Organizational Methods - Research Paper Example

Introduction Recruitment is the principal instrument utilized by organizations to catch the attention of skilled individuals. Brief and Weiss (2002) characterized recruitment as about all organizational methods and judgments that have an effect on either the amount, or kinds, of individuals who are enthusiastic and prepared to apply for, or acknowledge, a specified vacancy (p. 429). Even supposing that recruitment is frequently talked about as if it were a single activity, it is essentially a amalgamation of activities that can be influenced separately. Burnes (1996) accounted that there is extensive recognition that recruitment holds numerous stages, although little notice has been granted to the recognition or description of those stages (p. 12). She pointed out that there are three recruitment stages. These stages include the efforts by the organization to extend to the applicant populace to influence a little segment of them to become applicants. Another phase includes the efforts of the company to convince applicants to continue to be engrossed in the organization and to carry on following the job opportunity in anticipation of the organization determining whether to propose to them a position. Another phase is the attempts to influence people to accept job offers. Barber (1998) characterizes these phases as producing applicants, sustaining applicant standing, and controlling job preference. This study will examine what kind of competence does Norrona as a company searching for their new employees. The study will also explore the challenges in meeting the standards and qualifications of each position in the company. The second part of the study will evaluate the challenges of the demands of the candidate’s competence in Norrona. Norrona is a small-medium business that was started by the managers grandfather in 1947. The company distributes catering equipment (range includes, cutlery, china, glassware, tableware, bar products, utensils, fryers, ranges, burners, grills, fridges, ware washing, furniture. At present, they are one of the largest company in Norways, their head office is in Stavenger also have other branches in Oslo, Kristiansand, Harstad and Bodo. The HR concept defined earlier will be related to various HR alternate approaches. One of these approaches is the recruitment and selection of the employees. These approaches are two important human resource activities and typically the first steps done in hiring employees. Usually, the initial operations of an organization are made of informal recruitment and selection processes. However, as the organization becomes more mature, the need for a well-established human resource practice becomes realized. This is where the concept of HRP becomes integrated. Through the HRP, formal recruitment and selection processes have been established and practiced; with this integration, organization are able to attract more suitable applicants for specific jobs. According to Cummings (2001), the introduction of more formal human resource recruitment and selection practices resulted to a more extensive use of private and government employment agencies, referrals as well as newspaper advertisements for offering job opportunities. This turnout was confirmed by more recent researches (Burnes, 1996); this finding was even correlated to the continuous growth of several organizations. For selection procedures, interview was the most common technique used by organizations. However, so as to screen the applicants more effectively with fewer errors, multiple selection techniques had also been employed. Barbeschi (2002) concluded that in both large and small firms, employees are selected through one on one interviews. In addition to this technique, some organizations even use panel interviews and written examinations in selecting employees. I. Since Norrona is one of the biggest companies in Norway, it intends to employ more workers every year. Being one of the companies with the most number of branches, this number is considerably accurate for the operations of Norrona. The company acquires applicants every year to incorporate into their workforce. Normally, interviews are carried out by the line manager to assist in build loyalty and contribute into the decision. The following according to the interview with Frederick Boe, are the qualifications of the employees they are looking for are all based on the skills requirements of each position: In hiring a Seller, Boe is focuses on the applicant’s character and personal qualities. The applicant must be professional, educated; meaning graduated from college and has a work experience. Being sociable and trustworthy is also necessary. They prefer candidates that have experience in the kitchen such as a chef, because these people are knowledgeable in the said industry and would fully understand the needs of their customers and the industry’s lingo. While for the position of a service technician, the person must be a certified apprentice in electron because he will be responsible for the repair of electro mechanical equipment in the company. Like the Sellers, they must also be personable and sociable because they will also talk and assist customers who will come in Norrona for repair. Unlike the Sellers, the positions in the logistics and Warehouse, has no requirements of professional education. The most important qualifications are the possession of initiative, being responsible and organized. Management positions in Norrona like the Paymasters or Accountant, needs to have a formal bachelors degree and masters degree, of course personal qualities are also preferred like the other positions. In the upper management positions which are the leaders in Norrona, needs to have knowledge in theories and experiences in being a leader. Although, Norrona have different positions and different qualifications as stated above for example some positions give importance to education, degree, experience and some focuses on personal qualities. Norrona is still striving to achieve the company’s goals and objectives, through having organizations culture. According to Barbeschi (2002), the process of making an organization is simultaneously the growth and maintenance of relationships among individuals who are working towards a common goal and the actual accomplishment of tasks, individually and collectively. In any organization, there exists a cultural/political dimension (Barbeschi, 2002). It includes rituals and myths, symbols and games. Due to the common behavior, an internal integration within the organization is developed. In a sense, all cultural learning reflects the original values of individuals and their sense of what ought to be as distinct from what is. Some of the most difficult problems arising among diverse workforces occur because groups are unequal in power. Inequality results in stigmatization, prejudice, discrimination, and pressures on less powerful groups to assimilate to the norms of the powerful group. Members of less powerful groups may respond to unjust treatment with resentment and emotional exhaustion (Levy and Merry, 1986). For the organization, these personal reactions can reduce organizational commitment and productivity and, eventually, even increase turnover. As such, power relationships constitute a fundamental issue that diversity initiatives must engage to be effective. The staff of the organization, just like in any organizations exhibits a vast array of cultures, ways of thought, philosophies and approaches to life in general, and to problem-solving in particular. Given this mixture, a very basic, unwritten rule of the staff of the organization is to avoid conflicts. This is achieved by finding common denominators that everyone can agree upon. Often, these solutions will fall short of what is needed. Culture is the inter-subjective aspect of life. It is learnt, much of it at a very young age, and it is reinforced through social pressure. The result is that culture belongs to a whole group, not to its individuals, and we cannot avoid it. It paramountly determines our behavior, at the same time as it gives us an anchoring point, an identity, a social place and a world view. Because of the human need for order and consistency, our basic assumptions about humankind, nature and social activities become patterned into what may be called cultural paradigms (Miles et al, 1995) and these assumptions form a coherent pattern. This pattern or framework is used to structure experience--to give meaning to thoughts and actions. It is transmitted in many ways, including long-standing and often unwritten rules, shared standards and even prejudices. Within this general understanding of what culture means, it can be defined as being slightly different from one situation to another. Another dimension of culture is to clarify how deep-seated its shared qualities are (Kiefer and Stroh, 2004). Values, for instance, can appear or be hidden at various levels of depth. At the conscious level, or close to it, they may appear as behavioral norms. Such norms are written or unwritten rules of the game. Examples of such norms could be: on time in meetings, wearing only dark business suits at work and not sharing information with other groups. At a somewhat deeper level lays the hidden assumptions--the fundamental beliefs behind all decisions and actions that might be non-conscious cornerstones of culture. For example, some assumptions that may be shared among the members of a group or organization are: the future must be planed as much as possible, quantifications of an act to make it more certain, there should be subordinate and superior in this world and cooperation that will improve motivation among the participants People can have many theories about why the culture concept was able to catch their interest so thoroughly at this time; perhaps the time was ripe. Maybe the reason was peoples growing international interest or maybe it was an increase in the interest of human beings. One thing is clear, however: the cultural idea has led people to reevaluate the attributes of organizational success which are not part and parcel of the "orthodox" rationalist paradigm (Ellis and Williams, 1995). Norrona is having some issues and challenges in finding the right competencies among their applicants. Although, some companies believe that interview methods in recruitment is a reliable method, using Curriculum Vitae or resume during the interview give the reader some truth and facts about the applicants, these papers honesty is questionable. On the other hand, the cover letter reflects the candidates’ request and intentions. There are instances that the applicants will create a resume with an objective to just impress the interviewer. They will just say things about themselves that they think the interviewer wants to hear from them. This will exaggerate their enthusiasm. They are blinded by the job offer and compensation that the company can offer. Norrona usually checks how the applicants work and cooperate inside an organization, in order to do this, the company checks on the current or the previous employer. They often ask for some character references, they can a friend or an officemate, although, they don’t accept everything that the references say about the candidate. The applicants would not put people in their character references that will say bad things about them. This just proves that it is really difficult to get the true picture of the applicant. It is very hard to get an honest answer. As mentioned above, do they really want this job, or is it to push their current employer? I have found out that in today’s marked (here in Norway there are abundance of jobs and few qualified candidates), the quality of the seeker/candidate mass is lower. Those who are the best are usually taken very good care of by their current employer. He thinks that one of the solutions is, when you are recruiting it has to be done thoroughly. Norrona hires a recruitment agency that will do comprehensive interviews for them. This agency has a full knowledge of the company’s culture, so they are sure that the agency knows what kind of employee they are looking for. They also do personality test and check all their references. After that point, they come in for an interview at the organization. The person then has 6 months “time of probation” and if everything is ok, he/she will then be employed by the company/organization. Even supposing that each of the three recruitment procedures is significant, attraction activities takes place initially and are the most vital for ensuring recruitment and staffing success. Attraction activities set up the collection of applicants from which new employees will ultimately be selected. If top applicants do not submit an application, an organization has no possibility of employing their services. Therefore, the maximum potential value of a recruiting sequence is permanent the moment the applicant pool is instituted. To review attraction results, the appropriate applicant pool in continuous recruitment methods is all candidates of record at the time of decision making that have not previously been employed, irrespective of their existing position. An option is to regulate the description to only those candidates that submitted an application during some particular period of time. It is similarly important to look into the attraction outcomes of the procedure. It is imperative to weigh up each applicant using the instrument built up by each of the stated company. Norrona have to be created for all applicants in the applicant pool. To assess attraction outcomes in both batch and continuous recruiting, an applicant is any person that submitted an application for a particular post, whether they uphold their applicant status awaiting the hiring decisions takes place or not. Appraisal of applicants can take place at any point subsequent to the applicant entering the applicant pool until screening judgements are created and low marking applicants are sent away. Carrying out evaluations earlier in the procedure allows simultaneous assessment of attraction outcomes. Information from the examination of applicant flows for every post has to be recorded with the intention of making possible evaluations across recruiting occasions and modification of assessment devices. II. Changes According to Huber et al. (1993), change involves difference in how an organization functions, who its members and leaders are, what form it takes, or how it allocates its resources. From the perspective of organizational development, Porras and Robertson (1992) state that change is a set of behavioral science-based theories, values, strategies, and techniques aimed at the planned change of the organizational work setting for the purpose of enhancing individual development and improving organizational performance, through the alteration of organizational members on-the-job behaviors. These past 10-15 years, Norrona has encountered changes in the qualifications they are looking for their candidates because the demands in their organizations, job requirements and responsibilities of each positions change and moreover, there innovative methods of hiring candidates. For example, forklift requirements, certificate of the “driver”. All the electronic and mechanical equipment requires certification of the service technician. There are now stricter rules/laws/requirements to formal education and certification to the position. The offshore industry is one of the initiators/ as well as the government and EU, meaning that the authorities have very strong requirements in accordance to customer/buyer organization competence. Therefore, Norrona has to have more requirements and competence to their employees. Since Norrona has other branches, this shows that the organization is growing, and a growing organization undergoes changes. While, 10-15 years ago, the position of a Seller, sold, delivered and assembled equipments. Now, sellers only sells, there are other persons responsible for delivery and another person does assembling of equipments. According to Boe, it easier to recruit employees nowadays because it is difficult to find a “potato” the term in “everything”/every meal - hence the potato/ a person that can do “everything”- do not know if the word is also used that way in the English language!). Although, Norrona gives emphasis to personal qualities, Boe thinks that they should give more importance to keeping a good environment inside the company since it is growing. Innovation has been defined as the adoption of a new product or process that reflected the application of information technology. Information-technology innovations that required hands-on interaction with a computer-based system through a computer keyboard were examined in this study. Three criteria for selecting these innovations were established in light of the importance of clearly specifying the type of innovation to be sampled, in order to overcome the empirical instability and theoretical confusion arising from research on innovation in complex organizations. The first criterion was that the technological innovations had to have been designed for use by managers and/or professionals. At management levels, adoption of information technology is typically voluntary rather than mandatory. Consequently, certain persons may be needed to promote the introduction and implementation of these technologies. Moreover, to ensure more accurate recall of the innovation process by participants, the second criterion was that the innovation had to have been implemented within the 18 months prior to the study The third criterion was that the innovation had to have represented a significant financial investment to the company. This criterion ensured that the innovation was visible in the organization and had a potentially important impact on managerial work. According to the interview, 10-15 years ago, fax machine is an essential medium of communication. At present, computers, emails, outlook is the commonly used medium. Also 10-15 years ago, computers was not a common knowledge, however, today, employees must have knowledge in using a computer. Furthermore, 10-15 years ago, Norrona is selling electronic gadgets so they need a service technician that has broader skills on computer and electronic area. Conclusion As the discussion above, it is right to conclude that Norrona change together with time. Change is simply unavoidable in the business world. The advent of globalization and information technology taught organizations well that change is necessary. To become stagnant is to deprive the organization of its chances to survive in a harsh, unpredictable and rapidly changing business environment. These are just two examples why organizations have no escape to change, but if one would analyze the two, they have enough intangible important factor within that are essential to the survival of the company. To elaborate, because business turned globalize, competition had become tighter and more difficult. The same thing can be said with the emergence of information technology. It has become a requirement than a luxury and an organization that do not utilize its power risk their operations in terms of mobility, accuracy, and competitiveness. Being competitive means more profit and more profit is good news for the organization. Within those two contexts, employees also require improvement. With a new system implemented, employees must learn to adapt with it, as well as learn basic skills and knowledge associated with the new integrations. Again, changing the skills and capability of the employee for the better is also a means for competitive advantage. Both technical and human aspects of business have no escape for change. Ultimately, there is an abundant of factors that pressures an organization to change. Every new strategic management technique applied, change is present. The word ‘new’ is intertwined with change as people within the organization will experience something and will engage in something that they are not familiar of or not have encountered before. Thus, every change process involves people within the organization. Even if the change focused only on the technical aspect, people are also involved in the change as they are the ones who will use the new technologies acquired for the company. This stresses the importance of managing change. Change management is not the management of the change itself, but of the people involved in the change process. This is needed because resistance goes hand in hand with change. There are also many factors that trigger resistance and these should be pinpointed early by the management and find ways to prevent them Works Cited Barbeschi, M. Organizational culture of the OPCW Secretariat. Disarmament Forum, 4, 46-53, 2002. Brief, A. P. & Weiss, H. M. Organizational behavior: affect in the workplace. Annual Review of Psychology, 2002. Burnes, B. Managing Change, 2nd Ed. New York: Pitman Publishing, 1996. Cummings, T.G. Worley C.G. Essential of Organization Development and Change. Ohio: South-Western College Publishing, 2001. Ellis, T and Williams, D. International Business Strategy Prentice Hall, 1995. Huber GP, Glick WH, eds. Organizational Change and Redesign. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Kiefer, C. E. and Stroh, P A new paradigm for developing organizations. In J. D. Adams (ed.), Transforming work. Alexandria, Virginia: Miles River Press, 2004. Levy, A. and Merry, U. Organizational transformation; Approaches, strategies, theories. 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