Startup Project

Organizational Behaviour

Nightclub Xenon

Startup project

My organizational Structure and Organizational Culture

My start up project is going to be a nightclub called “Xenon”. It is going to be a concept for the younger crowd, 18-25 years, with an age limit of 18 years. The location is Helsinki, placed in the centrum of the city. Since younger people mostly don’t own a car yet or have the money for using cabs and the serving of alcohol rules out the use of a car anyways, it is easy to reach this place with public transportation from anywhere of the town.

We serve fabulous drinks with good music. The music alignment is Hip-Hop and R&B going with the current trends. The bar is serving a large scale of drinks from beer to it-cocktails. The opening hours will be Wednesday to Saturday from 10pm to 04am. Closing time is 04am since the law in Finland does not allow opening hours after that time.

Task 1- My Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture (LO1: 1.1, 1.2 and M2, D2)

Submission: 14/11/2013

This task must be done individually.

a) Upon identifying and explaining the business you want to venture, you must make a brief research of two companies within the same industry (same business line). One must be a global successful company. The second one must be around your locality (example: Helsinki). It is fine if the second one is a small or medium sized enterprise, familiar to you, that is in the process of growth. The first one requires you to do internet research (read as many websites about this company for you to explore how they achieve such competitive position), while the second one allows you to perform observation. Compare and contrast both companies’ organizational structure and organizational culture (based on your understanding of the text: pg.366-380 and the lecture). Explain how their structure and culture may implicate their performance.

b) By researching the two companies, you should be able to select appropriate organizational structure and culture suitable for your start-up venture and ensure its sustainability in future. Explain this in the second part of the task. Will there be any changes necessary in terms of your organizational structure and culture as you foresee growth in your business?

While building up the concept for my start up nightclub I did some research on this industry. I compared a local also very new club called “Hulabaloo”, which has a private owner, and the big national joint-stock company NPG Oy.

NPG Oy has 26 clubs all over Finland. They own but nightclubs also food restaurants. This company started also as a privately owned company with one club in Turku called “Bar57” in 1992 and got build up to an imperium over the past 21 years. It was earlier called “SK” for the founder and owners, Seppo (Sedu) Koskinen, initial letters. The name changed to “NPG”, which stands for “Night People Group” after it got sold to its investors in spring 2011. Today NPG is by far the most successful business in Finland and with owning almost half of the existing clubs in the main cities in Finland the very much rule that nightclub market at this point. The nightclubs of NPG are not all the same, they offer a large scale of variety in music and style. They also split the clubs in age groups in order to designate different clubs to different age groups. Some clubs are set with an age limit of 18 and some with 24 of even 26 years, and everything between that. The middle age in clubs with an age limit of 24 years or higher is mostly over 30 years. I believe the strategy in this concept is that people in nightclubs are, besides fun with friends, also always looking for a possible partner and older people, especially women, do not want to be mixed within the young 18 year olds.

HULABALOO is a small club in the center if Helsinki. It has 160 customer places and is run by 6 workers; the owner/ investor, a club manager, a bartender, a barback (someone who helps the bartender behind the bar for example with dishes), a dj and a photographer. This team is a group of friends who have all separately worked in Finlands nightlife for years and decided to come together as a team and open their first “own” place. The concept of this club is very wide scaled, it goes by an age limit of 18 years and is suited for pretty much everybody who doesn’t want something too fancy. The main spirit of this place is FUN and to signal that everybody can have great time together no matter of style, culture or wealth. They fit in their program what ever is amusing or creates a good feeling, considering artists, shows and their workers own personalities. They also want to support other upcoming artists and especially invest in young talents.

The workers build a small team where the concept is that everybody works in every area and they help each other out and work as one team together, of course keeping in mind everyone’s individual skills.

As of the organizational structure I think I can take a part of both examples. Hulabaloos teamwork is admirable with taking into account each workers individual skills and interests and respecting and supporting each their personal goals. From NPG’s example however I can conceive the future plans and objectives of growth to a big enterprise where the familiar concept of Hulabaloo becomes impossible. It is impossible to please everybody. In a large company it is impossible to take everyone individually in consideration because of the amount of workers and components it might not even be possible that everyone in the firm knows each other. Therefore you have to start separating areas into work groups of tasks, functions and purposes like NPG does. Not only are there separated working areas, also the customers are split into target groups.

Task 2: My Self-Concept (LO1: 1.3 and M3, D1)

Submission: 15/11/2013

This is an individual written assignment, but requires discussion in groups too.

In a meeting*, you will perform self-assessment using Myer-Brigg personality test, self-concept and emotional intelligence and the Johari Window. You will work with other members who also receive the seed funding of three million Euros from Princess Sultana Bolkiah. All of them, as well as you must learn how individual differs in terms of perception, personality and work behavior. It is critical to appreciate individual differences and understand how such differences must be taken positively to ensure organizational performance. Based on these self-assessments and discussion with other fellow members, you must develop your own self reflection paper.

My Self-Concept

I am a multi-cultured person with two home countries, Finland and Germany. My parents are completely Finnish and I also was born in Finland but when I was 5 years old we moved with my family to Germany where I grew up until I was 18 years old. Therefore in my head Germany is my home country but I still am Finnish, too. Since Berlin is a very multi-cultured city, besides my own, I grew up between many different cultures and learned to respect and appreciate them.

I speak three languages fluent, two of them being my mother tongues, Finnish and German and the third being English. In my family we speak very much mixing all three languages together, especially Finnish and German. It is for an outsider hard to understand.

My long-term hobby has been for over 20 years now horseback riding. I used to train five to six times a week and compete successfully. Now a days that my horse is currently in Germany and I do not have enough time right now it has sadly gone a step back. I am still a very active person and do and enjoy sports a lot.

My personality is very open-minded and I have good social skills. I am not afraid to stand up for myself or what I believe in, or stand in front of people as a leader. My personality is also very attentive and organized, what is important as a person in charge. As a supervisor I have gotten a lot of thanks for my good social skills, my kind personality and my skill to be a good leader and at the same time a good friend, as well as being a good role model.

Considering work experience I have collected a lot of it during the past ten years. I got my first job with 15 as a phone sales person. After that I have worked in many different fields but the ones I’ve always enjoyed the most were jobs in the customer service field, because there you are in contact with people and get to learn to know and to deal with a lot of different personalities. As of my start up project I also have very much experience in the nightclub industry since I’ve worked for the nightclub giant NPG for the past eight years and moved up to a shift manager and leader position. I have also been three times in the team to open a new nightclub and have been many times responsible for designing concepts for a variety of events. Therefore I already know much about leading a nightclub and designing its structure. In the last club worked I had a team of 20- 30 people under me, so managing working with and leading people is nothing new to me. The challenge to me will be to start from the bottom without the features of an already existing empire and its thousands regular customers. The question is “how will I make my club appear more interesting that the others in my area and how will I get customers come to my place rather than the one on the next blog?”, but that is a question I have been dealing with for years already because this is a question big nightclub chains have to deal with as much as the small ones.

Task

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