Assessment Task 2: Case Study Analysis - Managing McDonald's Australia

This case study examines the management of McDonald's Australia, focusing on the roles and activities of CEO Andrew Gregory. It explores the company's organizational structure, values, and the importance of its employees and stakeholders in achieving its objectives. The analysis delves into Gregory's responsibilities in business planning, marketing, and operations, contrasting his role with that of an assistant manager. It highlights the use of technical, human, and conceptual skills in fostering innovation and customer service. The case study further discusses the differences between a CEO's role in a for-profit versus a non-profit organization, emphasizing the importance of adapting to a competitive business environment through strategic innovation. The paper concludes with key insights into the leadership and management practices at McDonald's Australia and their impact on the company's success.

Case study analysis
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Answer 1..........................................................................................................................................2
Answer 2..........................................................................................................................................2
Answer 3..........................................................................................................................................3
Answer 4..........................................................................................................................................4
Answer 5..........................................................................................................................................4
Answer 6..........................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The fundamental objective of the paper is to evaluate the managing skills required for the CEO
of the company and determine the activities that need to be taken by the CEO of McDonald. It
will describe the values and purposes of the firm, along with the critical role played by the
people in meeting the purpose of the organization. Moreover, it will highlight how the human
and conceptual skills of Andrew Gregory influence innovation and customer service at the
restaurant of McDonald.
Answer 1
McDonald Corporation has established the first restaurant in Australia in 1971 in Yagoona,
Sydney and has over 36,000 restaurants across 119 countries. In 1972, it introduced 2000th
restaurant in Des Plaines at Illinois and celebrated 20th anniversary in 1975. The corporation
became a registered training organization in 1995 in Australia (Mathews-Hunt, 2016). There are
more than 90,000 employees in the corporation who are employed in over 900 restaurants of
McDonald and used to serve 1.7 million consumers internationally. The major priority of the
organization is to maintain trust as well as integrity among the consumers and employees to
ensure that the workers, as well as clients, receive the respect they deserve. To make the
McDonald restaurant up to standard level, the managing director or the CEO of the firm maintain
honesty, quality service, cleanliness and superior values. McDonald Corporation Australia is
considered as a franchise business that consists of over 80% of Australian restaurants.
McDonald’s Australia is also recognized as a leader for nutritional labelling and earns revenue of
more than 4 billion dollars.
Answer 2
As an organization, the purpose of McDonald is to provide quick services along with superior
quality food to the potential consumers and deliver unique customer value by offering a pleasant
working environment for the staffs.
The values of the company are as follows:
 It operates the business ethically
 Committed to the potential people
 Place the experience of the consumers at the core of all activities

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 Strive consistently to enhance
 Expand the profitability of the business
The organizational structure of the McDonald restaurant involves the board of directors
controlling the managing director or the CEO of the company. The CEO oversees the other
teams who directs the human resource team and the regional managers. The regional managers
guide the general manager of the restaurant (Anaf, Baum and Fisher, 2018). It has a hierarchical
organizational structure where all are organized effectively.
People include suppliers, employees, customers and partners play a significant role in meeting
the purpose by assisting the management providing positive feedback and motivate the counter
as well as kitchen staff by upholding values in customer service (Richards et al., 2016). The
stakeholders supply quality raw materials to the company to conduct daily activities to maintain
profitability. McDonald can meet their objective with the help of the role performed by each
people.
Answer 3
The CEO of McDonald, Andrew Gregory, is responsible for business planning, supply chain,
public affairs, marketing and operations. He is also responsible for leadership that impacts the
growth of McDonald’s Australia. Another role of Gregory is to administer the payrolls of the
restaurant and manage the working of McDonald’s.
To manage the business operations, Andrew Gregory has to undertake various activities such as
he is needed to compete with its rivals like Pizza hut, KFC, Subway and Dominos. He is also
required to navigate with other companies like Gomez, Guzman, Salsa’s Mex Grill and Oporto
within the challenging market environment (Nadolny and Ryan, 2015).
The roles and activities of Gregory differ from the assistant manager as his task is to focus
towards the bigger picture for fulfilling the objective, whereas the assistant manager focuses
towards planning the direct tasks for the team members. Moreover, the decision of Gregory
differs from the decision made by the assistant manager as it includes serving promotional
materials on a huge scale, whereas the assistant manager performs particular tasks based on
promotional setup (Birch, Skallerud and Paul, 2019). Being a top-level manager Gregory can
control the behaviour and performance of the managerial employees, while the assistant manager

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can control the performance of the non-managerial employees. It can be seen that as a CEO,
Gregory can incentivize with the help of tangible value, while the assistant manager plays the
same role through emotional value.
Answer 4
With the help of technical skills such as the ability of a person to finish the task skillfully,
Andrew Gregory maintains an environment that motivates sustainability at McDonald's
Australia. He provides wastage minimization training to the staffs throughout the company
(Hardy and Howe, 2015). Sustainable work practice is encouraged by the CEO within the
company by integrating his acquired knowledge on various tasks.
The CEO maintains an innovation environment at the workplace by instilling a positive
organizational culture with the help of human skills. Through human skills, Andrew Gregory can
effectively listen to the problems of the employees, which enable the workers to gain the
confidence to share their issues and answer the issues to their superior. With active listening
skills, he enables the employees to share their innovative ideas to him (Thornton et al., 2016).
Conceptual skills involve the ability of a person to understand, adapt and overcome complex
situations of the company. Andrew Gregory develops a customer-service focused environment
within the organization by using conceptual skills. To encourage customer service, a new
concept of learning lab restaurant with ‘create your taste’ has been introduced by the CEO to
overcome the complex environment as well as achieve a competitive advantage (Robbins,
Bergman & Coulter 2018). The corporation takes into consideration the positive and negative
feedback for improving its weaknesses.
Answer 5
The management roles of Andrew Gregory is to demonstrate the activities of the staff members
that are beneficial for the consumers.
The common responsibility of Gregory is to conduct a weekly conference with the management
of the organization where he plays the role of disseminator. To fulfil these responsibilities
effectively, Andrew Gregory provides relevant information to the employees gathered either
from the macro environment or microenvironment factors.

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The products of McDonald’s must be operationally, technically and economically feasible by
Andrew Gregory (Lee and Lambert, 2017). He is also responsible for producing the products that
possess the great probability to fulfil the preferences, taste and expectations of the customers,
which is then added to McDonald's menu. Thus, the actions of Gregory demonstrates his
entrepreneurial role as he facilitates the feasibility of new product that leads to the development
of a new product.
Thus the activities of the employees are to focus upon the commitment of the consumers by
developing positive relationships among the employees and the consumers. He must follow the
transformational leadership style for increasing sustainable advantage of the firm and enhancing
consumer experience (Scholz and Smith, 2016). He must provide interpersonal skill training to
the employees that will help the employees to focus towards the consumers that would help
Gregory to perform his leadership role.
Answer 6
It is seen that the business environment is consistently changing and becomes more competitive.
McDonald faced complex as well as a dynamic environment, but Andrew overcomes it by
building competitive advantage through innovation. Therefore, it can be learned by the other
managers from the approach of McDonald and Andrew Gregory that they should focus on
innovation to maintain a profitable market share (Murphy and Dweck, 2016).
Yes, there are differences between being the CEO at Non-profit organization and being CEO at
McDonald’s Australia. The primary focus of McDonald is on the managerial duties and turning a
profit and considered as ‘for-profit' organization. Hence, the primary purpose of the CEO is to
enhance monetary returns for workers and owners at McDonald (Selinske et al., 2015). While
the major goal of CEO at the non-profit organization is to use earned revenues for getting the
benefit. The two CEOs differ in terms of the duties performed by them. CEO at non-profit used
to participate less in planning activities as compared to the CEO at a for-profit. Therefore, there
possess differences among the non-profit and for-profit CEO's, in terms of the duties they
perform and purpose for turning a profit.

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Conclusion
The paper provided an analysis of the case study based on Managing McDonald's Australia.
Based on the analysis, the paper discussed the roles and activities of Andrew Gregory, the CEO
of McDonald Australia. It revealed the difference between the role of Gregory and the assistant
manager of the company.

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References
Anaf, J., Baum, F. and Fisher, M., 2018. A citizens’ jury on regulation of McDonald's products
and operations in Australia in response to a corporate health impact assessment. Australian and
New Zealand journal of public health, 42(2), pp.133-139.
Birch, D., Skallerud, K. and Paul, N.A., 2019. Who are the future seaweed consumers in a
Western society? Insights from Australia. British Food Journal, 121(2), pp.603-615.
Hardy, T. and Howe, J., 2015. Chain reaction: A strategic approach to addressing employment
noncompliance in complex supply chains. Journal of Industrial Relations, 57(4), pp.563-584.
Lee, A. and Lambert, C., 2017. Corporate social responsibility in McDonald’s Australia. Asian
Case Research Journal, 21(02), pp.393-430.
Mathews-Hunt, K., 2016. CookieConsumer: Tracking online behavioural advertising in
Australia. Computer Law & Security Review, 32(1), pp.55-90.
Murphy, M.C. and Dweck, C.S., 2016. Mindsets shape consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer
Psychology, 26(1), pp.127-136.
Nadolny, A. and Ryan, S., 2015. McUniversities revisited: a comparison of university and
McDonald's casual employee experiences in Australia. Studies in Higher Education, 40(1),
pp.142-157.
Richards, Z., Thomas, S.L., Randle, M. and Pettigrew, S., 2015. Corporate Social Responsibility
programs of Big Food in Australia: a content analysis of industry documents. Australian and
New Zealand journal of public health, 39(6), pp.550-556.
Robbins, Bergman & Coulter 2018, Management, 8th edn, Pearson Australia, Melbourne, pp.
31-32.
Scholz, J. and Smith, A.N., 2016. Augmented reality: Designing immersive experiences that
maximize consumer engagement. Business Horizons, 59(2), pp.149-161.
Selinske, M.J., Coetzee, J., Purnell, K. and Knight, A.T., 2015. Understanding the motivations,
satisfaction, and retention of landowners in private land conservation programs. Conservation
Letters, 8(4), pp.282-289.

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Thornton, L.E., Ball, K., Lamb, K.E., McCann, J., Parker, K. and Crawford, D.A., 2016. The
impact of a new McDonald's restaurant on eating behaviours and perceptions of local residents: a
natural experiment using repeated cross-sectional data. Health & place, 39, pp.86-91.