vices of the executive are the primary source of the toxic culture at Away, which, consequently, creates a hostile work environment. Employees that fail to answer messages or wish to take time off are viewed negatively as staff members not, as the company objectives state, in it together with the rest. It is an opinion that lacks validity because the company, as per attributional tendency philosophy, fails to consider that their employees have other roles beyond their company responsibilities. In the long run, the company’s poor human resources management creates a culture of low employee engagement, job satisfaction, and commitment. Furthermore, there are diversity barriers within the company’s setup. A clear example was when Korey, in her CEO capacity, fired employees that had made complaints about the company’s practices regarding inclusion and opportunities in a private LGBTQ channel.
It is clear that the company fails to fulfill its promises, overworks its available personnel, and understaffs the various departments, thus creating stress for the workforce. Remedying the situation has to start at the top. The decision-Ade concept would help ensure good decision-making by the executive (Cantrell et al., 2019). Key issues arising, such as complaints of understaffing and an increased overload, would get better handling. Using Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior and the positivist approach, the company could nurture its staff and use motivation strategies to boost productivity. The company’s human resources provide Away with the ability to operate, and their absence means the grounding of tools that would be detrimental to the organization.
References
Cantrell, R. A., Harris, V. W., & Brad Sewell, C. (2019). Using household budgetary constraints to explore negative-interaction behavior among homeowners in coastal southeast United States. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 40(3), 455-469. Web.
Kinicki, A., & Soignet, D. B. (2021). Management: A practical introduction. McGraw-Hill Companies.
Nair, G. (2021). The food we waste: Antecedents of food wastage management behaviour. Food wastage management behaviour, 48(6), 826-842. Web.