HR EVALUATION FOR KUDLER FOODS

HR Evaluation for Kudler Foods

HR Evaluation for Kudler Foods

Introduction

Kudler Fine Foods is an upscale specialty food store located in the general area of San Diego, California and has three retail locations, as well as a headquarters. Kudler foods was founded by Kathy Kudler with the first store located in La Jolla, California. She was able to achive a profit after only nine months of operation. She opened a second store in Del Mar, California soon after and within another 3 years opened her third store in Encinitas, California. In order to achieve this, Kudler has managed its people and resources efficiently. This paper will discuss Kudler's management structure and their strategic, tactical and operational managers. This paper will also present a short analysis Porter's Competitive Forces Model and how it can be applied to Kudler Foods.

HR Evaluation of Kudler Foods

Management at Kudler Foods

There are four basic functions of management, as discussed by Gomez, Mejia and Balkin (2002). They are planning and strategizing, organizing, leading and controlling. These functions are carried out by managers at various levels: strategic, tactical and operational.

The strategic, or senior managers, are the ones that are responsible for the overall management of the company. Their mail role within an organization is to develop long term goals and objectives and to develop activities necessary to obtain those objectives. Typically this is done by senior executives. It is their responsibility to se the goals, develop the plan to achieve these goals and communicate this to all supporting staff (Gomez, Mejia and Balkin, 2002). Kudler Foods' executive manager is Kathy Kudler.

Tactical managers are those that are responsible for the goals and plans developed by the strategic managers into specific objectives and activities. They are commonly referred to as middle managers.

Organizing is the management function which determines how the firm's human, financial, physical, informational and technical resources are arranged to perform tasks to achieve their goals and objectives. Operational Managers are those that implement the objectives and activities designed by the tactical managers. They provide the link between non-management employees and management. (Arce, 2003)

Leading is the function which energizes people to do their best. It involves inspiring and motivating employees including providing an example for others to follow in addition to offering guidance to those that they work with and encouraging people to work well together to maximize success in order to achieve the organization's goals. At Kudler, Kathy is the one that takes the lead with her passion and dedication to fulfilling her dream.

Controlling is the function that deals with measuring performance, comparing the performance to the goals and objectives, implementing changes as needed and monitoring progress of the performance. At Kudler, informal performance evaluations are conducted on an ongoing basis, in additional to formal reviews. Kudler has an unusual compensation policy which includes an incentive for high performance based on customer satisfaction, sales profits and employee satisfaction surveys. Pay raises are dependent upon performance and those that do not meet their performance goals are ...