Case Study The Dilemma At Devil's Den

Week 9 Case Study - "Dilemma at Devil 's Den"

• What is Susan’s dilemma?

Susan is a college student from Mt. Eagle College, who was working at a campus snack bar called the Devil’s Den. She realized a rather disturbing problem at her workplace where the student employees had been taking advantage of the policy by taking a lot of free food when leaving their shifts and allowing their friends to do so as well. Also, she supposed the wage system in the company was ineffectively to motivate employees to work hard. The dilemma was that the management seemed to be careless about the issue, and ignored what was going on while Susan’s idea about fix the issue. The other fellow employees followed to do the same thing, and this was harmful to Den’s discipline

Firstly, due to lacking of formal training upon taking on leadership roles, the student managers were not able to enforce policies properly, such as monitoring the food bar. Plus, the wage increase was small. As a result, the student managers did not receive enough incentives to either care their jobs or show sufficient control over other employees, which could be seen as a bad example to other fellow managers. In addition, in terms of the problem of unpaid goods being taken away, the management had little concern on this matter. Neither any corrective action was taken to tackle it, nor did the managers stand out to challenge this behavior. Indeed, although a few managers who did get their jobs done efficiently, the majority failed to deliver their work in a satisfactory manner. Lastly, it is necessary to boost the morale in this work place. People ought to pay attention on ethic codes and show respect on this part. While Susan attempted to report the problem, she was afraid of possible negative reaction from her fellow colleagues – they might have frowned on her and made her difficult to continue to work there. This fear is a result of the management’s lack of awareness of existing problems, which established an image that nobody would care to correct the wrongs

Some employees including Susan witnessed and admitted that this was growing to a serious problem. However, Susan really reported this problem and hoped could change something, but she failed to do so. Most employees felt did not be wiling to to expose this reality, because nobody wanted to be involved in a risk of their “friendship”. The Den was contracted with an external company called College Food Services (CFS). It was CFS’s loss of money from this freebie problem; the employees naturally would not want to jeopardize their relationship by standing out. Under the Den’s discipline system, since the management did not show enough concern on this matter, Susan chose to keep quiet after talking to one student manager.

What seems to influence the perceptions and behaviors of other Devil’s Den employees?

This company lacks of disciplinary consequences of a series of problems. Obviously, management ignored all the problems and be lazy to make a mover to be better. There was no monitor was enacted on the employees or some action to motivate them work more effectively. Furthermore, it had a chain effect that everyone was taking advantage of the free food policy so nobody cared to speak up when the rule was being abused, not to mention at a risk of getting frowned upon.

• What should Susan do about