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Suggest the 3 key elements of Starbucks’ organizational culture that contributes to its success in a global economy. Indicate management’s role with creating and sustaining the organizational culture.
The three key Starbucks organizational culture elements are the material culture, diversity and inclusion in their human resource, and the culture of recycling. Starbuck is known for its material culture. It always uses its logo and similar store front appearance in the entire world. This includes the green painting and the manner in which the painting is done. Therefore it is easy to identify a Starbucks store in any part of the world since a similar logo of twin-tailed mermaid is used in a similar manner in each of the company’s store. The logo and the color are easily recognized by consumers as Starbucks brand. This is a culture that Starbucks embraced long before it started growing to international level and now it stand as an identity of the company’s brand. It is therefore easy for the company’s customers to identify the company’s store at any part of the world without any form of struggle (Starbucks, 2015).
The company is also committed to environment conservation by recycling its cups to create other products such as napkins. The company shrinks its environmental trail and lowers wastes by recycling. Thus, images related to recycling also stand for the Starbuck’s culture. The company normally offers a dust bin in which customers can dump their cups after they are through. This lowers the number of company’s labeled cans lying on the ground either in its surrounding or in town. This is a culture that has made the company to be highly respected for respecting the environmental health.
The company has also embraced inclusion and diversity culture among its employees. Being an international company, Starbucks has employed workers from all over the world, with different cultures. The company also has workers from different age, gender, religious believes, sexuality and ethnicity. However, Starbucks has managed to harmonize the working culture of the organization by ensuring that everybody respects the culture and beliefs of others. Enhancement of organization culture in the entire world has been achieved through training. This has also been achieved by the development of the organization policies that guide the on workers behaviors toward each other, toward the customers and toward their seniors (Starbucks, 2015).
Starbucks managers are usually responsible of solving any identified problems in the organization. They ensure everlasting solutions to the identified problems. This is ensured by integrating the solution with the company’s policies and thus, everybody in the company is forced to implement the solution. For instance, after realizing the diversity challenges in the organization, the managers defined inclusion mechanism which must be followed in all company’s branches and by all workers. They also achieve this through delegation, where the role of enhancing organization culture is given to their juniors, or heads of departments. Mentorship is also employed to enhance maintenance of the organization culture. Thus, Starbuck managers have a great role in creating and sustaining the organization culture (Kane-Urrbazo, 2006).
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Assess the effectiveness of Starbucks’ management decisions in providing innovative offerings for its customers (e.g. WiFi, style of coffee, etc.) in order to achieve its current competitive marketplace advantage. Provide support for your rationale.
Starbuck managers have tried to employ different innovative techniques to enhance the competitive advantage of the company in the market. Some of these techniques include installation of WiFi, serving different styles of coffee, and ensuring product diversity among others. These innovative techniques have enabled the company to remain competitive in the market. For instance, the introduction of WiFi was initially to assist in workers training. This has basically improved their services and enhances a good working environment, where workers respect each other and always work to achieve the organization’s goals. Beside this, the WiFi also attracts customer who are interested in enjoying their coffee, while accessing internet through their smartphones, tablets or laptops. This gives the company the advantage of attracting all those who value good services and those who wishes to access internet while taking their meals. Provision of different styles of coffee attracts all kind of people despite of what they prefer since all choices are available in the company’s stores. Diverse products have ensured that the store can attract all customers, including those that are not interested in coffee but in any other product. Therefore, the company has managed to diversify their customers by creating diverse products and hence increasing its competitive advantage (Wardhana, n.d.). This can be demonstrated by the company growth in the first quarter of 2015 whereby it registered a global traffic growth of 2% and increase in revenue increased by 13%. This is a clear indication that the company is gaining more market share in the industry (Starbucks, 2015).
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Determine one (1) key management competency that a successful manager at Starbucks is likely to have. Indicate one (1) way in which this particular competency is a good fit for the organizational culture
A successful Starbucks manager is likely to have multicultural management as a key management competency. This is because Starbucks is an international company which focuses on employing a diverse workforce. However, the company does not expect to experience challenges brought a about by this diversity. A manager should therefore be able to integrate this diverse workforce to ensure quality services are provided despite of workers differences. This can only be done if a manager has multicultural management ability, the ability to create cultural competency and inclusion in the organization. This will promote respect among workers and appreciation of the value each culture has to the organization. This will also assist the company to enjoy the performance benefit brought about by a well managed diverse workforce (Slocum et al., 2008).
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Speculate on whether Starbucks would achieve long-term sustainability as a global leader in the coffee industry without the organization’s CEO, Howard Shultz.
Starbucks is an old company which is well based, with written policies, rules and regulations that govern its operations. This is what holds the company success and thus, a company should remain successful as long as the leaders remain in the right path. The success of the Starbucks is also founded on the culture of the company. Following organization culture can still enhance the growth and the development of the company in the future, even when the current CEO is gone. Moreover, the company’s organization structure also involves the board of directors who are involved in the organization’s decisions making. In this case, a CEO is not the sole decision maker. Thus, the future of the company does not therefore, decisions making does not only depend on the CEO, but on the entire management team. Therefore, the company can still continues being successful with or without their current CEO. The next leader should just focus on the company values, mission and visions, and work toward them. Moreover, the next CEO can achieve even better by taking the good things from Howard Shultz leadership and integrating them with his or he good ideas to improve the organization’s performance (Starbucks, 2015).
References
Kane-Urrabazo, C. K. (2006). Management’s role in shaping organizational culture. Journal of Nursing Management, 14, 188-194.
Slocum, J. W., Jackson, S. E., & Hellriegel, D. (2008). Competency-based management. South-Western, Cengage Learning.
Starbucks. (2015) < http://www.starbucks.com/coffee >
Wardhana, F. (n.d.). Strategic management of Starbucks company. Retrieved from < http://www.academia.edu/6692996/Strategic_Management_of_Starbucks_Company >
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