MeatPack Case Study: Organizational Behavior and Leadership

This report examines the organizational behavior of MeatPack, a family-owned food processing business aiming to become a $1 billion company. It analyzes the implications of a hands-on versus hands-off management approach, particularly focusing on the CEO's decisions. The report delves into the effectiveness of senior leadership changes, exploring alternative strategies to influence changes positively. Furthermore, it assesses how MeatPack's transition to a flatter organizational structure impacted its culture and performance, including associated challenges and benefits. The analysis includes justifications for management decisions, evaluations of structural changes, and recommendations for future improvements to enhance organizational efficiency and achieve the company's financial goals. The report uses the case study to illustrate key concepts in organizational behavior and leadership.

Organizational Behaviour

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
1. Justification of Bison be taking a more hands-off or a more hands-on approach to a
business...................................................................................................................................1
2. Presenting how senior leadership changes been effective and other options available to
influence changes more positively in future...........................................................................3
3. Presenting how MeatPack's flatter structure helped to create cultural and performance
changes...................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Organizational behaviour is that study in which people are going to interact within
groups. The basic aim of organizational behaviour is to create more efficient business
companies. The present report is based upon a case study of MeatPack which is a family owned
food processing business in Australia. From last so many years company is performing well but
their target is to become a 1 billion dollar company by 2020. To meet out their targets company
is currently deals with two major changes such as senior leadership changes and cultural and
performance changes.
The report justifying the statement should Bison be taking more hands off or more hands
on approach to a business. Further it presents the importance of senior leadership changes and
how it influence changes more positively in future. Report also describe how company;s flatter
structure helped to create cultural and performance changes with its barriers.
1. Justification of Bison be taking a more hands-off or a more hands-on approach to a business
Hands-off Approach: it is one of the oldest approach used by business but now many
firms did not uses this. Under this model, managers of a company adopt this approach to trust
their team enough and let them do the entire work by themselves only (Ferris and et.al., 2018).
The leaders of a manager do not want to pamper their employees and even employees
themselves take decision by their own.
Advantages:
 this approach helps or gives employees a sense of fulfilment because leaders find them
trust- worthy as they are able to manage entire work.
 It further assist to foster up creativity and growth of all workers and wants to come up
with their new ideas and solutions rather than being told what to do.
 It also deliver strong confidence among managers of a firm when there is a lack of time
(King and Lawley, 2016).
 Everyone knows their role that what they exactly wants to do and managers keep their
eyes on the progress through their reports only.
Disadvantages:
 sometimes it makes a manager over- confident related to his team's abilities.
 Managers also lose control of their employees as well as quality of inputs also.
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 Missing out some tiny details which are also quite beneficial for a business growth.
 Such managers are also unable to mentoring their employees even if they make some
special efforts.
Hands-on Approach: it is a modern method under which managers of a company are
actively involved in some work similar to all employees (Hands-on Approach, 2018). They are
not completely detached from day to day needs and operations of business. Moreover, under this
approach, managers will take out time in order to coach their team and they also actively
invested for the progress of a company. They further keep their line of communication open and
take active part in order to provide regular feedback.
Advantages:
 helps to take ideas from their customers as well as managers.
 Leaders or managers gain a deeper and more perceptive understanding of their business.
 Helps to earn respect and recognizes the importance of employee input.
 Assist to keep employee focused because of the manager's consistent.
Disadvantages:
 less motivates employees and sometimes not able to comfort them in the working
environment.
 If a manager of leaders adopt this approach then they find themselves loss at a time of
dealing with demotivated employees.
 Sometimes, a hand on manager may be fail to back off a motivated high performer which
indirectly affect company's productivity and profitability.
Justification for the response: As per the case scenario, Bison who is the CEO of
MeatPack uses Hands- on approach into their working areas because they wants to become 1
billion dollar company by 2020 which can be possible only by using Hands- on approach
(Kostis, Kafka and Petrakis, 2018). As Bison trusted their employees and also has a strong sense
of loyalty which helps to earn respect as well as through their productivity, they further helps to
maximizes their profit. There is a need to follow this approach because of the following reason:
 As the quoted company have trusted employees from last so many years but still they
need guidance and mentor in order to do work with more efficiently and this is only
possible by using Hands- off approach.
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 To avoid one on one communication, during meetings with their key employees which
help them to outline clear expectations and at time also this approach will be useful rather
then hands- off approach.
 By observing and monitoring all employees, MeatPack's CEO can easily identifies their
working progress which further helps to takes suitable action for their future
development.
 As Bison have strong confidence and not able to fir their old employees because of
emotional attachment. In this case decisions are not making as per emotions and having a
family atmosphere, even recruitment is also often via word of mouth which is not good
for a company's welfare (Gilfillan and Morrow, 2018). So by using Hands- on approach
CEO of a quoted company can understand the problems and take better decision as per
situation.
 This approach also focus to set aim and in the case of MeatPack also its objectives are set
and to achieve that hands-on leader or manager can step back and let employees to
execute those. Earlier all employees do their work as per their will but by adopting hand-
on approach management ensures control but also creates more work from their
employees, that further helps to inspire respect from their employees and also establish
creditability with their customers.
2. Presenting how senior leadership changes been effective and other options available to
influence changes more positively in future.
Senior Leadership Changes: This are basically relevant to small business goals only
under which senior leaders are changed because of business slowdown, relocation or new
product development (Senior leadership, 2018). But in the case of MeatPack, the CEO Bison
wants to become a 1 billion dollar company in its future and this can be done by making some
changes in Senior leadership. Growth is the second reason which pressurised company to adopt
new or makes changes in their existing leadership style. While on the other side, some changes in
their senior leadership could helps in company's plan for expansion and more focuses on
developing a best products in order to improve their customers services and further raise its
productivity in market.
These changes have been effective for MeatPack because of number of changes to a
company's human resources set-up, its wide leadership development program and coaching
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consultation for members of a senior strategy team. Moreover, Bison also finds that there is a
need to shift company's structure from a hierarchical to more horizontal organization with greater
responsibility and best performance. Moreover Bison feels that by making changes in senior
leadership it will creates some positive impact on members but on the other side he himself
struggled with it. Therefore, he makes changes in his team be developing new post of CEO,
COO, CFO, head of sales and business development (Wilson, 2018). To deliver these changes,
Bison also conduct an open dialogue with his team in order to encourage them to speak frankly
with each other during a meetings. But some uncertainty about the composition of senior strategy
team with one attendee being unsure that he was a officially part of a team or not, these lead to
discussion among the group of employees. So there should be separate team which also includes
senior line managers. And as Bison is CEO as well as founder of the company so CFO wonders
whether the board should hold Bison or a senior leadership strategy team be more accountable.
At the end, senior team leads to many major structural changes such as:
 arrival of new CEO of soups and meal business during 2013,
 existing COO will replace Bison as a CEO of meat.
 Lot of discussion made by head of business development such as how the new structure
will be differ from old one.
 CFO concerned whether benefit will derived if the quoted company will redistributed the
functions of supported team like Finance and IT.
The above discussion will led that senior leadership change are not as much effective for
MeatPack because employees and other head peoples are not satisfied because of the work.
Moreover, it also shows that these changes can disrupt the workplace and even bring many issues
which are related to employee satisfaction, morale and turnover. That is why MeatPack wants to
change in its senior leadership but it is not as much effective which helps to raise company's
productivity as well as profitability (Coccia, 2018). Even at the end, many members of a
company are clearly frustrated because their issues are not resolved during meetings and it is
announced that it will be discussed later. This clearly shows that this changes are not supportive
and helps a company to become more productive to presents best result for its future but it leads
to creates many disputes among members presents in a meeting.
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Alternate option to influence change more positively: As Bison influenced by many
activities of a business colleague and his friend and then introduced Human Synergistic
Circumplex for MeatPack where he basically outlines 12 behaviours into three colours:
 Red – Aggressive/ Defensive.
 Green – Passive/ Defensive
 Blue – Constructive
Organizational Culture of a quoted company is red and Bison wants to switch it to blue
and moreover changes its structure too. For that reason, Senior leadership do following things to
look better for company's future:
 They must train the employees of a company in order to achieve their all goals and aim.
As MeatPack also wants to become billionaire in upcoming next years so it is quite
necessary to provide training session to adopt new digital techniques so that it helps to
maximizes their profit (Agbozo and et.al., 2018).
 Prepare employees to accept any changes occurred in a company and allot them new
roles and responsibility by exploring their new ideas.
 Motivate employees and always be positive. Challenge all employees to take some
initiative and seek out solutions with new ideas. Be open at any activity whether it is a
meeting or something else.
 Adopting new organizational structure will also helps to make new changes in its near
future and there is a need to keep motivating all employees in order to accept some
changes. Managers or CEO of a company must listen their employees view too. To
establish well procedure in a company, they should keep monitoring their employees and
their level of performance and then take further action for their improvements.
3. Presenting how MeatPack's flatter structure helped to create cultural and performance changes
Flat Structure: Earlier MeatPack follows hierarchical structures and now it wants to
change from horizontal or flat structure in which there is no level of middle management in
between staff and executives. Horizontal structure helps a company in following ways such as:
 It encourages managers to change their methods of communication so that everyone
should get exact messages (Namvar and et.al., 2018).
 It helps to more focused on making things happen instead of understanding how things
are worked or why they are not.
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 It created top to down environment for managers so that they reached with their defined
targets.
 Moreover, it also appoint managers and supervisor of a company to take greater
responsibility and accountability in order to get the work finished on time.
 Bison also encourages his line managers in order to take more hands- on role for
recruitment of personnel as well as performance appraisals. Hence, it has overall drive in
order to get people to lead rather than manage.
 Flat structure helps a company to improve their working while on the other side, Bison
also removes or fire some employees who dose not have potential. But he cannot do so
because he has an emotional attachment with them which making such decisions more
difficult (Armstrong, 2018).
 As adopting new flat structure, organization faces sudden new changes which helps to
creates bonding and loyalty with each other. Therefore, it shows that changing its
structure will creates positive impact upon company's overall performance.
 There is a drastic change such as Bison also made a huge investment in his staff's training
and employees in order to improve their skills and to cope up with new chain that
company is adopting.
 There is a huge change in cultural as well as performance of a company such that a CFO
came out as a new assistant accountant which shows that there are still best opportunities
for for talented individuals. Further, CEO also introduces new management and team
leaders developmental courses in order to improve their leadership skills and help them to
better manage rather than lead.
 Moreover, the development of a line is also create a culture if accountability for every
position, in which they allow line staff to help in developing efficiencies of a company.
So that they also feel a valued part of a team and as a result they perform work in well
manner.
 As the company adopt new organizational structure, there are changes observed such that
there has been a shift from managers like managing to leading their teams. So that there
has been a more systematic process of all managers and talk with their employees in
order to sort out their problems (Azeem and et.al., 2015).
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 Another cultural change is that is managers are being encouraged to take some time out
to step back and address some situation, by finding best solutions for a problem.
 After adopting Flat structure, MeatPack start focusing on Rockefeller Habits which is
entirely based upon leadership and management principles (Barry and Wilkinson, 2016).
Moreover, performance of every employee are also judged and Bison takes proper
feedback of the work and provide training sessions to their employee to improve their
productivity as well as efficiency.
Barriers to the cultural change:
 The major challenge faced by a company regarding to reaching daily targets stem such as
the shifts are changes into two allotments. Bison faces many problems at the beginning
and in between the shifts but the cultural norms of all shifts are quite different.
 Employees are quite confusing related to their shifts because the afternoon shift is under
pressure because of some specific cut- off time.
 On the other side, there are some differences in priority such that day shift focusing on
maximizing issue and another shift is to carry sensitive lorry pic- ups. Therefore, this
creates some pressure upon the managers and workers too in order to increases its line's
productivity (Zayas-Ortiz and et.al., 2015). Moreover, the output is increases with no loss
time injury from past years.
 Due to emotional attachment with their employees and even all workers also tell that they
feel family environment in MeatPack which makes decision difficult for Bison to fire
some employees who are not work as per the needs. Even a quoted company is detected
internally as a trustworthy and honest peoples are worked that is why it is quite difficult
to take a decision to fire out some employees. As the cultural system is changed but the
emotional attachment creates hurdles while taking strong decision for the welfare of a
company.
 A strong sense of loyalty among employees and staff turnover is quite low, many
employees left the job and as a result Bison have a problem of retention. There are many
workers worked in a company but it is potentially challenging with regard to changing
attitude of many workers towards a proposed cultural changes (Gagné, Sharma and De
Massis, 2014).
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 In MeatPack, it follows a diverse arrangement of cultural background due to this it faces
another problem that is cross- cultural clashes with the employees who belongs to
different cultures.
CONCLUSION
By summing up above report it has been concluded that organizational behaviour plays a
crucial role in every business environment. OB helps to keep interacting with all employees as
well as managers so that company's all defined goals and aim achieved with proper time. Report
also concluded that MeatPack should uses more hands- on approach in order to attain objectives.
There is a need to change its organizational structure from hierarchical to flat structure so that
entire working as well as culture gets improved. Moreover, study also concluded that senior
leadership did not provide as much benefited to the company and even not able to solve disputes
among all members. But on the other flat structure helps a company to create better cultural and
performance changes.
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REFERENCES
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Namvar, M. and et.al., 2018. Simplifying sensemaking: Concept, process, strengths,
shortcomings, and ways forward for information systems in contemporary business
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Online
Hands-on Approach. 2018. [Online] Available through:
<https://smallbusiness.chron.com/handson-leadership-24933.html>.
Senior leadership. 2018. [Online] Available through:<https://smallbusiness.chron.com/change-
senior-leadership-its-effect-achieving-business-goals-44696.html>.
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