Sarinas Position in Balleen Regional Hospital - Case Study Example

Balleen Regional Hospital - Case Study Sarina’s position Sarina’s case is a typical situation of unhealthy organization culture leading to the de-motivation of an employee. As seen from the case, she is an old and faithful employee of the organization. She has risen from the bottom of the ranks and now holds a managerial position. However, she finds herself stuck in a bureaucratic culture of the organization now where the upper management is too busy to understand the problems faced by the employees at the lower levels. Another external force that is worsening the situation for her is that of the organizational restructuring happening on account of the financial pressures on the organization. As the company has resorted to cost cutting measures, it is finding ways of increasing the productivity of employees and getting the maximum output from this. This they are doing by applying freeze on new recruitments. This has resulted in extra work pressure for Sarina which has given rise to the demand for re-grading by her. She is expecting the organization to compensate her adequately for the extra work she has been handling on account of reduced staffing. Her situation can be very well explained by the various motivation theories relating to organization behavior. Equity theory is one such theory which states that “employees compare the inputs of their efforts to the outputs or results of another person or group of people” (Griffin and Moorhead 2009). When they compare and find that their ratio is equal to others, they feel motivated else de-motivated. This is what is happening to Sarina as she feels that those who are working less than her or are less experienced than her have been able to get re-grading done easily while her request for the same has been rejected. On the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, Sarina stands at the highest level of need which is self actualization. She is in charge of processes but does not have enough authority to take corrective actions with regards to the erring individuals. Added to this is the lack of support by the organization leaders on operational issues. Another problem faced by her is on account of her personality trait. Various models have been developed in organizational behavior studies which help explain why a person behaves in a particular way. The following figure shows Eysenck’s model of personality (Martin and Martin 2010). From the brief description about the problems she is facing with people in other departments, it can be inferred that her personality falls in the lower left quadrant of the circle. She is peaceful and reliable as far as the work is concerned. Hence, she is quite willing to provide her experienced hand in jobs which are actually not in her purview. However, she is passive about getting her own work done. She finds it difficult to get work done from people who do not fall directly under her area of authority. When her personality is seen from the perspective of the Big Five model, she falls low on the extraversion trait. This means that she is not very assertive and hence finds it difficult to persuade others to provide her the requisite reports. On the other hand, others are actually able to persuade her to help them out in their job despite her own pending work. This results in her sitting late and carrying work home giving her the perception that she is over worked. She falls high on the neuroticism trait of the Big Five model and low on the emotional stability aspect. This makes her predisposed to negative emotional states and stress leading to a negative world-view to the extent that she is contemplating change in job (Martin and Martin 2010). Another aspect she is low on is the openness to experience. She is not being imaginative enough to deal with the situation especially with regards to the erring employee. Her locus of control tends to be lying towards the external periphery as she is more dependent on her bosses’ decision to reprimand the erring subordinate than her own innovative thinking. Though, it is true that she has not been adequately empowered by the management to take decisions in such cases, she should try to think of ways that will give the employee a sense of responsibility and help her in extracting the right behavior. Thus, a proactive personality is the need of the hour where she needs to actively initiate activities rather than reactively respond to environmental demands (Bateman and Crant, 1993). Changes required for improving operations and retaining effectively performing staff The most challenging aspect for any leader at the time of structural reorganization of a firm to cope with the decreased cash flows is to retain the right skilled staff and also keep the company’s operations going unaffected. Balleen Regional Hospital is also facing the same challenge. Due to crunch in financial resource, the company is bound to restructure and reorganize and keep the operating and administrative expenses low. The most important aspect of any change in the organization is the communication and people involvement. Hence, to address the issue of discontent as seen in Sarina’s case, any structural changes should be communicated in advance. This should be done by personal involvement of the leaders as it instills confidence to the employees. The communication process can be viewed as a two way process which can be hindered by noise. This disruption can occur at channel end when the communication is happening from the source or at the receiver end. It needs to be a two way process where the source gives the message and takes a feedback. This can be represented diagrammatically as follows (Hunt 2004): Thus we can see that feedback is an important aspect of this model. Thus, as a CEO, I will make it a point to get feedback on the changes that have been implemented and incorporate the suggestions in the processes so as to create a healthy organization culture. There will be both upward and downward communication. This will be instilled in the culture of the organization where the leadership team as well as the management team down the hierarchy will be responsible to encourage the communication from down. This will solve the dissatisfaction on account of lack of availability of the management to listen to the operational problems faced by managers like Sarina. Decision making is an important aspect of any operational process within an organization. The timing of the decision is very crucial to obtaining the desired results. This can be seen in the case where the erring employee is not reprimanded at the right time leading to an even worsening behavioral trait which can be very de-motivating for other employees also. The senior managers need to be accountable for lapses happening at the lower end. Hence, the way Sarina is accountable for her reports, the managers above her will also be made equally accountable for lapses by her. This will encourage them to take faster decisions regarding problems highlighted by the operations managers. The organization is in a state of anarchy due to continuous changes; hence even programmed decisions which are determined by the past experience as appropriate for a problem in hand are also being left unattended to (Hunt 2004). Thus, the hierarchies need to be aligned so that communication happens both ways and decisions are taken fast. To improve operations and relieve overburdened employees like Sarina, it is important to align the key responsibilities of the employees and see which activities are interdependent and can be standardized. Wherever standardization can happen, technology will be utilized to generate reports. By creating a centralized database all types of reports can be generated without the types of errors that plague Sarina’s reports at the input end. This is the place where she needs to spend extra effort in terms of coordinating with the other departments. With a centralized database management system in place, all types of reports can be generated as and when required and will also be real-time information for the management. To address the problems of retention of old employees, an adequate retention plan based on the number of years of service as well as the skill set will be rolled out. This will address the issue arising out of the equity theory. Short-term incentives will also be aligned based on key job responsibilities and extra initiatives taken up. This will help in fair distribution of rewards. Moreover, to address the various higher level motivational needs of the employees as per the Maslow’s hierarchy need theory, non-cash incentives like certificates for best performance etc. will also be introduced. Internal communication to the employee is another important aspect which can lead to de-motivation in an employee. Sometimes, informal communication is a better way of informing followed by a formal one. A letter of denial for re-grading acted as a de-motivator for Sarina. The same message when given informally by the immediate manager and then followed by the formal refusal could have worked as a shock absorber for Sarina. Hence, the managers need to be trained on softer skills of communication. Managers will also be encouraged to use the following model of power to generate positive reaction (Chance and Chance 2002): Finally I will follow Theory Y as per the diagram below to achieve organizational goals (Borkowski 2008) References Bateman, T.S. and Crant, J.M 1993, The proactive component of organizational behavior: A measure and correlates, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 14, 103-118. Borkowski, N 2008, Organizational Behavior, Theory, and Design in Health Care, Jones & Bartlett Learning Chance, P.L and Chance, E.W 2002, Introduction to educational leadership & organizational behavior: theory into practice, Eye on Education, New York. Griffin, R.W. and Moorhead, G 2009, Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Hunt, J.G. 2004, Organizational Behavior, Wiley Publishers. Martin, J. and Martin, F 2010, Organizational Behaviour and Management, Cengage Learning EMEA, London. Personal perspectives On my behalf, I am most proud about the fact that I spent number of days on doing actual researches. Then, I formulated a rough draft, based on those researchers. Finally, I came up with the Final Research paper combining and fine tuning all my researches and importantly my own analysis and interpretation of the results. The end result of the paper also made me proud. As an end result, I was able to fulfill a dual purpose. Not only I am on the track to successfully complete the course project, but also understood many of the intricacies of the organizational functioning, which may aid me in my future professional endeavors. Apart from focusing on the content, I also made sure I followed correct citation styles, so it gives the paper a correct backup of external sources and importantly to avoid any plagiarism charges. Harvard citation styles are crucial for giving a structurally correct paper without any plagiarism. My incorporation of apt Harvard styles prevented any plagiarism charges and importantly gave good structure and flow to the paper. As I closely followed each rule of the Harvard citation style for each sources from websites to journals, books, magazines, etc, all the Harvard citation formatting was apt to the paper and elicited good responses from the tutor, who was skeptical first. In the initial period, what I did not do well in my writing was pay attention to details such as; formatting, present a thesis statement that is arguable, and refute many possible opposing positions in composition. Formatting in the sense, in the earlier papers, I missed Harvard citation styles few times, as it was my first exposure to Harvard citation styles. But, I corrected in the subsequent papers, even earning good comments from my tutor. When I formulated the research papers, I formed only a basic thesis, and missed forming an optimally discussable thesis. Also, I tried mainly to argue or discuss about my thesis, without incorporating the opposing point of views. However, I did make up it somewhat. As I was able to think logically and plan out the paper in a logical manner, I was able to come up with apt flow in my paper. With logical thought process, all the needed aspects fell into the place, without any misses and that gave completeness to the paper. Writing has become easier. With continuous writing, my thinking speed as well as my speed to ‘translate’ those thoughts into words, also became continuous and quicker. As the old adage goes, the more you do the easier it becomes, my writing became very easier and I am confident to write more such work. With this knowledge exercise as part of the project report, I gained in-depth understanding on one of the important functions of organization and I think I will be fully equipped to deal with the work environment and all the situations that will arise in my future employer’s place or organization. Read More