[SOLVED] Management theory suggests that compared to an

Management theory suggests that compared to an individual, a diverse group of people will be more creative because team members will bring a variety of ideas, perspectives, and approaches to the group. For an organization like Alphabet’s Google, innovation is critical to its success, and teams are a way of life. If management theory about teams is on target, then Google’s research and development Hyderabad center in India should excel at innovation. Why? Because there you’ll find broad diversity, even though all employees are from India. These Googlers include Indians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and Jains. And they speak English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, and more of India’s twenty-two officially recognized languages. One skill Google looks for in potential hires is the ability to work as a team member. As Google continues to grow at a rapid pace, new Googlers are continually added to teams. Suppose you’re a manager at Google’s Hyderabad facility. How would you gauge a potential hire’s ability to work as a team member, and how would you maintain your team’s innovation when new engineers and designers join the group? Global Sense Workforce productivity. It’s a performance measure that’s important to managers and policy makers around the globe. Governments want their labor forces to be productive. Managers want their employees to be productive. Being productive encompasses both efficiency and effectiveness. Think back to our discussion of efficiency and effectiveness in Chapter 1. Efficiency is getting the most output from the least amount of input or resources. Or, said another way, doing things the right way. Effectiveness was doing those work activities that would result in achieving goals, or doing the right things that would lead to goal achievement. So how does workforce productivity stack up around the world? Here are some of the most recent data on six-year labor productivity growth rates from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD): Australia, 1.57 percent; Canada, 0.99 percent; Greece, –1.09 percent; Ireland, 6.12 percent; Korea, 2.09 percent; Turkey, 3.06 percent; United Kingdom, 0.23 percent; and United States, 0.36 percent. Despite fairly strong economic growth and low unemployment, workforce productivity rate growth across the globe has been relatively slow in recent years. Since the recession, labor productivity growth has been about half what it was before the last economic crisis. Companies have been hiring more employees as a way to increase productivity growth. Low unemployment rates mean that companies have been forced to hire less skilled employees than they would like. This makes productivity growth harder to achieve for companies. But what an opportunity this situation presents if you are getting into the workforce and have skills and strong productivity to offer! Discuss the following questions in light of what you learned in Part 4:
• How might workforce productivity be affected by organizational design? Look at the six key elements of organizational design.
• What types of adaptive organizational design might be conducive to increasing worker productivity? Which might be detrimental to worker productivity?
• How might an organization’s human resource management approach affect worker productivity? How could managers use their HR processes to improve worker productivity?
• Are teams more productive than individuals? Discuss and explain.
• What could managers do to reduce the stress that employees feel due to pressure from managers to increase productivity growth?1
Continuing Case:
Starbucks—Organizing Organizing is an important task of managers. As Starbucks continues its global expansion and pursues innovative strategic initiatives, managers must deal with the realities of continually organizing and reorganizing its work efforts.
Like many start-up businesses, Starbucks’s original founders organized their company around a simple structure based on each person’s unique strengths: Zev Siegl became the retail expert; Jerry Baldwin took over the administrative functions; and Gordon Bowker was the dreamer who called himself “the magic, mystery, and romance man.” Bowker recognized from the start that a visit to Starbucks could “evoke a brief escape to a distant world.” As Starbucks grew to the point where Jerry recognized that he needed to hire professional and experienced managers, Howard Schultz joined the company, bringing his skills in sales, marketing, and merchandising. When the original owners eventually sold the company to Schultz, he was able to take the company on a successful path. Kevin Johnson’s transition to the president and CEO positions at Starbucks was smooth in part because he knew so much about the company. Johnson had been COO at Starbucks for two years before assuming the CEO role, and before that he served on Starbucks’s board for six years. He was able to bring his leadership experience from other companies as well as sales, marketing, and operations skills. As Starbucks has expanded, its organizational structure has changed to accommodate that growth. Starbucks’s success is credited, in part, to its adaptive organizational structure, and the company prides itself on its “lean” corporate structure. Kevin Johnson is at the top of the structure and has focused on hiring a diverse team of executives from companies like Exxon Mobil, Sam’s Club, Kraft Foods, KimberlyClark Corporation, and Macy’s. Johnson realized how important it was to have an executive team in place that had experience in running divisions or functions of larger companies, and that’s what he focused on bringing in to Starbucks. These senior corporate officers include the following: “C” (chief) officers, executive vice presidents, regional presidents, group presidents, and divisional vice presidents. Because being a global company is important to Starbucks’s strategy, there are regional presidents for the geographic regions that Starbucks covers. Starbucks’s focus on technology also is rflected in their structure. There not only is a chief technology officer, but there also are three senior vice presidents that oversee aspects of technology for Starbucks. A full description of the team of Starbucks executives and what each is responsible for can be found on the company’s website.
Although the executive team provides the all- important strategic direction, the “real” work of Starbucks gets done at the company’s support center, technology center, zone offices, retail stores, and roasting plants. The Seattle-based support center provides support to and assists all other aspects of corporate operations in the areas of accounting, finance, information technology, and sales and supply chain management. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based technology center focuses on the digital retail experience, including information security, business intelligence, and digital products for the company. The zone offices oversee the regional operations of the retail stores and provide support in human resource management, facilities management, account management, financial management, and sales management. A matrix structure is used at the zone offices with each manager reporting to both a regional head and a functional department head. For example, a human resource manager working in China would report to both the China/Asia Pacific regional manager as well as the head of human resources for China and Asia Pacific. The essential link between the zone offices and each retail store is the district manager, each of whom oversees eight to ten stores. Since district managers need to be out working with the stores, they rely heavily on mobile technology that allows them to spend more time in the stores and still remain connected to their own office. These district managers have been called “the most important in the company” because it’s out in the stores that the Starbucks vision and goals are being carried out. Thus, keeping those district managers connected is vital. In the retail stores, hourly employees (baristas) service customers under the direction of shift supervisors, assistant store managers, and store managers. These managers are responsible for the day-to-day operations of each Starbucks location. Finally, without coffee and other beverages and products to sell, there would be no Starbucks. The coffee beans are processed at the company’s domestic roasting plants in Washington state, Pennsylvania, Nevada, South Carolina, Georgia, and internationally in Amsterdam. There’s also a juicing facility in California, and the company set up a coffee roasting facility with Tata Global Beverages in India. At each manufacturing facility, the production team produces the coffee and other products and the distribution team manages the inventory and distribution of products and equipment to company stores
People Management at Starbucks:
Starbucks recognizes that what it’s been able to accomplish is due to the quality of the people it hires. Since the beginning, Starbucks has strived to be an employer that nurtures employees and gives them opportunities to grow and be challenged. The company says it is “pro-partner” and has always been committed to providing a flexible and progressive work environment and treating one another with respect and dignity. As Starbucks focuses on enhancing its customers’ experience and expanding internationally, it needs to make sure it has the right number of the right people in the right place at the right time. What kinds of people are “right” for Starbucks? They describe their ideal employees as having the ability to create “genuine moments of connection” with customers, a willingness to learn, and an openness to getting the job done while helping fellow team members. Starbucks uses a variety of methods to attract potential partners. The company has an interactive and easy-to use online career center. Job seekers can search and apply online for jobs in retail, corporate, and manufacturing in any geographic location. The company also has a limited number of summer internship opportunities for students at their support and technology centers in the US. But the company’s efforts don’t stop there. The company’s commitment to helping people in communities has led to various special hiring initiatives that focus on particular groups. For instance, Starbucks has hired 21,000 veterans and their spouses, exceeding their initial commitment to hire at least 10,000 militaryrelated individuals by 2018. Starbucks also has hired 65,000 low-income individuals and committed to hiring 10,000 refugees by 2020. Recently, twenty-five employees who know American Sign Language were hired for Starbucks’s first US-based Signing Store in Washington, DC—where you can order and communicate via sign language. Starbucks opened its first Signing Store in Malaysia in 2016. Starbucks offers a variety of training, but their most high-profile training occurred after two African Americans were asked by store staff to leave a Starbucks café in Philadelphia when they were waiting for a friend. Starbucks closed more than 8,000 stores across the US in order to offer racial-bias training. This training included multiple videos, discussions about race and identity, information about what people of color experience on a day to-day basis in public settings, and instructions for keeping a personal journal in the months after training. Starbucks plans on including racial-bias training in their orientation program for new employees in the future. Starbucks also offers new employees “Starbucks Experience” classes that get them up to speed on the company’s history, culture, and social responsibility practices. Unless an employee works at a remote location, the Starbucks Experience training is offered at regional training centers. To reinforce this off-site training, each store has a learning coach who guides new hires through hands-on training in the store. Further online training also is offered to support in-person training. For instance, Starbucks’s “Solutions University Online Training” is intended to provide instant training at the fingertips of their many employees. Starbucks’s largest training initiative is their College Achievement Plan. This plan provides reimbursement of tuition costs for an online bachelor’s degree through Arizona State University. Any Starbucks employee who has worked with the company for at least three months, works at least twenty hours per week, and doesn’t already have a bachelor’s degree is eligible to apply. Of the Starbucks employees who have applied to this program, 80 percent have been accepted into the program. The goal of this program—which was introduced in 2014—is to help make college affordable and accessible for its employees.

Discussion Questions:
P4-1. What types of departmentalization are being used? Explain your choices. (Hint: In addition to information in the case, you might want to look at the complete list and description of corporate executives on the company’s website.) If your classroom has internet capabilities, access some company information for Starbucks with your students at the following address:
https://stories.starbucks.com/leadership/
P4-2. What possible problems could Starbucks encounter with their matrix structure? What could they do to try to minimize these problems?
P4-3. If Starbucks wanted to offer compressed workweeks, flextime, or job sharing, what would they need to consider? What are the advantages and disadvantages of offering these employment options at Starbucks?
P4-4. Starbucks has said its goal is to expand delivery to one-quarter of its US stores and increase earnings per share by 10 percent. How will the organizing function contribute to the accomplishment of these goals?
P4-5. Starbucks has said that it wants people who have the ability to create “genuine moments of connection” with customers, a willingness to learn, and an openness to getting the job done while helping fellow team members. How does the company ensure that its hiring and selection process identifies those kinds of people?
P4-6. Evaluate Starbucks’s training efforts. What other type(s) of training might be necessary? P4-7. Pretend that you’re a local Starbucks’s store manager. You have three new hourly partners (baristas) joining your team. Describe the orientation you would provide these new hires.
P4-8. If Starbucks wanted to implement multiperson comparisons or 360-degree appraisals as methods of evaluating employee performance, what possible issues (both positive and negative) might arise? How might
those employee performance management methods affect how store managers manage their teams?
P4-9. Which of the company’s values affect the organizing function of management? Explain how the one(s) you chose would affect how Starbucks’s managers deal with (a) structural issues; (b) HRM issues; and (c) issues in managing teams. (Hint: Starbucks’s values can be found on the company’s website.)

Question: Management theory suggests that compared to an

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