Critical Perspectives on HRM in Britain - Essay Example

It is neither feasible nor desirable for senior managers to seek to change organisational culture: An assertion only partially true BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE DATE HERE Introduction It has been suggested that senior management of an organisation might face feasibility problems in an effort to change internal organisational culture and that such efforts are undesirable. Organisational culture consists of behaviours of organisational members and the significance that humans assign to these behaviours. Culture consists of shared norms, values and beliefs consisting of a pattern of cohesive behaviours which impact how members of the organisation think, reason and feel and is influential in how organisational members interrelate with one another and with external stakeholders. Research shows that when an organisation is able to achieve a cohesive and unified organisational culture, it improves problem-solving capacity within a firm and leads to enhanced organisational performance (Yilmaz and Ergun 2008). Furthermore, a longitudinal study conducted by Kotter and Heskett (1992) discovered that having a cohesive organisational culture was correlated with a 765 percent improvement of business incomes for the investigated organisations occurring between 1977 and the year 1988. With such evidence of organisational improvement and enhanced problem-solving capacity as a result of developing a cohesive organisational culture, it would appear that it is, indeed, desirable for senior managers to seek to change their organisational cultures if it is determined that existing culture in insufficient for enhancing organisational performance. However, change resistance is commonplace in many organisations in which managers become the victims of illogical and irrational employee responses when organisational members are faced with change (Ford, Ford and D’Amelio 2009). Hence, it might not be feasible to seek change of culture as a result of the intensity of psychological retaliation imparted upon management when attempting to elicit cultural change. Exploring the evidence There appears to be significant evidence that seeking to change organisational culture maintains a variety of benefits for an organisation. O’Donnell (2006) asserts that when an organisation maintains a cohesive culture, culture can facilitate development of innovations that support an organisation’s goals. For many organisations, especially those that operate in saturated competitive markets, the capability of an organisation in achieving many innovative outputs serves as a predictor of competitive advantage and holistic organisational performance. Kalyanaram and Gurumurthy (2008) describe an example of being a first mover in a new market where a firm achieves a new product innovation that is unique and creative to other competitive offerings in the same market. First movers which distribute an innovative product maintain advantages over competition as consumers have a propensity to assess later entrants against the original pioneer, often with unfavourable judgments for the late entrant (Kalyanaram and Gurumurthy). Hence, for an organisation that competes using products as a differentiation tool, the ability of the firm to produce creative product concepts and develop innovative market-displacing products would theoretically desire a collaborative and participative culture that can work collectively to come up with new product ideas on a regular basis. Stover (2004) asserts that in order for true innovation to be developed at an organisation, interaction with others and a collaborative team environment is absolutely critical. Hence, where innovation is a priority to achieve greater revenues and maintain competitive advantages, it would theoretically be desirable to change an existing culture to facilitate more shared values related to collaboration and teamwork. However, Cameron (2006) iterates that not every organisation is capable of achieving this type of cohesive and team-focused culture. Cameron asserts that some organisations have hierarchical and autocratic structures whereby decision-making is top-down and employees are not routinely consulted for their ideas and problem-solving solutions. One such organisation is Boeing, the leading producer of commercial aircraft, which requires substantial controls and sanctions to ensure that employees are meeting performance standards and quality standards related to aircraft output. This and other organisations that require superior worker performance have accustomed their workers to remain focused on efficiency, high productivity, and absolute compliance to regulations with little opportunity to become participative decision-makers in the firm. In such a firm structure, employees become accustomed to strict reporting structures and recurring power distance between subordinates and leaders which shapes behaviours and attitudes of employees. In this type of organisation, if senior managers attempt to alter the hierarchical culture to a clan culture (one that fosters participation and collaboration), there could theoretically be resistance by line managers that have grown accustomed to being the dominant decision-makers who are now requested to collaborate and consult with lower-level employees. Lunenberg (2010) supports this, suggesting that there could be change resistance in such an effort as managers will believe it will erode their autonomous working opportunities and decrease their decision-making authority. Suls, Martin and Wheeler (2002) assert that psychological well-being and self-esteem are improved when an individual makes social comparisons and believes they are better than others. Hence, theoretically, for an organisation where managers have built psychological well-being by being power figures over their subordinates that now suggests a more collaborative-minded culture is necessary to better competitively position the organisation, it is likely that managers will be substantially resistant. From a different perspective, there is a phenomenon recognised in the domain of psychology referred to as confirmation bias. Montier (2002) describes this phenomenon as the propensity of an individual to seek out and pay attention to information that is directly related to their existing values and beliefs whilst completely disregarding information that conflicts with these attitudes. Pohl (2004) supports the validity of this phenomenon, suggesting that humans maintain a tendency to selectively avoid any beliefs or information that is in direct contrast to their own values. Hence, whilst it might be advantageous for senior management to attempt to utilise strategies to instil a new set of norms which transform a hierarchical business to a collaborative culture, it is likely that psychological dynamics will influence rejection of a new leadership ideology in favour of confirming their own values and attitudes related to perceived relevancy of continued power distance. Additionally, Lientz and Rea (2005) assert that fear of change is common in the organisation and highly contagious, a situation where these fears rub off on others and, as a result, creates a culture of fear. It is common that when employees are faced with organisational change, they will maintain irrational beliefs that change could potentially lead to job losses or otherwise affect one’s perception of job security. Montana and Charnov (2008) describe Expectancy Theory, a hypothesis asserting that humans choose to behave in a certain way in relation to the rewards and benefits expected to be received as a direct outcome and remuneration for that behaviour. Consider a firm with an adhocracy culture, one where entrepreneurial behaviours are promoted and employees are applauded for experimenting with new creative ideas (Ahmadi, Salamzadeh, Daraei and Akbari 2012; Cameron and Quinn 2006). In a situation where this firm is acquired by another company, one that demands strict compliance to regulations and imposes heavy managerial controls, senior managers of the acquiring company might attempt to incorporate this entrepreneurial culture (adhocracy) and make it compliant to a top-down, rigid culture emphasising performance achievement through management control and visibility. In such a situation, where employees had become accustomed to creative working and autonomy, it is probable that employees will have strong, negative opinions about being forced to lose their autonomous and entrepreneurial working behaviours and will adopt a behaviour of resistance. Hence, resistance behaviours as a result of self-protectionism could theoretically dominate motivation and willingness to integrate into a hierarchical culture. As a result of this type of change, whilst advantageous to the acquiring company in the aforementioned example in terms of gaining better control over operations and quality, the senior managers would likely have substantial problems changing attitudes, values and beliefs which would complicate manifesting compliance-based behaviours toward adopting a new culture of diminished autonomy and unsupported entrepreneurial activity in employee job roles. Ford, et al. (2008) iterated that when change is enacted and presented to employees, managers become the recipients of irrational emotional responses by those who find a reason to resistant change activities and expectations. With such a dramatic change, moving from an autonomy-supporting culture to a hierarchical, high-control culture, it is probable that inherent psychological responses from employees would be intense in an effort to protect their own interests in an environment that was once highly-supportive of independence and self-sufficiency in their job roles. For many employees, autonomy and sovereignty are considered the most potent motivational influences which are directly related to the extent to which an employee maintains organisational commitment and focus on achieving productive goals (Nauman, Azhar and Nadeem 2010; Langfred and Moye 2004). For many, self-determination is a critical dynamic in the employment environment for enhancing one’s self-esteem (Gagne and Deci 2005). Self-esteem is a critical motivational need which must be fulfilled before an individual can achieve self-actualisation: the pinnacle of one’s achievement capabilities (Weiten and Lloyd 2010). Hence, the de-motivational impact of being forced to work under rigid managerial visibility and control systems as a product of attempted culture change could lead to higher employee turnover rates, decreased productivity, and perhaps even disciplinary problems as a result of continued and recurrent resistance behaviours. Under Expectancy Theory, employees would likely perceive that the only benefits of compliance to change expectations to develop a new cultural mindset would benefit the firm alone, thereby adopting resistance behaviours to ensure a type of self-defence and self-preservation. Furthermore, Palmer, Dunford and Akin (2006) assert that change resistance is common when employees believe that the timing of the new initiative is not appropriate. When an organisation attempts to exert many different changes within a very short time period, it can lead to frustration, burnout and general fatigue which serves as the underpinning for resistance behaviours (Palmer, et al.). When there is substantial disagreement between senior management and employees about the timing of a change or how the change is being handled by management, resistance is often the outcome. Now, it might be advantageous to enact a cultural change in the pursuit of achieving new quality standards, controlling costs and waste, or even promoting more advanced management control systems to guide increased productivity throughout the organisation (as only a handful of relevant examples). However, the strategies and processes involved with enacting such cultural change might not be feasible due to the complexities of human behaviour that conflict compliance attitudes. Not all managers in all organisations are capable of leadership in order to gain followership toward a new cultural-based vision and lack the competencies necessary to motivate and engage employees effectively to accept the new cultural ideology. Leadership is recognised as a set of inherent characteristics that cannot even be effectively taught (De Blonville 2009). To gain the commitment of organisational members to adopt a new cultural vision, it is necessary, in some instances, to role model these behaviours, open lines of communication, utilise internal marketing strategies, and even be empathetic. These are only some of the leadership competencies theoretically required to gain organisational commitment toward a change initiative and in the event of incompetent or under-developed leadership capabilities, it is doubtful that senior management will be successful in this change venture. Literature supports that one strategy of enacting cultural change is to build potent coalitions with internal supporters of a change initiative and gaining support of important social opinion leaders (Cummings 2008). However, building such commitment and alliances requires leadership capabilities which, in the event of under-developed leadership competencies, the feasibility of achieving cultural change could be impossible. To build a new culture, it theoretically requires building a new set of shared mental assumptions and guiding radically new behavioural changes. In the field of social sciences, it is recognised that how an individual perceives reality can be influenced by how a message is framed, the content and intention of a message and the implications of its delivery (Chong and Druckman 2007). For instance, in journalism, many journalists deliver news that is riddled with biased ideologies that shape how the audience perceives the reality of a newsworthy situation. Framing would appear to be relevant to whether cultural change is actually feasible in the organisational context. For instance, some senior managers, in an effort to evoke cultural change acceptance, begin criticising the past state of the organisation as a means of justifying the need for such change (Cummings). Many organisational members have been part of the past culture and put forth considerable efforts when working under the historical cultural structure and ideologies. Hence, the manager framed the message with insinuations of criticism, condemnation and generic denigration which, in turn, could create employee perceptions that the manager is attempting to demoralise the past behaviours and actions that occurred under the previous cultural model. The problem in the aforementioned framing example is that when senior managers attempt to build a believable case for why cultural change is necessary, it is required to point out why the previous cultural ideology is not relevant for achieving a desired, future state for the organisation. It would be difficult to remove some elements of scorn and condemnation to effectively make this case, however the senior manager may not have overtly been attempting to chastise the employees themselves, but only to underscore why previous culture was detrimental to achieving effective organisational results and increased performance. In any event, senior managers, in an effort to build a case to gain commitment to a new culturally-based change, may not have the tools and justifications needed to frame the message differently. Framing and the outcome of language and content utilised in messages could potentially make cultural change infeasible and never achieve intended results related to gaining commitment and followership toward this objective. Furthermore, in an established organisational culture, it is commonplace for there to be an in-group and an out-group. The in-group represents those with shared values, interests, and attitudes that build a coalition of solidarity and exclusivity (Levens, Yzerbyt and Schadron 1994). The out-group are those organisational members that maintain unfavourable characteristics or identities to the in-group, generally leading to discrimination against out-group members that do not share characteristics aligned with those of the dominant in-group. The development of in-group coalitions and out-group membership define the social structure of the organisation in many different types of cultures. One can consider a relevant example of a clan-type culture that promotes a family-like environment and very tight social networks. In this culture, common in such industries as the construction industry, it is common for “clan” members to strive consistently to maintain the existing status quo (Walker 2011). There are going to be those organisational members who are considered part of the out-group and it is likely that employees are going to want to sustain this social disparity. Now, one can consider a senior management-led effort to change the clan culture to a team-based adhocracy culture that facilitates collaboration, equality, and increased team functioning. Members of the organisation that have built their social identities, and gained esteem, through being part of the in-group may very well reject membership entry from previous out-group members of the organisation as contributors to team activities. Not all employees are embracing and accepting of diversity. In the aforementioned in-group versus out-group scenario, it is a relevant probability that could conflict the feasibility of achieving cultural change. O’Brien, Major and Simon (2012) found relevancy of this phenomenon in relation to ethnic disparities. This study found that when Latinos were rejected by Caucasian in-group members, it created attributions of discrimination which were directed toward the in-group organisational members. Whilst contemporary business studies attempt to illustrate the many benefits of organisational members maintaining diversity attitudes, it is unrealistic to believe that problems with ethnic disparity are legitimate phenomenon that occurs in today’s organisations which conflicts team-working and collaboration to some likely dimension. Those within the organisational environment that do not prescribe to the benefits of ethnic inclusion, especially when part of a dominant organisational in-group, could manifest resistance behaviours in an effort to transform from a clan culture to a team-focused, adhocracy culture that promotes inclusion and collaboration. In such a situation, long-standing stereotypes and prejudices against an ethnically-discriminated out-group could seriously undermine senior management efforts to create a change to the culture. Discrimination against out-group members is a legitimate phenomenon, thus likely impacting the potential feasibility of achieving cultural change when these discriminatory attitudes prevail in the in-group subculture of the organisation. In fact, Knight, et al. (1999) found that team performance is reduced when the concentration of diversity increases. Hence, whilst improved team focus and collaboration might be the intended benefit of seeking cultural change and highly desirable, recurring social confrontations, conflict and opposition between ethnically diverse employees could make a legitimate cultural change legitimately unattainable and relatively hopeless. Pelled (1997) found that conflict increased substantially when workgroups teams maintained a high degree of ethnic diversity. Conclusion It would, theoretically, be desirable to seek a change to a new type of organisational culture as cohesion and unification of shared ideas and values can lead to financial performance improvement, the generation of more vital innovative outputs and creativity, and foster better problem-solving capabilities within the organisation. All of these factors could lead to better competitive advantage for an organisation. However, it would appear that the transition from one culture to another maintains substantial problems for a senior manager seeking this endeavour, inclusive of in-group versus out-group conflict, inability of managers to enact viable leadership strategies to gain commitment and followership toward this objective and considerable change resistance at multiple levels. Therefore, despite the many perspectives and theories which illustrate that organisational culture cohesion and unification can be substantially advantageous to an organisation, changing pre-existing mindsets, values, assumptions and beliefs could be severely complicated by the socio-psychological characteristics of employees as well as the fact that leadership needed to gain this commitment cannot be trained and managers must have these inherent leadership traits to successfully accomplish this goal. Hence, this essay concludes that seeking organisational culture change is largely desirable as an initiative for senior management, but the relative feasibility of this effort is not probable due to the complexities of human behaviour that make such an objective unmanageable and impractical. References Ahmadi, S., Salamzadeh, Y., Daraei, M. and Akbari, J. (2012). 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