Portfolio Analysis of Bureaucracy and Culture - Essay Example

? 109SAM PORTFOLIO ITEM Bureaucracy Bureaucracy entails an administrative policy where the official gives mandate to their elected representative to make key decision on their behalf. For instance, company owners/shareholders may not have necessary skills and competencies to manage their company affairs and therefore, they may need some officials to represent their interest as well as make some key decisions. Research indicates that bureaucracy is one of the key indicators for a civilized society/ organisation (Flohr, 2010). Some of the merits of democracy include: it act as a tool for ensuring success and efficiency within an organisation. It furthers helps to coordinate different people to work together to achieve a common goals. In addition, bureaucracy helps to define roles that of each person in an organisation should execute. For example, some of the key roles hire include: finance role, managerial roles, human resource roles, accounting roles, legal roles, marketing roles to mention just but a few. In addition, less time is consumed in a bureaucratic structure because there are fewer consultations involved. Bureaucracy provides the top level managers with an opportunity to exercise greater control of organisation decision and strategies this further helps towards proper implementation of organisation decisions. Bureaucratic organisation structure tends to have a clear chain of command as well as define lines of reporting. Other merits of democracy may be observed from the government perspective. For example in case of a country, bureaucracy helps to protect it against external and internal aggression via establishment of central intelligence units and armed forces. In above connection, it helps to sustain a strong economy through the establishment of Export-Import bank, securities as well as protection of public goods (Media and Ingram, 2013). On the contrary, bureaucracy tends to have some disadvantage. Among disadvantages of bureaucracy include; it denies the participants an opportunity to think independently and hence, discouraging creativity and innovativeness. Bureaucracy tends to be so mechanistic and rigid; this discourages adaptability to contemporary market, legal and industrial changes. In addition, in a bureaucratic organisation, employee in lower levels of management tends to be less satisfied with the decisions made by top, management because they are not involved in making those decisions and hence they tend to lack accountability in implementing those decisions. In addition, bureaucratic structures tend to be so much centralized rather than decentralized and hence making it difficult for people with a brilliant ideas to contribute. Bureaucratic organization denies employees morale due to repetitiveness in the nature of task undertaken. This it is rare for employees to shift from one job to the other. Additionally, bureaucracy may not be suitable for a small organisation because it. In a bureaucratic organisation there is usually an aspect of goal displacement as because instead of pursuing overall organisation objectives individuals tend to pursue their own goals and interest (Media and Ingram, 2013). There are various theories of bureaucracy for example, max Weber theory, monopolistic model and the theory of acquisitive. Marx Weber theory of democracy comprises of five characteristics that include: specialization, whereby, employees should be allotted that task that they can do perfectly. The second characteristic involves division of labor; this implies that work should be divided into smaller and manageable task. The third characteristic entails hierarchical whereby, an organisation should have a clear chain of authority where employees can report to one senior. The fourth characteristic entails standardization of operating procedures. This involves explaining employees on how they are suppose to execute the task (Spark notes, 2013). PORTFOLIO ITEM 2: Culture Cultural awareness entails the ability to think not only about ourselves but also about the other people surrounding us within the work place or in any environment. This understanding may involve but not limited to understanding of others values, norms, attitude, believes to mention just but a few. Cultural awareness further involves the ability of remaining open to new global cultural and current ideological values and believes. It simply means understanding how culture may influence people believes, values, assumptions as well as their decisions. Due to globalization and emergence of new technology, it has become essentially vital to understand the cultural diversity that comes with the new technology. In addition to this employees should be aware of organisation policies, behavior and management in order to have cultural awareness. Cultural awareness has numerous importances. Among those importance includes; it helps employees to understand cultural diversity of various communities. This may not only lead to proper communication among employees but it may also lead an increase in productively, profitability as well as proper working relationship among employees. In addition, cultural awareness helps to propagate unity among employees within the organisation because employees feel attached to each other as a result of proper understanding of each other believes and values (Holt and Media, 2013). There are several techniques that can be utilized to create cultural awareness among individuals among those techniques include: listening up, cultural knowledge, putting cultural knowledge into use and overcoming stereotype. Listening up may involve being very attentive and keen when listening to fellow workers, this may involve paying attention to body language and word spoken. In addition, one should show interest and ask questions incase there are any unclear points that need to be clarified. On the aspect of cultural knowledge, entails carrying out a comprehensive research through reading books, researching on the internet as well as using various media platforms to learn about others people culture. The third aspect entails putting cultural knowledge into use. This may involve asking the co-workers to clarify some aspect of the cultural knowledge that one had learned from the various source. The last aspect/techniques that may be utilized to create cultural awareness may involve overcoming stereotype. In order to eliminate the misconception of childhood culture concerning the other members of the society, one may utilize the cultural knowledge learned as discussed above (Holt and Media, 2013). There are other numerous benefits of cultural awareness. For example employees from different cultural diversities bring their idea together. This helps to come up with the most important decision during program planning and implementation. In addition, cultural awareness helps employees to develop mutual trust and respect to one another. In the business side cultural awareness helps an organisation to create business networks both regionally and interjectionally. For example, an automobile company that manufactures vehicles should understand the culture of its local and foreign customers to excel in business. For instance, Chinese consider red color as a symbol of good luck while Japanese take it as a bad omen. Therefore, introducing a red car in Chinese market may create some business while introducing the same in Japan it may lead to losses. Therefore, proper understanding of culture helps to create business. In addition, cultural awareness helps bridges trust and respect among the parties involved (Flohr, 2010). PORTFOLIO ITEM 3: Online reflection Reflection entails the act of looking back on what an individual or an organisation had accomplished and comparing it with the current performance to determine whether there is any progress that has been made. Therefore, one of the most challenging elements for an organisation to manage is the culture. Organisation culture involves entails a pattern of behavior that include but not limited to values, believes, norms, organisation systems, habits, vision and goals. Therefore, managing organisation culture might emerge to be one of the most difficult tasks that management may face. This is because changing people believes and norms that they had acquired over the years may not be an easy task. Therefore, management should design ways in which they can be able to mange organization culture effectively. When implementing any cultural amendments within an organization care should be taken because organisation culture tends to have some serious consequences not only to an individual but also to the entire company. For instance, organisation culture affects the way people interact with each other. In addition, both internal and external business environments should be taken into consideration when instituting any cultural changes (Kavita, 2005). Therefore, a prior evolution should be carried out when implementing cultural change. This evolution should be done in consideration of certain groups such as group interview, surveying customers. In addition, the following guidelines should be adhered to when implementing change. Among those guidelines include: a review of the company vision should be carried out because vision indicates the direction where an organisation is heading to. Secondly, top management should be informed about the ongoing cultural change so that they can support the change because they will tend to feel committed in executing a change that they had been involved in. Thirdly, a model of change should be established so that every party that is involved in cultural change can be in a position to what they are expected to do. The forth guideline involves modification of the organisation. This entails identification of the current rules, policies and procedure so that they can be aligned with the new organisation policies that had been established. The fifth step involves implementing the desired change as well as terminating any deviant behavior. Under this stage employees might be provided with some training that would help them to practice the desired behaviors. Finally, proper evaluation should be executed to determine whether new cultural changes have been successful (Kavita, 2005). Another important element that is most challenging for an organization to manage is the change. Normally, managers find it difficult to implement change because of the fear that they may face resistance from both inside and outside the organisation when executing and implementing change. Middle level employees may further develop some resistance to change as some may fear that they might lose their jobs. For example, if a manager has discovered that employees’ efforts are not properly utilized, they may decide to implement change by creating a policy that would help to eliminate redundancy. In such a situation, employees who perceive that the new policy would affect them might develop some resistance to change. In above connection, some employees may develop resistance to change because they might be required to go back to Universities/colleges to add some new skills. Therefore, this makes it quite difficult to implement and manage change (Jackson, Keenan and Sirkin, 2005). Reference List Flohr, S. (2010). Teaching Literature: Language and Cultural Awareness Using the Example of "Hills Like White Elephants". Mu?nchen: GRIN Verlag GmbH. Holt.M.and Media.D. (2013).Cultural Awareness in the Work Place.Retrieved :< http://smallbusiness.chron.com/culture-awareness-workplace-737.html> On 28th November 2013. Jackson.A. Keenan.P.and Sirkin.L.H. (2005).The Hard Side of Change Management. Retrieved :< http://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-change-management> On 28th November 2013. Kavita, S. (2005). Organizational change and development. S.l.: Excel Books. Media.D. and Ingram D. (2013).what are Advantages and Disadvantages of Bureaucratic Organisation Structures. Retrieved :< http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-bureaucratic-organization-structure-2761.html> on 28th November 2013. Spark notes. (2013).The Bureaucracy: What Is Bureaucracy? Retrieved ;.On 28th November 2013. Read More