Pak Sweets Case Study

University of Maryland – Baltimore County

 Engineering Management Graduate Program

Case Study:

Pak Sweets: Managing a Diverse Workforce

Paola Camille Class Viera

ENMG 652: Management, Leadership, and Communication

Dr. Gouker

Fall 2017

Executive Summary:

        Pak Sweets Company is having issues due to cultural diversity that has caused damages to property and production. In order addresses this issue, management needs to put in place other changes to effectively resolve this. These changes are reestablishing the organizational structure and evaluating some practices. With these innovations in the company in place, we will be looking at a successful company by the beginning of 2018.

Introduction:

Pak Sweets is a small company based on Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This company was founded in 1984 with 3 employees and by 2014 it had 60 employees. Pak Sweets started with producing popcorn different flavors and currently has its own product lines of “candies, packed dried fruits, lollipops, candied fennel seeds, and bubble gum”. The company had a steady growth throughout all those years and a “strong presence in the market” making all this changes possible. The result of this growth and recruiting all these employees brought up an issue hard to manage: cultural diversity. (Farrukh, Khan, Saqib, & Tanvir 2016)

Analysis and Findings:

Pak Sweets owner and CEO, Shiek Farrukh Niaz, main issue the diversity of the employees.

• Employees come from different areas of the country which bring different languages, cultures and conducts.
• Lack of cultural integration techniques and knowledge.

Another issue is that the growth of the company was not accompanied by a change in structural management.

• Hierarchical Management Structure – The company has one operations manager whom oversees all the workers and reported to the CEO.  There is not enough people to be able to handle all conflicts and supervise production, customer service and all the areas in the company.
• Sophie Johnson explains that “hierarchical structures centralize power and authority at the highest levels possible. For a small business owner, this can create some problems. Instead of making decisions on big-picture issues, planning and providing leadership, the owner may be caught up in the day-to-day operations, making decisions about things that are best left in the hands of those closer to the situation”.

The last issues on this case was the statutes of the law.

• Niaz needed to provide for accommodation for the workers in order to comply with the Employees’ Cost of Living (Relief) Act of 1973. (Paycheck.pk)

Recommendations:

        The first recommendation will be implementing ways of cultural integration. Ruth Mayhew mentions that “that increasing awareness of diversity and teaching employees to embrace workplace diversity are the keys to preventing conflict”. A weekly meeting to express any cultural concerns or upcoming events that might interfere with the company will be the first step and it will take place every Sunday morning starting this upcoming Sunday. Additionally, the “elements found to have the strongest impact on cross-cultural business” will be incorporated in this meetings. According to the Society of Human Resource Management these elements are: communication, evaluation, leadership, decision making, disagreements, persuasion, scheduling and trusting. As the situation improves, the amount of facility damages is reduced by 50% and the production is stable, the meetings will be every two weeks. Once the amount of brawls and property damages is completely eliminates the meetings will be once a month. The goal is to reach to monthly meetings in 3 months at the latest. This can change as the organization goes through the six stages of the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity. (See Appendix)