Managing People & Organizations: Arnott's Biscuits Report Analysis

This report examines the organizational challenges faced by Arnott's Biscuits Limited, focusing on communication and leadership issues contributing to employee turnover. The report provides a brief background of Arnott's, highlighting its position in the Australian market. It identifies key challenges such as inconsistent communication, lack of feedback, and leadership deficiencies, which are analyzed using the 'Theory X and Theory Y' framework and the hierarchical structure of the organization. The analysis reveals that the company's top-down communication approach exacerbates these challenges, leading to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover rates. The report concludes by suggesting strategic recommendations for Arnott's Biscuits to improve communication, foster better leadership, and create a more positive work environment to enhance employee satisfaction, market reputation, and overall profitability. This assignment was completed for the HC1031 Managing People and Organizations course at Holmes Institute.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

MANAGEMENT 1
Executive Summary
An organization is the collection of individual working together for a common goal or
achievement. However, there lies numerous of issues or challenges that an organization faces
while performing in the competitive market. This report will explain the case of Arnott’s biscuits
Limited and the major organizational challenges that the company has been facing in the last few
years. One of the largest producer of biscuit, Arnott’s biscuits Limited has been facing
challenges regarding lack of proper communication among the managers and the employees as
well as leadership challenges among the employees of the organization. The report analyzed the
challenges within the organization with the required change management concepts for a better
harmony within the employees of the organization. The report will conclude with recommended
strategies for the organization to organizational profit maximization.

MANAGEMENT 2
Table of Contents
Brief Introduction and background information of the selected organization.................................3
Overview of the current organizational problem or challenge........................................................3
Detailed analysis of the current organizational problem supported with relevant concepts...........4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................8

MANAGEMENT 3
Brief Introduction and background information of the selected organization
Arnott’s biscuits Limited began its journey in the year 1827, in the region of Pathhead,
Scotland before entering the market of Australia. The organization settled firstly at Southern
Australia, at the region of Maitland. However, in the year 1850, William Arnott after following
the gold rush settled his business of bakery as well as catering towards the growing population of
the miners (Arnotts.com. 2020).
The biscuit industry of Australia faced a major crisis at the year 1950 where Arnott’s biscuits
Limited took steps ahead to launch American treats like Delta Cream and yeast based Plaza
biscuit and saltline cracker.
Arnott’s biscuits Limited is the top most brand of grocery at Australia and the company
boasts some of the major umbrella brands within the country (Digmayer and Jakobs 2019). The
company is the current leader at the manufacturing of cookies and biscuits in Australia. More
than 70 percent of the market of Australia is commanded by the company and their products are
present in 85 percent of the houses in Australia. The products assortments by Arnott’s biscuits
Limited which is famous includes perennial favorites such as Mint Slice, Tim Tam, Iced Vo Vos,
Full O’ fruit and more. Arnott’s biscuits Limited also manufactures salty munchies like crisp
breads, chips as well as crackers. The company has remained majorly focused over the market of
Australia. It has furthermore enables parent organization, Campbell Soup Company for gaining
their position at the Asian region.

MANAGEMENT 4
Overview of the current organizational problem or challenge
According to Klewes, Popp and Rost-Hein (2017), communication is one of the
important element regarding effective collaboration among the employees of an organization.
Oral communication, body language or written communication needs to be efficient as well as
effective for the maintenance of harmony among the employees of the organization.
Furthermore, feedback is also an essential aspect. Within the era where precise and effective
communication has become essential for the success of the company, thereby impacting the
customer satisfaction, employee engagement and the overall customer perception regarding the
organization, Arnott’s biscuits Limited recognized the dangers related to poor internal
communication which might threaten the profit margin and the reputation of the company.
As per the case of Arnott’s biscuits Limited, within the last few years, the company
noticed high rates of staff turnover. The concept regarding poor strategy of communication and
the lack of proper leadership skills are some of the root cause towards employee turnover (Ruben
and Gigliotti 2017). The major six challenges that the employees has been facing within the
organization includes inconsistency of communication, lack of feedback, language barriers,
communication of internal and external news, lack of respect and inspiring others. These
challenges includes both the communication challenges and the leadership challenges that the
employees of Arnott’s biscuits Limited are facing, which is eventually resulting in employee
dissatisfaction and high turnover rates. According to the literature, effective communication and
leadership skills within organization has always been a major challenge (Said and Shah 2017).

MANAGEMENT 5
Detailed analysis of the current organizational problem supported with relevant concepts
The current challenge or the organizational issues that is being faced by Arnott’s biscuits
Limited is the communication issue specifically targeting leadership challenges among the
organization. It is to note that communication is one of the vital management component
presented within an organization. The effect of ineffective communication is resulting to
leadership challenges like lack of respect, motivation among the employees as well as
miscommunication among the leaders and the managers of the organization (Steenhuis 2019).
Arnott’s biscuits Limited, one of the largest biscuit company in the Australian market has been
facing the challenge related to communication foe a couple of decade. Within the context of
communication and leadership challenges among the employees, the lack of feedback within the
organization is also leading to demotivation and the slack within the working attitudes among the
employees. This section will critically analyze the challenge that has been identified in the
previous section, drawing on the, ‘Theory X and Theory Y’ and the hierarchical structures,
which is relevant within this particular context.
Theory X and Theory Y was initially formulated by Douglas McGregor in the year 1960.
According to this theoretical model, there lies two of different views of the employees within an
organization in respect to the different behavioral patterns of human beings. These perspectives
differs in positive and negative mode. Theory X is the negative while the positive being Theory
Y.

MANAGEMENT 6
As per the assumptions of Theory X, an average employee intrinsically does not tend to
work and tries for escaping. Many of the employees as per this theoretical assumption, is
resistant to change and requires formal direction (Aithal and Kumar 2016). Furthermore, as per
the assumptions of Theory Y, employees tend to perceive their jobs at a normal and relaxing
mode. employees might also not require external control as well as threats causing organizational
objectives. As per the implications of the Theory X and Theory Y, the Theory X encourages the
usage of tight controls and supervisions. According to the theory, it implies reluctancy of the
employees towards the changes in organization; thus not encouraging any innovation. However,
Theory Y implies that it is essential for the managers to create as well as encourage working
environment providing opportunities for the employees for taking self direction and initiatives.
Theory Y nevertheless encourages the decentralization regarding the authority, the participative
decision making and teamwork within organization.
Another chart which can be explained at this context is the hierarchical structure.
According to Goulet (2019), hierarchy is the method for structuring the organization with the use
of several levels of authority. However, as per the case of Arnott’s biscuits Limited, there lies a

MANAGEMENT 7
major communication and leadership challenge since the channel of communication within the
hierarchy involved top to bottom communication line and not bottom to up. This means that the
communication and leadership are directed only from upper authorities to the lower level
employees of the organization. The employees of the organization who are positioned in the
lower category of the hierarchy of Arnott’s biscuits Limited does not get the opportunity to
communicate and escalate their communication challenges to the upper level.
Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded from the above that communication and leadership challenges
are some of the major organizational challenges which Arnott’s biscuits Limited in facing. One
of the biggest manufacturer of cookies and biscuits in the Australian market, Arnott’s biscuits
Limited have serious communication issues targeting leadership challenges due to top down
hierarchical approach within the company. These challenges are resulting in lack of motivation
and high turnover rate within the organization. Hence Arnott’s biscuits Limited needs to take
some strategic steps as recommendations for combating these organizational challenges s that the

MANAGEMENT 8
company can smoothly operate within the Australian market with high employee satisfaction,
good market reputation and effective profit margin.

MANAGEMENT 9
Reference
Aithal, P.S. and Kumar, P.M., 2016. Comparative analysis of theory X, theory Y, theory Z, and
Theory A for managing people and performance. International Journal of Scientific Research
and Modern Education (IJSRME), ISSN (Online), pp.2455-5630.
Arnotts.com. (2020). Arnott's Australia | Celebrating Arnott's iconic biscuits and crackers and
rich heritage in Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.arnotts.com/ [Accessed 22 Jan.
2020].
Digmayer, C. and Jakobs, E.M., 2019, July. Developing Safety Cultures for Industry 4.0. New
Challenges for Professional Communication. In 2019 IEEE International Professional
Communication Conference (ProComm) (pp. 218-225). IEEE.
Goulet, J.M., 2019. Virtual International Leadership Within Organizations Overcoming Cultural,
Language, and Physical Barriers.
Klewes, J., Popp, D. and Rost-Hein, M., 2017. Out-thinking organizational communications. The
Impact of Digital Transformation. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Ruben, B.D. and Gigliotti, R.A., 2017. Communication: Sine qua non of organizational
leadership theory and practice. International Journal of Business Communication, 54(1), pp.12-
30.
Said, B. and Shah, M., 2017. Impact of leadership responses to communication challenges in
organizational development. Paradigms, 11(1), p.48.
Steenhuis, M., 2019. Challenges in communication and leadership in multicultural teams.