Overview of Management

Kudler Fine Foods – Overview of Management
Kudler Fine Foods is an upscale specialty food store located in San Diego, California. What started out as a small endeavor has escalated into three stores throughout the San Diego metropolitan area. The three stores are located within existing shopping centers and contain the following departments: bakery and pastries, produce, meat and seafood, condiments and packaged foods and finally cheese's and specialty dairy products (Kudler Fine Foods - Home). Kudler's mission is to provide their customers the finest in selected foodstuffs, wines, and related needs in an unparalleled consumer environment (Kudler Fine Foods - Home). In order to develop this mission, Kudler Fine Foods needed to first develop a strong management team, focus on new technologies and realize the reality of competition.
Currently, Kudler Fine Foods operates under a very normal management structure. Kathy Kudler is the founder and President and all three store managers report to her. Under Kathy in the corporate structure are three key directors: Harvey Stephens – Director of Finance and Accounting, Yvonne Reynolds – Director of Store Operations and Brenda Wagner – Director of Administration and Human Resources (Kudler Fine Foods – Organizational Chart). All Directors manage two to three people in their respective departments.
Gomez-Mejia and Balkin (2002) emphasized the four management functions which involve planning and strategizing, organizing, leading and controlling, and decision-making. Decision-making is intertwined with all functions of management because each function does require some sort of decision-making process in order to develop its initial plan.
Planning is a function that helps different parts of the organization to set future objectives and to help develop activities necessary to achieve those objectives (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002, Chapter 1, p. 5). With planning and strategizing, the objectives of individuals, teams and... [continues]

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