Running Head: TIER ONE AZTEC 1

Tier One Aztec

Ashley D. Solis

South Texas College

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Tier One Aztec

Throughout the course of the Organizational leadership program students have been

introduced to different studies and theories that have been conducted and applied to how

Organizations are managed. Theorists such as Elton Mayo, Douglas Mc Gregor, and Max

Weber's contributions to organizational management continue to be studied and have had

significant contributions to understanding employee needs, what drives productivity, and

effectively managing a company.

Australian psychologist, sociologist, and organizational theorist, Elton John was born on

December 26, 1880 in Adelaide, Australia. Elton Mayo's writings lent a particular bent to

administrative human relations by tying personal dignity and man's social propensities to the

furtherance of productive performance. Mayo invested human relations with a moralistic tinge

which has yet to be discarded (Sarachek, 1968).

A Firm believer of Taylorism who then sought out to conduct a study based on how if

any other physical factors impacted productivity in an organization. What he learned was

completely different from his initial reason to begin a study.

From 1924 to 1930 he conducted a research experiment at the Hawthorne electric plan

find out if physical conditions in a workplace impacted employee productivity. This Research

Became known as the Hawthorne Studies. In the study he had two groups to compare results

with. One group was controlled and the other was not. Throughout the experiment researchers

tested of lighting, heating, breaks, and physical arrangements. He was confident that there would

be different results for each test group.

However, both groups productivity increased. Puzzled, he began to dissect the

experiment and came up with the idea that what increased productivity was largely due to human

and social factors. Including the employees in the test gave them a sense of belonging.
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Throughout the experiment employees from the test groups-built teamwork, comradery, and

formed a bond. Researchers reaching out to employees for feedback-built dialogue and paved the

way for communication between employees and management. Employee’s morale boosted and

so did their productivity. This proved that employees have social needs and are motivated by

more than just financial gains. It was established that communication was key to identify

employee needs for company to tap into motivating the employee to be productive. Elton Mayo’s

studies contributed to the creation of the personnel department which we now consider the

Human Resources Department. Currently research is being conducted to explore the idea of how

building human relations has a profound effect on employee productivity, avoiding turnover, and

improving the overall morale of the workplace. Today’s organizations of today present a clear

picture of human relations and attending to the need of employees being applied. Take the call

center for T-Mobile located in Mission. TX. Every other call center in the Rio Grande valley has

a high turnover rate however the T-Mobile call center has employees who have been there for

many years. You see them posting their admiration and appreciation of their employer on social

media. This call center listens to employee needs and it shows with the productivity produced

and employee loyalty. They have masseuse come into offer free massages for their employees,

days of work that involve bringing your children, potlucks, rewarding entire staff with BBQ,

having a theater room for employees to enjoy, napping room and gym for employee access.

Doing all this for their employees gives life to the call center and makes employees feel valued.

Douglas McGregor was born in Detroit the year of 1906. Highest level of education was

a PHD earned from Harvard University. From 1948 to 1954 he was employed as a professor at

MIT Sloan School of Management and served as president of Antioch college. He is one of the

most influential management theorists and is the brains behind the X theory and Y theory which
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he referenced back to Maslow’s pyramid of Hierarchy of needs. However, the impact between

XA' attitudes and job performance has never been empirically substantiated (Lawter, Kopelman,

& Prottas, 2015). His questioning of what makes employees work more and how behavior

towards them plays a role in how they perform resulted in the development of both theories

showing a contrast of how management views their employees and how it impacts employee

productivity.

Theory X was not what he believed about men but projecting the traditional managerial

view about their employees at that point in time. It is an authoritarian repressive style of

management where they believe employees are lazy men who hate to work, must be controlled

by forcing them to work, avoid responsibility opting to be told what to do, lack creativity and are

selfish. Theory X results in tight controlling policies which leads to employees resisting and

producing poor results. The needs filled from Maslow's Hierarchy Of needs would be the two

least important, psychological and safety. This theory has fallen out of fashion and scarce in

todays’ organizations. Current research implies that facilitating such practice would not be ideal

or accepted by society.

In contrast Theory Y is a more liberating and developmental management style which

fulfills the highest needs of Maslow's Hierarchy pyramid, belonging, esteem, and self-

actualization. Management views men as work comes natural to them and they want to work.

People seek responsibility and accept responsibility for their task, they are creative, not lazy.

Theory Y results in employee satisfaction, bringing out their creativity, employees being self-

driven and becoming ambitious. This theory is being applied in today’s organizations as it

encourages a collaborative relationship between employees and managers by paving a way for

employees to be promoted. Current research shows that organizational management is now

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embodying a combination of both X and Y theory to better serve their employees, improve

workplace morale, provide tools necessary to foster growth, motivate, and increase productivity.

Max Webber Born April 21st of the year 1864 in Erfurt located in Thuringia, German,

gained profound interest in sociology at an early age. Excelling academically, he earned his

Doctorate degree at the age of twenty-five years old from the University of Heidelberg.

Throughout his lifetime he made contributions to the areas of organizational studies,

communications, and management. “Max Weber's work scholarly work encompasses the most

divergent themes of 19th-century intellectual history” (Bendix, 1965). As a distinguished

sociologist and political economist, he identified flaws in organizations practicing Traditional

authority in a time where small businesses like farms were growing into factories. Living

through a time where people were employed by who they knew and not necessarily what they

knew was prevalent in how people ran their companies concurrent with particularism resulting as

a disadvantage to the company by evidently not hiring the best person for the role

The Majority at that point in time used relationships, kinships, or customs to sway

leadership and make decisions for the organization. It was common for fathers to pass down their

role of leadership to their sons bypassing individuals who may have been a better fit for the

position. Companies used a myriad of non-organizational factors centered around relationships,

family, sex, religion, and race to influence decisions made on who was hired and fired.

Max Weber studied bureaucracy and how it could be applied to an organization

stimulating the creation of the Bureaucratic Theory. This theory introduced a more rational

approach by clarifying leadership structure emphasizing the need for rules for decision making in

the organization. In the context of Leadership his belief was that a person’s legitimate authority

came from the position they occupied within the organizational structure and not their influence,
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popularity, persuasiveness, charisma or relation to someone in authority. To remain avoid

particularism, he expressed societal law should run consistently to establish formal rules and

policies to govern an organization.

There are six main principles to the Bureaucratic Theory division of labor, hierarchical

management structure, formal selection process, career orientation, formal rules and

impersonality. Division of labor separates complex work into simple, routine, well-defined task.

Hierarchical management structure assigns authority to position held painting a clear picture of

chain of command. Formal selection process involves selecting individuals based on training,

skills, qualifications, experience, and education. career orientation it assigns managers as career

professionals rather than unit owners allowing employees an equal opportunity at being

promoted and earning a raise based on how well they perform in accordance formal rules and

regulations of the organization. Formal rules and regulations rules uniformly govern employees

in an organization which they are to abide by. Impersonality is hiring and promoting based off

merit rather than favoritism. We can briefly define favoritism as giving someone priority or

granting privilege to someone, favoring someone unjustly and without complying with law and

rules, backing someone up; getting away from objectivity and taking side by comparing a certain

person, group, opinion or implementation with others when it is required to select one among

them (Toytok, Ucar, 2018).

In current research the flaws in the bureaucratic system have been magnified and current

research implies that impersonality does promote employee fairness however many times comes

at the expense of managers refraining from forming a relationship with subordinates to remain

bias causing a feeling of alienation for the employee. Although, bureaucratic management

structure isn’t favored today you can still find it in organizations such as college campuses,
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government sectors, military, factories, and large companies. Within the managed university,

manipulations of discourse obscure the increasingly bureaucratic nature of the university and

expand organizational control over campus culture (Cunningham, 2017).

In the wake of the caravan of immigrants infiltrating from the southern border of the

United States the urgency for a facility to thoroughly process every man, woman, and child

ensued. Deployed Services, an organization that rapidly deploys temporary facilities and

provides logistics management for the government in times of a disaster, crisis, and emergency

need interceded and began assembling massive commercial tents to temporarily house the influx

of immigrants arriving. They withhold the obligation of contracting the many organizations

involved in running the facility constructed in Donna, Tx. As of July 2019, the three-month

contract was awarded to Tier One Aztec to provide janitorial maintenance of the Donna facility.

After the 3 months concludes the aforementioned will convert to a month to month contract.

Tier One Aztec is a janitorial company based out of Houston, Tx. The organization

operates the maintenance of commercial properties and offices being used within refinery plants.

They pride themselves on Innovation, Safety, Excellence, Transparency, Ethics, and Inclusion.

The company’s mission is to produce clean facilities resulting in happy customers through a

dynamic, safety-driven culture and a well-trained, diverse workforce. Their vision is to be the

facility support services supplier of choice through a partnership philosophy of providing the

best value for clients, safe innovative processes, measurable performance, and a proven track

record.

Services provided daily at the processing center by Tier One Aztec include washing of

detainee’s clothes, sanitizing mats used for sleeping, decontaminating porta potties, sterilization

of showers, dusting vents, wiping windows, removing waste material, sweeping, vacuuming.
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Detainees come in with an infestation of lice, scabies, STDs, and illnesses. In effort to keep

contagious infections and illnesses from spreading around the clock maintenance by Tier One

Aztec is of utmost importance. Attributable to the need to ensure every hour of the day is

covered Tier One has three shifts. There is a site manager and each shift have an assigned

supervisor that janitorial staff is to report to. Supervisors hold the power to select two employees

per shift as their team leads.

How an organization is managed contributes in the triumph of attaining objectives

efficiently. In the case of Tier One and the recently awarded contract the preventable shortage of

supplies has occurred too often due to mismanagement. The way the vice president, Brad, of Tier

One Aztec filled the management positions began with hiring a personal acquaintance of his,

Tim, from Houston, Tx as the site manager overseeing the project. However, Tim has no

management experience, idea of what providing janitorial services entails, and no educational

background in organizational leadership to substitute his lack of competency in the position he

currently occupies. However, Brad conducts interviews of applicants seeking the janitorial

positions. Because of the enticing pay benefits, there is a favorable pool of candidates for him to

select from. As a result, shifts developed comprise of janitors who have worked for the school

district or hospitals and individuals with degrees and management expertise.

Treading dangerously Brad gives Tim the authority to select supervisors. With complete

disregard for employees already hired who have managerial and janitorial experience Tim

Having an aunt residing in the Rio Grande Valley hires her as his first shift supervisor with

Brad’s approval. She then recruits her sister and sister in-law for Tim to fill the positions of

second and third shift supervisors. Of the three supervisors two had worked retail and the other
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work in a call center setting. Regrettably, they do not have any janitorial or management

experience that could be of assistance in being effective supervisors for their assigned shifts.

Largely due to inexperienced supervisors inventory control has welcomed chaos with

opened arms. There are some detainees who become upset in learning that they are being sent

back home or the situation they are in and rebel at the cost of the janitorial staff. Such as

purposely wiping fecal matter around the toilet seats and walls, women leaving their menstrual

products soiled in blood on the floor, and detainees defecate while using the showers. As a

protective measure janitorial employee are required to use a suit that covers them from head to

toe, gloves, masks, and protective eyewear when doing laundry worn by detainees who have

scabies, cleaning the porta potties and showers.

Reverting to the shortage of supplies there have been an excessive number of occasions

where staff have been left without suits as a result of supervisors failing to be proactive about

inventory. Compromising the health of the employees who end up having to go in to perform

their task only wearing gloves, masks, and eyewear. In one event a load of clothes worn by

detainees who had scabies arrived, employee washed the clothes risking catching the contagious

skin infection. Trash piles up quickly with detainees coming in and out of the facility. There are

sixteen pods with eight trash cans in each. Each trash can use an average of six bags daily. When

brought to the attention of the supervisors by staff that stated the need for more trash bags was

imminent as there were only two boxes containing fifty bags left in the storage the supervisor

failed to order more assuming that one hundred bags would be suffice for the next week.

Those trash bags were gone by the next day which fell on a Saturday. Supervisors

conveniently have weekends off so in their place team leads are in charge Saturday and Sundays.

That Saturday caused ruckus. Trash bags were out and law enforcement agents working the pods
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were complaining about trash overflowing. Team leads were calling supervisors and site

manager nonstop for three hours with no answer. It got to the point that Border patrol made

Deployed Services aware of the situation which did not sit well with them and ended in the

termination by the founder of deployed services of the supervisor who failed to order trash bags.

The newly vacant supervisor shift becomes vacant and with no surprise is replaced by

one of the newly hired females who takes their lunch breaks with the site manager. Brad

continuing to allow Tim to select the supervisors without formally listing the position

recommendations using Max Weber's Bureaucratic theory that could be the solution to the cycle

of supply shortage. Ion giving everyone the equal chance to apply who have the experience to

serve as an asset to the team as supervisor. Shortage of supplies has continued with someday

resulting in only having glass cleaner to clean with.

Now we can realistically say that some management theories and practices work in

certain situations but not in others (Koprowski, 1981). However, applying Max Weber's

Bureaucratic Theory that could be the solution to the cycle of supply shortage. First and

foremost, establishing a hierarchical management structure would be the first step. Implementing

a chain of command could aid in holding people accountable for what they do and fail to do.

Team members should report to team leads team leads to supervisors, supervisors to manager,

and manager to vice president working toward the same objective of keeping inventory stocked

and avoid running out of supplies.

Division of labor would break the complexity of running a janitorial organization in a

large government facility into simple task and objectives. Giving people a better understanding

of what their position entails. The janitorial employees would perform maintenance labor. Team

leads would help supervisors oversee everyday operation by being the eyes on the floor.
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Supervisors should be responsible for reporting injuries, scheduling, safety modules, and keeping

track of inventory and communicating to site manager what he needs to be reordered. This flow

should facilitate continuous flow of inventory coming in.

Use a formal selections process to fill management position. Take experience, education,

skills, certificates into consideration when filling the organization’s management positions.

Consider current employees who have served as management and are familiar with inventory

control. Avoid hiring who you know and turning cheek to what they don’t know. Don’t promote

some based on your relationship when they have no experience in dealing with keep stocked on

supplies needed every day.

Create formal rules and regulations for all individuals within the organization to abide

by. Include policies that reprimand management for continuously making the same error of not

proactively ordering inventory supplies or demote them from their position for failing to perform

their duties. Work on impersonality by promoting employees within the organization based on

performance and merit not because they are family or dating you.

Avoiding shortage of supplies is completely attainable for Tier One Aztec. It is merely

the act of doing away with favoritism, enforcing uniformed rules, hiring the right candidates, and

promoting based on performance that could eliminate the many shortcomings in controlling

inventory. The staff does an impeccable job of cleaning. Law enforcement agents are

continuously complementing the maintenance crew for working efficiently and productively. But

if management continues to fail their subordinates the staff won’t have a job soon.
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References

Bendix, R. (1965). Max Weber and Jakob Burckhardt. American Sociological Review, 30(2),

176-184. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu:2048/stable/2091562

Cunningham, J. (2017). Rhetorical Tension in the Bureaucratic University. Journal for Critical

Education Policy Studies, 15(3), 305–331. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1165360&s

ite=eds-live&scope=site

Koprowski, E. J. (1981). Exploring the Meaning of “Good” Management. Academy of

Management Review, 6(3), 459–467. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/10.5465/AMR.1981.4285788

Lawter, L., Kopelman, R.E., & Prottas, D.J. (2015). McGregor’s Theory X/Y and Job

Performance: A Multilevel, Multi-source Analysis. Journal of Managerial Issues,

27(1/4), 84. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsjsr&AN=edsjsr.4411

3685&site=eds-live&scope=site

Sarachek, B. (1968). Elton Mayo’s Social Psychology and Human Relations. Academy of

Management Journal, 11(2), 189–197. https://doi-

org.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/10.2307/255256
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Toytok, E. H., & Uçar, A. (2018). The Effect of Administrators’ Behaviors That Involves

Favoritism on Organizational Opposition. Journal of Education and Training Studies,

6(3), 68–77. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.southtexascollege.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1175575&s

ite=eds-live&scope=site