Boston Red Sox Management Report Essay

The Boston Red Sox are a privately owned organization located in the Kenmore Square part of the city. The team plays at Fenway Park, located at 4 Yawkey Way in Boston. The Red Sox Front Offices are also located at Fenway Park. The park is currently celebrating its one-hundredth year, and is the oldest park in Major League Baseball The organization is tall in structure but is also departmentalized by function within this structure. At the top of this structure are the three owners, John Henry, Larry Lucchino, and Tom Werner. This ownership group purchased the Boston Red Sox for $380 million in 2002 (Ozanian, 2012). John Henry is the Red Sox’ principal owner, while Larry Lucchino serves as the President and CEO, and Tom Werner serves as Chairman. This departmentalization can be seen one level down in the hierarchy of the Boston Red Sox. Under the owners, there are sixteen different departments. These sixteen departments consist of the typical organizational departments such as Marketing, Legal, Human Resources and Information Technology departments, but there are also several environmentally specific departments. These environmentally specific departments include Ticketing, Baseball Operations, Fan services and Entertainment, and Ballpark Operations. The heads of these sixteen departments report directly to the President and CEO, Larry Lucchino. The Boston Red Sox are privately owned and operated, meaning that they are not sold and traded on the stock market and that all funding comes directly from the owners themselves. The Boston Red Sox gain most of their revenue through ticket sales, as they are known for constantly having a full ballpark while having expesive ticket prices. In terms of sport, market, stadium, and brand management, they are valued at $912 million, the second highest valuation of the thirty teams in Major League Baseball (Ozanian, 2012). I spoke with Stephanie Maneikis, the Senior Manager for Fan Services and Entertainment with the Boston Red Sox. She is in charge of a plethora of different activities and people throughout the organization. These include managing Fenway Ambassadors, Yawkey Way Hosts, and Family Room staff, being he main liaison for the players’ wives and families, executing the pre-game ceremonies that take place prior to each game at Fenway Park, and overseeing the Yawkey Way and concourse entertainment. Stephanie told me that she began working for the Red Sox in 2006 as a Fenway Ambassador. She graduated from college in 2007 and after that, spent the next year working in a part-time capacity. During that year, she proved herself worthy of more and more responsibility. During the off-season of 2008, her manager at the time left the team and she was promoted to a full-time position as Coordinator of Fan Services & Entertainment. After a year as coordinator, she was named Manager, and was recently promoted to Senior Manager. Stephanie graduated from college with a Bachelor’s of Arts and her major was history. She told me that everything just sort of happened and fell into place for her. She likes to say she was in the right place at the right time, but she told me that she knows that she has worked extremely hard to get to where she is today. I asked Stephanie about the working atmosphere within the Boston Red Sox organization. She told me that working for the Boston Red Sox is a lesson in what it means to multi-task. There is never a dull moment and at any given time Stephanie could be working on 5 different projects, all of the utmost importance. It can be stressful, but at the end of the day she feels that it’s all worth it. Her co-workers make all the difference in the world and everyone within the organization feels like they are part of one big family. I also spoke with Kellie Holden, an Elon graduate who currently lives in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Kellie told me that she is a 6th grade special education teacher and she is responsible for teaching students who have reading and language based disabilities. We discussed how she got started with this type of work, and Kellie told me that she has always enjoyed working with children and during her senior year of high school she had an experience volunteering in an inclusion classroom with regular and special education students. Ever since that opportunity she knew that she wanted to be a special education teacher. I asked Kellie how she got her job and what jobs and experiences have led her to her present position. She told me that all of the practicum and student teaching experiences that she had at Elon were great on her resume, but they didn’t help her too much with connections back in Massachusetts. She had a few family friends who knew a few people in the town she currently works in. They were able to pass along her resume and get her an interview. Clearly, having connections is important in all fields, not just business. Finally, we discussed whether she finds her job exciting or boring. She informed that everyday at her job is different. She is always teaching new things which keeps it exciting, but her students make her job the most exciting. Working with special education students, nothing is ever simple but they make her smile every day. Lastly, I spoke with Patty Vattes, the Senior Manager of Human Resources with the Boston Red Sox. I asked Patty what makes a successful hire for the Boston Red Sox. She told me that the Red Sox view a successful hire as someone who is hard working, dedicated, innovative and willing to go the extra mile. Next we discussed the Red Sox’ approach to hiring and whether promoting from within is an important approach for the organization. She informed me that the Red Sox strive on the success from promoting from within. With almost all positions, the Red Sox look at internal candidates first and Patty told me that they are working on methods to improve that process. Lastly, I asked Patty what mistakes she has observed of unsuccessful candidates seeking to work with the Boston Red Sox. Patty said that an unsuccessful candidate with the Boston Red Sox is one who wants to work for the Boston Red Sox in any capacity and does not have a specific skill set or knowledge of the type of job they’d like to have. She told me that there have been many occasions when someone says they’ll do anything just to work for the Red Sox, and that is never a good statement to make. Clearly, like any business, the Red Sox want people with various skill sets and a not someone who just wants the glamour of working for a Major League Baseball team.