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Organizational Behavior at Whole Foods

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Organizational Behavior at Whole Foods
Organizational Behavior at Whole Foods

Introduction
This paper will discuss the organizational behavior concepts that relate to Whole Foods. These concepts include Theory X and Theory Y, human and social capital, the profile of the 21st century manger, Carroll’s Global Corporate Social Responsibility Pyramid and the seven moral principles. Whole Foods Market is a supermarket chain that functions through several completely maintained divisions. The supermarkets are located in the US, Canada and the UK. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas and employed about 72,700 people as of September 30, 2012, of whom 16,400 were part-time employees and 3,200 were seasonal employees (“Company Profile”, 2013).

McGregor’s Theory Y Role at Whole Foods

In 1960, Douglas McGregor wrote The Human Side of Enterprise, which framed two sets of molds about human nature. The first one is Theory X is unenthusiastic and negative. It assumptions people don’t like working and must be forced to do their work, avoid responsibility and have little motivation. As Kopelman and et al. (2012) stated “the manager who holds Theory X beliefs may unwittingly engineer a low level of employee motivation and (ironically) lament to a colleague that you can't get good workers nowadays” (pg. 451). Theory Y is the counterpart. In this Theory, mangers assume employees can be self-motivated, committed, responsible and creative workers. Whole Foods hires people that are well-trained who flourish in their workplace because they are happy with their jobs. John Mackey, the Cofounder and Co-CFO believes that “happy team members result in happy customers (Kreitner & Kincki, 2012).

How Whole Foods Builds Human and Social Capital

Human capital is the productive potential of the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of individuals that generate economic output. Martin (2005) explained that” individuals exchange effort for reward, and acquire human capital in the expectation that their incomes

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