The Supermarket Manager

1. On analyzing the approach used by Mr. Ferrell, it should be said that it is rather discouraging than really motivating. Mr. Ferrell proves to be a meticulous, scrupulous person who apparently have got used to control his subordinates. In such a context, it is quite natural that he has supervised Amy during two weeks, even though she has been able to work efficiently after a couple of days of training. Obviously such an approach used by Mr. Ferrell was discouraging since Amy could not feel that Mr. Ferrell is confident in her professional skills and abilities. Moreover, his refusal to consider Amy’s suggestions concerning possible improvements of the work of the store apparently increased the negative impression Amy had because Mr. Ferrell did not only fail to encourage her to introduce innovations and work better, but, instead, he pointed that she was unable to improve the work of the store, being inexperienced in this field.

In such a situation, it is possible to speak about highly bureaucratic and almost mechanical approach used by Mr. Ferrell to motivate his employees. What is meant here is the fact that Mr. Ferrell totally relies on the parent corporation, which he views as the highest authority which should take all decisions concerning the functioning of the store and the organization of work of employees. This is why he fails to motivate the innovations from the part of employee but, instead, he encourages them to obey and follow strictly to the recommendations and models developed in the parent corporation (Pine and Gilmore, 123). Consequently, he motivates employees to perform functions defined by the parent corporation and avoid initiatives that can change the organizational culture and affect organizational performance.

2. Taking into considerations the specificities of Mr. Ferrell’s management style, it is possible to recommend Amy changing her the manner of presentation of her suggestions pointblank. In fact, the main problem she has got when she decided to talk to Mr. Ferrell directly concerning her suggestion was the fact that she showed to Mr. Ferrell that it was her own suggestions and ideas. This was probably the major error made by Amy in the communication of her ideas to Mr. Ferrell. Obviously, Mr. Ferrell was too conservative and too bureaucratic to accept any suggestions made by a new and young specialist, whom he is not even confident in since he has supervised Amy for two weeks.

In such a situation, it is possible to recommend a totally different approach to communicate her ideas to Mr. Ferrell. To put it more precisely, Amy should choose a different time for the presentation of her suggestions. Instead of presenting her idea at the beginning of the working day, when there are a lot of things Mr. Ferrell and Amy had to do, she would better communicate to Mr. Ferrell at the end of the day, when they ended their work and Mr. Ferrell could be able to consider her suggestions more carefully.

Furthermore, Amy should introduce some back up for her suggestions to make them more plausible to Mr. Ferrell. What is meant here is the fact that she should present her suggestions as if they had been already introduced by the store she used to work at and they had proved to be highly efficient. In such a way, Mr. Ferrell would perceive Amy’s suggestions not as the ideas of a newcomer who did not know anything, but, instead, he would perceive them as important information retrieved by his employee from a competing store. Therefore, such suggestions would be more significant for Mr. Ferrell because he would believe that it could be useful to use the experience of successful stores, which operated successfully for a long period of time.

3. As for the general manager of Right-Way’s Supermarket parent corporation, it is possible to recommend changing the organizational relations between the parent corporation and its subsidiaries consistently. It proves beyond a doubt that subsidiaries should have autonomy and they should be more flexible to respond adequately to new challenges of the business environment as well as to introduce innovations (Peters, 230). However, the dependence of subsidiaries on the parent corporation deprives them of such flexibility. For instance, Mr. Ferrell is unable to introduce any change without the consent of the parent corporation, while, if he had autonomy, he could introduce innovations suggested by Amy and improve the performance of the store consistently along with the improvement of the affiance of the work of employees.

In addition, the parental corporation should encourage innovations introduced by its subsidiaries. For instance, the parental corporation could introduce a system of bonuses and rewards for the introduction of successful innovations that could encourage employees to introduce efficient innovations. Moreover, the parental corporation could organize special training courses or programs which could help professionals employed in different subsidiaries as well as the parental corporation to share their knowledge and experience. For instance, Amy could be sent to such a training course to share her ideas with other professionals employed within Right-Way’s Supermarket.