Devil's Den

Case Analysis
Dilemma at Devil’s Den
Michael Spence
Management 602
Situational Analysis: In the case study of the Dilemma at Devil’s Den, we have a student snack counter that has many organizational challenges that need to be immediately addressed. The first issue is that the Devil’s Den is a contracted company operated by an external company called College Food Services (CFS). This presents a challenge because there seems to be a severe disconnect here as far as CFS’s vision for the Devil’s Den is concerned. From outside observations, it’s obvious that management failed to clearly convey the vision or the mission. There seems to be no clear understanding of where the company is headed, what is or is not expected from the employees,
To begin, in order for a company to have the best chance at market success, its strategy must be based on what the company does well in order to stay competitive. The company may have competencies, core competencies and distinctive competencies. These differ by the extent that the company can perform a valuable activity. A competency is something the company can perform competently. A core competency is an activity that is central to a company’s strategy and competitiveness, and a distinctive competency is something that the company does better than its rivals. In order for the Den to build its competencies, it must first spell out what they are. Their strategy must show what their competencies are, and from there they can build off of these competencies in order to remain competitive.
Company Culture. As far as shaping the culture goes, the night shift at the Devil’s Den is shaping it in the wrong direction. Currently, the culture is such that management is showing the employees that unethical behavior is not only acceptable, but not punishable and truly is the norm of the organization. Unfortunately, the only seemingly punishable act is disclosing when someone is
Management is also performing poorly when it comes to instituting policies and procedures. This is one of the risks involved in outsourcing. Not only is it potentially difficult to monitor, control and coordinate the activities of a contracted company, it can also be difficult in resolving kindly. It is also be problematic contracting a company because an outside party may lack incentive to make investments specific to the needs of the outsourcing company’s value chain. Presently, the Den does not have well established control systems. The employees and management of the night staff almost seem to be running their own controls and setting their own standards of what is acceptable. There is no punishment being administered to those who are stealing food and money. Even when an employee was caught by a customer stealing money out of the register there were no consequences for those actions, proving that there are no internal set of controls established to prevent or even to act on such problems. It has also been stated by Susan that the managers were not even good motivators; they did little work themselves and did not show much control over the employees. Also, the managers received authority and responsibility over events occurring during their shifts as managers although they were never taught how or when to enforce