Chapter 8
James’ New Job
Question 1 – Unrealistic Job Expectations and the Physiological Contract
What evolves from the case study on James is the difference between what he had expected on the job from an outsider perspective and what he experienced once he starts working at the amusement park. The joys and the merry that the users of the amusement park exhibit seem to be limited to the position of the customer and not the employee. Keeping the park as ambient as James had experienced in his earlier days remains to be the tedious job that is done by the park attendants.
From the understanding of unrealistic job expectations, there was little that James knew about the job from the outsider point of view. This is a view that is shared by Tallodi (2019), many are the times when institutions or organization might look pleasant from the customer point of view and ne different from the internal environment look. This is realized with James on the physiological context where the job can only be described as dirty and has fewer incentives than what he has hoped for.
Question 2 – What Organization can do to avoid some experience for new hires?
Looking at the considerations that James has, he is currently contemplating resigning from his current job. This is one of the reasons to which Onnis (2019) develops long term consequences of unrealistic expectations at the workplace. In this case, the expectation had materialized form the employee rather than the employer as in many cases (Onnis, 2019, pp. 17-19). Nonetheless, what needs to be done is to offer proper induction as well as job description upon hire and before hiring respectively. () fronts this as the best possible way to develop an understanding of what the job details and the expectation for delivery on the employee’s end (Xiong & King, 2019).
Proactive Socialization
Question 1 – What could a potential TRU student do who wants to be more proactive in their socialization process?
The understanding of proactive socialization creates a perception of means and needs for survival within the new environment. As such, a new student at TRU will need to be more accustomed to the norm at a very early stage. This means fining better accord in terms of time management. Figuring out how best to live will, therefore, be a plus for those that have lived independent lives before joining the university. As such, isolation to groups of new joiners will in many cases therefore not help. Preference will be to indulge more with other social groups and campus-based clubs where their exposure and their experience can be nourished and widened on how best to wade through campus.
This approach is similar to what is recommended by Bauer and Scholars (2019) in their research. New entries are normally filled with stress and anxiety levels that will alter their performance. In many cases, the extreme stress levels seem to build therefore creating strife on internal motivation, lack of ability to cope and task-specific anxiety. This is the campus life that can be equated to the grade suffering that the first year suffers in their initial examinations.
Chapter 9
Hiring a Manager
Question 1 – Leadership traits and behavior in the position
The manager will need to have the following from a business sense background
- At least one-year running experiences in a restaurant management role
- Financial acumen
- Customer care experience
- People management
- Training or certified knowledge in North America labour laws
From a personal perspective, the manager’s position will be looking to fill in a candidate who has the following qualities.
- Good interpersonal skills as he or she will be handling a team of 30 employees
- Composed and with a high tolerance for work pressure and fast-paced restaurant
Question 2 – Using Fiedler’s Contingency Theory to analyze the positions, leadership orientation appropriateness
The Fielders Contingency Theory focuses on the situation at hand and the effectiveness of leadership is matched to the best fit of this situation. In this case, the restaurant manager position needs to hire someone with the desired experiences and additional interpersonal skills. The current situation thus cannot allow for internal promotion hence the expected struggle that the manager will have in building a team. As such under the Fielders Contingency Theory Deshwal & Ali (2020) suggests that the leadership style can be scored on the LPC (least Preferred Co-worker) scale. Under this scale, the leader is either leaning towards being considered a relationship-oriented leader or a task-oriented leader.
With the current dynamics at play on the hiring, the position needs a blend of both, third is to satisfy management and business KPIs through the task-oriented leadership. On the other and the manager is expected to create a seamless working environment that will equally need some relationship-oriented leadership. According to Busse & Regenberg (2019), the use of a relationship leadership style might be difficult in this case as status in the profile for hiring a manager. The manager’s use of bonuses and incentives is limited in this case. As such, the best alternative will be to use the Fielders Contingency Theory to scale a candidate who satisfies the qualities sort after and is more of a task-oriented leader. This suggestion is developed from assumptions of the unionized workers and labour laws setting out the rules of the engagement between management and the 30 employees.
References
Bauer, T. N., Perrot, S., Liden, R. C. & Erdogan, B., 2019. Understanding the consequences of newcomer proactive behaviours: The moderating contextual role of servant leadership. Journal of Vocational Behavior, Volume 112, pp. 356-368.
Busse, R. & Regenberg, S., 2019. Revisiting the “Authoritarian Versus Participative” Leadership Style Legacy: A New Model of the Impact of Leadership Inclusiveness on Employee Engagement. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 26(4), pp. 510-525.
Deshwal, V. & Ali, M. A., 2020. A Systematic Review of Various Leadership Theories. Journal of Commerce, 8(1), pp. 38-43.
Onnis, L. A., 2019. Human resource management policy choices, management practices and health workforce sustainability: remote Australian perspectives. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 57(1), pp. 3-23.
Tabloid, T., 2019. Mediation as Experiences of Breaking the ‘Barrier’ and Unrealistic Expectations. In: How Parties Experience Mediation. s.l.:s.n., pp. 143-164.
Xiong, L. & King, C., 2019. Aligning employees’ attitudes and behavior with hospitality brands: The role of employee brand internalization. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Volume 40, pp. 67-76.