The study of behavior through organisational behavior

Organisational behaviour is actually the study of the behaviour of people working in an organisation. In other word we can say that it is the study and understanding of individual and group behaviour and patterns of structure in order to help in raising organisational successfulness, performance and effectiveness. It is also express as the study and application of knowledge about how people, individuals and groups act in work organisation. There is a close relationship between organisational behaviour and management. We are surrounded by organisations everywhere like where we study ,do our activities, do jobs, we use them in any sense mode of communication, etc. We use thousands of organisations on regular intervals. So we can understand how organisations influenced our daily life and how much they are important. It plays a vital role in the lives of us. It is important to know how organisation function and how they exercise to the behaviour of people. It is much more significant to know interrelationship with other variables that together form the whole organisation. The behaviour of people in work organisation is being watched in terms of multi related figures concerning the individual, the group, the organisation and the environment. Achieving the effectiveness or success of an organisation is not an easy task . it can be achieved through the process of management, efforts of members of the organisation, co-ordination and organisational objectives. Relationship between the organisation and the individual is the psychological contract. The nature of expectations has an influence on the relationship between employment and behaviour in work organisation. Now a time a major challenges faces by managers is due to an increasingly global business environment. This increases the need for cross cultural approach to the study of organisational behaviour and the management of people. Because of increasingly international context, managers need to understand the impact of national culture. The management of organisation is not totally dependent on internal factors but it is also influenced by external and environmental factors. For an effective performance of work organisation, it has to respond to challenges, opportunities and limitations presented by external environment. Organisational behaviour is the concept to improve the overall productivity of an organisation by the process of explaining, predicting, maintaining, understanding and changing human behaviour.

“Management is a pivotal importance of modern society. It is for this reason that, no matter what thinking about management, certainly at university level, is of great relevance to management practice. So apart from the question of whether management claim that it is indispensable is really valid or not, the fact that practically every one believes it is , is what counts”. {Mullin (2008)}.

The 7s Models of McKinsey

Strategy: the plan made to maintain and build competitive advantage over the competition.

Structure: the way the organisation is structured and who reports to whom.

Systems: the daily activities and procedures that staff members engage in to get the job done.

Shared Values: called “super ordinate goals” when the model was first developed, these are the core values of the company that are evidenced in the corporate culture and the general work ethic.

Style: the style of leadership adopted.

Staff: the employees and their general capabilities.

Skills: the actual skills and competencies of the employees working for the company.

Start with your Shared Values: Are they consistent with your structure, strategy, and systems? If not, what needs to change?

How well does each one support the others? Identify where changes need to be made.

Do they support one another? If not, what needs to change?

As you adjust and align the elements, you’ll need to use an iterative (and often time consuming) process of making adjustments, and then re-analyzing how that impacts other elements and their alignment. The end result of better performance will be worth it.

The McKinsey 7Ss model is one that can be applied to almost any organizational or team effectiveness issue. If something within your organization or team isn’t working, chances are there is inconsistency between some of the elements identified by this classic model. Once these inconsistencies are revealed, you can work to align the internal elements to make sure they are all contributing to the shared goals and values.

The process of analyzing where you are right now in terms of these elements is worthwhile in and of itself. But by taking this analysis to the next level and determining the ultimate state for each of the factors, you can really move your organization or team forward.

In Search of Excellence – the eight themes

A bias for action, active decision making – ‘getting on with it’.

Close to the customer – learning from the people served by the business.

Autonomy and entrepreneurship – fostering innovation and nurturing ‘champions’.

Productivity through people – treating rank and file employees as a source of quality.

Hands-on, value-driven – management philosophy that guides everyday practice – management showing its commitment.

Stick to the knitting – stay with the business that you know.

Simple form, lean staff – some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff.

Simultaneous loose-tight properties – autonomy in shop-floor activities plus centralised values.

Peter and Waterman identified customer satisfaction as one of the important attribute for successful growth of an organization. They suggests organizations should go close to listen and learn from people they serve. Try to provide reliable and quality service. {Mullin (2008)}.

Management and leadership are two sides of a coin. Leadership is related to motivation, communication and interpersonal behavior. It influences both individual and organizational performance. Leadership in Management comprises of four basic principles namely commitment, planning, action and evaluation{Mullin (2008)}.

Kotter says that successful companies do not wait for leaders to join them. They recruit and select people with leadership potential and train them to develop managerial skills{Mullin (2008)}.

However, the style and approach adopted by Foxconn Technology highlight different dimensions and is still successful.

Being one of the largest electronics manufacturing services organization in the world , established in 1974 at Taipei, China has 25 factories in 13 countries with 700,000 employees world wide. The organization provides one stop solution from design and manufacturing to logistic, to repair and maintenance. The five key principles of the business model include, speed, quality, technology, flexibility and cost efficiency, which has proven Foxconn sustainability. The eight “C” core competence include, computers, telecommunication, consumer electronics, channel business, car, digital contents, health care, CSER Investment.

The principles of corporate governance values in partnership with customers, suppliers, shareholders and community. It has board of directors , who represent the individual company unit from different countries and two independent directors and Chief Executive Officer. ( Foxconn 2009).

The company uses military style . Security guards beat and shout at workers. The lower rank workers are unhappy with management. The labor union is not efficient and effective . They do silly things jobs like booking tickets and are not bothered about rights of workers. Some workers are frustrated because payments are deducted with unfair reasons. Some workers work overtime up to 120 hrs in order to earn a decent living. Foxconn lost 150000 workers in past three months. Employees don’t get opportunity to socialize due to over crowding at work place. In a interview with “Richest chines” Magazine, the company’s chief Terry Gou says, he personally works 15 hours a day and expects all of his employees to work as hard as him. The CEO, Gou exhibit extremes of severity and kindness. To quote a example, in a meeting he got disappointed on hearing a unsatisfactory answer from a executive and made him to stand for 10 minutes. At the same time Mr. Gou rewards his employees by paying executive bonuses out of his own pocket. ( Global Times 2010).

Recently the Foxconn global high tech industry was in news due to suicides of 13 workers. The reason behind could be extreme pressure. The death of Chao hiung raised doubt of foul play as his body was discovered with four stab wounds .Does he really committed suicide or was beaten by security guards has created an atmosphere of threat amongst workers.( POC 2010).

The leadership at Foxconn appears to be autocratic and shows transactional approach. The said approach state that authority is concentrated and centralized with leader. He is sole decision maker and derives policies and the way the task has to be done. The system of reward and punishment is place. Such leadership is unlikely to work in the modern democratic world.

Rajan points out that leadership styles are needed to cope with different situations. Goleman reports that most effective executives use a collection of distinct leadership styles, each in the right measure at just the right time {Mullin (2008)}.

Management is an art which has scientific base and needs to be practiced in a magical and artistic way keeping in mind the politics around. The view has been supported in the research work. {Mullin (2008)}.

The Citigroup Inc. is a major global financial services company based in New York and employees 260, 000 staff around the world. Due to financial industry developments and competitive issues led to massive changes and re-organization at Citigroup leading to mergers and acquisitions. There were 25% lay-of in Information system division and remaining employees were reorganized into a focus work team structure in an effort to keep high performance level ( Innerwork 2010).

However it was observed that morale in remaining employees “survivors” was very low. Employees had very poor trust level with management, fear and uncertainty, lack of communication, poor level of team work, finger pointing, blame fixing, disorganized approach to service the business unit customers ( Innerwork 2010).

Realizing the important facts, the Citi group partnered with a consultancy company ” Inner work” to rebuild morale, productivity and customer focus. Inner work company came out with a number of solutions comprising of encouraging department to organize small leadership team, then developed integrated curriculum of self change, Team change, monthly lessons on site to for deep learning ( Innerwork 2010).

Results were encouraging at the end of six month training program showing 76% increase in trust level, 32.85% increase in various measure of team effectiveness, 48% increase in open and honest communication, 75% increase in personal power/ability to respond to change, 68% increase in personal emotional mastery, 65% reduction in stress, 75% increase in commitment to the organization. There behavioral change led to 75% reduction in cycle time for software development, 33-50% increase in work team productivity ( Innerwork 2010).

The intervention made by Citigroup is theoretically supported by the ” productivity through people”. {Mullin (2008)}.

The Foxconn and citigroup case studies attract attention to these two important attributes namely trust and communication required for performance. Citigroups timely intervention in the form training proved beneficial to gather trust between employees and management. The Foxconn need to put attention on transparency in communication and use policies for safety at work place and work hour limitation to avoid stress. Counseling of employees will go long way in transforming the attitude.

Considering observations from Foxconn, Citigroup studies and reading various research articles and conclusion drawn by them, the role of human resource management has important role to successful performance of work organization..

The strategic use of human resources will help managers to get true values by optimally using competencies of people. The traditional view of looking at HRM ( Human Resource Management) as a department for planning human resources, recruitment, selection, induction, training, consultation with unions, development of employees, compliance to law requirements, record keeping, statistics, lessoning with government department is all set to change {Mullin (2008)}.

Companies today face five critical challenges, like globalization, profitability, technology, retaining intellectual capital and the change coming over in the new millennium.

The practice of HRM is getting affected by cultural diversity due to globalization, which necessitates to derive common culture and policies, which can suit changes in structure and strategies can be implemented globally.

The major area of relevance to effective performance remain training and development. The basic role of a manager is to direct, develop, encourage and train subordinate people. This can help to improve knowledge, skills and change in attitude.

But mind all line managers are their own human resource managers and the HRM function is a shared responsibility among top management, line managers and supervisors. The crucial activity of HRM is to judge performance of people, which can help top management to make key managerial decisions relating to allocation of duties and responsibilities, pay, empowerment and levels of supervision, promotion, training and development and career progression.

However it is equally necessary to have performance management system in place with regular monitoring and feed back. The formulation of system which include qualitative or quantitative measures , frequency of monitoring and method of feed back like 360degree or upward feed back need to be discussed with the line mangers , supervisors and top management.

Observations drawn from the Foxconn is just efficient but not effective. And the Citigroup case study where in emphasis was led on training indicate the HRM activities do help Organization to perform effectively.

Stone from research work has identified six steps for effective management namely,

Senior managers are committed to the process.

Objectives are clear.

Feedback is balance.

Progress is reviewed.

Development plans are included in the process.

Managers have the right skill to support the process.

This supports the discussion made about management and the factors which play critical role in effective performance of an organization.

With changing nature of modern work organizations a survey undertaken by management today draws attention to the changing relationship between organization and individuals. The dispersed teams across multiple location would often work as virtual teams. The greater empowerment will led to shift of responsibility from organization to individuals. And the role of Management and there by manager will be questioned.{Mullin (2008)}.

Factors

Some more factors to determine the effective performance of work organisation are organisational structure, motivation and reward, objectives/goals/missions, values, team working, diversity.

Organisational Structure

Organisations always prefers formal structure that is why organisations manage with responsibilities. They create the formal structure which helps the organisation to achieve their desired goals. and most of the times these formal structures set out on paper in the form of organisational charts.

The organisations which is based on day to day reality they develops informal structure between the members. Informal structure can be different from that which they set out on paper.

In today’s world managers need to learn and work with both formal and informal organisational structures. The flexibility should be there in managers than they can realise that the elements of the informal structure may be formalised. When managers take the elements from informal structures and modified them into formal structures then this may lead to high level of motivation for the staff which is involved in that organisation.

The structure of an organisation not only affects productivity and economic capacity but also the morale and job satisfaction of its members. The overall successfulness of the organisation is influenced by sound structural design and by the behaviour of people working in that organisation. It is so significant to remember relationship between structure and the realities of organisational behaviour.

The organisational structures which supports the retail fashion industry are heavily focused on two main tasks making reliable predictions about design trends and achieving cost reduction in the production process. Unlike other companies who design and order their ranges of clothing in advance, Zara makes only what is selling at the moment. if the designs sells good it increase the production if not then they stop producing it ,the company has not lost much as volume of remaindered items is small.

Motivation And Reward

The motivation is some driving force within individuals by which they do efforts to achieve some objective in order to fulfil their needs or expectations. When people are motivated and rewarded in the organisation than they put extra efforts to achieve their goals. With the motivation and reward policy adopting in an organisation will helps in effecting the successful performance of work organisation.

Mission/Objectives/Goals

Organisation never sets the objectives but people in an organisation sets the objectives. They are established by the people either individually or by the number of individual co-opera tingly. Like a group of senior management agree on certain desired course of action that may then announced as an organisational objective. The setting objectives is an integral part of the process of management and necessary aspect in almost each and every organisation. Objectives can be set out either in general terms or it may be in more specific terms. General objectives are ascertained by the top level of management. Specific objectives are given with in span of general objectives and usually have more cleared areas of applications and time limits. The objectives of an organisations are the reasons behind their existence. The objective is something which an organisation is striving to achieve. Just objectives can be controlled but the clear defined objectives will help in communications and also help in reducing misunderstandings and provide more explained criteria for obtaining work organisation performance.

Organization need to be efficient in doing the right things with utilize the resources in optimum way and should be effective in doing the right things relating to organizational objectives. The output in the form of increased net earnings, delivery of service, good results in focus areas, customer satisfaction, changes adapted according to the demands and expectations of external environment which is ultimately perceived as performance.

Values And Team Work

Task/work is a team based based activity and teams and groups are an important feature of human behaviour and work organisation. Members have to be co-ordinate to carried out the work. Good team work helps in raising the level of morale and work organisation performance. There is a tendency for teams and groups to be used interchangeably. Whereas all teams are groups , it doesn’t essentially follow that all groups are teams. Groups or teams develop their own style of values and norms of behaviour. There are two forms of groups at work one is formal and another is informal. Formal group is the part of the organisation structure . it is deliberately planned and formed by management to do their respective tasks and achieve organisational goals. Informal groups are based on personal relationship and develop irrespective of formal structure. Informal groups are hired to satisfy members psychological and social needs. Groups are created for a number of reasons relating to performance of work and social processes. Individuals can form into teams and groups for a number of reasons relating to both work performance and social processes in both sense formal and informal. The managers main concern is that members in that teams and groups should co-ordinate. The factors that effect team cohesiveness can be considered under the broad headings of membership, environment of work, organisational and team development and maturity. There are potential disadvantages of strong, cohesive teams and the manger should attempt to prevent unconstructive intergroup rivalry. However, intergroup conflict may be deliberately promote as a means of building stronger with in team cohesiveness.

Self-Managed Teams

Organisations are facing hard competition in the global market and are sure to face increasing battles in the future. To position themselves for growth in the coming times, many organizations are making the alteration to an empowered personnel. In an empowering atmosphere, those adjoining to the job are given the duties to make decisions regarding their own work and their own customers. Implementing self-managed teams is a step towards achieving an empowered society. Details the five necessary steps for successful team implementation including: the six-step process for designing teams, adopting team selection systems, addressing new training needs, initiating leadership transitions and changing roles, and rewarding team rather than individual performance. Self-managing teams are also known as self-directing work teams, represent a innovatory approach to the mode work is organised and performed. Instead of organising work based on the traditional Taylor model – reducing a process to individual steps – work becomes restructured around whole processes. There must be interdependence and joint responsibility for outputs if there is to be a self-directed work team. Whereas the traditional system reduces the required skill at every level of work, producing boredom in the bottom-level jobs, the new system integrates the needs of the people with the work to be done and those closest to the jobs help design the job.

In the “RL Wolfe case study: Implementing Self managed Teams” for example, it states how well self created teams are used to create successful organisations and how well it is being implemented throughout the organisation. In 2003 as stated in this case, when RL Wolfe purchased Moon Plastics – a small, family-owned custom plastics manufacturer in Corpus Christi – Amasi (director of production and Engineering at RL Wolfe) had seen an opportunity to implement self-managed teams at the new plant. He had been interested in self created teams for several years, since taking a business school executive education course on workforce motivation and team structures. Amasi had been intrigued by reports of 30% to 40% improvements in productivity and quality for SDT-run units, when compared with traditional manufacturing facilities, and returns on investment more than three times the industry average. Those reports had come from a variety of industries -food and beverage, consumer goods – but Amasi felt he saw evidence that he could use the SDT model to drive high productivity in a plastic pipe manufacturing plant. “High productivity, in his view, was 95% or more of design capacity. Wolfe’s two other plastic pipe manufacturing plants were running at 65%-70% of design capacity.”

Amasi’s first step had been to gain the board of director’s approval to approach the worker union and offer a long-sought concession in health care coverage to clear the path for what became known as the Corpus Christi experiment. The new plant would not be unionized; in contrast to Wolfe’s other two plants. His second step had been to lure 35-year-old Jay Winslow from Wolfe’s top competitor to become plant manager.

Individual Differences and Diversity

Diversity challenges many traditional stereotypes and organisation needs to manage diversity ina manner that benefits the well being of all staff members . one of the most important aspects of managing diversity is that of gender equality and the participation of men and women in the work organisation.

Conclusion and Recommendation

There is multiple of variables which invade on any organisation and which shows the complicated nature of the study of work organisational effectiveness . Organisations needs to be efficient, effective, adaptable and give attention to innovation . One important approach of interdependent organisational variable to organising is McKinsey 7-s framework. Gratton refers six tenets of the democratic leadership organisation in which win-win approach relationship for both the individual and the organisation. The main factor in organisational effectiveness is the successful management of new inventions means innovation and change the concept of the learning organisation. A radical approach to organisational change and restructuring involves a fundamental rethinking of business processes. There is continues demand for managerial development as an internal part of the organisational development . Concentration needs to be given to learning, training, performance review , planning and career progression. Management growth should be seen as a on going process and involves formal programmes of on going professional growth and management accepting responsibility for self growth. There is a wide variety of interconnected individual team, group, organisational and environmental influences on behaviour in work organisation.

Work organisation can be analysed in terms of open systems framework, group work, teamwork and leadership. The role of management ,management style and effectiveness, profile of organisational characteristics, contribution of the human resource management (HRM) function ,key areas of performance and results, design of organisation structure, organisational control systems, planned organisation change, organisational culture and climate. A programme of organisation audit involves a review of the operations of the organisation as whole. In addition to anxiety for the current position of the work organisation, concentration should be given to its future growth and success. The driving force behind the successful 21st century work organisation will be its manpower( we people).

Learning Outcomes:

This assignment really has given me the chance to bring my academic knowledge to practical implementation and thoughts involved in obtaining my views has really broadened my knowledge, skills, horizon and this will further help me in my management career. This report has given me great learning towards organisational behaviour. If in my academic life I will get a chance I will definitely do a deep study in this area either by my some case coursework or dissertation and reading of books in relation to this.