Changing Organizational Culture - Case Study Example

TOPIC: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR TITLE: THE EFFECTS OF CULTURE CHANGE IN A MODERN ORGANIZATION SETUP. STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER: FUCULTY: CLASS: TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 1.0 THE EFFECTS OF CULTURE CHANGE IN A MODERN ORGANIZATION SET-UP 2 1.1 INTRODUCTION 2 2.0 PASHA FASHION INC. UNDER THE OWNERSHIP OF ISOBELLA MANCHINI 2 3.0 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR 3 4.0 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE 4 5.0 PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF PASHA FASHION INC. 4 5.1 ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP 4 5.2 JOB SATISFACTION 5 5.3 TURNOVER 6 5.4 PRODUCTIVITY 7 5.5 ABSENTEEISM 8 6.0 THE COMPANY UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF ALICE BENNET 8 7.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMMENDATIONS 9 8.0 REFERENCES 9 8.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY 10 1.0 THE EFFECTS OF CULTURE CHANGE IN A MODERN ORGANIZATION SETUP: 1.1 INTRODUCTION: Pasha Fashion Incorporation is a business entity specializing in cloth line fashion and design. It was established eight years ago by Isobella Manchini after her parents emigrated from Italy when she was still young. She started the business from scratch as its sole proprietor and multitasked herself as the owner, designer manufacture and a marketer after working for five years in the fashion industry in Australia. Pasha Fashion Inc. targeted the mature women market and specialized in creating elegant day-wear for women between the age bracket of thirty to forty years unlike the common trend in Australia which concentrated in only shorts and singlets. She employed designers of remarkable portfolio which took the business’ sales a notch higher. As a leader, she employed a good working culture in her business which saw her employees enjoying their work. The employees were rewarded for their hard work and they enjoyed flexible working conditions with their employer working side by side with them. The business was doing well under her leadership until when she decided to go back to her country of origin and that is the point when things started getting worse for the company. 2.0 PASHA FASHION INC. UNDER THE OWNERSHIP OF ISOBELLA MANCHINI: The indicator of the management behaviour is always the company values and the employee behaviour coincided and reflected on those values which are both real and affirmed values (Larry and Bob, 2003). Isobella did achieve the trust of her employees because she developed congruence between her herself and the employees and also fulfilled her deeds and what she said to them. She created a culture where her employees could act with integrity and speak their minds. This is seen where she allocates a certain time for her employees to allow them balance between their job and private lives. In terms of Organizational culture, Isobella Manchini invested so much in the Organization values and beliefs that made the company a success. She managed to do this by allowing and adopting honest discussions and healthy debate, communicating straightforwardly, respecting them and openly to her employees and listen to their concerns. We can evidently see these organization real values by observing the Pashas business, management behaviour trends, especially in times of crisis. She gave her employees good and flexible working conditions and was their when they needed her assistance. She rewarded them for their job achievement and hard work. The employees were also very loyal and turnover was in no doubt doing well. This also made the employees to work more effectively and efficiently, maintaining punctuality and increasing company revenue. 3.0 ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR Organization structure is referred to as the field of study which examines the impacts imposed by behavior of group dynamics, individuals and structure within the organization settings with the aim of improving the organization effectiveness by applying such skills and knowledge. Organization structure consists of three major determinants factors namely, 1) Structure 2) individuals and 3) Groups The importance of Organizational Behavior is reflected whenever people of varied cultural values and backgrounds efficiently and effectively work together. 4.0 ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational values, beliefs, and norms that have been developed over time, emergent and unplanned are known as Organizational culture. The ways of the operations of an organization can be greatly influenced by its culture’s impact on it. The culture of an organization is the means to its survival and its interventions are infamous to for its duration and difficulty. Moreover, if the culture alteration is considered, it should not be an obstacle for it to embark on the process of change. The organization culture is multi-faceted, complex and imprecise, intangible and changes with time. Different organizational systems and structures are reflected in different cultures. Structures and systems are suitable to the business culture and different organizations structures are favored by different people depending on their inspirations and characters. Organizations do often combine a collection of cultures inclusive of sub-cultures and other traits of dominant cultures. At times, a clash of cultures does arise in an organization, but then a range of cultures are mostly welcomed, appropriate and necessary (David and Richard, 2008). 5.0 THE PERFORMANCE INDICATORS OF PASHA FASHION INC.: 5.1 ORGANIZATIONAL CITIZENSHIP In the case of Pasha Inc. business situation, we can see that the Organizational Citizen Behaviour existed from the top management. This is well illustrated in the case where, we are briefed that Ms Isobella is not a citizen of Australia but came emigrated from Italy. The concept of citizenship behaviour takes its toll from beyond what is expected when she introduces a different fashion style in the fashion industry which she introduces the stylish modern-day wear as opposed to the traditional shorts and singlet’s which was more familiar to the Australian women. This concept is developed and includes the extra role behaviours which contrasts with the Australian traditional views in terms of fashion, and which we can refer to as task performance measures of cognitive abilities are always closely associated with task performance while personal ability measures are good at predicting the OCB performance (Frank and Jaffrey, 2010). This change goes well with the locals and they embrace the new idea in their country’s fashion industry. OCB responds more to the existing conditions that are assertive (proactive) behaviour which aims at changing conditions. We can associate adaptive performance to Pasha Inc. because we see that that the locals adapt to her fashion policies in terms of fashion change. But the company operations are eventually reversed by the new C.E.O, who is Alice when she reverses the fashion trends back to the Australian style, by re-introducing the shorts and singlet’s fashion styles previously ignored by Isobella. 5.2 JOB SATISFACTION Job satisfaction is the positive emotional well being in an individual as a result of his/her good job experiences and comfort. Job satisfaction goes hand in hand with organizational commitment. The job outcome also normally depends with employee attitudes towards their job. And therefore job satisfaction tends to be the key attitude related to the behaviours of the employees and their job performance turnover (Peter and John, 2004). The general attitude of the employees suddenly changes the company’s production impact due to the new policies and rules introduced in the company by Alice as the employee’s changes their attitudes towards their job. They also feel that their job security is threatened under the leadership of Alice. During the leadership of Isobella, job satisfaction is very evident among her employees as compared to the leadership of Alice as the company’s manager. The employees are seen to be more satisfied with their job because they feel more comfortable with the organizational values practiced by Isobella. Isobella offered to assist and work side by side of her employees, gave them a free atmosphere to express their feelings and suggestions and also offers them flexible working conditions before Alice comes along and changes the Company’s organizational culture. This is made evident where the newly appointed assistant secretary to Alice disagrees with her colleagues on what time they should hold office meetings because it was going contrary of their organizational culture behaviour as they used to before when they were under the leadership of Isobella. Some of the employees also threaten to resign as they don’t totally feel comfortable with the new management in place. 5.3 TURN OVER It is evident that employee turnover is capable of hurting entire productivity of an organization. This is always a result of symptoms of other troubles experienced by the employees. Turnover in organizational operations normally affects its normal successful operations. In the case of Pasha Inc. business, its turnover will be affected in the long run when its current employees decide to resign and also after the retrenchment which was one of the Alice’s suggestions to streamline and reduce the organization’s operation costs according to her. The company’s turnover will be hurt in the case where she will be required to train the new employees that she will be introducing in the company because she will be required of her to spend the company’s money to perform that. The interruptions of hiring and firing of the employees will also interfere with the normal company business as usual because there will a lot of business interruptions instead of business normal operations. This will hurt the company’s turnover earnings with time. The other issue is that the employees became reluctant, stressed up, ambivalence with their jobs because of the new management and the introduction of new policies. The employee turnover will also be experienced when the employees suddenly becomes meaningless to the business (Marc, 2007). Staff turnover will eventually befall Pashas Fashion business when she eventually make good of sacking the existing experienced employees. 5.4 PRODUCTIVITY The aim of any existing organization is to achieve productivity (Delta Publishing, 2006). Pasha Due to the poor organizational culture brought about by Alice, the company’s productivity will certainly deteriorate due to: Staff and management relationship deterioration and lack of management protection Lack of staff motivation Sudden change of culture policies without gradually familiarizing the staff Jobs accountability and control are not being accorded to the staff as they are they are not given the opportunity to control them. Staff not accorded authority of setting their own goals, participating in decisions and evaluating their group performance. 5.5 ABSENTEEISM Absenteeism is one of the various counterproductive behaviours experienced in the organizations (Frank and Jaffrey, 2010). It is the habit of being absent from your duties. The kind of absenteeism which will be experienced at Pasha Fashion will be involuntary absenteeism. This is because it never existed during the leadership of Isobella and it will now be experienced because the staff have now developed weak relations with the present management and developed a work attitude at the work place. They no longer have job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The absenteeism will also come up as a result of breach of the previous contract between the staff and Isobella in terms of organizational culture, and also as a result of low morale implanted by the same actions. Absenteeism will eventually hurt the production progress of Pasha Inc. 6.0 THE COMPANY UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF ALICE BENNET: When Alice took over the company from Isobella Manchini, she never maintained the organizational values. Several years down the line, the business took a downturn and Alice started complaining that the business was facing hard times and she needed to cut down on the operational costs. One of the parts of her plans was to lay off some of her employees whom she feels were giving her a hard time with her new policies that she had introduced as the new C.E.O. of the fashion clothing line. This made them aware that their loyalty and hard work meant nothing in terms of job security. The layoff of her four employees among other policies which she introduced resulted in souring the workers morale and tumbling productivity, and not surprisingly within no time the talented employees like Delia who was her Chief designer decided to tender her resignation later to join the employee exodus. Unlike her predecessor’s practice of company values, she decided to practice the opposite. She did this by putting profits before the employees (Larry and Bob, 2003). 7.0 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Under normal circumstances, culture change is supposed to be inculcated to provide a safe environment to promote creative staff in the useful field jobs. But in the case of Pasha Fashion Inc. things took a new toll when a new owner was introduced and the core high performing organizational values which consist of respect, trust and commitment were compromised. Since Alice felt dissatisfied with existing culture she inherited from her antecedent, she should have carried out an existing culture assessment and followed the right organizational culture change process and understand it without hurting the company productivity. This could have helped her to change the culture and structure process of the company. Then she could have performed a restructuring exercise which could have seen the organizational structure change from functional to client basis. This could have enabled the staff to clearly define their roles and enable them to embark on the combination of various duties and responsibilities and reduce their perceived sense of work insecurity. It could have also made them assume more decision making roles, cope well with their jobs and feel more in control and thus increasing the company’s productivity, bringing out the skills and making them more functional (Marc, 2007). 8.0 REFERENCES 1. Delta Publishing Company 2006, Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior, Delta Publishing Company, USA: Available at URL: http://www.apexcpe.com/publications/471001.pdf 9.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Larry, J. and Bob P. 2003 Absolute Honesty: Building Corporate culture that Values Straight Talk and Rewards Integrity, Larry Johnson and Bob Philips: USA. 2. David, B. and Richard J. B. 2008 Power, Politics, and Organizational Change, 2nd Edition. SAGE Publications L.T.D: London. 3. Frank, J. and Jaffrey M. 2010 Work in the 21st Century: An introduction to industrial and Organizational Psychology. 3rd Edition. Blackwell Publishing L.T.D 4. Marc, J. 2007 Changing Organizational Culture: the change agent’s guidebook, John Wiley & Sons Ltd. West Sussex: England. Read More