Mark Coglin and the Operational Challenges of House, Hearth and Home
Mark Coglin was the owner and the General Manager of the large retail establishment firm, House, Hearth and Home. The hardware, furniture and building centre, House, Hearth and Home, relied on providing superior customer service. Wesley Simpson was the long-term yard manager of the firm. Mark Coglin decided to hire Dan Boyd, his friend as an assistant to the yard manager, in order to aid him in operations of the firm.
Earlier, it was an easy task to run the operations of the yard but owing to the issues of economic turndown, increased competition, pressure to meet customer needs, it had become necessary to engage all the employees, not just managers to help to achieve organizational goals (DuBrin, 2013). Comprehending the situation and analyzing the source of problem, Coglin decided to hire his friend, Dan Boyd as an assistant to the yard manager, Simpson.
Coglin was apprehensive about his decision fearing some employees may question his decision for showing biasness to his friend and offering him such responsible position. However it was noticed that the after the appointment of Boyd, there was a development in the employees and there was an improvement in the performance of the organization. There were also signs of customer satisfactions, which was evident when their most hard-to-please customer, Graham praised their organization’s efforts and services.
After this improving situation of their organization, Coglin was in a new dilemma, whether his long serving loyal employee Simpson still apt for the post of yard manager and if not what would be the future of Simpson in the organization. The other issue which troubled Coglin was that ,it was noted that Boyd had all the attributes of an effective leader ,which was not present in Simpson, so whether it would be justified to give Boyd the promotion after this short tenure in the organization (Malik, 2013) .
From the above case analysis, it can be surmised that Coglin, being the owner of the organization took the apt decision as a leader to hire Boyd for aiding the operations of the yard to solve the issue of the firm. Though it seemed a risky decision, he proved to be an effective leader as his gamble to hire Boyd turned out to be fruitful as his organization showed drastically and unexpectedly improved performance, which solved the growing issues of customer dissatisfaction. However, considering the present scenario Boyd should be placed as the yard manager and Simpson should be engaged in some other department of operations.
Problem Statement
The root cause of the problems in House, Hearth and Home, which lead to the problem of economy turndown and the need to maintain customer satisfaction, was emergence of competitors in market and employees lacking motivation (Hill & Brierley, 2017). Considering the stiff competition from other giant firms, it was necessary for every employees of the firm to be more committed to meet organizational goals. However, the yard manger, Simpson was incapable to motivate the employees so that would ensure that no orders were delayed and led to customer dissatisfaction (Szwabowski et al., 2016).
Analyzing the situation, the problem statement complying with the four rules of thumb and considering long-term perspective is –
Is the newly appointed employee apt for the designation of yard manager of the firm in the future considering his better leadership qualities of influencing, relationship building, strategic thinking and execution, in comparison to the present manager
References
DuBrin, A. J. (2013). Fundamentals of organizational behavior: An applied perspective. Elsevier.
Hill, N., & Brierley, J. (2017). How to measure customer satisfaction. Routledge.
Malik, S. H. (2013). Relationship between Leader Behaviors and Employees’ Job Satisfaction: A Path-Goal Approach. Pakistan Journal of Commerce & Social Sciences, 7(1).
Szwabowski, S. J., Filev, D. P., Lu, J., Tseng, F., & Prakah-Asante, K. O. (2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,333,975. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
