Final Analytical Paper
One of the places that I have worked in the past was Hardee’s. While I am not currently an employee there, many of the metaphors that we discussed made me think back to working at Hardee’s. Some of the metaphors that I feel would help to explain the experiences that I had and witnessed in while working there are the Machine Metaphor, the Psychic Prison Metaphor, and the Political Systems Metaphor. Individually, each of these metaphors views the Hardee’s organization through a very narrow lens. Collectively, however, they create a fuller understanding of why some of the problems that Hardee’s has exist and what can be done to remedy them. As a means of approaching recommendations for Hardee’s, the Holographic Brain Metaphor will be used.
Initially Hardee’s was founded by Wilber Hardee in 1960. Within five months of opening his initial restaurant, Wilber Hardee had his first franchisee. By 1997, CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl Jr., bought Hardee’s. The Hardee’s chain is spread throughout the Southeast and Midwest. As of 2003, it has established niche for itself as a leader in thickburgers made from 100% Angus beef(Hardee’s, 2007).
Within the Hardee’s where I worked, I had the position of ‘general crew member.’ This is the same position title that was given to any person hired below a manager (including janitors, greeters, and bussers). I worked mostly backline jobs including regarding food preparation. As I was in high school for the duration of my employment there, I had relatively little say in any of the few decisions that crew members could speak to because of my youth.
The Machine Metaphor is used in workplaces where people in power want to maintain power and control in their organizations. Organizations in which this metaphor can be applied often have elements of scientific management, bureaucracy, and hierarchy. Each of these elements is in place because they emphasize power and control in the workplace by instigating rules regarding how to dress, when to work, how to work, and so on. Machine-like workplaces tend to have reduced autonomy for their employees and create a sense of alienation from end products that are being produced as well as the workplace itself. Nonetheless, this form of organization persists.
Scientific management is put into practice by breaking down each work task into individual, specialized parts. This is done in order to maximize the efficiency and productivity of workers. Due to the fact that scientific management was developed under the assumption that all workers are inherently lazy, stupid and motivated only by money, it created a system wherein workers are treated like parts in a machine. Because scientific management assumes laziness, employees are monitored closely by supervisors hired to do the thinking while the workers act as mechanical labor. This was starkly evident in the Hardee’s workplace.
At Hardee’s, there were general managers for certain regions, managers for day-to-day restaurant operations, shift leaders, and general crew members. General Managers did random visits to each store to ensure that all things were being done according to the regulations handed down to the restaurants. Managers were present to handle scheduling of employees and monitor work performance. Shift leaders were those people that best exemplified Hardee’s commitment to service and were supposed to serve as role models to other employees and assistants to Mangers and Assistant Managers.
Another consequence of scientific management is that workers become interchangeable. This interchangeability, combined with the highly specialized nature of workplaces using scientific management, creates a sense of alienation in employees. For instance, Hardee’s had quite a very high turn-over rate. Yet, they never suffered from a lack of employees. This is because each job is broken down so much that no one person is responsible for the completion of a task from start to finish. For example, there may be several people within the restaurant involved in the production of one hamburger. One person delivers pre-cut meat to the freezer closest to the broiler, another person loads the patty and buns into the broiler, a third person retrieves the burger and buns and dresses the bottom half of the burger, while a fourth person finishes the top and wraps the burger. Finally, a fifth person takes the wrapped burger and puts it into a bag for the customer. Therefore, if the broiler person decides to quit, any number of people could walk off the street fully qualified to fulfill his/her job. Because of this, no one has any sense of connection to their work, nor did they feel any connection to their workplace. The lack of connection has made many workplaces using scientific management suffer from high turnover rates like Hardee’s does because of this alienation.
Bureaucracy and hierarchy, also aspects of the Machine metaphor, are all about rules and regulations. All of these rules help define the structure as far as who is in charge and what to do in the face of uncertainty. In fact, the idea is that there are rules in place to handle every situation and eliminate any uncertainty. These rules, theoretically, are supposed to ensure consistency and efficiency in regards to output—whether that be an actual tangible products or services provided. For Hardee’s, the best example of this dependence on rules is the employee handbook that everyone receives upon being hired. Before starting work, you are expected to have read it cover to cover. In order to ensure this, on the first day, you must sign a statement indicating that you have read the handbook. In the handbook there are rules for employee conduct, methods to request days off, policies regarding when and how to call in sick, and guidelines for operating cash machines and making all the food. If there was a question about anything, employees were referred to their handbook first. In the event that a problem arises that cannot be addressed by the handbook, confusion erupts.
For instance, while there were rules about how to make a Hardee’s burger, the growth in popularity of the Atkins Diet seemed to baffle Managers and Shift leaders alike. No where in the handbook were we told how to make a burger without bread. One of the general crew members on the backline suggested to our manager that we serve the burgers between two large lettuce leaves. After the suggestion had been made to all of the managers, the crew members were told that it would be brought up to the General Manager. Once the GM had heard the suggestion, he informed us that he would get back to us after he had talked to the regional director. Approximately two months after the original suggestion had been made, our Managers got back to the crew members to inform us that all special requests for burgers without buns should be served with lettuce in place of bread. This illustrates how inefficient such reliance on pre-established rules can be. While they are supposed to make responses quick and easy, the actually paralyzed action on the part of Hardee’s when an unforeseen situation arose. In fact, because employees working for Hardee’s were so un-used to acting autonomously, they failed to enact the solution that they had in favor of reporting the issue to a superior for instruction.
The issue of communication is also important to the machine. Not only is communication important to scientific management and bureaucracy, but it is also important to consider in terms of hierarchy. Communication is affected by these tools of the workplace because of the uneven way that power is distributed. Many of the most powerful people within a company have no idea about the day to day operations. This is problematic because they are key decision makers. This can easily be seen the Atkins example mentioned above. As I stated, it took about 2 months for the higher-ups to get back to our restaurant about how to make a burger with no buns. The communication breakdown between high power decision makers and day-to-day employees is what allowed this situation, and other situations like it, to escalate dramatically. Whenever a person ordered a burger without buns, people on the backline froze and looked to their shift leaders and managers for how to process the order. While this situation brought no end of undue stress on the crew members, it probably seemed rather trivial to the actual people responsible for making the call on what to do. This is because they did not see the volume of customers making such ‘special’ requests and, therefore, looked at this as a problem that could sit on the back burner for a while.
Another metaphor that can be applied to Hardee’s is the Psychic Prison Metaphor. This metaphor is based on the idea that people experience fear and anxiety in the workplace. In order to manage this fear and anxiety, certain stories are created to help them interpret reality in a way that they can handle. Psychic prisons are very much closed systems. They are very poorly equipped to deal with change because they do not acknowledge environmental factors that may be causing the problems that psychic prisons attempt to manage.
One psychic prison that fits my workplace is the ‘organizations, dolls and teddy bears’ psychic prison metaphor. The organizations, dolls and teddy bears psychic prison metaphor suggests that organizations as a whole-including managers and workers- are like children in that they have comfort objects that they cling to in order to feel safe in the face of fear and anxiety. They likely have fear and anxiety towards change because it can affect their organizations’ sense of identity down to individual departments and even people. In the context of a psychic prison, organizations may have developed a fixation on these comfort objects to provide a sense of security during times of great change. Such a fixation can make it difficult for organizations to move on and adapt to a changing environment. Some examples of comfort objects in a workplace environment are ritualistic techniques, rules, structures, or principles that may no longer be necessary or productive. In order to assist in change, employers may need to create transitional objects or phenomena to ease the conversion that is underway.
In the case of the Hardee’s, employees seemed to cling to both objects and rituals. The object that many of the workers clung to was the old cash register. When told that we would be getting a new touch-screen system, most of the workers complained daily that they would have to learn a new register system and that they preferred the one they were used to. Along with replacing the old cash machines with new ones, came a new system for clocking in to work, which is one of the rituals that everyone clung to. Before the touch-screen registers were installed, clocking in was done by checking in with a manager and recording the time in the manager’s presence on an employee card. Although this form of check-in/check-out was inefficient and difficult because workers, like myself, often had to spend time tracking down one of the managers, many remained resistant to changing this system of clocking in because the new system, like the new registers, was unfamiliar. Also, because of the new electronic system, workers were no longer allowed to take breaks on the honor system. Now, we were all expected to punch in and on for break on the registers.
Despite the fact that the new system would make check-ins flow with greater ease, the introduction of this new system threatened workers’ sense of security in the workplace. One of my older co-workers even went so far as to constantly mention how this was a sign that they were getting rid of the old for the new, speaking not only in reference to the registers, but also himself because of his lack of familiarity with computers. As a result, he and other employees clung to the ritual of checking in the old way for as long as possible. And when it came time to use the touch-screen computers, many people asked to be transferred to the backline crew, where computer screens were only viewed to start food orders rather than used to enter any information. As a result of this worker resistance to change, motivated by the fear of job loss and unfamiliar systems, the Hardee’s where I worked went through a rather rough patch. New employees were hired in order to have enough people working the front line on the new systems and old employees had to be re-scheduled so that they could work in the back where they were comfortable.
One transitional object that Hardee’s had at it’s disposal, but failed to use, was the employee card. Rather than get rid of it and the old register system all at the same time, which generated a great deal of anxiety over swift change, they could have left the card system in place while employees got acclimated to the new touch screen system. In this way, employees could have learned to both use and trust the new systems while still having the employee cards as a ‘back-up’ until they were more comfortable letting go of the old methods. In this way, the cards would have acted as a change agent without directly threatening anyone’s sense of job security. In other words, by working with everyone to shift slowly, rather than forcing a sudden change, Hardee’s could have kept fear and anxiety at a minimum.
A final metaphor that applies to my workplace is the Political Systems Metaphor. The political systems metaphor looks at an organization as a governing body. In order to understand an organization in such a way, we need to understand three characteristics of the political systems metaphor. The three characteristics are: 1) interests, 2) conflict, and 3) power. Interests can also be further broken down into three sub-sections: task interests, career interests, and extramural interests. Task interests focus on completing a particular goal at hand. Career interests are those interests that are oriented towards future career plans. Extramural interests, on the other hand, are those things that are outside the workplace, such as family, friends or hobbies. When these interests run into one another, it creates a conflict, which is another characteristic of the political systems metaphor. The final characteristic, power, is used to resolve conflicts.
While there are multiple different sources of power, one kind that I will focus on is formal authority. Formal authority is based on legitimate rule (i.e. policies or laws). Two kinds of formal authority are traditional and bureaucratic—both of which occurred explicitly in the Hardee’s workplace. Some of the people with formal authority were Managers and Shift Leaders. One item with formal authority was the employee handbook. Both were used to resolve conflicts within the workplace. For instance Marcus, one of the crew members, was constantly late for work. While one of his task interests was to get to work on time, he had extra-mural responsibilities regarding his younger siblings. As the oldest sibling in his family, Marcus was responsible for getting his youngest brother to day care. Every day he was scheduled to come in to work at 6:30 AM to prep the store and open for breakfast. Every day the day care did not open until 7:00 AM. Every day Marcus was late. Often, he asked to be scheduled to come in at 7:15 AM so that he would not be counted late all the time. This is where interests collide. The Manager had the task interest of getting together a schedule that would not cause the General Manager to question why he started out the day short-staffed. He also had the career interest of looking prepared so that he might be promoted to General Manager. Marcus had the task interest of not being docked for tardiness every day as well as the extra-mural interest of getting his brother where he needed to be.
In order to solve this problem, the Manger used formal authority. He referred Marcus to the handbook which outlined that employees understood that they were required to complete a full standard shift except in cases where unexpected emergency situations or circumstances came about. Because Marcus’ responsibilities toward his brother were by no means unexpected and, in the eyes of management, not an emergency, he did not fall into that category. Marcus was told that, if this continued to be a problem, he had two options: 1) Start working evening shifts or 2) Find employment that would better fit his schedule (read: quit). Again, Marcus’ extra-mural interests of completing summer school in the afternoon and doing homework/helping out at home prevented conflicted with working an evening shift at work. In the end, Marcus ended up leaving Hardee’s to find work elsewhere. Management was able to use formal authority to deny Marcus’ request to about having a special schedule. They were able to do this because, the 6:30 AM schedule was standard—it had always been done that way, and it always would as far as they were concerned. They were also able to rely on the rules and regulations in the Hardee’s handbook to resolve the conflict.
There were several weaknesses that I have identified within the Hardee’s workplace. They were lack of job autonomy, alienation, hierarchy, bureaucracy, lack of communication, fear and anxiety, and conflicting interests. In order to resolve these issues, I would suggest the use of the holographic brain metaphor. This metaphor is the idea that you build the whole of the organization into each of the parts. In this way, if you shatter the organization into individual pieces, each piece would contain a complete and true image of the whole organization. This feature of the holographic brain metaphor makes organizations that operate in this fashion capable of being decentralized. For instance, in the same way that human brain can compensate and adapt by self-organizing when a portion of it is damaged, so could an organization that is like a holographic brain. Organizations that are set up like a holographic brain could be described as learning organizations that are able to adjust their ever-changing environments.
As previously stated, the Hardee’s workplace has many aspects described in the machine metaphor. Using this metaphor, organizations like Hardee’s attempt to use rationality in order to make all of its and rules. However, true rationality can never be achieved because there is not way that enough information can be gathered on which to base our actions and decisions. From this position, the reliance that Hardee’s has on the employee handbook and few key decision-makers makes little sense. Rather than refer to the handbook or wait for decisions to make their way up the chain of command and back down again, Hardee’s should attempt to create a networked intelligence. Networked intelligence is the idea that all the pieces of the organization are interconnected systems that allow for the free flow of information. This allows individuals from anywhere within the organization to participate in the acquisition of new, shared organizational knowledge. Hardee’s could accomplish this by cross-training all of its employees. People working frontline should be familiar with the backline as well as managers should be familiar with the tasks to crew members. This would foster familiarity with all the jobs necessary to the organization. In doing this, Hardee’s could widen their organization's potential knowledge base while simultaneously creating an opportunity for more communication of ideas about how production should be handled. On a larger scale, networked intelligence could help each individual Hardee’s to manage itself more effectively. For instance, earlier I mentioned how long it took to hear a decision about how to make a bun-less burger. However, were the whole of the organization built into each of the parts, our location could have determined an answer to this question without need to go back to a central intelligence location through the General Manager.
Another concept from the holographic brain metaphor is the use of holistic teams and diversified roles. This involves having teams that are responsible for things like setting schedules, production, and quality checks. Having teams like this would decrease the hierarchy and bureaucracy that exist within Hardee’s. Also, it would decrease the division of labor among employees by making managers obsolete, especially if employees are performing for themselves all the functions that the managers would have done for them. Such teams have the additional benefit of minimizing alienation. Because employees are working in teams with one another and are given a greater degree of autonomy and responsibility, they may feel more connection to their workplace—which could reduce the high employee turnover rate that Hardee’s has dealt with in the past.
Another characteristic of the holographic metaphor is the principle of redundancy. Redundancy is about sharing information among different groups with different specializations. This method of processing information allows for error correction during rather than after production. Additionally, it helps to generate more creative ideas and perspectives from within the organization. By allowing many different people/groups within the organization to take part in the decisions, the process of redundancy also guards against groupthink. For instance, the decision makers at Hardee’s may not see Marcus’ conflict as warranting investigation and consideration because they are insulated from his problem or anyone with problems like his. They all agree that coming in to work at 6:30 AM is the best way to arrange the schedule. Now, if they were to take into equal account the opinions of everyone, including crew members like Marcus, they might understand his problem differently. In fact, this might bring forth a greater understanding of the unique conflicting interests that employees face. Hardee’s would benefit from such a change because much of their high turnover rate is due to not only alienation, but also the inability of employees to resolve conflicting interests in a satisfactory manner—much like Marcus.
Hardee’s. (2007). The Hardee's Story. Retrieved April 20, 2007, from Hardee's Web site: http://www.hardees.com/company/story/