BUSM4185A – INTRODUCTION TO MANAGEMENT

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
CASE STUDY ANALYSIS

Lecturer Antoine Goupille

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
I) Case Analysis: ............................................................................................................................3
1. Employee turnover happened frequently................................................................................... 3
2. Overwhelm administrative workload & no division of labor………………………………….3
3. Lack of employee delegation & empowerment………………………………………………..3
II) Linking theory and practice to the solution: .............................................................................4
1. Strategic use of human resource……………………………………………………………….4
2. Apply the division of labor ………........................................................................................... 4
3. Fulfill employee empowerment & delegation…………………………………………………5
III) Recommends specific strategies: ............................................................................................ 5
1. Create a Human Resource department/ self-recruiting and create an attractive compensation
package……………………………………………………………………………………………5
2. Maintain team communication and improve organizational culture...........................................5
3. Delegation of authority to personnel........................................................................................... 6
IV) References ................................................................................................................................7

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I. Case analysis
1. Employee turnover happened frequently
Even though Ms. Ngoc has 8 full-time staff members in the Da Nang initial outlet and 12 workers in
the Ho Chi Minh city current subsidiary but she continuously removes and hires new employees. Her
actions lead her business to have high turnover employee rate. Employee turnover is the process of
replacing an existing employee with a new one (Abassi et al. 2000). Dismissal, retirement, agency
transfers, and resignations are all forms of organizational and staff separations, and staff may have a
voluntarily or involuntarily attitude (Price 1997; Beam 2014).
This phenomenon occurs creates disadvantages for the Outdoors. Cascio (cited in Henry 2007) states
that ‘managers have long focused on employee turnover because of the personnel costs incurred when
employees quit, such as those for hiring and training replacements’. If Ms. Ngoc tries to recruit to fill
the gap and do not train the employee properly, they may not attain more experience to help her
business grow and commit to the organization, which create weak organizational culture. After that,
employees will leave the business. Ms. Ngoc is dealing with staff shortage from two areas and it has
been affecting her well-being and time to expand the online business platform. Not only are they
currently facing problems, but also the underlying problem for Outdoors when dealing with staff
shortage is the investment for human resource after any departure is increasing, which make the
business concentrate too much on recruiting new staff. Maslow (cited in Jones et al. 1976) states ‘the
highest level in Maslow's hierarchy is self-actualization needs, which pertain to realizing one's
potential, self-fulfillment, pursuing personal progress, and peak experiences’. The Outdoors’ staff
cannot have their mastery, work potential realized and applied. In the case study, there is unclear
career development for employees who work for Outdoors. Lack of professional development
experience at one company may harm the exchange connections between individuals and companies,
resulting in turnover (Weng et al. 2010).
2. Overwhelm administrative workload & no division of labor
The second problem regarding unbalanced volume of work between Ms. Ngoc and her employees.
Apart from her legitimate work, Ms. Ngoc also handles product selection, supplier relationship
management, accounting, and marketing- these positions can find employees. The issue is Outdoors
has not applied the division of labor. According to Smith (2009), ‘division of labor means the
separation of a work process into several tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or
group of persons’.
Ms. Ngoc’s workload is overwhelming and the efficiency for each job section is going to be less
efficient, unlike the person who specialized in a particular field (The Investopedia Team 2021).
Hence, she loses the equilibrium between her occupation and her hobbies, the effect spread to her
time management for not being capable to conduct retail online shop for Outdoors- a development to
her business. Ms. Ngoc doesn’t assign the tasks for employees because of the inexperienced, she
accidentally lowers the job exposure for the staff and makes the individual productivity,
empowerment decrease and less engaged in work so the certain consequence is employee turnover.
3. Lack of employee delegation & empowerment
Moreover from Ms. Ngoc’s recruitment matters further, the concerned point for the current labor
force’s cooperation with her is lack of employee delegation. Therefore, delegation is the process when
managers must decide which tasks they should complete themselves and which should be allocated to
others (Schermerhorn et al. 2017). Lack of delegation has a detrimental influence on leaders since
they work disseminated on many specialized tasks that a subordinate can handle rather than striving to
make precise decisions to achieve business objectives (Trakaniqi 2017). It also puts more burden of
responsibility and unnecessary stress for the manager and creates trust issues from managers to their

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employees about the work quality. Nelson & Economy (cited in Trakaniqi 2017) declares that
‘Managers who do not delegate tasks usually have no confidence in their employees to complete their
duties correctly and in time’, alike to Ms. Ngoc’s situation.
It is also indicated in her uncertainties in giving the work for the less experienced employees and the
approvement for every choice that they make, which turns out her employees are in shortage of
empowerment. Delegation and employee empowerment have a significant connection to each other
(Zhang et al. 2017). In Ms. Ngoc’s problem, with the lack of delegation in job distribution, her
employees had experienced professional stress, unproductivity, unable to contribute and enhance their
skills (Chandler & Richardson, cited in Trakaniqi 2017 ) which damaged the business affair and time
management.
II. Linking theory and practice to the solution
1. Strategic use of human resource
To refine the human resource of Outdoors. Ms. Ngoc needs to be attentive about the training and
recruiting progress to ensure each employee has developed the expertise, and capabilities adequately
to execute their jobs successfully. The use of the second and last insights from Taylorism is
appropriate for her situation. For the recruitment, select workers with appropriate abilities for each job
and the training, she needs to let her employee familiar with the steps, regulations for the standard
task to gain more experience and know the abilities of individuals to give them the suitable jobs for
the best effectiveness (Missias et al. 2010). The reason for choosing the Taylorism theory is because
of its compatibility for work fragmentation (Missias et al. 2010), improve the productivity for the
business, create more workplace spirituality, and speed up progress so Ms. Ngoc can balance her job
and outdoor hobby, also her workforce have fewer work uncertainties.
Moreover, the human resource of an organization is one of the most crucial aspects. So, Ms. Ngoc
needs to orientate the investment and what does she want for her members and share the same goal to
accompany Outdoors eventually. Noe and R. A. (2017) point out that ‘human resource management
practices (such as training) can help companies gain a competitive advantage but if other factors such
as product or budget allocation, etc are not sensible enough, the company will not survive’.
2. Apply the division of labor
The unclear assignment for employees and the fear of employees’ ability not able to complete the
tasks had made Ms. Ngoc suffer from overworking and it put a strain on her well-being state. This
extensive work was caused by a lack of competent management, who were ill-equipped to reconcile
the requirements of their team members with the needs of the organization (CMI, 2016). No
application of division of labor also makes the employees feel less attached to their responsibility and
make them doubtful about their usefulness (Forster, 2009, cited in Trakaniqi 2017), which creates
more stress and affects their productivity, absenteeism and slack off in work (Gaspar et al. 2007,
Zhang et al. 2017) that takes degree on both managers and staff. In this case, it has been led to a more
severe issue is the employee turnover happens regularly at Outdoors.
By applying this principle, Outdoors will have greater productivity and solve the problem of
inexperienced employees. First, when the tasks are divided, it enhances employees' dexterity and
thinking by repeating activities, exposing and handling working situations lead to gain experience and
employed development (Adam Smith, cited in Adam Smith 2009). Using division of labor can
decrease or eliminate adaptation or set-up costs, as well as the expenses of transitioning from one task
to another, saving time management by each worker specializing on one or a limited number of
separate tasks (Camacho 2013).
3. Fulfill employee empowerment & delegation

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The neglect of delegation in Ms. Ngoc’s business leads to disharmony in cooperation between herself
and the working team. Bloom (2020) indicates ‘employee empowerment is defined as providing
workers associated with a particular degree of authority and responsibility for making decisions
related to their different organizational duties’. As noted above, delegation and employee
empowerment have a link and support to each other (Zhang et al. 2017). If Ms. Ngoc assigns the tasks
for her team (the process of delegating), it will positively empower the team and resonate with
harmonization teamwork.

The benefits of employee empowerment can bring success for any organization but as the utmost
factor, the process of delegation is necessary. Employees who have been delegated have greater
flexibility to operate independently when power and responsibility are given to them, and they enjoy a
variety of good outcomes such as increased job satisfaction, organizational commitment, inventive
behavior, and task performance (Chen, Z, Lam, W, and Zhong, J A 2007). When individuals feel
accountable for essential tasks, they feel psychologically empowered. They also feel empowered
when they believe they are important in contributing and urging to engage in the work (Zhang et al.
2017). The empowerment makes employees evolve the self-efficacy concept- the refers to an
individual's conviction in their ability to carry out the actions required to achieve defined performance
requirements (Bandura, 1997).
III. Recommends specific strategies
1. Create a Human Resource department/ self-recruiting and create an attractive
compensation package
For Ms. Ngoc problem not to utilize the business’s human resources, to decrease the employee
turnover rate, she can create her Human Resource department to be able to define and recruit suitable
options but for the current conditions of Outdoors, Ms. Ngoc should decide a plan to recruit annually
so that she can recruit timely with quality staff. The competencies of the applicants can be used to
evaluate the potential for future positions on different levels (Tyson 2015). The manager also needs to
evaluate both business outlets to know how many employees should she have, provide the essential
job descriptions, and demand for person specification: degree, experience, etc. Tyson (2015) also
implies that ‘the job description and the person specification are both necessary and complementary
definitions. since it provides the criteria for assessing effective performance’.
Creating an attractive compensation package can maintain employee retention loyalty, reward the
well-performed staff and utilize united negotiation in conflict or turnover (Taylor 2015). Employee
compensation can include traveling, more annual leaves, vouchers for shopping, or even more salary.
The beneficial impacts of awards power on creative performance can only be achieved when the
target workers appreciate the prizes and display self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Malik et al. 2015).
After recruiting a significant amount of employees, Ms. Ngoc can consider the division in position
and create Human Resource department, which will deploy, specialize in recruiting and training the
employee. In order to prevent situations like Bao and almost in deprivation for core employees before,
Ms. Ngoc should focus on how to upkeep long-service employee tie-in in exchange for promotion, in
charge of tasks, extend employees’ scope of work, and career development. Professional growth is
described as a pattern of ongoing good outcomes in a person's job, including long-term career
advancement (Weng et al. 2010).
2. Maintain team communication and improve organizational culture
The case study said Outdoors team has been indicating that poor communication from teams and no
tasks delegation make the business suffers from high turnover rate and affect the work-life balance of
Ms. Ngoc. In order to seek a way to improve Ms. Ngoc’s team communication and cooperation, Ms.

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Ngoc needs to break down silos from her position to employee, and silos between distance in
occupation experience by expressing her trust to the employee. She also needs to apply some of the
bureaucracy structure: separation of tasks, a defined hierarchy, detailed rules and regulations, and
impersonal organization relationships (Anon, cited in Capstone Press 2003 ).
Another aspect that needs to mention is Ms. Ngoc should guide her inexperienced employee to
support her at the right time and propose a business plan for her further intention of extending
Outdoors. When she has an optimized plan, she can designate reasonable missions like creating
monthly KPI and criteria for her team to bring the best result. After every job is done, Ms. Ngoc
should arrange weekly meetings on online platforms or face-to-face conferences to summarize the
goals and give feedback to her working team. Comments from administrators can help employees
reassess and improve their ability while also clarifying expectations and responsibilities (Renn and
Fedor; Ashford et al.; Whitaker et al., cited in Zhang et al. 2017 ). Individuals inclination for
feedbacks tend to notice valuable information to improve, have learning goal orientation and have
high self-esteem (Fedor et al.; Tuckey et al.; Bernichon et al.; Anseel et al., cited in Xiyang Zhang et
al. 2017). When managers share insights for employees and reverse, we can see that the knowledge
management is using will enhance employees’ skills and experience, keep up the long-term
relationship and improve organizational culture.
3. Delegation of authority to personnel
For the sake of Outdoors in the current time and the future, the business needs to operate with the
most capacity to attend current customers’ needs and attract potential customers. There is large
amount of workload to do and delegation to employees is required in order to bring the most output.
Ms. Ngoc can assign some of the employees who are in charge of each phase: product selection,
supplier relationship management, accounting, and marketing. Subordinates have some direct role in
decision-making have greater flexibility to operate independently when power and responsibility are
given to them, and they enjoy a variety of good outcomes such as increased job satisfaction,
organizational commitment, inventive behavior, and task performance (Chen G. et al., 2007). Giving
employees authority, opportunity, motivation to take the initiative and engage is one of the elements
that attract people to large companies like Facebook or Goggle (Garvin, cited in Zhang et al. 2017 ).
Ms. Ngoc can give benefits (reward power) to employees who have been empowered to motivate
other employees to engage in the tasks. Delegation also encourages subordinates to improve their
skills and knowledge (Uhl-Bien et al., 2000). According to the Hawthrone studies, employees were
more productive when administrators paid more attention to their work, giving the sense that their
superiors cared about more than just their job, it is the recognition for their efforts (McCarney et al.
2007). The resonance of delegation and communicating can show the employee that they are trusted
and acknowledged in the working environment so they are going to be engaging eagerly and increase
job satisfaction.
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