The Garden Depot

Executive Summary

This qualitative analysis focuses on a floral company called “The Garden Depot”. It originated in Barrie, Ontario in the year 1985 by Murray and Glenda King. Over the years, it has gone from a small family-business to a company with a new developed landscaping and maintenance division and retail store. With this said, there is no doubt The Garden Depot is continually growing into a successful company. Janice Bowman is one of the key people in this as the case analysis unfolds a few problems she faces as office manager.

By reading this case analysis, there is clearly a main problem among others. This involves the new landscaping manager, Derek Sinclair. He was hired although he is unqualified for the job with no experience in management whatsoever. Though his job is to respond to customer demand, he does not do his job well as Bowman receives all the customer’s complaints regarding Sinclair’s lack of communication with them. Since Sinclair has not been keeping track of invoices, customers are not billed accordingly and the company might lose a great deal of money if continued. There is also a lack of communication between Bowman and the president, in additional to the challenge of recruiting skilled and full-time workers.

With these problems comes with causes. Using the EOPT theory, it is evident that there is lack of fit between a few different aspects. Firstly, there is a lack of fit between people and organization regarding the recruitment of Derek Sinclair. It is obvious that this falls under the individual category as it appears King hired Sinclair for a favour, and putting Sinclair as manager in a major division is slowly becoming a major setback for the company. Another example of this lack of fit can be demonstrated through staff performing illegal activities. Having weaknesses such as monitoring workers in an organization encourages employees such as Jayme Strong to overcharge customers and stealing goods from the company. Lastly, there is a lack of fit between people and task. This is due to the poor staffing and informal job titles which leads to hardworking employees like Bowman to take on other duties outside of their own. Before these problems become worse it is evident that goals must be considered to maintain the company’s success.

Some of these goals include improving communication and trust between upper-level and middle-level management. Most especially improving to provide quality customer service. To avoid missing inventory and theft, a stronger and more defined way of tracking must be in place. And lastly, the company must reorganize the structure of the landscaping division. This way, people will be more confident of each department’s performance.

With these goals in place, it is important to act on it. A beneficial strategy is to further train or select qualified employees that will follow company regulations to improve professionalism and performance. As well as establishing a feedback system where customers can provide input about the service. Therefore, it will be easier to meet customers’ needs and employees can cater to them better. Lastly, to improve the landscaping division, Sinclair should be put under probation in which he will be given a chance to save his position as landscaping manager. This would help the company greatly since with this probation in place, Sinclair should improve his performance, therefore increasing customer satisfaction and lower complaints.