Mba 6001 Unit 1 Organizational Research & Theory

Derrick Chapman Jr.

Columbia Southern University

MBA 6001, Organizational Research & Theory

Dr. Mark Pantaleo

Employee Motivation

Joe Coulumbe was very successful in creating a policy of promotion from within the company so that the highest performing sales people could rise within the organization. In efforts to motivate employees, Joe recognized the need to treat employees in a fair and equitable way to encourage them to develop the customer-oriented values and norms necessary to provide personalized customer service (Jones, G.R., 2013). Joe went outside of the normal pay grade for full-time employees working within this industry. He decided that full-time employees should earn at least the median household income for their communities which averaged 7K a year in the 1960’s and 48K today, which is competitively high in comparison to other major supermarket chains within the industry (Jones, G.R., 2013).

Morale

        Joe Coulumbe made sure to decentralize authority, which empowered salespeople to take responsibility for meeting the customer needs. Rather than implementing strict rules for the employees and constant supervisor approvals before any efforts in making customer- specific decisions, the employees were granted the ability to make their own decisions and provide personalized customer service (Jones, G.R., 2013).

Organizational Culture

With Joe’s organizational design implemented throughout the organization, employees felt as if they owned the supermarkets that they worked in, creating a culture based on values and norms about providing excellent customer service and developing personalized relationships with customers (Jones, G.R., 2013). Coulombe says he tried from the start to make Trader Joe's a place where people would enjoy coming to shop. Inspired by a trip to the Caribbean, the book Trader Horn, and the dawning of the jet age, he sought to make a shopping excursion resemble a vacation. Employees wear Hawaiian shirts, hand out food and drink samples from little tasting huts, and employ nautical terminology. Store managers are called captains, for example; assistant managers are known as first mates (Palmeri, 2008).