Organizational Behaviour And Background Of Texchem Group Business Essay

Texchem group of companies is a multinational organization which involves variety industries such as trading, manufacturing and services.

In 1973, Mr. Dato’ Seri Fumihiko Konishi founded the first Texchem as a local merchant in Penang, Malaysia. At the beginning, Texchem only has seven workforces. With the effort of all workforces, it has grown rapidly from a company to a group of companies in these years. The number of employees of Texchem Group around the world included Malaysia is 9097, this shows that Texchem has a very huge workforce.

Today, Texchem Group of Companies has established successful operations as a well-diversified multinational large organization in several countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Passion for excellence in doing everything serves as the main drive of Texchem Group and it has enabled them to grow rapidly in international platform. Furthermore, Texchem has divided their business into five core divisions which are industrial division, packaging division, family care division, food division, and venture division.

Philosophy of Texchem is to identify and capitalize on market opportunities and to respond to such opportunities with top quality products and services that deliver real value. Texchem has working hard over the years to build a good reputation in financial strength, competitiveness, flexibility, speed, responsiveness and management to become an excellent player in the global marketplace.

Retrieved from: http://www.texchemgroup.com/aboutus/history.php

Texchem

Group

Packaging Division

Texchem-Pack Holdings(S) Ltd

Texchem-Pack(M) Bhd

Texchem-Pack(Johor) Sdn Bhd

Texchem-Pack (Thailand) Co., Ltd.

Texchem Engineering Plastic Sdn Bhd

Texchem-Pack(KL) Sdn Bhd

Texchem-Pack(Wuxi) Co., Ltd., China

Texchem-Pack (Vietnam)Co., Ltd

Texchem Polymers Sdn Bhd

Eye Graphic Sdn Bhd

Eye Graphic (Vietnam) Co., Ltd

Sanko Kasei (M) Sdn Bhd

Family Care Division

Fumakilla Malaysia Berhad

Technopia Vietnam Pte Ltd

Technopia (Thailand) Limited

Technopia Singapore Pte Ltd

Myanmar Texcorp Limited

PT Technopia Lever, Indonesia

PT Technopia Jakarta, Indonesia

Texchem Consumers Sdn Bhd

Industrial Division

Texchem Material Sdn Bhd

Texchem Singapore Private Limited

Texchem Material(Thailand) Ltd

Myanmar Texchem Limited

Texchem Malaysia Sdn Berhad

PT. Texchem Indonesia

Texchem Trading (Wuxi)Co.,Ltd.,Chins

Food Division

Texchem Food Sdn Bhd

A.S.K. Andaman Limited

Sea Master Trading Co Sdn Bhd
Ocean Pioneer Food Sdn Bhd

Miraku Sdn Bhd

Myanmar Sea Master Company Limited

Seapack Food Sdn Bhd

Sushi Kin Sdn Bhd

Seapack Italia S.r.l., Italy

Venture Division

Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd

Guardman Security Services Sdn Bhd

Texchem Risk Management Sdn Bhd

TEXCHEM CORPORATION SDN BHD

Today, Texchem Group has grown up to an organization of 38 companies with diversity businesses in Malaysia and other countries. Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd is a subsidiary of Texchem group under Venture Division. Texchem Corporation was founded in 1980. Texchem Corporation helps to ensure high quality standards of corporate management throughout the group by providing corporate planning and support services including human resource, IT consultancy and property management services, financial management, mergers and acquisitions activities.

Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd helps Texchem Group to respond fast to rapid changes of business world by providing a good management information system consists of real time data management and communications throughout Texchem Group with latest technology facilities.

The corporate headquarter of Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd is located at Penang, Malaysia. Meanwhile, Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd’s central region office is located at Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia. We had visited to Texchem Corporation Sdn Bhd’s central region office, Subang Jaya to conduct an interview session with the manager of Human Resources Department, Ms. Rohaya Salim.

Ms. Rohaya has served Texchem for nearly 29 years. She started her employment with Texchem in year 1982 by taking up a position as a clerk, and then she moved slowly from a junior to a senior position. She was promoted as Human Resources Manager in year 2006. For her education background, she owns a certificate in Human Resource Management. The interview session has enhanced our organizational knowledge and wider our view towards the real corporate world, as she had spent her precious time and co-operation in responding our questions. Furthermore, we also learned more about the application of organizational behavior in reality.

FINDINGS, ANALYSIS & SUGGESTED THEORY

Almost in all companies around the world, there will be issues on the performances of employees, including Texchem Corporation. Performances of employees can be categorized into two, performing employees and non-performing employees. Performing employees are those individuals who contribute positive attributes towards organizational performance. While individuals who contribute towards organizational performance with negative attributes are categorized under non-performing employees.

Texchem identifies between performers and non-performers based on a few criteria. The first and most obvious differences between performing employees and non-performing employees are the job satisfaction of employees. Ms. Rohaya had pointed out that most of the non-performing employees in the company are dissatisfy with their jobs. This is caused by their salaries, personality of the employees, conflicts with colleagues, employees’ expectation and so forth. On the other hand, performing employees are those who satisfy with their jobs in the company. They have positive feeling about their jobs. Dissatisfaction of the non-performing employees will lead to low productivity level compared to employees who perform well in their job. When they feel dissatisfy, they are demotivated to do their job in a very passionate way, they oversimplified their job for the sake of doing job without concerning of its quality. Those employees are more concern on their self-interest instead of being a good citizen of company.

In relation to the personality of the employees, the core self-evaluation of employees contribute to the performances of performing and non-performing employees in Texchem. Core self-evaluation is the degree to which people like or dislike themselves. Positive core self-evaluation employees like themselves and see themselves as effective, capable and in control of their environment. So, they will perform better and set more ambitious goals to achieve. While, negative core self-evaluation employees tend to dislike themselves, they will question on their capabilities in doing works and view themselves as powerless over their environment. Eventually, this group of employees brings low end performances to Texchem.

Self-efficacy means an individual’s belief that he or she is capable in performing a task. As compared to non-performing employees, performing employees have higher self-efficacy and more confidence in their ability to succeed in their job or task given by

their supervisors or managers. Those with high self-efficacy also will try hard in mastering their challenges, for example they will challenge themselves to come out with a more high-tech packaging solutions. In addition, individuals with high self-efficacy in Texchem seem to respond to negative feedback in a positive manner. Conversely, those employees who are low in self-efficacy are lack of confidence in their ability to succeed and most likely to lessen their effort when given feedback. For example, when the manager gives feedbacks on their monthly performances, employees with low self-efficacy tend to look themselves down and they rank their capability lower than the actual one.

Moreover, knowledge on the expectation from managers is one of the reasons that cause the difference between performing and non-performing employees. As a manager, they have the responsibility to inform their subordinates about company’s goals, objectives and time frame given. In Texchem, non-performing employees arise due to they aren’t informed clearly by their managers on what they have been expected from the managers. Some employees failed to comprehend message conveyed by their managers. Therefore, their performances fall below the expectations from the management side. This will result in lack of motivation and job interest of those employees. In contrast, those performing employees with the knowledge of the expectation from managers will perform according to the expectations and they know clearly about their direction. With the established goals, employees will look towards the goals and try their best to achieve it.

Furthermore, there are differences in skill level between performing and non-performing employees. Necessary skills are skill needed by employees in performing the tasks given or their respective jobs. In Texchem, the non-performing employees are lack of the necessary skills and hence they cannot complete their job effectively thus lead to unproductive. For example, for those employees who lack of the machinery skills on how to use and control machines to manufacture the products will cause them face difficulties in completing their tasks in an effective and efficient way. As compared to performing employees, they have the necessary skills, so they can complete their job effectively and smoothly.

In term of supervision and communication, it also causes the difference between performing and non-performing employees. From the supervision in Texchem, the managers will evaluate employees’ performances and awards will be given to well-performing employees, so employees tend to perform well and will put more effort in completing their tasks in a very effective way. In contrast, in those departments that have less supervision from managers, the employees will not perform as what they have been expected and create more job loafing. With effective communication among the employees, they will understand and know well what they have to do, they also tend to perform well by referring to the feedback given by their supervisor.

Beyond all the differences between performers and non-performers, there is also a similarity between the performing and non-performing employees which is the contributors of both types of employees. In Texchem, both types of employees can both come from the newbies and old hands. The performing newbies will perform their jobs well due to the jobs are on their interest, while the non-performing newbies will feel that the tasks given not same as what they expected and the working environment is not suitable to them. On the other hand, the performing old hands will perform well in their jobs due to they want to achieve higher level of satisfaction they intended, while the non-performing old hands feel bored in performing the same jobs.

Summary about comparison between performing and non-performing employees as below:

Performing Employees

Differences and Similarity

Non-performing Employees

Satisfied

Job satisfaction

Dissatisfied

High self-efficacy

Self-efficacy

Low self-efficacy

Have the knowledge on the expectation from managers

Knowledge on the expectation from managers

Do not have the knowledge on the expectation from managers

Have the necessary skills

Necessary skills

Lack of necessary skills

More supervision and communication

Supervision and Communication

Lack of supervision and communication

Newbies and old hands

Contributors

Newbies and old hands

Performance of employees is the key concern for the success of an organization. Obviously, performance is interrelated to the level of satisfaction and happiness of employees, so we aren’t able to deny the relationship between them. Productivity of employees increases when they feel happy and satisfy with their job. In order to make sure employees perform well, Texchem has implemented some effective ways to create a ‘happy’ and conducive culture in their sphere of working.

Texchem believes that the main factor which leads to well performing of their employees is their open communication system in company. Company will provide and share as much information as possible to them so that they know what is happening in the company they work with. For example, company will tell their employees about how the company is doing, where it’s making money, where it’s losing money, how its products are doing in the marketplace, what new initiatives are being considered and the reason behind, and how the employee can contribute to these with their best efforts. By doing all these, employees will feel that they are valued and well-appreciated by their managers as well as their company. As a result, this will win their loyalty in return.

Moreover, Texchem has a good participative management which helps to increase employees’ commitment to the company’s success. Employees will share a significant degree of decision-making power with their immediate superiors. This make them feel like they are one of the business partners, not just an employee. Besides, to involve in decision-making process, employees must have the competence and knowledge to make a useful contribution. Thus employees will perform their due diligence so that their ideas can be accepted by company and trusted by other employees. This makes employees have higher self-expectation towards themselves by accepting challenges in a positive way which later lead them to become a performing employee in company.

Furthermore, Texchem’s employees are performing well in the company due to the working environment which company provides to them. Company believes that a good working environment equal to good work. So they will try their best in providing employees with a comfortable work environment and sufficient equipment to optimize their needs during working process. For example, Texchem is fully facilitated with right amount of light, fans and air-conditioners. Texchem will also make sure surrounding area is at the utmost clean and neat. This gives invaluable positive effect on the

efficiency of the employee. Employees feel that they are secure working with this company and therefore produce a higher quality of work. 

With the economy starting to pick up, it has become important for company to make sure that their key talent doesn’t walk out the door. This is because high performing employees always get greater demand than low performing employees. So what Texchem does in order to retain their high performing employees? Performers are the most valuable asset for Texchem. According to the Manager of Human Resources of Texchem, she mentioned that there are several ways which used by company to retain their employees.

Firstly, Texchem will identify a suitable course for employees to attend in order to enhance their qualifications and increase their relevant knowledge in their profession area. For Texchem, performing employees are those who like to learn, to grow, and to improve their marketability. In short, they are those who always seek for opportunities which contribute to their self improvement and personal development in order to build up their individual value. Texchem believes that those courses will give employees more opportunities to learn as many new skills as they are able to enhance their knowledge too. Obviously, this will increase their satisfaction towards company and increase their sense of belonging towards company because company cares for their growth in company and not solely focus on their contribution towards company. This leads to higher level of cooperation in a very positive environment..

Next, high performing employees will be promoted to higher level of career advancement by Texchem. This gives a sense of responsibility and achievement to the employee who receives it. Other than that, it is also creating a sense of competition among employees. Every employee will fight for achieving their target and getting higher status and position in company. Promotion serves as token of appreciation towards their good performances and to ensure that employees will continue serve the company and provides a better service to the customers.

Besides that, material compensation is also one of the ways to retain their employees. The material compensation can be provided in various ways – either as an increment in the salary, a bonus, benefit in kind or a reward given as recognition for the hard work on a particular achievement. In Texchem, employees will be entitled to service award amounting to 1,2,3 & 4 months of salary based on 5, 10, 15 & 20 years of service

they provided in company respectively. However, in order to receive the awards mentioned above, they must achieve at least 325 points based on their last 5 years’ performance appraisal. The points will be given by the superior for each of the employees based on their performance’s evaluation scheme provided by Human Resource Department.

However, it is impossible for every company to have only high performing employees. There must be some employees who contribute to non-performer in the company, including Texchem, there is no exception for all companies around the world. During the interview session with their HR manager, she condemned that the reasons employees do not perform well usually come from employees themselves. Their attitudes, personality and behavior strongly affect their performance in company.

Employees with low emotional intelligence (EI) pose higher chances of becoming non-performers. EI is a person’s ability to be self-aware, detect emotions in others and manage emotional cues and information. Texchem believes that mood and emotion can have big impact on decision making process. When employees feel depressed, they tend to become slower in processing the information and tend to weigh all possible options rather than the most likely ones. Besides, employees in bad mood are less creative than those in good mood. They ended up with produce less ideas and options. Sometimes, those who are weak in EI might influence their colleagues around by spreading the negative moods and emotions around, it brings negative impact to company in various aspects.

Furthermore, understanding an employee’s attitude helps to determine their satisfaction towards job and performance in company. Attitudes are evaluative statements about objects, people, or events either favorable or unfavorable in working place. Texchem claimed that non-performing employees are usually those with low job involvement. They care less about the kind of work they do with and perceive performance level less important to self-worth. These directly increase both their absenteeism and turnover rate.

In additional, non- performing employees don’t know what they need to do or what is expected from them. HR manager of Texchem said that some department supervisors do not direct their ideas or instructions clearly to their employees. Leadership is especially important in multi-team system, in which different teams

coordinate their efforts together to produce a desire outcome. Poor in leadership skill may hinder the supervisor to empower his or her team by delegating responsibility fully to their employees. As a result, employees don’t know what they suppose to do and ended up with a gap between the expectations from both parties which later affects company’s performance.

In the era of globalization, increasing number of client, competitive business environment and demanding work conditions, scoring excellence are the norms of Texchem. The standards set are high and expectations soar in a very fast pace. In these circumstances, non-performing employees can seriously obstruct company’s progress and thus affect company’s image and performance. In team work project they may also end up with problem in loafing around and let other team members complete the project themselves. The following are some steps and practices applied by Texchem to deal with non-performing employees.

First of all, employees who cannot perform their task well are generally given training and mentoring by Texchem. If company feels that an employee will respond positively to monitoring or counseling given, this option allows employees to be more productive without taking negative risks associated with disciplinary action. In addition, if the employee has valuable knowledge or experience, this alternative retains those talents. Meanwhile training will be given to an employee if he or she has been transferred to a new position. This enables him or her to have an opportunity to develop the necessary skills, understand more about Texchem and thus improves his or her performance.

At the same time employees’ job performance will be graded based on the appraisal performance evaluation in Texchem. Evaluation will be conducted from June until December. If employees are graded below expectation, they will be informed about their short comings and are advised to improve within the stipulated period. For example, supervisor and general manager level will be given 6 months to correct their short comings. Immediate superiors will closely monitor and guide their employees accordingly. Reasonable stipulated period is given to show the empathy of Texchem towards the employees.

For employee whose grade fall below expectation graders, there will be no salary increment. If the performance of employees didn’t show any improvement in the period

given, the particular employee will be terminated from Texchem forever. During our conversation with Ms. Rohaya, their Human Resources’ manager, she expressed that asking employees to leave is a complicated process and might negatively affect company’s image if it’s not being handled well. Rumors spread easily if there is no clear explanation and communication from management level to employees. The news of termination also prevents new talent from joining the organization. As a result, Texchem will make sure that their employees are leaving the company with respect and dignity.

Usually Ms. Rohaya will conduct a domestic inquiry session in March with management level review the process and the ground of job termination. A domestic inquiry is an internal hearing held by an employer to ascertain whether an employee is guilty of misconduct. Domestic inquiry is required by Malaysian Labor Law to protect the right of the employees.

According to Ms. Rohaya Salim, some relevant theories are being used in Texchem to serve as various alternatives to change the behavior of non-performing employees. As the problem of non-performing employees solve, the efficiency and the productivity of the employees will be increase and bring benefits to Texchem.

As mentioned in our discussion, unfavorable working environment, dissatisfaction on salary, poor relationship with colleagues and so forth affect the performances of employees. To solve the problem, management should apply the Two-Factor Theory so called motivation-hygiene theory. From the views of this theory, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposites but they are separate constructs. Managers need to eliminate the factors that create job dissatisfaction such as the salary paid, the working environment which are categorized as hygiene factors. It won’t motivate the employees by just looking from hygiene factors, the key motivators that lead to employees satisfaction will be individual or personal growth opportunities, recognition and so forth. Texchem may not only need to fulfill the hygiene factors that will placate those non-performing employees, they need to have those motivators as mentioned to change the behavior of those non-performing employees, at the same time, to retain those performing employees.

In Texchem, some of non-performing employees arise because of not being well-informed by their managers on company’s goal and managers’ expectations. Texchem may implement the Management by Objectives (MBO) program that emphasizes

participation from different level of employees in setting their goals that are tangible, verifiable and measureable. The organization overall objectives are translated into specific objectives for each succeeding level of the organization. With these, MBO can provide individual employees with more specific personal performance objectives and motivate those non-performing employees who aren’t clear about their personal goal and expectations from management level.

Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory also known as social cognitive theory or social learning theory refers to an individual’s belief that he or she is capable of performing a task. Employees with high self-efficacy will be more confident with their ability and respond to negative feedback with increased effort and motivation. To deal with those non-performing employees in Texchem who are low in self-efficacy, managers can increase those non-performing employees’ self-efficacy level by verbal persuasion, arousal, vicarious modeling and enactive mastery. Managers can motivate the employees through verbal conviction while arousal can leads to an energized status that will drive the employees to perform better. For vicarious modeling, non-performing employees that low in self-efficacy will be more confident when seeing someone that similar to them can perform the task better while for enactive mastery, the employees will gain experience with the task completed successfully and it will be more confident for their next attempt since it provides the most authentic evidence of whether one can master what it takes to succeed.

As mentioned in earlier part, Texchem does apply the appraisal performances evaluation. From this point of view, Texchem can adopt the Expectancy Theory that says that the strength of a tendency to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation of a given outcome and its attractiveness. Three relationships of the theory are the effort-performance relationship that saying the probability perceived by the individual that exerting a given amount of effort will lead to performance, the performance-reward relationship that telling the degree to which the individual believes performing at a particular level will lead to the attainment of a desired outcome and the rewards-personal goals relationship emphasizes on the degree to which organizational rewards satisfy an individual’s personal goals or needs and the attractiveness of those potential rewards for the individual. Managers need to convince the employees that their level of effort will lead to a good performance appraisal, and good appraisal will lead to

organizational rewards such as bonuses, salary increment or promotions and so on. As a result those rewards will satisfy their personal’s goals.

For handling old hands that did not perform well due to the boredom towards their job, Texchem can make the effort to redesign their daily job scope to take off their boredom. Job rotation that shifting an employee from one task to another with similar skill requirements will reduce the boredom. The employees that always face with the same operating machine in the manufacturing department will suffer from overroutinization of their work. Since Texchem has lots of division, managers can shifting the employees to new division to experience new job scope. It can also be done by putting them into different projects held by other divisions. All these can increase the motivation of non-performing old hands arise from boredom and help them to gain better understanding on how their works contribute to the organization in a more complete picture.

Mentoring relationship can be used by Texchem to assist those non-performing employees that lack of skills or experiences in carrying out their daily tasks. A mentor usually is a senior employee who sponsors and supports a less-experienced employee by sharing useful information with the younger generation on how to handle their jobs in an effective way. The senior employee or so called mentor can coach the non-performing employees and counsel them on their problems that might lead to their non-perform. With the implementation of mentoring program, Texchem can motivate those non-performing employees by providing guidance from mentor on accomplishing their jobs because they have a coach to refer to.

As Texchem group is a large organization that having a lot of divisions, it’s impossible for Texchem to expect a successful changing behavior of non-performing employees by using only one of the theories suggested above. As time changing, there are lots of different factors or causes that contribute to the rise of non-performing employees. In order to deal with those non-performing employees, Texchem needs to apply different theories as mentioned in different situations. There won’t be a single theory that works perfectly to change and improve the behavior of all non-performing employees. Combination usage of all these different theories mentioned above will be effective and efficient in changing the behavior of all these non-performing employees.

In conclusion, we feel thankful for this opportunity for us to get one step closer to real world and get a better understanding on the application of Organizational Behavior. Besides, this assignment also serves as a good platform for us to approach management level from large organization. We really appreciate the time given by Ms. Rohaya in making our interview session a success even though she was busy with her jobs. What she shared is precious for every one of us. Besides, all information we got from Texchem might help us in shaping ourselves to become a better employee or employer in future.