Case Study: RST Carports and Metal Roofing

Introduction

For an organization’s success, vital factors contribute significantly to the operation to realize the achievement of the target goals. Guiding, motivational, and inspirational Strong leadership, skilled and motivated task force aligned with the organizational vision and mission, and continuous improvement in the operation and processes will define the success of any organization (Ashdown, 2018). This paper aims to present diverse discoveries, advice, and justifications for proposals on enhancing the organization’s seamless operation. The research pertains to the case of RST Carports and Metal Roofing, an organization that has encountered numerous obstacles due to inadequate efficacy in terms of management and leadership styles (Sivalai & Rojniruttikul, 2018). The other change which affected the company was the types of power implemented to influence the organization.

The organization’s leadership, management, and operation for the years between 1981 and 2017 are very different from those between 2018 and 2020. In the first phase, the management had enough staffing and a consistent democratic decision-making style characterized by teamwork (Sivalai & Rojniruttikul, 2018). Every team player is involved in the decision-making process, active participation, and open communication and collaboration, resulting in creativity, innovation, and ease in problem-solving (Cherry, 2022). The leadership was either servant, transformational, or situational, depending on the role of the individual staff who got the job based on their credentials, expertise, experience, and passion.

However, the latest regime of the leadership of the second phase is characterized by a lot of recklessness in every aspect, including autocratic and Laissez-Faire management decision style, primarily transactional leadership style with evident coercion within the management environment (Carlin, 2022). This led to disorganization, making the company lose focus.

Findings and analysis

Based in large part on the metrics from the RSTT Excel spreadsheets used previously, this organization has been facing significant difficulties common to all organizations, including the employees’ level of experience, their leadership style, and the management choices made by the RSTT organization some examples of the challenges the organization faced. This section details how these difficulties affected the organization’s matric system’s downward trends.

Change in the Management decision style.

The management-decision style change from democratic to autocratic was a bad shift, greatly influencing operations in the RST Carports Company. Democracy in the first regime led the company to increase production and installation from four versions of carports to 48 and the beginning of manufacturing 18 varieties of metal roofing products (Sivalai & Rojniruttikul, 2018). This could be because everyone’s views, suggestions, and contributions were valued, and a consensus could be reached. The change in the management style with the newly employed team to autocratic resulted in centralized management with total control of everything. Such decision-making management needs more creativity, motivation, good diversity of ideas, hostile working environment because the leaders have no monopoly of extensive knowledge and expertise in every sector. This resulted in decreased production, reducing profit margin to a worse level than the risk of the company collapse because even the managers were overworked, and there was no collaboration within the management.

Change in Leadership style

The transformative and servant leadership styles made RST Carports Company grow consistently for 36 years because it was collaborative and inspirational with the flexibility to the dynamics of the environments. The change in leadership to transactional leadership promoted conservative rigidity in creativity and innovation, motivation, change, and focus with low job satisfaction. After the leadership change, the managers and other staff were laid off, and others overburdened their roles; pay was reduced by 20% with no valid reasons, which was an inadequate treatment of a human creature. This killed the morale of the staff and increased absenteeism, and others who felt mistreated quit their job. As scripture says in Matthew 7:12, also known as the “Golden Rule.” It states, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” The company ought to have treated their staff with kindness, compassion, and respect, as they would like to be treated.

Change in the working environment.

A lot of pressure due to reduced staffing, lack of motivation to work, reduced pay, and employment of untrained staff without proper transition contributed mainly to the worsening of the conditions in the organization. The compulsory 48 hours training for the staff was reduced to 2 hours, unethical replacement of staff and failure to pay overtime resulted in poor service delivery, reducing production quality.

Change in exercising of power.

According to the text in the case study, having power implies exerting control over other individuals within an organization. Management has also influenced how managers and employees carry out their responsibilities to make decisions and manage. When employees are fired unfairly, an act of power causes a regression in RST. Managers who abuse authority or act out of emotion impact their subordinates and the organization’s overall goal and objective. The use of power must be ethical and sympathetic.

Recommendations

The main factors contributing to the gradual collapse of the RST organization include the drastic change in the management decision and leadership style, exercise of power to the top management, abrupt reduction and change of staff, employment of unskilled workers, and employment and improper treatment of the employees. The following recommendations can be implemented to recover RST Company back to its initial success.

A. Leadership and management

The company needs to focus first on leadership and management because both are like drivers in any organization. Good leadership in an organization is seen when positive influence is experienced.

1. The selection of the top management needs to be revised, employing qualified managers based on their credentials, passion, and experience who would replace the incompetent ones. Someone with these qualities will be able to deliver, increasing production rate with quality services.
2. The leadership should be transformational and servant-like, instilling progress in the organization.
3. The positions, which had been combined, should be split back and respective professionals reinstated to reduce overburdening and promote specialization of operational roles.
4. Reinstate the leadership and management staff and give good salaries based on their profession and other payments such as overtime. They should also remove unreasonable deductions. This would promote the morale of the staff and hence focus on the vision and goal of the company.
5. There should be continued coaching and mentorship to the top leaders and the subordinate so that they can be flexible and adaptive to the current world changes related to their functions in their roles. This would enable them to continually gain working skills, making them practical and efficient and increasing productivity.
6. The culture of collaborative leadership should be instilled where the staff would access the challenges, goals, objectives, internal and external environments, and brainstorm on them as a team and come up with suggestions and consensus decisions to rejuvenate the company back to its previous status.

B. Operational changes for subordinate staff

The company should do the following to recover the effectiveness of other staff.

1. Rewarding and promoting subordinate staff motivate them and give them the morale to love their job and embrace the operational objectiveness of the organization.
2. The real-time solution to problems facing subordinate staff to promote efficiency.
3. Proper communications and channels for adequate instructions and information delivery.
4. Regular assessment of employees’ experience in the company and quick response to ensure no gap in the operation within the company.
5. Regular training and seminars to boost the employees’ skills and keep them updated on the current trends concerning their specialization.
6. Good salaries and other allowances for the employees because they are the engine of production in the company. They will be motivated and enjoy working in the company for the common goal.

Conclusion

From the case study, it is observed that the management and leadership of an organization are fundamental and critical players in the cheerful projection of organizational growth. RST had good transformational and servant leadership for its first 36 years, and the company experienced high production rates, making it realize high-profit margins. Upon drastic changes in the management, leadership, and operation to autocratic and Laissez-Faire, the company experienced considerable losses to worse situations of collapsing. To salvage the company from collapsing, specific changes need to be implemented to save the company. The changes include leadership and management changes, operational changes, improved staff payments, and proper communication channels, among others. Lastly, power in the organization should be practiced with high integrity to avoid changes influenced by power.

Reference

Ashdown, L. (2018).  Performance Management: A Practical Introduction. Kogan Page Publishers.

Carlin, D. (2022, October 12). Democratic, authoritarian, laissez-faire: What type of leader are you? Forbes. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcarlin/2019/10/18/democratic-authoritarian-laissez-faire-what-type-of-leader-are-you/

Cherry, K. (2022, November 8). Is Democratic leadership the best style of leadership? Verywell Mind. Retrieved April 6, 2023, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-democratic-leadership-2795315

Sivalai, T., & Rojniruttikul, N. (2018). Determinants of the state railway of Thailand’s (SRT) total quality management process: SEM analysis. Journal of International Studies, 11(2).