Opening a New Restaurant

You and your partners have decided to open a new restaurant in your local community; it will be open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. Each of you is investing $50 000 in the venture and together you have secured a bank loan for $200 000 more to begin operations. You and your partners have little experience in managing a restaurant beyond serving meals or eating in restaurants and you now face the task of deciding how you will manage the restaurant and what your respective roles will be.

1. Decide what your respective managerial roles in the restaurant will be. For example, who will be responsible for the necessary departments and specific activities? Describe in detail your managerial hierarchy.

2. Enumerate all the professional skills that each manager should possess.

3. Think about personal skills of each manager and identify how they correlate with the manager’s position and in what way they could contribute to the success of the restaurant business.

B. Society makes various assumptions about men and women – how each should or should not behave what attributes each should have and so on. Work in groups of six people, divided according gender and prepare the list of stereotypical qualities of boys/men and girls/women, i.e. what society expects them to be like, how they are expected to behave (“typical” characteristics). Compare the characteristics included into the list by the groups of males and females. Use stereotypical qualities, indicated in the following lists:

Women: affectionate, cheerful, placid, childlike, compassionate, flatterable, gentle, gullible, loyal, sensitive to others, softly spoken, sympathetic, understanding, warm, yielding, nurturing, concerned with appearance, nonuser of harsh language, eager to soothe feelings, peacemaker, dependable, dependent, excitable, emotional, unreliable, no good with anything mechanical/technical, cannot cope with pressure, cannot cope with/do not want responsibility, home oriented, family oriented, puts others’ needs first, scatterbrained, nagging, gossipy, unstable, temperamental, weak, irrational, lacking in confidence, inarticulate, maternal, not businesslike, won’t take risks, shy, submissive, easily influenced, go to pieces in times of crisis, modest, live through and for others, self-effacing, powerless.

Men: brave, strong, dependable, confident, ambitious, aggressive, dominant, adventurous, macho, defender, concerned with self-achievement, analytical, willing to take a stand, self-reliant, childish, forceful, competitive, decision maker, self-sufficient, individualistic, defender of beliefs, defender of his own views, leader, confident, capable, technical, tower of strength/protective, stable, athletic, rational, well-adjusted, arrogant, conceited, provider, self-initiated (relationships), vigorous, virile, comfortable describing his own attributes/accomplishments, powerful.

Discuss the following questions:

· What is the difference between how women see themselves and what men think of them and their behaviour?

· Is there the same difference between how men view themselves and what women expect of them and their behaviour?

· Has conforming to the typical feminine role served women well? Why (not)?

· What difficulties does conforming to the typical masculine role present for men?

How do these difficulties affect interpersonal relationship within and between the genders?

Unit 8

BUSINESS RESEARCH AND RESEARCH ETHICS