Carol's Cupcakes has grown from a home business into a one of the largest event and wedding catering companies in the area. Its founder, Carol Thompson, first dreamed of owning her own company while she was in high school. When she launched her business just a few years after graduating from university, she did special order work out of her home kitchen, with just a few friends working on a casual basis to help her with wedding orders. A few years after opening her business, she outgrew her home kitchen and entered into a contract with a local commercial kitchen. The contract meant that she could apply to the city for a license that would allow her to expand her business from catering to supplying other companies with baked goods to sell.

Carol's love for baking was obvious and she provided her clients with a unique customer service experience. She believed that every special event was made just a bit more special if it ended with a slice of cake or one of her signature cupcakes. Even as she grew the business, Carol made sure that her employees maintained customer service standards and worked hard to maintain a culture that was open, friendly, and personal. There were no specific job roles. Everyone worked in the kitchen and helped to bake, decorate, and package the orders. There was always someone around to help with deliveries. Her employees were like family, and she cared about them deeply.

To ensure that the business culture stayed family oriented, Carol increasingly spent time with her staff and continued to work alongside them in the kitchen, and she spent less time on the business side of the bakery. By mid-year, and in the midst of mid-summer wedding season, Carol realized that she no longer knew by heart how much butter she had in the cooler, how much sugar was in the pantry, if the baking flour was about to pass its best before date and become stale, or even how many layers were needed for the next weekend's wedding cake.

She did know that Rose's daughter was sick and that Rose couldn't work this weekend, that Bill's car was in the shop and he needed an advance to pay the repair bill, and that Cindy's boyfriend had broken up with her, so she was heartbroken and making mistakes in the kitchen. Carol kept track of the birthdays of every one of her employee and the anniversary dates of those who were married. Each of these special occasions was marked by a custom cupcake that Carol made herself. She was up every morning by five-thirty helping in the kitchen, so that her staff could manage their daycare arrangements.

This attention to her people, who she saw as the core of her company, may have distracted Carol into making a single bad decision that put her company at risk. She signed a contract to supply cakes and cupcakes to a local independent grocery store. As part of the agreement, Carol would buy her ingredients from the store at a supplier rate, and the store would sell Carol's products at their own price point. Carol used all of her cash on hand in the business to make a significant purchase of ingredients that would allow her to fulfill the store's order for baked goods for the month, and then the store reneged on its part of the contract. Carol's Cupcakes was in trouble, with essentially no cash on hand to meet payroll and an excess of supplies, much of which she would be unable to use before it went stale.

On Friday, one week before payday, Carol calls a meeting of everyone on her team. She explains that there is not enough money in the bank to pay the employees next Friday. She had to pay rent on the kitchen or the business would have to fold immediately. The grocery store wouldn't take back the order so there would be no refund of that major expense. Carol admitted to her employees that she needed help. Tough decisions would have to be made and she didn't know how to make them.

 

question: 

analyze the organizational culture, examine organizational decisions through the ethical lens, and propose ways to manage teams in ways that best meet the needs of the situation.