Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Michael David, Sydney Parkmond, Bryan Dau, Andrew DeLuke & Calvin White
industry (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). Companies in this industry tend to draft annual one year
contracts with their key customers, in this case supermarket chains, in an effort to reduce risk on
service delivery. As a result of this practice the industry is known to be extremely reactive, thus
growth and is expanding internationally, requiring additional personnel to address with the
demand. The company culture appears to operate in a silo, fostering an environment that lacks
trust, communication, and feeds uncertainty. Employees work in remote locations and often work
in pairs or alone in regional offices. This has led to lack of vertical and horizontal
study which is the disconnect between Space Engineering Services front line employees and its
management. Frontline employees feel they are the last to know about core company decisions
and in turn feel undervalued. This a result of a lack of internal communication strategy, face to
the company listed above. Her project was to design a performance management tool for
monitoring and measuring employee performance. The goal of this performance tool was to
improve the issues of change, leadership, and overall communication within the company
between employees and upper management (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). The graduate student
obtained and collected information from employees in order to determine the disconnect between
employees and managers. The end results were lack of communication and overall feedback
resulting in dissatisfaction with the leadership and lack of morale and faith in the managers
require different types of leadership (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). With that in mind, the
graduate student took into consideration the leadership behaviors, situational variables, and the
needs of the employees. With the information collected, she was able to effectively evaluate the
situation and determine the next steps needed to promote success and improve leadership.
Utilizing the Situational Leadership Theory, the graduate student was able to evaluate the
situation at hand and understand the type of support and direction that would need to take place
to accomplish her established goals (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). Since the managers were
found to be inexperienced and did not have any formal training in performance management, the
graduate student aimed high on directive and supportive behavior and provided sufficient
direction and support to the managers. Instead of delegating the information to the managers, she
understood the level of the followers (D1-Developing) and provided the appropriate and right
mix of direction and coaching needed to succeed (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). She was able to
accomplish this through formal training, one-on-one interviews, and by providing guidance,
Theory, leaders need to motivate their employees and diminish any obstacles in order to achieve
end goals and improve overall performance (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014. The obstacles in this
particular situation would be the lack of experience and training obtained by management. By
providing the training, coaching, and overall guidance, the graduate student was able to lessen
this obstacle leading to improved performance and communication between employees and
managers.
During her time there she focused quite a bit on performance management. She
weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This type of analysis would be of incredible value
especially if the opinions of stakeholders were taken into consideration. The stakeholders in this
case study range from employees to senior level management. Specifically, the stakeholders
include the employees- mostly engineers, managers and senior level managers.
The engineers which comprise over half of Space Engineering Services play an integral
role in the companys organizational culture (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014). Based on the various
surveys and focus groups conducted, employees need better communication from management
and the perception that management is invested in them. By creating an environment with more
effective and regular communication, employees will become more engaged, feel valued, and
ultimately bridge the gap/ disconnect between front line employees and management. This will
managers who may be highly technically skilled can lack the human interaction and leadership
skills to be effective. This leads to disengagement among employees and a lack of both
communication and understanding of the importance of inclusion in the workplace. For example,
the graduate student received feedback during the third quartile that the employees felt the
performance reviews were linked to more work or demotions (Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014),
which was not the case. The employees also felt the performance reviews were micro-
management exercises, to which the managers when asked how they explained the reviews they
stated I don't really know. Communication amongst all levels is important, but where the
rubber meets the road is if the newest member of the company knows the vision and direction
managers accountable for keeping the employees engaged, informed, and connected to the vision
and direction of the company. For instance, in the case study the graduate student introduced
performance appraisals including core competencies to the company. The lack of accountability
and communication of the value and rationale behind the performance appraisal resulted in a lack
of buy in from the managers and a performance appraisal completion rate of less than 76%.
The stakeholders could also include customers such as supermarket chains and other
services such as heating and ventilation companies. Since they are the primary parties on the
receiving end, their opinions and input on how to improve performance management could be
the game changer in how Space Engineering Services operates. Since no stakeholder is equal,
various angles and perspectives are key to having a well-rounded approach to bettering an issue.
In regards to remedying the issues that lie within Space Engineering Services, the results
from all the surveys now need to be taken into consideration. Communication can simply be
fixed by creating a network of chat rooms, message boards or e-mails where messages can work
their way up the chain and issues can be communicated and remedied quicker. They see their
line manager perhaps once a month as the core communication is by telephone. Engineers also
do not have access to e-mail, and so any company-wide communication is sent via the post.
(Schedlitzki, Edwards, 2014) If the engineers are given basic lines of communication between
levels of management, then a lot of the confusion and isolation would be taken out of the
References
1. Schedlitzki, D., & Edwards, G. (2014). Studying leadership: Traditional & critical