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ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Organizational Development

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 ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Organizational Development
Introduction
An organization is an open and complex system that consists of many variables in its

interactions with the external environment. It has been observed that many organizations are

currently not as competitive as they were before due to an ever-changing business environment

which demands efficiency and innovation. Therefore, organizations have to look for new ways of

doing things so that they can increase their effectiveness in achieving their goals and objectives.

Organizational development is the overall process used by an organization in order for it to

increase its effectiveness and facilitate organizational and personal change by using interferences

that are driven by the behavioral and social science knowledge (Anderson, 2011, pp. 3).

For an organization to be effective, productive and always satisfactory to its members

including its customers it must incur changes now and then. Changes in many organizations are

always triggered by the continuous change of customer demands. Some changes also occur in

organizations because of their want to be updated as possible and thus making them change

according to the change of technology. It’s not only the organization that is required to have

changed, its employees also need to learn new and advanced skills as employee positions in the

organization change with time. The best employees are the ones that are quick and flexible in

adapting to the new advancements of the organization.

Papa John’s is a famous American Pizza restaurant franchise which was created in a

broom closet in Jeffersonville, Indiana in 1984 which makes it nearly 35 years old. It all began

when ‘Papa’ John Schnatter made pizzas for the patrons that were at his father’s tavern, he

managed to buy restaurant equipment worth $ 1,600. In 2016, it was ranked as the third largest

restaurant to offer pizza delivery in the U.S. after Dominos and Pizza Hut. Its current
headquarters are in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. It has managed to have over 5000 establishments

around the globe and 4456 of them are located in the United States. In 2017 the business’

revenue was billed at approximately $1.7 billion. (Schnatter, 2017, p. 5).

The downfall of Papa Johns started back in 2017 when controversy was created by

Schnatter criticizing the NFL leadership over their kneeling during the national anthem as a sign

of protesting against racial injustice and police brutality. Schnatter is also accused to have used

the N-word during a conference call with the marketing laundry service as he was trying to find a

way forward for the company. After the company banned Schnatter from the office and also

from advertising he apologized and resigned. These were not the only problems that the business

faced, Schnatter was accused by employees of inappropriate conduct when he was still the CEO

of the company. The complaints ranged from stories about him spying on his employees to the

extent of having sexually inappropriate conduct at the workplace.

The performance gap at Papa John’s is clearly shown by its string of bad sales that it

reported in the last year’s income. The period that ended July 1st, 2018 reported that the company

had a sale drop of 6.1 percent in the North America stores, a decrease of 10.5 percent was

reported in the same region from July 2 to July 29. The overall drop of the company in 2018 was

3 percent and it’s expected to drop more to about 7-10 percent this year. It’s clear that the

company has a competitive external environment which consists of Pizza Hut and Dominos and

an ineffective internal environment consisting of problems with leadership toxic culture and

diversity (Hambrick, 2019, p. 43).

Research question

Will the anti-bias diversity training resolve the performance gap at Papa John’s, or the brand

should not be defined by one man’s actions?

Main objectives

- Assessing the need for change, helping to identify the problems at Papa Johns and

planning development

- Engaging with Papa John’s CEO and other board members to facilitate the change

- Diagnosing the causes of the performance gap, in this case, problems with diversity &

inclusion and leadership toxic culture.

Papa John’s main strategic objective is to continue widening the menu and also at the

same time keep expanding its restaurants around the world. The company’s ethics is losing its

reputation because of the battle between itself and its founder. This creates a threat to future sales

and commitment to the brand by the employees and franchisee. This research will help to set

new changes to the company like a new culture to be adopted, repairing the brand image and

regaining employee and customer trust through the creation of an equality and diversity

environment.

This research project will try to bridge the performance gap at Papa John's by using

Brown's five stages of OD. The second chapter will first explain the use of the stages then the

third chapter will apply them on Papa John's and the conclusion will include summarizing the

findings and providing the necessary recommendations so that the performance gap can be

bridged.

OD consultancy method of inquiry

Brown’s 5 stages of OD

Need for change

This is the step where the need for a change in the organization is developed and

understood. An assessment of the internal and external environment is done so that a

performance gap can be discovered. the internal environment includes factors like motivation,

leadership, culture, and group work. The practitioner in this step is required to make sure that the

client notices that the organization is in a state of disequilibrium hence the need for a change.

The work of the organization development consultant is to enter into the organization, collect

data, use the data to keenly detect the needs of the organization, propose necessary interventions

and then evaluate the progress (Brown., 2010, p. 4).

Client practitioner relationship

A good first impression always influences the Formation taken by the interpersonal

relationship between the client and the practitioner (Brown, 2010, p.15). For an OD to be

successful both parties must involve themselves in having a shared responsibility when

collecting data, diagnosing the data, interventions necessary and also during the implementation

of the change itself. The most important components during the process of entry include

presence, authenticity, and empathy. The client-practitioner relationship is always the dependent

value for the successfulness of an OD. At the beginning of the relationship, the mutual

expectations of both the practitioner and the client should be discussed so that both may be

satisfied at the end of the process. The client is required to consider the practitioner as a

facilitator and not an expert. If the practitioner listens carefully and understands the client’s

issues, then the goals and deeper desires are uncovered.

Diagnostics

This is the step where the practitioner does an organized approach to allow him or her know the

current state of the organization then compares it to the state that is required. The problem and its

causes are Identified then information regarding the selected strategy to be taken is provided.

Data is to be analyzed systematically so that the link between the poor performance and the
internal systems of the organization is known. Both the driving forces and restraining forces are

identified during the data collection process. The most important consideration in this stage is for

both parties to ensure that a non-faulty, perfect and strong diagnosis is done so that a pricey and

unproductive change is prevented.

Action plan

After the identification of all problem areas and casual relations with a concise and

conclusive diagnosis, the next step is a series of interventions, activities, and programs with the

main aim to solve the organization’s challenges and increase its effectiveness (Brown, 2010,

p.16). Not all OD interventions are supposed to aim at improving organizational effectiveness,

some interventions should aim at the successful implementation of change within the whole

system. The interventions can either focus on organizational culture, leadership, employee

motivation, team building or the organization’s structure. An OD strategy integrates the

technological strategy which consists computer systems and machinery, and with the behavioral

strategy which majorly consists of the human resources and the structural strategy which consists

of the chain of command, spans of control and work functions.

Evaluation

Evaluation can be measured from a financial perspective or the satisfaction of the client.

Profitability or return on investment is the main finance measures while quality-of-life or

employee retention is on the client satisfaction perspective. Since employee behavior and

motivation at the workplace is greatly influenced by the organizational structures and processes

then the organizational development deals with change management through the humanistic
approach. The humanistic approach allows for more sustainable and effective performance

across the organization’s activities. Organizational development entails a continuous process of

diagnosis, planning, execution, and evaluation of the required changes so that an overall

improvement in organization performance is achieved.

OD’s humanistic values

OD’s humanistic values include honesty between the client and the practitioner, this

limits both parties from hiding information from each other. Successfulness of an OD depends

on the availability of all the required information. The other value is trust, the practitioner and

the client should have trust with each other and the trust should not be broken. The main goal

should be to develop the intervention, the practitioner should just use the acquired information

otherwise. Shared responsibility is the other humanistic value, the client and the practitioner

should both agree to work together so as to come up with the best intervention measures

(Gladden, 2016, p. 239).

Secondary research

The OD consultancy project will be fully based on secondary research, it will involve

using the available data that has already been summarized and collected. I will do my best to

collect a variety of different perspective by using a variety of sources of research. I will make

every effort to recognize and try to overcome the limitations of secondary research. Some of the

information I will collect will, of course, be biased and others will lack authenticity but I will

make sure I try to collect a range of possible perspectives. Secondary research has limitations

especially in relation to primary research where sampling is done and one gets the information

directly from the source, this produces more valid and reliable data. The advantage of using the

secondary research strategy is that it is not time-consuming.

 The strengths of secondary research include the fact that the data available is a lot, almost

information on all the topics is available, the research is also not expensive, it's not time-

consuming since data is available easily. It also has a weakness which includes some data

lacking authenticity because of the age difference and this may make it difficult to notice if the

data is biased. It's not easy to get the latest reports and statistics when using secondary research.

The success of a secondary research project will always be dependent on the credibility of the

primary research that was done and recorded in the secondary data. When doing historical

comparisons, it may be difficult since the measurement of data may change over time. The data

may not be a representation of the wider population since some documents may have been lost

over time.

The perspective of other change management models

Other change management perspectives include those that are bottom-up (Appreciative

inquiry) and the top-down (Kotter). The first time that Kotter model was proposed was in the

mid-1990s and it was invented by the Harvard Business School professor John Kotter

(Kotter,1995, p. 60). It was majorly grounded in a theoretical direction in regard to change. The

model didn’t have rigorous basics but it was still well received and up to date it still remains a

landmark in the change management literature. Kotter’s model was precisely determined to make

a design that could assist an organization to be able to cope up with the new and more

challenging market environment by having a look on its own conduct (Kotter,1995, p. 67).

According to Bush (2012, p. 34) there are two critiques of appreciative inquiry. The first

critique was from the OD scholars they raised an argument that for a balance in an organization

the major concentration should be on what works and what the problem areas are. They argue

that AI advocates were not researchable. Bushe (2012: p. 13) also criticizes by giving a response

that the social constructionist underpinnings of AI were not clearly explained hence making them
hard to understand. The Only positive side of AI is that evidence of its benefits have been

noticed in many case studies. Like all the other OD approaches, AI has also concentrated on the

already existing culture and resources of an organization, no foreign set of ideas have been added

into the organization.

OD ethics
The practitioner should always be answerable for his or her professional development and

competence, he or she should always accept the responsibility that follows the consequence of

his or her acts. They should also be socially responsible and act while being aware of the world’s

cultural filters. They should also be sensitive to multicultural and multinational differences, they

should ensure all the well-being on earth are served justly and fairly. They should provide

freedom by allowing them to exercise responsibility and self-control. Being just means having

people live their lives whose results are equitable and fair. They should also be true to

themselves this is by consistently acting with their feelings, ensuring they are honest and

appropriately open with one another. Flexibility change is when people change themselves and

continuously act assertively with the aim of achieving or maintaining a good fit between

themselves and the external reality within which they live.

Project Planning -Gantt Chart

Application of Brown’s 5 stages model
Need for change

According to Kirsch, (2018) due to the NFL comments made by Schnatter, the first and

second quarter saw the corporate revenue fall by 5 %, meanwhile, the net yearly income showed

a steep decrease of 40% from the previous year. One of the company’s franchisee said that the

organization was allowing an alarming discount than it has ever done, this clearly shows the state

of disequilibrium that the company is at and indicates the need for a change in the organization.

In a call with the investors, the executives of Papa Johns explained how the company was

planning to spend over $50 million dollars on all the costs related to the scandal which included

the removal of Schnatter from all the company's marketing, the internal audit and any extra legal

costs that were to be incurred.

Schnatter is also reported to have done many court settlements with women involving

inappropriate conduct that he did during his management period, the more he stayed in the
company the more the culture of Papa Johns was seen to decline (Kirsch, 2018). Within one

year, Schnatter is reported to have done at least two confidential settlements. This clearly

indicates some bad leadership skills which show an explanation of the rampant demotivation of

the employees. Many insiders have said that under both Ritchie's and Schnatter's watch multiple

transgressions happened. They say that female employees were many times asked if they were

menstruating as a way to mock them. Male executives at times made references to ‘gangbangs'

and made comments to the females if they wanted ‘to jump on the train'. Three former

employees have confirmed that Ritchie was available when these remarks were being made at

the workplace and he just laughed along. This clearly indicates the need for a change in the

organization so that the employees can feel safe in the workplace.

There is a need for the organization to change from using hard HRM and start using soft

HRM. Hard HRM strictly supports only one-way communication and that is when the managers

give orders to the employees, managers are quick to get rid of any low performing employee.

Soft HRM allows two-way communication, the employees are allowed to ask questions about

orders which is contrary to the hard HRM. The soft HRM will make the employees be motivated

and gain their trust in the company hence reducing the rate of replacement which as at now is on

high level. (Dransfield, 2004, p. 105). Since the company is experiencing low sales some of the

employees are being fired in some establishments so as to avoid losses and in some

establishments, the employees are resigning themselves because of speculations that the future of

the organization will be worse. The organization should adopt a post-heroic leadership system

which will assist in the creation of a good culture between the management and the employees.

A post-heroic leadership is the management style that values a group dynamics awareness more

than a commanding personality.

 Deontological ethics is the ethics system whereby an action is judged if it is right or

wrong by considering the moral code while utilitarian ethics is whereby a positive outcome is

considered first before a course of action is taken. Currently, Papa Johns has the deontological

ethics and this needs to be changed to utilitarian ethics. Groupthink is also a strategy that should

be avoided because it causes a decline in mental efficiency, moral testing, and reality testing. In-

group pressures are the major cause of groupthink. If the company can’t work without grouping

the employees then Impartial leadership should be adopted by the team leaders, impartial

leadership is the best strategy in avoiding groupthink.

Client practitioner relationship

As the hired OD consultant during the start of the organization development project, I would

meet with Papa John’s managers including the CEO of the business. I will make sure I also invite

the board members who later will form the search committee. During the meeting, the challenges

that Papa John’s is facing presently will be discussed this will include the need for a strategic

plan, public relations, finance, and staffing, probably more areas will be identified at that time. I

will then explain how a general systematic approach is the most effective approach that can be

used to achieve organizational development at Papa John’s. I would advise the management team

to convince the workforce that they should be involved in the research process because they are

the ones who are greatly affected.

Client practitioner relationship also involves having a psychological contract with each other.

The psychological contract consists of expectations and obligations. The client and the

practitioner are not supposed to over expect from each other and they should be able to perform

their obligations to the best of their capability. The Practitioner-client relationships should shift

from the apathetic which is considered to be perceived as a pluralist perspective to the consensus
mode which is a unitarist perspective. There are three models that can be adopted in a client-

practitioner relationship. Expert model, this is whereby all the task of interventions and change in

the organization is left to be handled by the practitioner, I will discourage the client from

adopting this model because an organizational development process requires that the activities

are carried jointly for it to be successful. Doctor-patient model this is where the practitioner as

the consultant is hired by the organization to diagnose the problem and give a suggestion of the

intervention that should be taken, in this case, the client is also not fully involved in the process.

Mechanic model, this is considered to be an antithesis of OD since all the responsibility for the

change is passed to the practitioner. The model to be adopted will include sharing responsibilities

among the client and myself, this will ensure that I have all the knowledge of how the company

undertakes its activities.

Diagnosis

From the case studies, diversity and a toxic culture were the main identified issues that

affected Papa John’s, through explaining this to the client I will have already created a ‘felt need’

in the client’s mind that change in the organization is necessary. Diagnosis step will consist of

looking for a causality which is the link between internal systems and the identified issues. The

diagnosis step will include a collection of data from Papa John's. The main items that I will use

to collect the data will be the use of questionnaires, interviews, and observation. The

questionnaire’s main roles will be to assess the strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats that

the company is facing. Interviews will assess the employee attitudes, values and the beliefs

associated with the organization. During the analysis of the data collected Lewin’s force-field

process will be used so as to detect the driving forces and the restraining forces of the

organization.
 The main advantage that I will have for using interviews as a data collection instrument is

that it will allow me as the interviewer to modify the questions in order to probe the emergent

issues. It will also help me have an empathetic relationship with the employees hence making

them be frank and able to disclose information that will be difficult to disclose in any other way.

The main limitations that I will face for using direct interview are that it may result to the

interviewee being biased for fear of me reporting him or her to the management and I as the

interviewer have to be skilled enough so as to ensure that I don’t do a wrong interpretation of

data leading to distortion. The most effective data collection that I will use will be observed.

At the action plan, the 7S model should also be used for problem solving and analysis.

The 7S model is used to cause an improvement in the performance of the company, determine

the best way of implementing the proposed strategy, and assist in making sure that all the

departments are aligned in accordance in a way to accept change (Peters and Waterman, 2004, p.

10). The collaborative management of the organization greatly influences the cultural perspective

and thus an exceptional emphasis will be placed on the team configurations and the culture of

intact work teams. The leadership of the organization should be developed so that it can be able

to enable the organization to be a learning organization.

Action plan

The action plan will be fragmented into small steps with accountability structures. Each

person will be assigned responsibility and date agreed in which the exercise given should have

been completed. Implementation of the action plan at Papa John’s will include the application of

any organization development interventions including the group and individual coaching, anti-

bias training, leadership development, the process of solving conflicts, team building, and

diversity dialogues. The already ongoing coaching will be advised and encouraged to the
employees so that they can support it as they focus on successful implementation and evaluation

of the strategic plan. I will advise the management to make the anti-bias training for all staff to

be made mandatory including the management team, the Cultural change should also be taught

to the workforce during the training process. I will make sure the management takes actions to

evaluate the effectiveness of the change to the organization’s goals.

The organization will adopt a strategy that will comprise of all the three categories of

OD; the structural, technological and behavioral strategies. The structural strategy will majorly

emphasize the organization’s design and workflow. Technologically, the organization will focus

on the implementation of new innovations of technology. On the behavioral strategy the

organization will improve the use it’s human resources. There are four major categories of

intervention techniques; individual or interpersonal level, team or group level, intergroup level,

and the total organizational system level. For the individual level, we will consider the employee

motivation and reward. According to (Lauby, 2005, p. 1) employee motivation is focused on

direction and persistence of action. A fully motivated employee tends to choose a course of

action which is different from others and continue with the path they have chosen even when

they face difficult conditions.

For Papa John’s to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage the employees will be

motivated to achieve a shared goal hence human resources will have been utilized. I will advise

that Papa John’s use employee engagement as a strategy to bridge its performance gap. This will

be done by encouraging by employees to be involved in the management process, for example

allowing them to give their differing ideas on how the organization should be run. Employee

engagement can be seen when the management listens and works according to the employee
voice. The main objective of the management should be to make sure that the work environment

is created by effective leadership and a positive supportive culture.

The other item to consider in the action plan step is hard and soft elements. The main

difference between them is that hard elements are easier to identify and they are directly

influenced by the management while the soft elements are the ones that are influenced by the

culture and they are difficult to describe because of their intangible nature. Hard elements

include strategy which is the scope and direction of the company over a long time. Systems,

these are the formal and informal procedures that govern the company's everyday activities.

Structure, this is the basic organization of the company, how the different departments interrelate

with each other, and who reports to who. The soft elements include skills, which are the

competencies and capabilities of the company. Staff, which is the development, training, and

motivation of the company's people resources. Shared values, these are the beliefs and values of

the company. Style, this is the company's overall operating approach and also the top

management leadership approach. Both hard and soft elements of Papa John’s will be identified

and aligned with the strategic goals of the company.

I will advise the company to have a continuous planning strategy so as to ensure

collaboration in all its departments. For Papa John’s to be considered as a learning organization it

should always encourage its workforce to regularly learn from their own work. The organization

should also implement systems that can capture and ensure information moves to where it is

needed with ease. For the organization to be successful it should ensure it keeps transforming

itself continuously. Distinctions between members should be reduced to a minimum, what should

be understood is that every member has untapped human potential.

Conclusion

During the undertaking of the need for change stage, I will talk to the employees of Papa

John’s then ask them on what they think about the organization’s diversity. I will make sure

there is no scheduling of the discussion time since this can cause interference to the normal

running of the organization, the discussion can take place at any time, anywhere, and they would

not require any professional facilitator. The major criticism of the ambiguous training program

already adopted by the company is that its need is not thoroughly explained. On my own

perspective its wastage of the company's financial resources. The only thing required is to make

sure the human resource team explains to the leaders the need for them to be comfortable when

addressing the sensitive matter of racism.

As a practitioner in order to curb racism in Papa John's, I will suggest changes in the

hiring practices so that diversity is the first priority. Diversity will be avoided through blind

screening of CVs so as to ensure that there is no favoritism and the interviews should also be

structured with a set of questions that are to be answered with all the applicants, then the expert

will be the one to evaluate and compare the applicants fairly. The other way to completely do

away with racism is trying to change the environment or behavior of the organization by

adopting a policy design whose main focus is on curbing racism.

The other non-crucial factor that the company has promoted is anti-bias diversity. We all

know that the breaking down of an uncurious bias is not able to happen overnight. It can only be

achieved if a culture change is done to the organization. Cultural change takes a lot of time to

achieve, the organization should first start with the managers and leaders of the organization then

the information can be transferred down the level slow by slow. The HR department should

ensure that a clear demonstration of Diversity and Inclusion culture is shown to the top leaders of
the organization, they should play a vital role in the act of putting forward or clearly showing

what the perfect culture should look like.

Coaching is another intervention that has recently been adopted by the organization it is a

nice idea because it acts towards the achievement of the organization’s goals and also ensures

everyone in the organization is engaged in one way or another but the only criticism is that the

company adopted a one-day training which will not really create a great impact to the

organization. continuous training should have been adopted for the organization to feel the

impact.

The organization has also done some internal changes that clearly show its focus on being

considered as a learning organization. The company has done steps like hiring a third Party

internal auditor who analyzes the company’s culture and implements new policies based on the

audit. The company has also hired Marvin Boakye as the new Chief HR, he is an expert in

diversity and inclusion and has worked in human resources for more than 20 years, he also has

culture transformation and changes management experiences. He will assist the company in the

implementation of a talent management strategy which includes having oversight of people

operations, compensation and benefits, and learning development.

Shaquille O’Neal Board of Director who is a retired NBA basketball player has also

joined the board of pizza chain Papa John’s International. Mr. O’Neal has also entered into a

marketing agreement to be an ambassador for the Papa John’s board and will also become an

investor in nine of the group’s restaurants in the Atlanta area. Mr. O’Neal said in a statement he

wanted to be part of improving the Papa John’s culture from the inside and out. Marketing

Maven Bozoma is completely focused on making a makeover of Papa John’s image. The

marketing executive of Papa John’s insisted that the brand will do more than just apologize for
its founder’s mistakes. The global Marketing of Papa John’s has already presented the idea of

specifically focusing on the real people behind the brand, who are the pizza makers, store

managers, and delivery drivers. This is a contradiction to the previous campaigns that put former

founder Schnatter at the center of everything.

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Gladden, M., 2016. Posthuman Management: Creating Effective Organizations in an Age of

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Knowledge, 02 January, p. 43.

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