Business Organisational Behaviour - Coursework Example

Executive Summary The Team, Leader and Client Surveys were conducted over a spread of 3798 cutting across demographic, social and economic boundaries. The survey report shows some interesting relationship between management practices and their resultant impact on performance and quality and customer satisfaction, governance, human resource development of an organization. These factors invariably affect quality of the product or service, brand and reputation of company, ethics, cost, information flow and communications. We discuss the issues affected by Decision making process of a company. The faster the company makes decisions, the more performance oriented it gets and vice versa. But Decision making process in the contemporary business scenario is more complex than it may seem. Each decision comes fraught with its own challenges, risks and traps. The process needs optimization.. Empowerment of employees to make decisions has its own benefits in perpetuation of company culture, homogenization of ideas, reinforcement of team spirit and ethical governance, and increased social and corporate responsibility. Decision-making Decision making is emerging as a key element that influences corporate strategizing in modern organizational theory and practice. The implications of decision making in an organization when studied intricately reveals that making decisions is not just about choosing a course A or course B in a given situation but impacting the overall environment of a company. Decision-making is a complex, multi-dimensional issue. While people may be sure that they expect authority, they may be less clear about what to do with it. (Gispenc & Rodgers). In this light we can view the results of the Client, Leader and Team survey and see how the results of the survey that show a mediocre rating for decision making rating by clients also have deeper ramifications on the quality of products, transparency practiced in an organization, cost measurement and services of a company. The most important cause and effect of Decision making is information availability. Information is the key input for a decision. It is also a key output. An examination of Decision-making in the Oval reveals the following. Decision making is inside the Oval and is located in the upper right hand quadrant of the Performance-Importance graph. In the Gap Analysis, Decision making falls in the upper right hand quadrant well within the acceptable levels but show a need for its further promotion. It can be seen that other related behaviors like Accountability, Innovation and Management of External Relationships lie close to Decision making in the Oval. Though there is balance between performance of Decision making strategies and importance given to it in corporate governance, but its location in the Oval requires of the strategists to work for its further promotion. Categories scores across different groups show Decision making earn an average of fav % of 73 %. Decision making in Impact on effectiveness has an average fav % of 65%. In the sample response for people being rated Decision making fav % varies between 70 to 75 %. The mean rating for Decision making is 3.4. Though these are fairly impressive figures but the deviation from maximum attainable rating of 5 does gave have a cascading effect on the overall performance and competitiveness of the organizations. Only 48 % of the respondents say that decisions in the organization are transparent. More than half of the respondents either don’t feel the decisions are transparent or are unaware of its current status. What is being reflected in the survey is conservative approach in decision making. Results impacted by Decision making that hover between 50-60% shows that most of the decisions are vested with upper team members. HBS professor Michael Tushman of the Organizational Behavior unit also sees an aware, open, and inquiring senior team as critical to sound decision-making. (Emmons). Communication, the next important parameter is addressed by the respondents with more than 70% of the clients expressing satisfaction at the communication standards but satisfaction climbs down to 60% when asked about feedback generation. The response is again above 60% about addressing of customer grievances and complaints. A fav %of 50% for “Taking time regularly off work” indicates lack of responsibility in the team members. The Gap Analysis shows a big gap in complaint and grievance handling, staff being able to go the extra mile, taking suggestions, responding quickly to requests, being seen to be caring. The ‘willingness to go the extra mile’ (also directly affected by Decision making) is pegged at 64%. In ‘tailoring quality needs the clients give a fav % of 64 % and Innovation has a fav % of 64%. Keeping up-to-date with new ways of doing things is higher at 70%. Information availability, communication, cost transparency, are lower in Public Sector than in private organization thus showing a lack of empowerment and Decision making in the staff of public sector organization than the private companies. After Sales service also shows a scope of improvement with Overall Fav % at 62%. In fact effective and quality after Sales Service for both services and products requires quick Decision making by the staff to redress grievance and give consumer support. The more the staff is empowered the better would be the satisfaction of the client or consumer. In the Gap analysis the Staff and Ethics just lie on the boundary of Oval thus signifying that for staff to improve performance, it needs to be given more participation in Decision making. Communication lies outside the Gap Analysis Oval in the fourth quadrant. This implies that more emphasis is being given to communications yet the results are not up to he desired levels. Communication of Decisions and information for the decisions is important. In fact a sound and instant communication channels aids in flow information thus increasing efficacy of the company. It can be inferred that sound Decision making only comes from empowerment and sound Decisions are the outcomes of strong cognitive skills at the individual level. Werff attributes 80 % of creativity to brain storming sessions that can only take place if all levels of employees are made to feel intrinsic parts of the company. Most of those were not bad news things; to our surprise we found that people were reluctant to voice what they perceived to be good ideas, unless they were extraordinarily confident they would be well-received. And this in a firm that lives and dies by its ideas. (Emmons). More empowered employees also serve to enhance the brand power and reputation of the company. It has been observed that greater Decision making powers lead to more responsibility in the employees of the company and leads to formation of a participative process. Rights and responsibilities reinforce one another. (Gispenc & Rodgers) Decision making increases with more decentralization in the organization. Quick Decision making helps in identifying, and prioritizing of problem solving (Decision making). The lesser the time taken to solve the problem, the better is the functioning of an organization. Effective Decision making empowers all levels of staff. This aids in bringing transparency in the services and backend operations handling of the organization. In fact respondents show an awareness level about the cost calculation of the products and services that hovers around 60%. Since more Decision making powers leads to more transparency, this in turn will give more information to the client on the product, he is investing upon leading, to greater business transparency. The overall fav % for human resource development activity, for service to humanity, social and charitable causes is around 50%. This has direct relationship with the role of Decision making in making an organization a living organism aware of its environmental, and social responsibilities than being a mere being a profit increasing machine. Greater social responsibility further serves to enhance the corporate branding, explore newer markets thus increasing its business. As companies expand into markets outside of their home country, they are experiencing the business benefits associated with community involvement in those markets. (Global Community Investment). Companies with more empowerment and Decision making powers in its employees show a greater social responsibility. Sony Corp. is a classic example of the above ideal. Sonys Someone Needs You program is a global employee volunteer program that includes a wide variety of activities designed to improve the connection between Sony companies and local communities in many countries. By 2003, approximately 11,000 Sony employees participated in activities in 22 countries around the world. (Global Community Investment). Decision making responsibility in the companies may present its own set of problems. In the competitive times, where information is the key to business success not all information can be shared and percolated downwards or horizontally in the company hierarchy. Pilferage of data and theft are increasingly becoming common incidences in flattened organization. An organization that is more encouraging in its approach, for independent decisions, has to face dissensions that may lead to disruption of smooth functioning. If you want good decision-making, contention is essential, Bill Geroge ( quoted by Emmons). Decisions taken autonomously, at a lower level, can also violate company policy and decision. In order to curb such incidents company policies and strategies to be more informed about it. Participation of managers and staff in the decision making can only be effective when they have an in depth knowledge of larger aims and objectives of the company. Conclusion: The Survey Report shows that decision making is being practiced in the private companies. However, there is further scope for improvement. More empowerment will lead to more quality, more team work, better cohesion, cost effectiveness, more customer loyalty and increased reputation of the company. Decision making can be improved by more Human Resource training programmes, better communication, and availability of decisions at key nodes. References Emmons, Gary, Encouraging dissent in decision-making(2007), Working knowledge for business leaders, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5746.html accessed on 12-10-2007 Decision Making, Free management library, http://www.managementhelp.org/prsn_prd/decision.htm accessed on 12-10-2007 Global Community Investment, http://www.indianngos.com/corporate/communityinvestment/globalcommunityinvestment.htm , accessed on 12-10-2007 Problem Solving and Decision Making, study guides and strategies, http://www.studygs.net/problem/index.htm accessed on 12-10-2007 Gispenc & Rodgers, Participation, Decision making and employee ownership (1998), http://www.nceo.org/surveys/documents/participation.pdf accessed on 12-10-2007. Werff, Terry J, (2000), Scenario Based Decision Technique, Global Future Report, http://www.globalfuture.com/scenario1.htm accessed on 12-10-2007 Read More