Date

5-23-2025

Department

Graduate School of Business

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (PhD)

Chair

Kimberly Anthony

Keywords

Grievances, Entrepreneurs, Participants, Leaders, Investigation

Disciplines

Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations

Abstract

Grievances are common in work, indicating major impediments to employee performance. Employee grievances lower productivity, motivation, and work happiness, damaging firms. This flexible design qualitative study investigated and improved understanding of entrepreneurs' failure to resolve employee concerns in Los Angeles' small businesses, resulting in lower organizational performance. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants—4 executives and 11 junior staff. A thematic analysis identified eight main themes: Small business employee grievances; reasons for grievances; consequences of grievances; resolving grievances; leaders' responsibilities in handling grievances; leaders' mindsets that hinder or improve grievance management; and how to improve leaders' mindsets. Data from this study had important ramifications. One conclusion is that small business employees face many issues, including excessive workload, inadequate health care/COVID-19 responsiveness, burnout, longer work hours, poor work-life balance, and low pay. This study found that organizational leaders' actions and conduct help solve employee problems. Leaders must find ways to better handle personnel difficulties and their repercussions on the workforce. This study suggests these research directions: More study on leader grievance management training, quantitative research with a bigger sample size, and leader-employee grievance collaboration.

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