CASE STUDY 3 - PEPPERCORN DINING

(i.) CASE SYNOPSIS

Peppercorn Dining is a college dining place whereby the partners of Square One
Consulting named Roger, Lynn and Erica, are having lunch in the afternoon when
Drew Randall, the manager of Peppercorn Dining identifies Erica who had worked
there a few years back.Then.the consultants have a short conversation with Drew
whereby Drew tells them about some challenges that Peppercorn Dining is facing at
the moment. Drew highlighted mainly on staffing problem, which forced several
students to stop working there .Although Drew was aware of it, he could not sort out
the fundamental cause of the problem that was affecting Peppercorn’s workforce.
Hence, Drew seeked professional advice from the consultants.

The entry and contracting process went on very well, Drew raised his concerns about
the performance of the diner and transparently expressed his main objective which
was to “increase productivity and to improve employees morale” . Since Erica was a
former employee at Peppercorn Dining, she had personal relationships with most of
the current employees there. This has enabled the consultants to negotiate a contract
with Peppercorn easily and quickly. Apart from that the process of identifying the
organization’s culture, sources of power, and informal practices was also easy and
smooth. Erica was also seasoned with the language of the organization and was
therefore able to find out the main cause of most of the problems faced by
Peppercorn. Finally, the contract that was presented to the company drafted the
consultants’ fees as well as the proposed schedule of the times and dates that they
planned on gathering information from Peppercorn.

Their data gathering required gathering information on various organizational

characteristics, based on the feedback received from personal interviews as well as
general observations that were made at Peppercorn dining . Apart from that,they also
made systematic efforts to scrutinize the company’s records, policies, mission as well
as rules and regulations so that they can gain further understanding about the
organizational structure. Undoubtedly,Erica was the best consultant when it came to
conducting interviews because she already knows and has good relationship with the
employees there. However,the probability of her findings being biased is high
because she was a former employee there. Since the employees there know her well
and are comfortable with her, it hindered her to be able to be neutral and collect the
data objectively. Furthermore, the interviews conducted were not properly structured,
because the questions given to each and every employee was entirely different from
one another. Hence,the consultants were unable to make comparisons between the
employees responses. In addition to that, they were only able to ask open ended
questions and due to that, the employees responses did not have any analytical
significance. Conclusively,the data gathering was not efficient.

Questions
(ii.)
a.) How effective was the OD consultants’ data gathering? The content of the
data?The process of how the data were collected?

The three consultants,Roger,Lynn and Erica used both qualitative as well as

quantitative methods to collect data.It was done by interviewing students who dine at
the restaurant, representative from the parent dining organization for the university as
well as the management and staff there.

The three different types of data collection methods which are classified as qualitative
and quantitative comprises of questionnaires, conducting interviews and focus groups
as well as observation.

Hence,the data collection method used was reliable in that the consultants are now
able to use the gathered data for further analysis.Apart from that, by meeting Drew
and also with the help of Erica who was a previous employee at Peppercorn,the
consultants were able to prepare questionnaire to be used for data collection in a short
span of time.

However,the data collected was not effective .This is because,Erica has good
relationship with the other staff and might be bias as she was an employee there
before. This is an obstacle for her to be able to be neutral and collect data
objectively.Another reason for inefficient data collection was unstructured
interview .This is because the questions asked to each and every employee was totally
different from one another.This led the data collected to be ineffective.
b.) What concepts or models might help you analyze the data? What conclusions
would you draw from the analysis?
Graphical analysis model can help analyze the data collected, whereby SPSS software
or Microsoft excel can be used.The repondents replies can be converted into codes
and then can be keyed into the SPSS or Microsoft excel.This can later be used to do
cross analysis on the data collected. Apart from that,different statistics such as the
comparison of mean,averages,and standard deviation can be used.

Another model is analysis of variance.A researcher needs to choose between different

available statistical methods and apply the method which produces desired
results.Hence,the consultants gathered data by using both quantitative as well as
qualitative methods of data collection

c.) How should the feedback session be designed?

The first thing that should be done is to plan for the feedback meeting.The purpose of
this is to gather all the results in the form of graphs and after that deliver a
presentation on the operations aspect of Peppercorn.

During the feedback presentation, the results of the collected data should be presented
using mean, frequencies as well as standard deviation.Apart from that, the consultants
should give a clear explanation on each and every aspect .

Lastly,the outcomes from the meeting should be to be able to provide useful

information to Peppercorn’s Management regarding ways to increase its revenue and
at the same time not compromising on quality in order to raise quality standards of
peppercorn.