Principles of Organizational Behaviour - Essay Example

?Principles of Organizational behaviour – Prajakta Kanegaonkar It is understood and widely accepted human resource of the organization that drives the place, so it becomes more appropriate to understand how many successful organizations have implemented organizational behaviour concepts to make the work place better. In this essay we are going to understand and consider following concepts at various levels: 1. Individual Level: Work motivation 2. Group Level: Leadership 3. Organizational Level: Organizational culture and climate Individual level – Work Motivation Work motivation is a process to energize employee to the work goal through specific path. It is necessary that every employee realizes his or her contribution in the organization’s work and image. Motivation comes from within the person. Motivational factors could be implanted by the management externally; however the employee has to feel the urge himself. Hence it is a process to create the urge and define the path for him or her. Clarity of goals gives idea to the person what he is striving for. The real challenge for a manager lies in defining the path. If the goal is too difficult, it will give the air of impossibility and is discarded by the employee. On the contrary, if it is too lenient then it loses the attraction of challenge. Apart from this the manager needs to have a clear idea about the role every individual plays in the team to align his goals with those of team. A well-defined job description gives a clear idea of specific job roles, responsibilities. Group level – Leadership Leadership in an organization comes at various levels. It starts at one to one level, progresses to team level and then assumes the overall macro level of leading the organization. All the three aspects contribute to an employee’s growth in an organization. Appropriate leadership at appropriate level benefits not only the team but also the development of the organization as well. For ex: at the individual level, a guiding but firm hand gets the work done from people, and this could be an informal leadership. The team leadership could demand a certain output from the team while being a facilitator for the required inputs. Macro leadership merges all the leaderships. Macro leadership provides direction with the help of well-defined goals and structured path, which is further broken into objectives for departments, further down to teams and eventually to every individual playing as a team member. Hence it is also imperative that leadership at every level must identify future leaders who could take over further responsibilities of delivering the task to the organization. There should be a great stress on identifying leaders and developing them. It is the only way the human resource can be developed and made competent. Hence identifying leadership competencies is as necessary for a manager as to acquire them. Often it is also noticed that there are two leaders in the organization natural leaders and appointed leaders. Natural leaders tend to get better results. Alternatively appointed leaders could be trained to prove themselves but could be lengthy process. Organizational Level: Organizational culture and climate The culture of a group can now be defined as: A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. (Schein 373-374) (www.soi.org) Organizational climate is the set of characteristics that describe an organization and that distinguishes one organization from other organizations; are relatively enduring over time and influence the behaviour of the people in the organization (Forehand & Gilmer, 1964). (http://organizationalclimate.wordpress.com) Although similar, elements of both the concepts have different impact on an employee. Both the definitions state the congeniality in the environment provided by management to an employee to adapt and be at his or her productive best. The culture and climate of an organization makes a lot of difference in the outlook of an employee towards the work and eventually the results he produces. Hence today we observe that organizations make it a point to establish their employees in the organization environment. Let us now consider these organizational principles in the context of GE. GE today holds numerous offices across the world and is a huge conglomerate. It is known that Jack Welch when took charge of the organization, clearly stated his terms clearly to all the businesses under GE. He wanted the business to be number one or two in the field or to shut down. Transformation of GE was a challenge face by Jack Welch when he took over the company’s charge. He changed GE culture, perception and most importantly the perspective of his people. He rates competitiveness and creativity very high amongst his employees. To foster this approach in the company he tried various options. Today GE is a vast pool of talent drawn from various industries, a place where best practices are shared and implemented widely across and where workforce is highly motivated towards perfection and profit. At an individual level GE provided clear targets to the employees. Jack Welch had the ability to cut across the layers of the organization and communicate directly to his employees. He also made it a point that every unit person was rewarded differentially and there cannot be same rewards across GE. He made it mandatory for his managers to hand out stock options to at least 25% new members in the team. This made several employees beneficiary of stock earnings of GE. During his performance review meetings Welch did not get into praises but demanded performance for next year. His message was videotaped and sent across to the particular GE unit where it was played for all the team people. He thus managed to percolate his message in the organization. He knew details about at least 1000 managers in the organization. The tradition transcended and had a tremendous effect on people. All across GE this strategy played beautifully as every employee felt personally responsible to GE and Welch, thus creating highest level of motivation. Welch took interest in development of future mangers and leaders in GE. He set up a training academy at Croton which is known as Croton Ville by GE employees. He interacted with the top cream of his company on a regular basis who could directly question him, and discuss with him. Welch always managed to infuse his ideas through his sessions at Croton. He directly discussed performance appraisals of the teams with the managers. These sessions helped him identify future leaders and managers in the organization, who could be further trained at Croton. He may not have agreed with suggestion or decision but he always appreciated the efforts put by the person in charge. This always encouraged the managers to come up with the best of suggestions, irrespective of them being implemented. The biggest difference Jack Welch made to GE was to bring the informal culture to the organization. He always ensured that the formalities are cut across and implementation was fast if it helped the organization. This streamlined the processes and resulted in better outputs. Team leaders at all levels should be proud of the people who report to them was his constant statement. He added personal touch through sending handwritten notes of appreciation or sending roses and champagne to people who have delivered a good job. This informal culture helped melt the differences between businesses. If one business unit was able to cut expenses under six sigma and show record profits other business heads did not hesitate to visit the unit and implemented the changes in their own respective units. It made everyone think of GE as one unit and function accordingly. This attitude made a tremendous difference to GE. Welch has proven to have long term positive impact on the organization. From an individual level to the organizational level there is a common thread that weaves the fabric of the organization. If an individual worker or employee is not happy, he or she would not be delivering at his or her best, which cascades into team not performing well, department not performing well and eventually organization not performing well. Hence individual motivation is very important and which can be managed through effective leadership and congenial organizational culture. GE proves to be the best example of the logic. At an individual level the informal work culture plays a huge impact where every individual takes pride in the fact that the CEO can contact him directly. This also puts the manager in a good leadership role where it becomes his responsibility to get the most efficient output from his team members. The larger goal of being number one or two is thus further broken down through informal culture, good leadership nurtured and highly motivated work force. References: 1. Concepts of Leadership: Accessed May 28th, 2011 from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html 2. Work motivation: Barriers and Strategies, Dr. Dutta Roy, Accessed May 29th, 2011 from http://www.isical.ac.in/~ddroy/workmoti.html 3. John Byrne 1998, How Jack Welch Runs GE, Accessed May 29th, 2011 from http://www.businessweek.com/1998/23/b3581001.htm 4. GE Company History, Accessed May 30th, 2011 from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/General-Electric-Company-Company-History.html 5. Organizational Culture (page 396-397), Changing Organizational culture (page 49 – 411) Accessed on May 28th, 2011, from Organizational Behaviour: Text and Cases – Kavita Singh Pearson Publication ISBN 978-81-317-2600-6 6. Jack Welch’s thought son Leadership, Accessed on May 20th, 2011, from Winning by Jack and Suzy Welch - HarperCollins (April 2005), (ISBN 0-06-075394-3) 7. Get rid of the Boundaries that interfere the business, Accessed on May 29th from Jack Welch and the GE way : management insights and leadership secrets of the legendary CEO by Robert Slater (ISBN 0070581045) http://www.iterations.com/private/research/liberty/dwnload_files/welch.pdf 8. American Industrial Revolution, Accessed on May 29th, 2011 from http://americanhistory.about.com/od/industrialrev/a/indrevoverview.htm Read More