MGT101A: Analyzing McDonald's Management in a Global Environment

This case study provides an analysis of McDonald's management strategies in a global environment, addressing key aspects of corporate culture, organizational performance, and leadership. It examines McDonald's strong cultural values, commitment to quality, and teamwork, highlighting how these elements contribute to customer satisfaction and employee empowerment. The study also explores the relationship between organizational culture and performance, particularly how McDonald's integrates cultural policies with marketing strategies, such as the Happy Meal concept. Furthermore, it discusses the four management functions—planning, organizing, controlling, and leading—and their application within McDonald's. The analysis incorporates Robert Katz's leadership skills framework, assessing the technical, human resource, and conceptual skills present in McDonald's management. Finally, it identifies general, task, and internal factors that influence the company's success and suggests qualities for future managers within the organization. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wide range of study resources for students.

Running head: MANAGING IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Managing in a Global Environment
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author’s note

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MANAGING IN A GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT
Table of Contents
Answer to question 1..................................................................................................................2
Answer to question 2..................................................................................................................2
Answer to question 3..................................................................................................................2
Answer to question 4..................................................................................................................3
Answer to question 5..................................................................................................................3
Answer to question 6..................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................5

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Answer to question 1
The corporate culture of McDonalds is proven to be the best for the workers working
out there. McDonalds have a strong cultural value and provide support to the global
environment youth. There are some rules and regulations flowed by this company from the
beginning. They are determined to provide good quality food and expertise to the customers,
provide support to the employees, and believe in team work to improve quality. They also
believe in celebrating achievement together and committed to achieve new goals every day.
They are highly committed to the customer expectation and satisfaction (Awadh & Saad,
2013). The goal of company is to give people full freedom to work in the organization. Often
McDonalds reward their workers for their good work and commitment to the company. The
main USP of the company is fast customer service, error free work, simple decision making,
well maintained facilities and clean restaurant premises that attract more number of customer.
This is the way the company have managed corporate culture within the organization since
beginning (Daft & Samson, 2014).
Answer to question 2
Organizational culture and performance are related to each other. To define the
performance the culture within the company always plays an important role. If the culture is
not good then it affects the performance of the organization. Similarly McDonalds also define
culture with performance. During the previous time there were lot of issues with this
company regarding cultural policies. To increase the sales of their products McDonalds use
different policies. For example they have a clown concept named Rolland McDonald who is
very famous among the children and adults. As health is currently a main concept and
McDonalds also aims to provide healthy foods (Daft & Samson, 2014). Such a concept is
happy meal where they provide good quality foods and health drinks. Apart from that they
also give toys to the children. In this way they increase the sales and also develop the
marketing strategy. This is the reason the parents are forced to take their child to store. Apart
from that clean restaurant is another concept for McDonalds. In this way the company
combines culture with performance (Awadh & Saad, 2013).
Answer to question 3
There are four management functions related to McDonalds namely planning,
organizing, controlling and leading (Schraeder et al., 2014). The planning function ensures
that the company manages all the resources efficiently and utilize them to the fullest.

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Planning is considered to be main factor for this company because it ensures all the
restaurants to be working under the same objective. Company ensures effective use of
resource available to set the goal or objective. As the company vision is to be the best
restaurant service provider of UK. In order to achieve this objective the company utilizes the
resources to achieve the common objective. Organizing involves the involvement of
organizational goals and structure of the company. Managers highly rely in the functions to
distribute or delegate authority. McDonald builds successful culture and improves creativity
and motivation (Daft & Samson, 2014). They give employee empowerment and motivation.
It increase the company standard. Controlling is another aspect ensuring that the employees
are highly motivated and policies are clear to them. The company sets benchmarks and
shortcomings to performance by improving the employee awareness. In this process the
company sets a positive brand image. Lastly leading is the fourth factor which ensures
leadership quality among the employees. McDonalds ensure power, influence, and persuasion
and communication strategies to improve leadership quality.
Answer to question 4
According to Robert Katz, there are three types of skills that defines leadership
quality of management namely technical skills, human resource skills and conceptual skills.
Each skill has different set of approach to the human beings as well as for the companies also.
Technical skills are those where the employee’s knowledge base is checked on the particular
area. These skills sets are required to effectively maintain the works within the organization.
Similarly human resource skills are used to manage people efficiently (Shuayto, 2013).
Human resource skills help the companies to work with the subordinates. Again conceptual
skills are those which are based on the core subjective knowledge of the workers. McDonalds
Company in order to serve more people use technically suited persons for cash department
and billing, works as a team to provide good foods to the customers and are determined to
provide good quality customer solutions and expertise. As a whole McDonalds Company
executives maintain all the required skill sets in the organization suggested by Katz (Samson
& Daft, 2012).
Answer to question 5
There are three types of factor that affect the success of McDonald’s company namely
general factor, task factors and internal factors. General or environmental factors are those
which are not included in the short term case but proved to be important for long term

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perspectives. For example general factors include social, political, and economical factors.
Task factors include those firms or companies which makes similar kind of products or
services and the stakeholders are also aware of their customers, suppliers, employees ,
pressure groups and competitors. Lastly internal factors are those which happen within the
organization and play an important part in the success of the company (Samson & Daft,
2012). For example, recruitment, selection, performance appraisal, attrition rate. McDonalds
has been so successful in this time period because of their strong social, political and
environment factors and good quality products and servicing. Apart from that they have
utilized many methods to tackle down their competitors like pizza hut, dominos and KFC
with their strong market appearance, good brand image, and quality service providing. In this
way the environmental factors have become so important for the success of this company
(Boso, Cadogan & Story, 2013).
Answer to question 6
McDonalds provide full support to the budding employees who have recently joined the
company. They also give full freedom to the workers to works in their respective fields. As
the company focuses on teamwork hence the overall productivity is increased. Apart from
that to become successful managers in the future there should be certain qualities inherited to
the person. These are as follows:
1. Set the right example.
2. Development of leadership skills.
3. Technically proficient.
4. Positive attitude (Coder & Spiller, 2013).
McDonalds Company also focuses on all these above activities inside the human beings.
Hence these are main qualities of manager for McDonalds (Samson & Daft, 2012).

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References
Awadh, A. M., & Saad, A. M. (2013). Impact of organizational culture on employee
performance. International Review of Management and Business Research, 2(1), 168-
175. Link: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?
doi=10.1.1.682.3511&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Boso, N., Cadogan, J. W., & Story, V. M. (2013). Entrepreneurial orientation and market
orientation as drivers of product innovation success: A study of exporters from a
developing economy. International Small Business Journal, 31(1), 57-81. Link:
236004019_Market_Orientation_and_Entrepreneurial_Orientation_as_Drivers_of_Pr
oduct_Innovation_Success_A_Study_of_Exporters_from_a_Developing_Economy
Coder, L., & Spiller, M. S. (2013). Leadership education and gender roles: Think manager,
think"?". Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 17(3), 21. Link:
https://www.abacademies.org/articles/aeljvol17no32013.pdf#page=29
Daft, R. L., & Samson, D. (2014). Fundamentals of Management: Asia Pacific Edition PDF.
Cengage Learning Australia.
Samson, D., & Daft, R. L. (2012). Management (4th Asia Pacific ed.). Melbourne, Australia:
Cengage.
Schraeder, M., Self, D. R., Jordan, M. H., & Portis, R. (2014). The functions of management
as mechanisms for fostering interpersonal trust. Advances in Business Research, 5(1),
50-62. Link: http://journals.sfu.ca/abr/index.php/abr/article/view/71/91
Shuayto, N. (2013). Management skills desired by business school deans and employers: An
empirical investigation. Business Education & Accreditation, 5(2), 93-105. Link:
http://www.theibfr2.com/RePEc/ibf/beaccr/bea-v5n2-2013/BEA-V5N2-
2013.pdf#page=95