GM500 Unit 10 Bakery Contingency Integrative Paper Example

Built for Bread, Strained by Cookies: A Unit 10 Integrative Management Paper on One Bakery and Two Seasons

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM500: Management Theories and Practices I

Unit 10 Integrative Management Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The bakery, its people and every figure are composite and illustrative; the theorists and studies cited are real.

Introduction

Ferncastle Baking runs two production halls under one roof. Hall A produces sandwich bread and buns on four automated lines, five days a week, all year, for three grocery chains' store brands. Hall B produces bread rolls for most of the year but converts each September to holiday cookies: decorated sugar cookies, gingerbread and shortbread in seasonal tins. From September through mid-December, Hall B's workforce grows from about 40 permanent employees to about 130, most of them temporary workers from two staffing agencies.

The thesis of this paper is that one organizational design, built on classical principles, serves Hall A well and Hall B poorly in autumn, because the two halls face different degrees of uncertainty. Figure 1 maps the frameworks to the parts of the operation they explain: scientific management and bureaucracy to the bread lines, human relations and motivation theory to the autumn floor, and contingency theory to the comparison between them.

Part 1: Classical Theory on the Bread Lines

Standard times. Every bread batch in Hall A has a standard cycle: mixing, fermentation, dividing, proofing, baking and cooling, each timed to the minute and printed on the batch card. Frederick Taylor's insistence that each element of work be studied and timed is visible here in plain form (Taylor, 1911). Line leads compare actual times against the standard every shift, and variances above five minutes are recorded.

Written files. The bakery's food safety plan identifies hazards at each step and specifies critical limits, monitoring, corrective actions and records. Each batch generates a record of temperatures, metal detector checks and allergen changeovers. Max Weber's description of administration based on written documents, applied impersonally by trained officials, fits this system closely (Weber, 1978). Auditors from the grocery chains read these files twice a year, and the bakery has passed every audit in the last six years.

A clear chain of command. The plant manager oversees two hall managers, each with shift supervisors and, below them, line leads. Instructions flow down; production reports flow up. Henri Fayol's principles of unity of command and the scalar chain describe the arrangement (Fayol, 1949).

On the bread lines, this design works. Output is steady, waste runs under 2 percent, and annual turnover among permanent bread line staff is about 12 percent. The work is repetitive, the product changes little, and the equipment sets the pace. Under those conditions, standards, files and hierarchy do what they are meant to do.

Part 2: The Same Design in Autumn

In September, Hall B applies the same design to a very different situation.

Standard times break down. Cookie decorating is manual and varies by product. A gingerbread figure with icing details takes much longer than a plain shortbread round, and new designs arrive from customers each year, sometimes only weeks before production. Standard times set in August are often wrong by October.

Informal norms are lost. Permanent Hall B employees have worked together for years and have informal ways of covering for each other and training newcomers. When the workforce triples, line leads are responsible for groups of fifteen to twenty people, most of whom they have never met. Elton Mayo's account of the informal group, with its own standards and ways of helping members, explains what the permanent staff provide in ordinary months (Mayo, 1933). In autumn, that informal system is overwhelmed.

An attendance bonus that fails. To keep temporary workers through December, the bakery pays a $300 bonus to any temporary worker who completes the season with no more than two absences. Last year, only 41 percent of temporary workers earned it, and turnover among temporaries was about 55 percent by early November. Expectancy theory explains the failure: a reward paid in mid-December is remote for a worker earning hourly pay in September, and a single bad week removes any chance of earning it, after which it motivates nothing (Vroom, 1964).

The bakery's design assumes stable work, known workers and a pace set by machines; autumn brings changing products, strangers and a pace set by hands, and the design has no way to adjust.

Part 3: Contingency Theory Explains the Pattern

Tom Burns and G. M. Stalker found that firms in stable conditions did well with mechanistic organization, meaning clear hierarchy, specialized roles and detailed rules, while firms facing rapid change needed organic organization, where roles shift as tasks change, people consult sideways rather than only up the line, and whoever knows the problem best leads on it (Burns & Stalker, 1961). Joan Woodward showed that the best structure varied with production technology (Woodward, 1965), and Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch found that departments facing more uncertainty should be organized differently from those facing less (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967).

Ferncastle illustrates all three. Hall A is a stable, machine-paced process, and a mechanistic design fits it. Hall B in autumn faces uncertain products, uncertain staffing and manual work, conditions under which an organic design would serve better. The bakery applies one design to both halls, so it fits one and strains the other. Contingency theory does not say classical theory is wrong; it says classical theory is right for some conditions and not others (Donaldson, 2001).

What the Bakery Should Change

1. Different standards for Hall B in autumn. Rather than fixed times set in August, Hall B should use weekly targets reset by line leads based on the previous week's actual performance on each product.

2. Restore the informal system deliberately. Each permanent employee in Hall B could be paired with three or four temporary workers as a named mentor, with a small premium for the season. This puts the informal group's training role into the formal design.

3. Pay the bonus in stages. Splitting the attendance bonus into monthly payments of $100 makes the reward closer and keeps it meaningful after one bad week.

4. More authority at line level. During the surge, line leads should be able to reassign workers between decorating stations and adjust the sequence of products without waiting for a shift supervisor.

What the Bakery Should Keep

The food safety system and its records must stay exactly as they are in both halls and in every season. Food safety is the one area where uncertainty must not loosen the rules: allergen changeovers, temperatures and metal detection are the same in October as in March. The chain of command for safety decisions should also stay intact. An organic design in Hall B should apply to how work is organized, not to whether the safety plan is followed.

Conclusion

Ferncastle Baking's classical design succeeds on its year-round bread lines because the work is stable, the workers are experienced and the machines set the pace. In autumn, the cookie surge brings changing products, a workforce of strangers and manual work, and the same design strains. Contingency theory explains the pattern: the best design depends on the conditions. The bakery should keep its classical system where conditions are stable and where food safety demands it, and loosen it where autumn's uncertainty calls for flexibility.

References

Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The management of innovation. Tavistock.

Donaldson, L. (2001). The contingency theory of organizations. Sage.

Fayol, H. (1949). General and industrial management (C. Storrs, Trans.). Pitman. (Original work published 1916)

Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Differentiation and integration in complex organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 12(1), 1-47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2391211

Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. Macmillan.

Taylor, F. W. (1911). The principles of scientific management. Harper & Brothers.

Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. Wiley.

Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1922)

Woodward, J. (1965). Industrial organization: Theory and practice. Oxford University Press.