South Texas Boots Co.

Alfredo Elicerio
Josie Arellano
Adrienne Downey
Angelica Araujo
Elizabeth Garza
Norma N. Rincon
Leonel Garcia
ORGL-4341 Management Theory
Dr. Addae

Background
South Texas Boot Co. has been making quality work boots since 1950. They take pride in the
quality of their boots and have kept up with the latest technological advancements to increase the
quality of their product line. South Texas Boot Co. has developed a new insole that allows air to flow
through the toe and heel area for increased comfort and to control foot odor.

Problem
South Texas Boot Co. has received several complaints from both retail stores and customers.
The complaints claim the latest boot model does not perform as advertised. While the company has
received negative feedback, they have also received positive feedback. It seems that there are potential
quality control issues. Quality control is not following testing procedures in order to ensure the
product is fit for purpose and ready for distribution. In order to assess the problem, CEO John Doe has
given functional authority of the quality control team to the Manager of the Design Team along with
the Marketing Specialist. They will be advising and overseeing the entire quality control process from
start to finish in order to ensure the procedure is being followed correctly. The problem potentially
stems from a lack of oversight and quality control measurements. Several pallets of boots left the
production area without proper inspection and testing.

Significance
If South Texas Boot Co. does not handle the quality control issue promptly it could
potentially lead to a decrease in sales and ultimately a decline in retail market share affecting all
stakeholders. In addition, South Texas Boot Co. could also face legal issues.

The Research Goal

The overall goal of this initiative is to test and show how effective functional authority is when
assigned to the design and marketing teams. The effects on the organization overall will be measured
as well.

The Purpose
The purpose of this research study is not only to restore customer confidence in the South Texas Boot
Co. brand but also to ensure guidelines and procedures are being followed internally. The first step to
retaining and acquiring additional retail market share is to establish and maintain an effective quality
control program.

Research Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.

How are we going to see the number of complaints?

Was it beneficial to give functional authority to both design and marketing?
What is the business benefit you want to gain from this project?
How could giving Functional Authority help this company?

Literature Review and Synthesis of Evidence

In an organizational setting, authority is defined as the right of a person in a particular role to
make certain decisions, allocate resources, and direct certain other peoples activities (McKee, 2014).
There are three types of authorities that can exist in an organization: line authority, staff authority, and
functional authority. The most common use of authority is line authority. It reflects a supervisorsubordinate relationship. The superior makes the decisions and gives the order for whatever the action
needing to be implemented. There is a lot of delegation that typically happens in this area since it

mainly involves the management team for the attainment of objectives.

Staff authority involves the right for one to provide advice and/or assistance to those who
have line authority or even to those under no authority. They are to only provide assistance, not
directives. They help increase the effectiveness of those under line authority.
Functional authority consists of giving an area of the organization authority to make decisions
outside the assigned area. It is given to these individuals in order to meet certain responsibilities
outside their traditional area of authority. Essentially control or authority is given to a person or group
due to their expertise in a certain topic.
Authority in the quality control setting can be very sensitive because they can run into
micromanagement from different areas of the organization and this can lead ultimately lead to
incomplete products. It has been known that a major pitfall management makes when hiring a quality
control manager is failing to provide a balance between the responsibility of creating the programs and
the authority needed to implement and enforce the systems (Clute, 2009). Communication is a vital
link between management and quality control departments to be able to move the organization
forward. There must be clear lines of reporting so that the information moves along the organization.
It has been known that conflicts occur when the quality control manager reports to operations,
because of the need to get the most products out the door versus the responsibility of producing the
highest quality product, to the finance area, because of the need to skimp on program expenses versus
the responsibility to build a good quality program, or the product development because they want to
focus on new products (Clute, 2009).
Overall, the role of management in quality control is to provide support to the quality
manager. Without this it will bring negative results that will reflect on the products we sell to the
customers.
To prevent situations as mentioned above we need to implement Total Quality Management,
which involves the continuous improvement of organizational processes, resulting in high quality

products and services. This will open communications from all areas, solve problems from the root
cause, the prevention of mistakes from occurring, and have co-operative relationships.

Project Plan and Methodology

In this process South Texas Boot Co. will introduce and implement a quality management
program through the utilization of ISO 9001.

The ISO 9000 family addresses various aspects of quality management and contains
some of ISOs best known standards. The standards provide guidance and tools for
companies and organizations who want to ensure that their products and services
consistently meet customers requirements, and that quality is consistently
improved. (#)

ISO 9001 encompasses the guidelines and requirements a company must adhere to in order to fulfill
the standard. For example, some the requirements include but are not limed to the following:

Develop, implement and utilization of a quality management system

Documentation of how the system will work
Creation of a quality manual
Documentation control to ensure accuracy and suitability
Management of records to show the system is working as proposed

These standards will ensure the highest level of quality assurance for the company and stakeholders
alike. After the initial implementation of standards, South Texas Boot Co. will seek an ISO
Certification. The ISO organization states Certification can be a useful tool to add credibility, by
demonstrating that your product or service meets the expectations of your customers. (#) South Texas
Boot Co. seeking this certification will provide a way for the marketing team to increase the level of
confidence in the brand for to end-user.
In order to assess the current quality issues the marketing team will engage a survey company,
XYZ, to collect qualitative and quantitative data from customers via telephone surveys. South Texas

Boot Co. will also invest in two software programs, VOXCO and InfinityQS, to help with data mining
and data analysis. VOXCO will collect data via telephone-based surveys from 500 customers,
analyzing their opinions. InfinityQ data will provide information on returned items and customer
complaint on South Texas Boot Co.
CEO, John Doe, and the Executive Committee of South Texas Boot Co. are interested in
measuring the effectiveness of allocating functional authority of Quality Control to the design and
marketing teams. Standardized software such as Microsoft Excel and a SQL Database will be utilized
to query results.

Resources Available
ISO
VOXCO
InfinityQS
SQL Database
Microsoft Excel

Conclusion

South Texas Boot Co. has developed a new insole that allows air to go into the toe
and heel area for comfort and control foot odor. But there has been issues with quality and
design for not performing as advertise so managers of the design team and marketing
specialist worked into modifying the issues in order to restore customer satisfaction on the
quality of our product. After research and analyzing data collection with telephone survey on
customers helped the company restore the quality and design of the companys boot. In
given the marketing and design Team Functional authority was a great success since it had a
positive impact on South Texas Boot Co. because it brought great sales and our existing
customers stayed loyal and new customers loved the quality and the new design.

Potential Impact for management and organizational leadership:

With this change and study, our management will know what kind of authority to give
the individual departments. Giving them functional authority allows them to reject suggested
management decisions and create their plan based on what they feel is right in their
particular field. For marketing they will be to get the word out based on what they have seen
has worked in the past. Design could make changes to design or how the items are
inspected weather upper management knows or not. Therefore, the organizational
leadership will either see an increase in overall value in the boots based on how they were
advertised and built, or they might need to change the decision they made. If giving
functional authority to the departments didnt help in the quality control are then the decision
was not the right one to make.

Timeline:
Week one: Identify target audience, delegate tasks, and schedule VOXCO testing and
surveys.
Week two: Conduct randomized testing survey
Week three: Collect data from survey
Week four: Analyze data
Week five: Compare data to our literature review
Week six: Decide action to take based on data results
Week seven: Take action, present it to leaders who can make the changes

References

Clute, M. (2009). Food industry quality control systems. Boca Raton, FL: CRC
Press.

McKee, A. (2014). The Leadership Imperative: It's up to you. In Management: A

focus on leaders (2nd ed.,). Boston: Pearson.

Voxco Multi-mode One survey software system. Many channels. (n.d.). Retrieved
October 6, 2015. http://www.voxco.com/survey-software/multimode-data-collectionplatform/

ProFicient Features. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2015.

http://www.infinityqs.com/software/proficient-features

ISO 9001 Consultant. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2015.

http://www.iso9001consultant.com.au/9001_nutshell.html
Certification:
http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards/certification.htm