Paradise Bakery Case Study: Management, Communication, & Recession

This document presents a solution to the Paradise Bakery case study, addressing three key questions. First, it outlines how Daniel Patterson should communicate his decision to hire Laurie Danks as CFO, considering Tim Halverson's reluctance and the need to justify her salary and equity requirements. Second, it develops a communication plan for delivering the news of Paradise Bakery's acquisition by Panera Bread, anticipating employee concerns and using multiple communication mediums such as email and meetings. Finally, it proposes an action plan to address the recession's impact on Paradise Bakery, considering options like operational cuts and renegotiating the deal terms, while managing the concerns of various stakeholders. The solution emphasizes effective communication, strategic planning, and stakeholder management in navigating challenging business decisions. Desklib offers a wide range of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in their academic endeavors.

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
Business management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Question: 1
According to the case study, Tim Halverson is reluctant about the selection of Laurie
Danks as the new CFO. Thus, there is a high risk of discontentment from the side of him in case
of the appointment. However, on the other hand, Daniel Patterson is needing experience
possessed by Laurie Danks. In this case, only effective communication by Daniel will help to
persuade Tim regarding the appointment of Laurie (Mishra, Boynton & Mishra, 2014). Thus it is
recommended that Daniel should communicate the competitiveness of Laurie Danks to Tim and
should also identify the areas where Laurie is ahead of him. Therefore, the primary objective of
doing this will be understood Tim that appointment of Laurie will be more beneficial than
appointing him as CFO. It is the responsibility of Daniel to make Tim understand how the
experience and expertise of Laurie will help Paradise bakery in enhancing their business in long-
term.
Besides, there is some additional information also being required such as the salary and equity
requirement for Laurie. This is important due to the reason that Daniel has the responsibility to
justify the higher salary and equity asked by Laurie. Management will have the concern about
the viability of providing more benefits. Thus, the past performance of Laurie should be
examined in accordance with her salary. It will help Daniel to justify to the management of
Paradise bakery about providing higher salary and equity to Laurie Danks.
Question: 2
To deliver the news of taking over of paradise bakery by Panera bread, Daniel should
follow some steps to have the lower rate of repercussions. In the first step, he should
communicate about the advantages of partnering with a larger brand to the employees. This will

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help him to have the favorable impression among the employees regarding working with another
brand. The next step should involve communicating the advantages of working with Panera
bread and the areas where they are ahead compared to Paradise Bakery. This will make the
employees believe that partnering with Panera Bread will eventually have advantages for them
(Men, 2014). This will help Daniel to communicate the final news to the employees. It is also
recommended that different mediums should be used for the communication process. This is due
to the reason that different employees will have the diverse set of issues and queries and handling
the single type of medium cannot able to solve.
As the first step, email should be sent to all the employees regarding the news of
takeover. Using email as the primary communication tool will ensure that all the employees will
be covered in the communication process. In the next step, the meeting can be organized
primarily for the employees with having specific queries. In this case, the email will not be
effective in meeting the particular queries of the employees (Olsson, 2013). Conducting meeting
will ensure that employees will be able to ask their questions personally and their queries can
also get met in more personalized manner.
Daniel: Guys I have something to share with you all. What do you think about the
competitiveness of panera bread compared to us?
Employees: They are larger brand than ours and are having more market share than us.
Daniel: Do you think that we will have some sort of advantages in partnering with them?
Employees: Maybe we will have advantages in terms of business context but what will happen to
our job security? Who will be responsible for it? What if our existing approaches do not get
matched with them?

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Daniel: Yeah there will be obviously some sort of difficulties to be faced. However, I am
thinking about partnering with them in gaining advantages and I will also ensure about your fears
and queries as well.
Daniel: Guys, a mail has been sent to you all. Please go through the mail and come up with any
queries.
Employees: Though it is good news that we will now become a larger brand but we are having
different set of queries regarding it.
Daniel: Ok I will meet you one on one basis in order to meet your queries. Please come up with
your different and personal queries and meet me up individually.
Question: 3
Time line Recommended steps Involved stakeholders Long term implications
First six
months
Cutting off a part of the human
resources will help to reduce
the expenditure that will further
contribute to survive in
recession (Brewster, 2017).
Daniel should also
communicate with the
involved employees
about why attrition is
essential and how the
organization may get
affected in the long
term without reducing
the workforce.
However, a provision
should be there that
Business will get
benefited from the lean
operation mechanism It
will also help to save
the internal cost and
maintaining the
profitability.

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will enable to rehire
the employees in
future.
First one year Stalling the expansion plan. The
more stores will get opened by
Paradise at the time of
recession, and the more will be
the revenue loss due to the lack
of customers. Thus, they should
be more concentrated on their
existing portfolio to maintain
the profitability.
Daniel should
communicate with
Panera bread about the
importance of
restricting the
expansion plan. It is to
be informed curtailing
the expansion plan will
regulate the average
loss in sales, and
Panera bread will also
incur a lower loss from
having a limited
number of stores at the
time of recession.
This will help to have
less exposure to the
organization towards
recession and will help
to immune for the
future. This will also
help to save the added
capital for future
expansion.

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Reference
Brewster, C. (2017). The integration of human resource management and corporate strategy. In
Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35). Routledge.
Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership,
communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication
Quarterly, 28(2), 264-284.
Mishra, K., Boynton, L., & Mishra, A. (2014). Driving employee engagement: The expanded
role of internal communications. International Journal of Business Communication,
51(2), 183-202.
Olsson, E. K. (2013). Public diplomacy as a crisis communication tool. Journal of International
Communication, 19(2), 219-234.