Final Project Case Study: Sanderson Soap Company
Sanderson soap company is a family-owned business located in Portland, Maine. The company in the soap was founded in 1978 by Emily Sanderson and her husband, James. Emily acted as the one-stop-shop attendant for the company before it became big enough to hire employees. She is now the current company president, with the co-founder James being the Vice-President, product development, and production. Emily’s sister, Margaret, is the other vice-president in charge of marketing and sales. The company is known for nepotism, since out of the 32 employees, 18 are family members. As the company’s CEO, Emily does not like to introduce non-family employees into the management positions, which is why she has held on to the role of CEO, with her husband and sister as the co-presidents, despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
There have been concerns about the company’s running, with several employees, including family members, voicing concerns on how the company mistreats them. Emily has been on the spot for ignoring those concerns mainly because many of them are perpetrated by the firstborn son, John, who hopes to become the business CEO once her mother retires. She has been ignoring and covering up for her son’s mistakes because she has a soft spot for family, and she would love for him to take charge after she leaves, even if her sister Margaret is the likeliest successor for the position. These concerns have weakened Sanderson’s business standing. For a company to be relevant in the market and have good productivity, employees need to be motivated to give their best efforts. There should be a conducive working environment that involves the employees and the management working in cooperation and harmony (Mokhber et al., 2017).
Motivation Theories
One of the main theories that are important in Sanderson’s employees’ motivation is Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation. Maslow outlines five needs that human beings feel that they need to achieve. The conditions are essential for survival, with the most critical needs at the bottom of the needs pyramid and the less important further up the pyramid. They are physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization need. Among the physiological needs is the need for food, shelter, security, and other basic needs. Human beings also need to belong and be accepted in social groups, classified as belonging needs. Self-esteem needs are the needs related to an individual’s feelings about themselves and to be noticed by others. The last condition in the hierarchy of needs is called self-actualization, where a person feels the urge to achieve personal fulfillment and grow in whatever they do. The order of needs works in stages, with the realization of one need leading to the other.
Maslow’s theory of motivation can be used in the workplace by the Sanderson management to motivate the employees and make them feel like part of the group. First, John needs to start trusting the people working under him and appreciating them when they do a good job. The management also needs to pay the employees well for them to fulfill their physiological needs and to be able to achieve other conditions. For a working place to function effectively, unity and cooperation need to be upheld at all times. Maslow’s theory of motivation can be used to achieve this since all human beings need to feel that they belong. For the employees at Sanderson to function effectively, they need to be shown and feel that they belong, and in return, they can give maximum output (Acevedo, 2018).
Another theory relevant to the Sanderson soap company and their employee motivation is the Alderfer’s ERG motivation theory. The ERG theory breaks down human needs into three parts, relatedness needs, growth needs, and existence needs. According to Alderfer, the needs priority differs from one person to the other. Still, generally, existence needs are the most important, followed by relatedness needs and then growth needs come last. The ERG theory states that achieving a set need leads to satisfaction and strengthening the currently performed requirements. Complete achievement of needs leads to progression to the next level of conditions, with the frustration caused by the lack of achievement leading to regression (Caulton, 2012).
The ERG theory application in the work situation at Sanderson is that the needs of the employees need to be taken care of simultaneously for them to perform their responsibilities effectively. For example, growth needs cannot be satisfied without a person being offered the opportunities to grow, leading to low motivation levels. John and the other managing staff need to show the employee that consistent good performance guarantees growth through promotion and salary increments; this will motivate them to put more effort into the job. If growth needs at the workplace are not offered to the employees, they regress, and in return, the motivation levels go down, that is why motivation levels at Sanderson are lo. For the employees to be motivated again, a change in leadership strategy needs to be effected to guarantee inclusivity to the employees, bot family and non-family (De Vito et al., 2018).
John, the eldest son to Emily and James, is the main culprit for employees’ mistreatment until they resort to using unethical measures to keep him from coming to work. Such methods include compromising his food to miss work; this shows that he is not a likable character. Correct all of this and retain favor with the employees, which will act as a motivating factor in return. John needs to delegate more responsibilities to the employees to show that he trusts them. The management, led by the CEO Emily Sanderson, also needs to stop nepotism and promote workers based on merit to higher positions in the company. Having a senior employee who is not part of the Sanderson family can increase motivation and productivity.
According to Vroom’s theory of expectancy, Victor Vroom states that two conditions must be met for workers or people, in general, to be motivated and productive. The first condition is that people should have the belief that their efforts will not be in vain and that they will have good results (Barba-Sánchez and Atienza-Sahuquillo, 2017). The other condition is that people have to believe that they will get rewards for the effort they have put in. Therefore, the workers have to think that they will be rewarded for the effort they put when the outcome is favorable. This theory can be used well in Sanderson Soap Company, where employees can get added incentives depending on the actions they have put in for a successful company’s initiative.
Recommendations
The company’s management structure needs to be changed. First, with Emily Sanderson diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, thorough vetting of potential successors needs to be done on the potential candidates, including her son John. If declared unfit to lead the company, he should not take charge because if he does, the employees’ motivation might become even worse because there are no guarantees that he can change his characters while in the job. After all, it is hard, almost impossible, to change one’s management styles while in a position of power.
Emily, the CEO, needs to tone down on her family members’ favoritism and stop turning a blind eye to their shortcomings as a result. For example, the employees have been complaining about John’s antics, and she has been ignoring them. If she can accept that he has gone against the company’s laws and regulations, he should be reprimanded using the correct channels to ensure that he does not repeat the mistakes.
The department under Antony, Emily’s lastborn son and John’s younger brother is the department with the most productivity, fewer issues, and confrontations. There are rare absenteeism cases in the department. The reason why Antony’s department is thriving is because of the way he treats his junior staff. Anthony is always approachable and has a good relationship with his employees. Anthony always welcomes ideas from his junior team and also asks of their opinions before making a decision. In doing this, Anthony increases motivation among the employees, and in return, their productivity is high. The rest of the company management should learn and implement his strategies in their departments and the company.
The next recommendation regarding Sanderson is about inclusivity. Among more than 30 employees, only one employee is non-white, going by the name Sanjay, the son-in-law to the Sanderson because he is married to their daughter. The company needs to promote inclusivity and hire employees from different backgrounds. Having employees from diverse backgrounds increases cooperation and supports the sharing of new ideas and skills among the employees to make them better. James, the Vice President, also ignores Sanjay and his views on animal treatment by the company. Even if he does not ignore him because of his color, continually ignoring him may lead to that conclusion. James and all the other management personnel need to learn to listen to the junior staff’s views, and that way, they will feel that they are a part of the company.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Sanderson’s built their company from scratch, and they developed it from when it was a one-stop-shop, so they deserve to manage the company in an ay that they see fit. The problem with this is that with this kind of management, the company will start crumbling down, and when not corrected early enough, all that has been built through the years will be in vain because it might even become non-operational. If John, the eldest son, does not adapt his management styles for the company’s sake, he does not deserve to become the CEO, with his younger brother Anthony the better fit instead. The company also needs to change its structure and introduce more departments, such as a human resource department, to take care of the performances and issues facing the employees, including mistreatment.
References
Acevedo, A. (2018). A personalistic appraisal of Maslow’s needs theory of motivation: From “humanistic” psychology to integral humanism. Journal of business ethics, 148(4), 741-763.
Barba-Sánchez, V., and Atienza-Sahuquillo, C. (2017). Entrepreneurial motivation and self-employment: evidence from expectancy theory. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 13(4), 1097-1115.
Caulton, J. R. (2012). The development and use of the theory of ERG: A literature review. Emerging Leadership Journeys, 5(1), 2-8.
De Vito, L., Brown, A., Bannister, B., Cianci, M., and Mujtaba, B. G. (2018). Employee motivation is based on the hierarchy of needs, expectancy, and the two-factor theories applied with higher education employees. IJAMEE.
Mokhber, M., Gi, T. G., Rasid, S. Z. A., Vakilbashi, A., Zamil, N. M., and Seng, Y. W. (2017). Succession planning and family business performance in SMEs. Journal of Management Development.
Yuliansyah, Y., Bui, B., and Mohamed, N. (2016). How managers use PMS to induce behavioral change in enhancing governance. International Journal of Economics and Management, 10(2), 509-530.