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The corporate culture of Sobeys is clear with a focus on excellence in fresh food, a commitment to customer service, and highly engaged employees. Sobeys owns and operates more than 1,800 corporate and franchise locations in the Canadian Market. These stores are across all regions of Canada and include numerous banners such as Sobeys, Price Choppers, and Thrifty Foods to name a few. These different banners allow Sobeys to deliver different strategies of having the right products at the right prices determined by whom they compete with such as Wal-Mart as a discounter or Loblaw as a conventional grocery retailer. Sobeys owns 41.6 of Crombie REIT as of 2014, which allows Sobeys to have a strong partnership with a real estate company and continue to develop areas of expansion through capital growth by adding square footage sales. This paper will expand on further details of the real estate resources Sobeys has, what the firm’s plans are for future growth, and how Sobeys are maximizing their store formats to maintain and grow market share (Chevalier, 2015).

The main aim why individuals set up the business organization is to generate profits. Sobeys store has been able to conquer the market structure across Canada, and it can compete favorably with other stores including Walmart incorporations. Sobeys is the second largest food retailer in Canada having more than 260 supermarkets. The company is evolving occasionally as the technological landscape changes. Good management and the ability to retain customers has been one of the major focus of the Sobeys store and the secret of their success that spurns since the 20th century. The food industry is a very tricky industry to invest in, if the operations are not well connected, it can lead to massive losses. The regulations governing food industry are also many that the company is supposed to comply with. The authorities are very strict in implementing these regulations mainly because they have a direct impact on general human well-being.

Sobey's chain of stores is stocked with products that consumers easily relate to. The food industry is customer-based industry thus the need for customer feedback is very high. Without consumers, of course, the company will seize to exist. Ensuring customer satisfaction is one of the key priority of the Sobeys store. Customers always dictate what they want, and before opening a new store in a place, there is the need to conduct effective market analysis to identify the basic preferences of the local individuals to avoid cases where produced food stuff are not consumed. In any given population, the number of individuals who prefer exploiting new options is usually very because most people consider their usual tastes and flavors.

The company has been able to undergo successful transition over time while remaining a big market player. The foodstuffs that were preferred in the 20th century are different to the ones that are being consumed currently. It is always very difficult for a company that enjoyed success in previous years to change their strategy and remain relevant.

The organization is a major player in the retail business, and it is one of the best preferred in the region. The organization has since developed important strategies that are likely to propel it to greater heights especially by reaching new markets. Every organization, therefore, implements policies that are likely to foster its growth and propel it to greater heights within the retail sector. It is important for an organization to consider employee relationship as they strive to achieve success by increasing the number of sales by navigating through new markets.

The organization, therefore, depends on its strong recruitment strategy and strong rewards and compensation strategy to bolster and have the much-needed employee retention that many organizations struggle with. The recruitment strategy that is adopted by the organization focuses on skills and experience rather than mere academic qualification which does not always reflect on the ability of an employee to perform effectively to improve performance and promote positive engagement. The presence of diverse skills within the organization has been a major boost on how the organization has been able to perform above their rivals since employees exhibit varying skills and level of experience, which ensure that employees are highly integrated into improving organizational success (Binkley and Connor, 2008).

The benefits and rewards strategy that has been adopted by the organization is much higher and includes more benefits for success achieved by any employee within the organization occupying different positions within the organization. The benefits and compensation strategy that has been implemented by the organization promotes both individual and group employee engagement since it highlights the importance of individuals efforts as well as teamwork since employees are compensated depending on how well they help in achieving the organization's goals and target. The organization has two levels of target setting where the first target is much dependent on individual performance while the other focuses on a wider organizational perspective through teamwork.

Sobeys Company is committed to continuing producing quality products to all of its 1296 stores in Canada. The company has plans to expand even further to reach international recognition as the best grocery retailer with highest customer satisfaction levels. Due to this fact, the company is entirely focused on improving the quality of their products, service delivery within each format by specifically realigning and renovating their current store base to meet the current regulations. The company has a strong market presence in Canada and is one of the companies that have greater market power (Binkley and Connor, 2008).

Sobeys Company is considering using its influence to incorporate new products in the market to boost its revenues levels. Having made a name by producing quality products in the market, incorporating new products to the market is likely to boost its relevancy and improve its adaptability standards. Many companies tend to avoid introducing new products to the market because of fear of the levels of customer satisfaction as it may influence other products in the market.

I have ben privileged to work with the management of the Sobeys Stores as assistant chief finance officer. As the assistant chief finance officer in the organization, my responsibilities revolves around how well the organization can link between profit maximization and while restricting the total costs that are incurred by the organization. Therefore ensuring that the organization remains profitable at the targeted levels is one my key responsibilities. I work closely with the organization's chief executive officer since there is the need for a close working relationship to foster better organizational strategies that can help improve the organizational performance and help the organization remain one of the best performing companies with a good employee structured relationship.

Therefore, responsibilities also revolve around ensuring that financial risk within the organization is managed to prevent any incidences of negative influence on the organizational profitability. The increasing economic uncertainties, increased regulatory requirements, and increased investor scrutiny are among the factors that have led to an increased spotlight on the role of finance officer within numerous business organizations. Ensuring that employee are also compensated effectively depending on how they can influence organization productivity in increasing the company sales. Thus, in general, a finance officer within an organization is tasked with ensuring that the organization has smooth run by ensuring total control, efficiency, performance and execution of organizational functions (Binkley and Connor, 2008).

However, in ensuring that the organization remains productive, ensuring that employees are well compensated plays a significant role and ensuring that employees remain positive and focused on achieving the organization goals. Improving employee morale within an organization is directly related to the organizations increasing profitability. Highly motivated employees mean that they are well focused on achieving the organizational objectives.

Thus with the aim of ensuring having highly motivated employees, developing an effective rewards and compensation strategy has a significant positive impact on the organization, as it can focus on more productive issues of the business instead or ensuring that the organization spends most of its time convincing high performing staff members. The rewards and compensation strategy that is employed provide a straightforward solution to employee queries regarding compensation and rewards for their performance within the organization. Therefore, business organizations thrive on perfectly developed rewards and compensation strategies.

Ensuring that all employees within the organization are satisfied is one of the most complicated things that organization is striving to achieve its objectives. In recent times, the organization even though has been having average profits, there has been a lower employee morale regarding their interest in various tasks within the organization. The change in morale can be attributed to numerous elements. The employee engagement strategy within the organization has been considered rigid since it has been operational for quite some time. This change in morale can normally be accredited to the attitude employees are having towards their job on the compensation strategy that has been outlined which employees think that it deserves changes and be flexible to accommodate the changing working patterns that employees are subjected to.

The organization, however, has made several steps in addressing the issue, especially through employee engagement with an aim to create a more understanding method that can help the employees and the organization in general to ensure to restore the much-needed motive for employees for employees to have the hunger to succeed.

Some of the factors that are inhibiting full organizational performance include the changing business, and economic landscape is making difficult of the organization to satisfy employees effectively through better compensation and engagement strategies. Competition in recent times is also among the increasing factors that are influencing the organizational performance. In recent times, Sobeys store has been forced to close some of its stores to develop a clear general strategy that can be adopted to provide the organization with an upper hand over its competitors. These are some of the common factors that have led to reduced employee participation in the organizational operations.

Research question provides the clearest idea of what is ailing the organization or what the organization is considering implementing to change the trend and resume the previous profitability status with a high level of employee engagement. Therefore, in this case, the most probable research question will be,

What are the factors or strategies that can be adopted to have high performing employees with the best level of morale? This is the research question that will provide important information that the organization will act upon in developing new policies and strategies to ensure that employees are satisfied with the business cultural environment and general benefits and compensation. Some of the factors that will be considered in this case include reviewing the benefits package and also to realign the existing benefits and compensation strategies to ensure that they conform to the latest changes within the business world. This will also ensure that employees can reach their full potential concerning their ability to perform effectively within their preferred position within the organization.

Julie Abbott (2003) developed a study that sought to establish if there exist employee satisfaction within business organizations. Thus, the main aim of the study was to create an effective understanding of the impact of low employee morale on customer satisfaction and profitability of an organization in a business-to-business environment. The author wanted to have a clear picture on the existing theories that link employee morale with the quality of organizational performance. The business organization strives to ensure that employees within their environment are effectively taken care of to have better production levels. This connection has received several reviews from the different organizational environment while also acknowledging the difficulties involved in striving to develop better and favorable strategies that will ensure employees are highly satisfied (Abbott, 2003).

The study included exploratory research in the business-to-business sector within the United Kingdom. After a thorough analysis of the data, the results showed that there was an inverse relationship between employees’ morale and the productivity. The study thus showed that employee morale could be very low, but they still work extremely hard to fulfill their objectives. However, the study also highlights the need to have a successful organization where there are equal employee morale and the productivity. A business organization in most cases assume that the two variables correlate effectively in ensuring that the organization performs better among its rival companies.

Morale of an individual plays a significant role having a better working environment. When employee morale is low, it is very difficult to engage in better organization engagement and better teamwork performances. Low moral employees as outlined in the study tend to focus on their work as allocated by the organization but does not have significant importance to general employee performance regarding teamwork. The study, therefore, concludes that employee morale has an impact on quality of employee performance although the impact is not that huge that can cause disharmony easily within organizational performances (Abbott, 2003).

Schminke et.al (2005), conducted a study on the effect of leader moral development on ethical climate and employee attitudes. In the documentation, the authors focused on examining the effect of leader moral development on a given organization's ethical climate and employee attitudes. Leaders in the business organization include the management who monitors how the organization is progressing regarding achieving the set objectives. The strategy that is employed by these business leaders to their employees in seeking to evaluate their services has a significant impact on the employee morale and general development within the organizational setting. A leader should be in a position to know exactly how to approach employees whenever they are seeking to enquire about information. It is important to understand that employees are very vital for pushing forward the organization's agenda a poor treatment will mean that they lose the moral support from the management, which is supposed to spur them to perform even harder (Schminke et.al,2005).

Results from the study showed that the existing relationship between leader moral development and ethical climate and employee attitude depend on two important factors which include the extent at which the leader utilizes their cognitive development and the age of the organization. The study found out that leader’s moral development was found to be stronger for high utilizing leaders whose moral actions were much in line with their moral reasoning. Thus, a leader is expected to be very reasonable and make key decisions that can improve on the organization's general acceptability and not the other way round.

The study also established that relationship between the leader’s moral development and the employees’ moral development was positively associated with the job satisfaction and the corresponding organizational commitment while it was negatively associated with turnover intentions. Therefore, the authors concluded that for better employee engagement and positive attitude towards their work, it is important for business leaders to consider having positive moral development (Schminke et.al, 2005).

Tsui et.al (2007) focuses on the existing alternative approaches to the employee-organization relationship with the main research question of whether employee investment pays off. An organization that decides in their employees has to ensure that all the important elements that may be detrimental to the organization development are well outlined. Investing in employees as an organization can have a varying level of results. The researchers, in this case, decided to investigate this development to have a clear and suitable answer on whether investing in employees pays off. The study incorporates the empirical study of employees from ten companies to provide an honest opinion regarding the research problem (Tsui et.al, 2007).

The authors outline the importance of trust in any development between employees and the organization. Trust plays a significant role in helping the organization or employees to know if they can invest in one another for better organizational development. Employee-organization relationship is supposed to be mutual where every party benefits without any massive challenges. This situation in most cases develops into a very solid relationship between the organization and employees but only if there exist trust and honesty between each other.

The results from the study found that investing in employees can pay off but if there is a clear outline on how the whole process is supposed to be undertaken. The study showed that employees could perform better on key tasks within the organization, which is demonstrated by citizenship behavior and expressed as a high level of commitment to an employer more especially when they work in overinvestment or mutual investment relationship. These results were very consistent even after the researchers controlled some of the critical variables that they thought would have a significant impact on employee performance and attitude (Tsui et.al, 2007).

Lawler Edward (2006) develops some important strategies that can help improve employee morale and performance for the wellbeing of the organization. The author focuses on high involvement management as a participative strategy for improving organizational performance. The high-involvement approach that is discussed in this case focuses on involving employees and all stakeholders in the organizational activities but with limited engagement. The author highlights the need for the organization to focus on important organizational activities that can negatively influence the organization's performance and devise a mechanism on how to handle each. The author asserts that to have a well outlined organizational performance, it is important for an organization to implement strategies that can be able to detect any changes in employee performance or organizational behavior to address the issues as fast as possible before they are reflected in the organization's performance.

Engaging employees regularly is also among of the function of the high involvement management. Engaging employees boost the employees moral since they are assured of their significant role that they play in helping the organization perform exemplary. The author, therefore, acknowledges that for an organization to be successful, employees have to be treated with respect and dignity they deserve since they form the backbone of the organization and play a critical role in improving the organization's performance. Employees have the power to make or break the organizations thus the management should also consider employees as such and be in a position to respect them.

Bruce McAfee and Paul Champagne (2013), developed a study on performance management as an employee strategy that the can be employed to improve overall employee organizational behavior including performance and morale to work extra harder. The authors focus on performance management since the strategy contains three important components, which include performance planning, performance management, and appraisal. Monitoring employee situation within the organizational setting is an important step that management should undertake if they have any chance of succeeding through employee integration. The authors also highlight the importance to understand the existing organizational structure and be able to know the place of employees within the organization.

Performance management, therefore, help in understanding the overall strategy that is employed by the organization to be able to develop a better counter claim that the organization can base upon when making critical changes in the organizational behavior. The author highlights the need for the organization to be in a position to detect any changes in employee morale by focusing on other factors since it is evident that employee change in morale cannot be easily reflected on performance but rather on employee behavior and the ability to participate in teamwork for better and successful organizational performance.

Moshe Davidow and Peter Dacin (2007), provides an interactive study that seeks to understand and influencing consumer complaint behavior through improving organizational complaint management. Employees are always on the spot when dealing with employees and organization seeks to employ individuals who can be able to seal a deal effectively while also having a high sense of confidence. The authors thus focus on the situation when an employee is unable to perform affectively when called upon to and how the organization management views and handles the whole issue. An employee who has low morale is likely to have low self-esteem thus there is the need for the organization to focus on ensuring that employees within the organization are well managed thus being in a position to feel that their presence within the organization is felt through better employee engagement.

Terminal course objectives

The research problem highlights some of the elements that have been developed in the course outline. Some of the terminal course objectives that are reflected in this organizational behavior include B, C, and G and F. The terminal course objective describes each behavior and how it is impacted in the organizational setting and how better the condition can be managed to avoid having a negative effect on the organizational performance. The B terminal objective focusses certain factors that play a significant role in the organization including decision-making skills and focusing on the individual attributes including values, attitudes, beliefs, feelings and personality.

These important factors influence the organizational performance thus putting into perspective. This terminal objective is reflected in this organizational setting because employees within the organization who are having a lower moral. Employee morale is influenced by various factors within the organization, which have been effectively highlighted in this terminal course objective including management behavior, attitude, and workplace engagement. Terminal Objective B focuses on different factors that influence the organization's decision-making process as well as individual attributes.

Terminal Objective-C is another objective within the course outline that has been outlined within this research project. Terminal Objective-C focuses on both individual and team organization and how motivation affects organizational behavior and employee engagement and how employees can be motivated to achieve the set organizational goals. In this research project, the organization is trying to evaluate different factors that the organization can put in place in order ensure that the organization can achieve success at both individual and team level. These factors have been exclusively highlighted in the course outline under the terminal objective C.

Another terminal objective that has been highlighted in this project is the terminal objective G. this framework highlights the need to manage change within the organizational that can be able to help in formulating better human resource policies and practices. These practices can be employed to ensure that the organization remains profitable and considers employees as important members of the organization thus being able to put their interests at the top of organizational agendas. In this research project, the organization seeks to create better strategies that can be used to create a better understanding between employees and the management to develop a proper organizational engagement. The terminal objective F has also been highlighted within this research project. This terminal objective focuses on the organizational culture and how it influences organizational performance.

In ensuring that the organization navigates this problem, ensure that the organization remains competitive, and show an intention to engage employees to have a higher employee engagement. The best way that the organization can solve this issue is through the employment of better benefits and compensation strategy. The employee morale is something that can be easily improved through better compensation. However, it will depend on with the source of low employee morale and other factors that are influencing employee. Better compensation and benefits package is what makes employees know that the management is appreciating their hard work. Companies that do not compensate their employees it can be noted that their revenues generated are not as high as they should be. It is only that the management does not know the right methods to use when compensating employees.

Another solution that can be adopted by the organization to increase company performance is through better employee and management relationship. This can be achieved through establishing a better relationship through constant interaction between employees to boost how the organization can achieve employee satisfaction.

Another important solution that the organization can employee is developing favorable change strategies that can foster better understanding between the employees and management. The organization should review its leadership to incorporate better management skills that can ensure that the organization and employees are well connected. Change is always difficult for an organization to employ but when the time is right, it is important to develop better policies and strategies that can help manage the organization effectively.

Reflection

Improving organizational performance through employee management is an important factor that the organization should be able to focus on. This assignment has improved my understanding of vital factors that influence organizational behavior. It is important to incorporate all factors necessary for better organizational performance. Leaders in business should be able to know that junior employees within the organization need to be acknowledged through offering employee benefits and compensation strategies without necessarily negatively influencing the organizational performance. Managing a business organization needs leaders with strong character who can be able to handle serious organizational changes and any other common organizational challenges.

References

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Binkley, J. K., & Connor, J. M. (2008). Grocery market pricing and the new competitive environment. Journal of Retailing.

Chevalier, J. A. (2015). Capital structure and product-market competition: Empirical evidence from the supermarket industry. The American Economic Review, 415-435.

Connor, J. M., & Peterson, E. B. (2012). Market-structure determinants of national brand-private label price differences of manufactured food products. The Journal of Industrial Economics.

Davidow, M., & Dacin, P.A. (2007). Understanding and influencing consumer complaint behavior: improving organizational complaint management. NA-Advances in Consumer Research Volume 24

Johns, G. (2006). The essential impact of context on organizational behavior. Academy of management review, 31 (2), 386-408.

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Mcfee, R.B., & Champagne, P, J. (2013). Performance management: A Strategy for improving employee performance and productivity. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 8(5), 24-32.

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Tsui, A. S., Pearce, J. L., Porter, L. W., & Tripoli, A. M. (1997). Alternative approaches to the employee-organization relationship: does investment in employees pay off? Academy of Management journal, 40 (5), 1089-11