Organizational Behaviour and Theory Analysis of Pantaleone’s Restaurant

Organizational Behaviour and Theory

Analysis of Pantaleone’s Restaurant

Contents

Introduction        2

Discussion        2

Analysis        5

Personality        5

Perception        8

Recommendations        9

Conclusion        11

Empirical Sources        12

Secondary Sources        12

Introduction

Throughout this report, we will be examining the various causes and concerns in Pantaleone’s restaurant with respect to organizational behaviour issues. The elements that come to light during our discussion will serve as the basis for our analysis of the business’ current position and will ultimately guide our firm’s final recommendations to help improve the business.

Located in Denver, Colorado, the home to a growing twenty-five hundred restaurants, Pantaleone’s can be found just 7 miles from the city center. The owner Pete, who is originally from Greece, first opened his restaurant after working as head chef for a few years in another establishment. Opened in 1985 by Pete and his wife Paulette, the restaurant began receiving wonderful reviews as well as an array of awards for their food and service. Pete currently runs the business as the head chef, assisted by his son Josh who is the cook, as well as what seems to be the future for Pantaleone’s. Paulette manages the front of the business, which involves taking orders and dealing with customers, while Pete’s grandson Gabe is also working on staff as a prep boy in the kitchen. Pantaleone’s, like many others before it, is going through some tough times made even tougher by an owner that is struggling to come to terms with necessary improvements and facing criticism from not only his customers, but more importantly, his coworkers. Despite their successful years, Pantaleone’s has taken a turn for the worse. The family owned restaurant is now facing bankruptcy, while the owner remains too stubborn to change his ways in order to help save the business from certain failure.

Discussion

Pantaleone’s and their self proclaimed “Best Pizza in Denver”, are facing the harsh realities of their failing business. After listening to the concerned staff working at the restaurant, it has become evident that Pete simply refuses to listen to his co-workers or anyone else for that matter when it comes to criticism about any of his food, especially his pizza. Paulette claims that she has been telling Pete for many years that Pantaleone’s needed to change in order to remain relevant in the restaurant industry. “Active resistance can take the form of outright refusal or rebellion or it might manifest in complaints” (Smollan, 2011). However, both herself and her son Josh claim to have fought a losing battle as Pete does not listen to either of them and is too stubborn to assume any fault of his own or change his ways.

Pete’s son Josh is 33 years old now and eagerly awaiting an opportunity to take over and run the family business. Although Josh is willing to step up and take on new responsibilities, his father Pete continues to maintain his crippling stronghold over the restaurant and refuses to step aside so that Josh can bring in his new ideas in order to bring Pantaleone’s back to life. It is becoming clearer that Pete is in denial of the fact that he will have to step aside someday and let go of what he worked on for over thirty years. Managers should be the leaders who want to make a difference on the future of the business (Nyberg & Mueller, 2009), and resistance is a counter productive phenomenon (Georgalis, Samaratunge, Kimberley & Lu, 2015).

These actions that Pete has displayed have evidently come to the forefront of the issues within the restaurant. The behaviour that he is exhibiting in terms of his emphatic unwillingness to listen to his co-workers’ advice has highlighted an important organizational behaviour issue with respect to his personality. Communication is a very important part on the success of a restaurant and Pete is ignoring every message he gets (Simoes, P. M. M., & Esposito, M., 2014).

When chef Ramsay asked Pete about his pizza and if it still maintained the proclaimed title of the best pizza in Denver since they received the title back 1985, Pete went on and said: “I think I do. In fact, I know I do!” This type of assessment that Pete is making demonstrates the bias he has for his own products as well as his inability to objectively assess his own work. Customers have complained on multiple occasions about undercooked pizza dough, enormous portions, and in plain terms as chef Ramsay described it to be “absolutely appalling”. Gabe, Pete’s grandson, works in the restaurant as a prep boy and supports the claims of the restaurant's success throughout the 1990’s. However, Gabe goes on to claim that his grandfather believes he is still providing the same successful products as they once did. In this particular instance, we can now notice that there is an organizational behavioural issue related to perception, since Pete is clearly unable and in some cases, unwilling to realize the problem with his pizza.

Because of these organizational behavioural issues that Pantaleone’s is facing, many other aspects of the business are showing signs of failure as well. For instance, the quality of their food has significantly decreased over the years as the situation with Pete’s personality, perception and attribution began to take a greater toll on the quality of food that Pantaleone’s would serve to its customers. In what resembles a snowball effect, as the business began to face more adversity and times got tougher, Pete’s troubles with his personality and perception, began to take an even greater toll on the business. Thus highlighting the poor quality of the product they have been serving as a result of these organizational behaviour issues.

We believe Pete is the main problem after having examined the other aspects of the business and unable to pinpoint major deficiencies that would lead to the results we have been presented with. Paulette’s job in large part focused on customer service and handling the cash. To this extent we have identified no particular complaints from customers about service neither have we obtained any rhetoric from the staff indicating she has been failing to meet customer needs. Which brings us to Josh, who is the other major player in the restaurant's operations. Josh works as a cook in the kitchen of the restaurant and continues to fulfill his duties as a cook and in addition to this, eagerly looks forward to playing a role in the business. Despite Josh having a central role in the business he bears little of the responsibility for the restaurant's poor quality food as well as its current financial situation. Josh, on many occasions, proactively brings up ways to improve the food by modernising certain methods and bringing in fresh ideas but because his hands are tied by Pete. These qualities have enabled us to discount Josh from being the catalyst to Pantaleone’s failures. To this point we are then left with Pete, the owner of the business and head chef. He maintains a strict control over what goes out of the kitchen as well as any major decision-making, which makes him by consequence, the one that must bear the responsibility for the restaurant's current state.