Organizational Behavior at Hewlett-Packard Company - Coursework Example

Running Header: Essay Assignment Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Introduction Organizational behavior is a hot area of concern; it is a very important topic for the analysis of the behavior of individuals within an organization context. This discipline is very wide. It also includes sociology, psychology, communication as well as management. Human decision making is a crucial in the running of an organization. In the context of leadership, organization’s leadership is a very vital role played by the Chief executive officers in any given organization. Leadership role is the determinant of the success or failure of an organization. For example the Hewlett-Packard’s (H.P) depended on the Carleton S. (‘Carly’) Fiorina as the Chief executive officer. The role she plays is vital in running of the organization; her failure in this specific position is matter of concern. Fiorina was a good leader who earned herself recognition all over the world; she was very energetic, enthusiastic, charismatic and very aggressive. Though she possessed all these qualities, they at time hindered her effective performance; this is evident as the HP Company struggled instead of rising up as it is a highly reputed organization. There are various reasons which led to these good qualities to become liabilities. One of the major challenges was the leadership style that she portrayed. Fiorina was not keen to advices given to her; she was advised to change her leadership style but adamantly refused (Markoff 2005). Fiorina is said to have spent a lot of her time talking to people and spending very little time within the company. There should be a balance between work and other activities. Her quality of being aggressive and visionary became a burden; as a leader of the company Fiorina was supposed to handle company’s issues the best way possible without over exercising her qualities. A culture of the company is important in the entire process of a company. Fiorina was eager to make changes in the culture of Hewlett-Packard Company. These reduced the motivation of other employees. Motivation is a key to leadership, therefore killing the motivation of the employees led to her failure as the employees felt discouraged. There is a likely hood that Fiorina was exercising a bureaucratic form of leadership. This theory of leadership discourages effective performance of junior employees especially in top bottom approach; this is a leadership style that is practiced in many organizations; killing motivation of workers. Leadership requires clear direction as well as focusing on the goals of a company (Suthinan 2007, p. 143). Organizational behavior mainly focuses on the impact of personality on performance, the motivation of the employees, leadership, organization culture as well as individual perception within an organization. Personality is a component including the emotional, attitudinal and the behavioral pattern of response of individuals mainly at worksites. It is important for a leader to stick to his personal traits and to be flexible in the process of making personal, group or even organizational decisions. The Fiorina’s case does not contradict the importance of having good personalities, though it is not good to have too big personality especially when one is a leader, like in the case of the Fiorina, she is accused of depending too much on her own personality, rather than being considerate on the advices given to her by other employees and the board of the HP Company. Personality is crucial in personal motivation and is based on different traits among them: openness; this shows that a leader is appreciative to new ideas. The other important trait is the great quality of being careful to, showing self-discipline and having an aim of achieving planned behavior rather than just self generated behavior (Suthinan 2007, p.146). Personality also involves extroversion; this is ensuring that there is a tendency to cooperate with other employees within the company. A leader has to agree on the decisions of others; this is the reason why a personal trait is very important. There is no one case where a leader can make decisions on her own and assume everything within the company is alright. Sticking to personality is a benefit to a leader such as the Friorina; it is not that she failed due to lack of personal traits but through mix of many other factors, both external and internal. The success of a company has to rely on all the stakeholders not only on the overall leader. Antagonism is a wrong way of exercising powers from any leader. Following the Friorina’s case whereby she is accused of not following the advices of her other employees, it is quite clear that personality is not a hindrance to appropriate decision making especially when firm decisions have to be made and effected for the betterment of the company. It is very likely that the personality of a leader can be too strong; this happens mostly when a leader is very much willing to accomplish all goals and objectives set for a company. According to Richard and Patricia (2007, p. 421), there is need to have a controlled personality, a balanced personality that does not go beyond ones expectation as this leads to over use of powers bestowed upon a leader of a company. Personality does not require a leader to be over judging, employees and work situations should be viewed and judged accurately to avoid making faulty conclusions; this entirely depends on what a leader perceives to be good and bad rather than strictly depending on the judgment personality that he or she holds. It is easy for a leader to have too strong personalities which make her or him to loose direction or positive focus of a company and especially when praised too much like in the case of Fiorina who had praises over her whenever she was hired to work as the chief executive officer. As indicated by Taylor and Francis (2011, p.27), it is important for a leader to understand the human behavior; why certain people behave in certain ways and understand the importance of working together. By frequent and closer interaction of the leader with other workers, a leader is able to handle each situation and each individual in a more understanding manner. This reduces the chances of over dependence on personal traits. Fiorina is said to have focused mostly on herself rather than the whole company and that this was what led to her failure, in my view that was not the case Fiorina’s success was well known from the previous organizations that she worked for, therefore, other factors such as organizational structure and employee motivation may have been the cause of the pressure for her fail. The failure of Fiorina is not a sign that women cannot handle pressure in their work places neither can it be concluded that aggression and working forcefully works for men only. Women like men are known to handle work stress differently but both manage to over come challenges. Aggressiveness at work paces can be handled well by both male and female employees provided one has the right traits, skill, education and also personality to work for a company. Fiorina had succeeded in various organizations and HP Company is not different. Gender did not play any role in the firing of the chief executive officer. Though Fiorina had taken a personality test before she was hired to work for Hewlett-Packard Company, she failed. Her failure is not a show of how ineffective a personality test is. According to Upinder and Santosh (2006, p.126), personality test has been playing a very function in the society. Questions in the personality test vary from test to test according to the organization one is interested in working for .Personality test provides perceptivity into the brain of the human. Personality test is very important as it provides a way of categorizing the characteristics or personal traits a hiring company might sometimes not be aware of. The categorization is very important to a company as it helps in determining the capability of an employee. A personality test helps in self reflection thus encouraging self awareness; a very important aspect employer seeks when hiring people. In the case of Fiorina the 900 questions personality test was to ensure that the company understood well who Fiorina was; not that she failed to deliver or to withstand aggressiveness in the company. It does not matter if an employee has undertaken a personality test or not, to make a company succeed; personality test is meant just to make a conclusion on the suitability of a person to the position which he or she is being hired to take. Fiorina for example undertook a personality test and after that she was hired as the chief executive officer. Later on her failure cannot be attributed to the personality test. The value placed in the personality test is too much and cannot be watered down by this single case. One of the major values for taking a personality test is that it offers insight into how one reacts to other people. Some people get along better with people while others are prone to clashes and arguments. The importance aspect of personality test is to ascertain these facts before an employer hires an individual. Many jobs require specific characteristics as well as personality types; this is the main reason why a personality test is crucial before a job placement (Organ 2011, p.14). Conclusion Organizational behavior is a very broad field of study, it is very hard to effectively determine each persons behavior within an organization; the main reason being the difference in responses to situations among many employees. Employees also are affected differently to situations within a company. Organizational behavior helps managers and employers to understand, describe as well as modifying individual behavior. There are a lot of studies in the field of organizational behavior and a vast literature which need to be studied by human resources managers especially in the fields like psychology, sociology and politics. Organizational behavior is crucial in running of a company as it enables employers to understand the type of employees they are working with and also the type of employees they are hiring. On the other hand people or leaders must be able to withstand aggressiveness and force at work sites. In most cases the organizational behavior relates to attitudes, perception and values of individuals within an organization. It is therefore important for organizational behavior study to be carried out in all organizations, so as to achieve organizational goals. The case of the failure of Fiorina is an eye opener; it raises many issues regarding the successes and failures of a company; what contributes to failures of able leaders, is that they cannot work under pressure or cannot handle stress at work places. All this lies in regular and effective organizational behavior study of all the employees from top to bottom. The way forward for the success of a company also relies on carrying out personality tests to ensure that companies employ able employees who have a positive attitude towards development. References Markoff, J 2005, ‘When + adds up to minus’, New York Times, 10 February, pp. C1, C7 and La Monica, PR ‘Fiorina out, HP stocksours’, CNN/Money, viewed 10 February Organ, J B 2008, ‘Organizational behavior’, Journal of Organizational behavior, vol.12, no.1, pp. 14-17. Richard,L & Patricia 2007, The leadership Style, Cengage Learning, United Kingdom. Suthinan, P. Organizational behavior: Theories and concepts, Bangkok University Press, United States of America. Taylor & Francis 2011, ‘Introduction to organizational behavior study’, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, vol. 31, no.1, pp. 22-27. Upinder, D & Santosh, D 2006, Study of organizational behaviou, Excel book, New Delhi. Read More