Peppercorn Dining
Purpose of the Assignment:
1. Review principles of entry and contracting
2. Critique data gathering and analysis strategies
3. Practice designing feedback processes
Placement in the course:
The Peppercorn Dining case is the second of several cases at the end of Part 2 in the text. The Part 2 chapters have described the fundamental processes of organization development, including entry and contracting, data gathering, data feedback, intervention design, and evaluation. The Peppercorn case is rich in detail around how a small group of consultants began an IM process and collected a broad range of data. It is a very action oriented case in that it ends at a natural breakpoint in the IM process - a set of data has been gathered, needs to be analyzed, and a process for feeding back the date needs to be designed. It is a good case to give students a chance to think through these issues, propose some alternatives, and discuss the pros and cons of different approaches. (Note: If this type of case is appealing to the instructor, the BR Richardson Timber case in the Integrative Case section at the end of the text has a similar structure.)
Overview of the case:
Peppercorn Dining is a restaurant on the All American University campus and serves students who have purchased "meal plans" as well as cash-paying customers. A group of consultants from Square One Consulting was having lunch at Peppercorn when they bump into Drew, Peppercorn's manager. One of the consultants, Erica, worked at Peppercorn as a student. Based on this chance meeting, Drew describes the situation at Peppercorn as he sees it and they eventually reach an agreement to do some operational auditing. After several days, the group of three consultants, Roger, Lynn, and Erica, collect data from managers at the restaurant, representatives from the parent dining organization for the university, and from various student, full time, and temporary employees. Their interviews cover various operations functions, including serving, the kitchen, cashiers, dishwashers, and supplies.
Toward the end of the first day of observations and interviews, Erica describes a new development, the announcement that the university will be constructing a new dining facility and that Drew will be the head of the new unit. The consultants complete their interviews and observations and must make sense of the data collected as well as think through the purpose and design of a feedback session where Drew will hear about their conclusions and recommendations.
Teaching Plan: (60 minutes)
There are a variety of issues to sort out in discussing this case. The questions at the end of the case ask students to a) comment on the quality and type of data collected as well as the process used, b) think about how the data might be analyzed, and c) design a feedback session.
Entry and Contracting (optional)
Q.1. What do you think of the entry and contracting process?
Data Collection Process
Q.2. Are you satisfied with the quality and quantity of data collected by the consultants?
Data Analysis
Q.3. How will you analyze the data collected? How will you make sense of the situation at Peppercorn?
Data Feedback
Q.4. What is your plan for the feedback meeting? How will you feed back your analysis and what outcomes do you want from the meeting?