Running head: GREENE’S GROCERIES 1

Greene’s Groceries Cashiers

Samuel E. Dunham

Valdosta State University

November 29, 2014

GREENE’S GROCERIES 2

The purpose of Greene’s Groceries is to sell food and grocery items (e.g., medicine) to

their consumers and provide excellent service. The grocery store is a small, local grocery store

with 15 cashiers and 5 managers (among other employees). The store’s goal towards their

cashiers is to create an environment where the cashiers are productive and efficient, while also

showing them their value to the store. The store’s objective for management is to have

productive managers who create high quality leader-member exchanges with the employees in

order to encourage better job performance (Graves & Luciano, 2013). These objectives will be

reached by providing competitive employee wages and healthcare insurance to the cashiers.

Those placed into management positions will be selected based on their performance record,

motivational skills, and leadership. The expectations of the cashiers are that they will be cordial

to customers, work diligently, and give to their communities. The expectations of managers are

that they will listen to the concerns of the employees, look for innovative ways to run the

business successfully, and lead effectively through procedural and motivational tactics.

Performance for the cashiers will be evaluated by measuring how many items per hour

they scan while also considering customer service surveys. Cashier critical incidents will also be

examined. Shift attendance rates will also be used to assess cashier performance. The

performance of management will be determined by the turnover rates of the store cashiers. A

high rate of turnover would indicate poor management performance and low turnover rates

would indicate good performance. Management will also be assessed by cashier completed

surveys to determine how they interact with the cashiers.

On major challenge for Greene’s is the economic climate. The success of the store and

their ability to meet the needs of their employees depends on the amount of groceries sold to

their customers. When the economic prospects fall, consumers typically react by saving more

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and buying less (Flatters & Willmott, 2009). This could lead to hard decisions being made in

terms of employee termination and use of resources. One solution is is to lower prices because

people need groceries and also an incentive to shop at the store. The lower prices would hurt the

amount of revenue gained per item, but would return a greater profit because more items would

be sold. Another possible issue for Greene’s is an increase in wages given to employees at

competitor stores. Those prices would force Greene’s to either increase the wages of the current

employees, which may be an expensive venture, or tell the employees that their wages will

remain the same and risk losing them to their competitors. One way to solve this potential would

be to either increase the wages of the employees or increase certain employee benefits (e.g.,

more vacation days offered).

There are two approaches that can be used by Greene’s: satisficing and maximizing

(Simon, 1956). Satisficing has a few major advantages. For one, it requires less time and effort

from the store. It allows them to find an option that works “well enough.” By satisficing, the

grocery store can making decisions efficiently. This approach works best with less consequential

decisions. Maximizing works in the opposite way. It requires more time and effort to make

decisions, but it allows the person to find the absolute best option available for the situation

(Schwartz, Ward, Monterosso, Lyubomirsky, White, & Lehman, 2002). Maximizing tends to

work well with decisions that have higher consequences. The best strategy really depends on the

importance and magnitude of the decision. If the consequences are not major for making a bad

choice, then satisficing is the better option. However, if the decision has major consequences for

an error, then maximizing would be the wiser strategy to use. In other words, neither approach

lends itself as a better approach to all situations, but there are instances where one approach

works better than the other.

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In terms of organizational activities, there are benefits and drawbacks to maximizing and

satisficing. In personnel selection decisions, maximizing allows the store to select the best

cashiers for the job. However, it requires so many resources and organizational energy that it

may not be feasible (Roets, Schwartz, & Guan, 2012). By satisficing, Greene’s can find someone

who can handle the job, though maybe not be the best fit. This means that the store increases

their chance of making a selection mistake, which would be costly for them.

Maximizing management’s objectives would likely produce the best policies for the

store, but may not be feasible because no set of objectives can cover everything. By choosing to

satisfice, the store can produce a set of objectives that are generally focused with their mission

and vision, even if it is not exactly the best set of objectives. However, the objectives may not

cover the most important objectives which would hinder the company from walking in the

direction it is supposed to.

By aiming to have task performance that maximizes, the store may be able to get the best

possible performance out of the cashiers (Iyengar, Wells, and Schwartz, 2006). The problem is

that the expectation that the cashiers produce a maximum effort at all times is not feasible. This

would lead to employee burnout, leading to increased absenteeism. These would lead to more

financial loss for Greene’s. If the store looks to satisfice, then cashier performance will likely be

much more consistent. However, the cashiers may not have the motivation to perform their tasks

to the best of their abilities. This would lead to less than maximum performance from the

cashiers. Along those lines, evaluating performance with a maximizing perspective would allow

the store to look at optimal employee performance. Unfortunately, this would either lead to low

ratings of performance or inconsistent ratings because the cashiers probably will not perform

every task with their maximum effort. On the other hand, if the evaluations of performance are

GREENE’S GROCERIES 5

done with a satisficing perspective, then ratings would be much more lenient to the cashiers.

However, this would likely lead to less motivation from cashiers to perform because they can

obtain good ratings without any extra effort. It is also likely that cashiers would see other

coworkers who do not work as hard and get good ratings, which would decrease the motivation

to work hard for the cashiers who already do.

Finally, maximizing and satisficing could both likely decrease worker motivation and

morale. Maximizing could do so because the cashiers may be held to a standard that they cannot

likely reach (Schwartz et al., 2002). However, there could be an increase because the cashiers

may feel that the store exhibits procedural justice. Satisficing could lead to decreases in these

factors because some employees would feel like they invest more in their jobs than their

coworkers do. This approach could also lead to more cashier work motivation because their

performance ratings would likely be constantly high.

Because the store is in an industry that experiences moderate turnover, it would be best to

take a satisficing approach in personnel selection. I would suggest that the store not invest

substantial resources in hiring because of the expected turnover rates. Finding individuals who fit

the organization should be the primary focus (McCulloch & Turban, 2007). Management

objectives should be as specific and relevant to the mission as possible so that it can be identified

when Greene’s is making process. A maximizing approach should be used for both task

performance and performance evaluation. This can be done by having honest evaluations that are

rigorous so that the cashiers are motivated to work diligently and know that good performance is

not lost by management. In order to work with worker motivation and morale, the store should

look to be fair in all of its decisions and communicate constantly with the cashiers.

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References

Flatters, P., & Willmott, M. (2009). Understanding the post-recession consumer. Harvard

Business Review, 87(7-8), 106-12.

Graves, L., & Luciano, M. (2013). Self-determination at work: Understanding the role of leader-

member exchange. Motivation & Emotion, 37(3), 518-536.

Iyengar, S. S., Wells, R. E., & Schwartz, B. (2006). Doing better but feeling worse: Looking for

the "best" job undermines satisfaction. Psychological Science, 17, 143-150.

McCulloch, M. C., & Turban, D. B. (2007). Using person–organization fit to select employees

for high‐turnover jobs. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 15(1), 63-71.

Roets, A., Schwartz, B., & Guan, Y. (2012). The tyranny of choice: A cross-cultural

investigation of maximizing-satisficing effects on well-being. Judgment and Decision

Making, 7(6), 689-704.

Schwartz, B., Ward, A., Monterosso, J., Lyubomirsky, S., White, K., & Lehman, D. R. (2002).

Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1178-1197.

Simon, H. A. (1956). Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psychological

Review, 63, 129-138.