MGT/312 Week 4: Organizational Culture, Diversity and Communication, sample paper

A Family HVAC Contractor Joins a National Chain: Reading Two Cultures at Three Levels, Choosing a Diversity Perspective and Fixing How Change Was Communicated

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MGT/312: Organizational Behavior for Managers

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The companies, employees and events are a composite written for a model paper.

A composite heating, ventilation and air conditioning contractor, founded 34 years ago by a husband and wife and now run by their son, employed 60 people, including 38 service technicians, in one metropolitan area. Last year a national home services company that owns more than 100 local contractors acquired it. The founders stayed on as advisers, the brand name remained on the trucks and pay was not cut. Yet within six months, 10 of the 38 technicians had resigned, several to a local competitor. The acquirer had protected everything it could count, and lost the things it had not thought to count. This paper examines the two cultures, their approaches to diversity and the communication that connected them.

Two Cultures at Three Levels

Schein (2010) separates what an outsider can see in a culture, its artifacts, from what its members say they value and from the unspoken assumptions that actually steer behavior, and he argues that the last of these is where a culture really lives.

Artifacts

At the family contractor, technicians took their trucks home, set their own routes after morning dispatch and gathered on Friday mornings for breakfast in the shop. The owner knew every technician's family. The national company's artifacts were different: a scheduling app that assigned routes automatically, a scorecard showing each technician's average ticket value and sales of service plans and a quarterly town hall by video.

Espoused values

Both companies claimed to value customers and employees. The family company's stated motto was "fix it right, charge it fair." The national company's values emphasized customer experience, growth and accountability.

Basic assumptions

Beneath the stated values, the assumptions differed sharply. The family company assumed that skilled technicians are trusted professionals who know best how to serve a customer and that the company succeeds when customers come back for decades. The national company assumed that performance should be measured and managed with data and that selling service agreements and upgrades is part of serving customers well. Neither assumption is wrong, but technicians experienced the change as a message that they were no longer trusted and were now expected to sell.

Two Approaches to Diversity

The family contractor's workforce was diverse: about 40% of technicians were Latino, several were immigrants from Central America and the company had hired two women technicians in recent years. Its approach was informal. The owner hired people he knew or who were referred, bilingual technicians were often sent to Spanish-speaking customers and the Friday breakfasts included everyone.

Ely and Thomas (2001), studying three culturally diverse firms, identified three perspectives on diversity. In the discrimination-and-fairness perspective, diversity is about treating everyone equally and complying with the law. In the access-and-legitimacy perspective, diverse employees are valued for access to diverse markets. In the integration-and-learning perspective, employees' different backgrounds and insights are used to change how work is done. Ely and Thomas found that only the integration-and-learning perspective consistently supported high-quality intergroup relations and work group functioning.

The family contractor operated mostly from access and legitimacy: bilingual technicians were valued for reaching Spanish-speaking customers. The national company operated from discrimination and fairness: it applied uniform policies, provided required training and tracked demographics. Neither drew on what diverse technicians knew. Two Latino technicians who resigned said that the scheduling app sent them into neighborhoods where their language skills were not needed while English-only technicians struggled with Spanish-speaking customers elsewhere, and no one asked their advice about fixing it.

How the Change Was Communicated

Daft and Lengel (1986) argue that communication channels differ in richness, their capacity to convey complex, ambiguous information, and that managers should match rich channels, such as face-to-face conversation, to ambiguous or emotional messages. Lean channels, such as memos and email, suit routine information.

The acquisition was announced to technicians in a 20-minute meeting, followed by a series of emails about new policies, the scheduling app and the scorecard. Questions were directed to an HR mailbox at headquarters. Technicians learned that their routes would be assigned by app from an email. The Friday breakfasts ended because they were not in the budget. The most emotional and ambiguous changes, those touching technicians' autonomy and identity, were communicated through the leanest channels.

Consequences

The combination was costly. Exit interviews, conducted by the founder's son rather than headquarters, found that seven of the ten departing technicians named the loss of trust or the pressure to sell as their main reason, and only two mentioned pay. The departing technicians took years of customer relationships with them, and replacing a skilled technician takes months. Customer satisfaction scores at the location fell for two consecutive quarters, and repeat calls for the same problem rose as newer technicians handled jobs that veterans once knew by heart. The acquirer's own growth plan depended on the local brand's reputation, which was now at risk.

Recommendations

The national company should take four steps in the integration's next phase.

Explain the reasons behind changes face to face. The general manager and the founder's son should hold small-group meetings to explain the scorecard, invite objections and adjust where technicians' concerns are valid.

Preserve artifacts that carry the family company's core assumptions where they do not conflict with the national model: reinstate the Friday breakfast, which costs little, and allow senior technicians to adjust their routes within the app.

Adopt an integration-and-learning approach to diversity. Ask bilingual technicians to help redesign dispatch rules for language needs and create a paid mentor role for experienced technicians to train new hires.

Balance the scorecard. Add first-time fix rate and customer retention, which reflect the family company's value of fixing it right, alongside service plan sales.

Conclusion

The acquisition of a family HVAC contractor exposed a clash between cultures built on different assumptions: trusted craft versus measured performance. The acquirer's fairness-based approach to diversity, like the family company's access-based one, missed what diverse technicians could contribute, and the use of lean channels for emotional changes turned uncertainty into departures. Communicating face to face, preserving meaningful artifacts, learning from a diverse workforce and balancing the scorecard would give the integration a better chance.

References

Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1986). Organizational information requirements, media richness and structural design. Management Science, 32(5), 554-571. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.32.5.554

Ely, R. J., & Thomas, D. A. (2001). Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(2), 229-273. https://doi.org/10.2307/2667087

Schein, E. H. (2010). Organizational culture and leadership (4th ed.). Jossey-Bass.