Organizational Behavior in AT&T Company - Coursework Example

Organizational behavior in a company Introduction Organizational behavior refers to how individuals or groups in a particular organization relate and act towards each other. Analysis of Organization Behavior examines people’s conduct and its impact on the performance of the company. Stephen P. Robbins and Nancy Langton define an organization behavior as “a field of study that investigates how individuals, groups and structure affect and are affected by behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectiveness” (Stephen & Langton, 2004). These behaviors are influenced by several factors such as culture, individual objectives, leadership as well as political, social and economic aspects of our surrounding. An important part of organizational behavior is the management or manager because he is responsible for coordinating all the activities of a company and ensures that all operations run smoothly. Good management will have a positive effect on the performance of the company by ensuring that all the goals and objectives are achieved. Hence the behavior and conduct of the managers is very important in an organization and every company needs to create certain code of conduct for their managers and other employees in order to perform effectively and efficiently (AT&T, 2011). For a company to accomplish their goals and objects, Harrison and Dennis (2004) note that it needs to develop an excellent and good managerial scheme that will work to achieve performance and thus profitable growth. For this paper we are going to look at the AT&T Company organizational behavior, the challenges they are facing and how they impact on the overall performance of the company as well as possible solutions or recommendations. The Company AT&T Company is a multi-national telecommunication company with its headquarters in the United States but operating in a number of countries. Originally a Southern Bell Corporation, AT&T is the second largest mobile and fixed telephone provider in the United States and the world’s largest mobile telecom operator. The company has evolved and stabilizes due to several acquisitions and mergers and thus has undergone a considerable number of reorganization of its structure and management as well as employees. Apart from mobile and fixed telephone services the company also provides digital television services and broadband services. The company focuses more on power bases, motivation and culture in an attempt to improve and create healthy organizational behavior within the company. Organization Behavior Challenges At AT&T Some of the challenges that the company faces related to its organizational behavior according to PEST analysis include diversity which is brought by difference in cultures, technology and the constant need for innovation, communication, feedback mechanisms, organizational direction, responsiveness, decision making, ethics, change in adaptability, globalization and how the organization can achieve extraordinary accomplishments. On the other hand SWOT analysis which is concerned with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats show that the organization has several challenges as well. One main threat that the company faces is competition from the rival company Verizon Inc while their main weakness is lack of effective communication within the company channels and inadequate employee motivation which leads to poor performance. The company has been lately facing certain controversies because of their services and products which have led to customer dissatisfaction. On the other hand the company enjoys the strength of innovation and variety of products and services and products offered to consumers. AT&T enjoys the benefit of popularity and customer loyalty which gives them an opportunity to improve their sales by investing more in the global market and also through community service programs they have an opportunity to win the trust and confidence with the community. This in turn enables them build good and solid relationships with the consumers which leads to improved sales and profitable growth. In order for the company to overcome these challenges and improve performance, they need to develop effective strategies and practices that will drive the company towards attaining its goals and objectives and hence achieve profitable growth and competitive advantage in the telecommunication market. Below we discuss some of these challenges further and offer possible and as OB consultants give recommendations that the company can employ to overcome them. Recommendations Diversity in accompany results from a mixture of employees from different backgrounds, races, different ages and even cultural orientations. This diversity thus become hard to manage to positively impact on the performance of the organization since bringing people of different cultural backgrounds to share a similar culture and values is very challenging. This problem could have been brought about by the several mergers and acquisition that the AT&T Company has seen over the years thus assimilating several employees from different organization. It is brought by employing people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds like the minority groups in and the majority groups in the United States of America which mostly results in racial discrimination of the minorities. Hence managers need to find a way of treating their employees uniquely with regard to their cultural backgrounds and beliefs and value the contribution of each employee towards the growth of the organization in order maintain valuable employees and improve the performance of the organization. According to Hofstede, the values in a workplace are greatly influenced by culture which he describes as mental perceptions, artifacts, principles of refinement and a complex pattern of interlocking practices and institutions of a company. He goes ahead to mention the dimensions of culture as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, Confucian dynamism, masculinity and femininity and finally individualism or collectivism. Thus for an organization to overcome cultural challenges within the organization they need to utilize the Hofstede idea of culture which centers on the social psychology of people. As a recommendation to fix this problem of diversity in the company, AT&T Company needs to modify their management strategies and involve all the employees representing different cultural groups in management and decision making process. Due to globalization and extension of the company’s operations beyond borders there is quite ethnic diversity which requires the company to look at the organizational psychology in the context of cross-cultural diversities, and thus gain understanding of the situation hence knowing which strategies to apply in order to create an environment where employees share same organizational culture but at the same time preserving their own (Silverthorne, 2005). This makes the company value each employee and their contributions towards the success of the company which leads to improved performance and growth. Another challenge that AT&T Company has which affects its organizational behavior is inadequate motivation for employees. The company does not center its priorities on employees and thus fail to recognize their values in the organization. Further, based on commissioned sales AT&T provides less income value to its employees and also they do not reward employees and sales teams. Since motivation is very important in productivity of the workers in a company, this makes employees loose morale and thus do not perform efficiently. One employee’s statement captures it all. “I work for ATT (wireless sales.) I can say that it does feel like we work for the aforementioned companies above like Goldman and Lehman Bros. Between arbitrary sales pressure, constant complaints about our network and unenthusiastic corporate bosses I feel hopeless. For instance, did you know that AT&T corporate raised sales goals during Christmas and iphone launches to protect them from paying us too much? We get paid according to how close we get to our total monthly goals. If you exceed the goals you get paid more; something I feel is fair on months like December and June (iphone launch) when we have to deal with all the extra bullshit.” (DailyTech, 2009) This problem could be attributed to lack of proper leadership and management structure. This is mostly concerned with the human resource leadership which lacks proper structures for motivating and appreciating their employees so as to make them enjoy their jobs and not detest them and become hopeless like the above employee. Lack of proper management and rewarding of sales teams will make them offer poor services to customers resulting in customer dissatisfaction. Customer dissatisfaction is a big crisis for the company which depend most on provision of services because they may loose their customers resulting in low sales and reduced profits for the company. The equity theory is based on measuring or comparing the employee’s inputs and outputs. The motivational model states that the level of motivation is correlated to the individual’s perception of equity, justice and fairness that is practiced by the management. Thus the perception of fairness by an employee is translated to greater levels of motivation. One of the recommendations that the company can use in improving employee motivation is through rewards which is a form of appreciation for their hard work and contributions to the growth of the company. Employees play a very crucial role in driving the company to productivity and profit growth and thus achieving its goals and objectives, as a result the company needs to focus their resources on individual and team rewards which will in turn focus on placing higher value on human resource and human capital. The company also promotes employee motivation through several benefits and by investing in them they improve the employees’ willingness to do their jobs effectively and efficiently in order to attain maximum profitability. Other motivation strategies that the company can use to improve performance are through leadership training and offer opportunities for further studies among others. Good leadership, decision making and organizational direction are some of the important components of a company that drives it to high performance and profitability. The AT&T company experiences inadequate leadership and organizational structures and this may be due to a lot of mergers and acquisitions made the company impacting on the stability of leadership and organizational structure (Robbins & Judge, 2011). This results in ineffective management and neglect of the company’s priorities leading to poor performance and low sales. The problem could also be due to lack of motivational strategies and structures in the company which makes the leaders less interested in their roles of steering teams and the company to greater levels of achievements. The leadership trait model describes the effectiveness of leadership in a company. The leadership traits of a certain leader are analyzed and compared with the traits of potential leaders. The AT&T Company uses the trait model to select effective leaders and these include physiological, demographic, personality, intellective, and task related traits. Thus the company focuses in creating and achieving success through effective and efficient leadership. However effective leaders are different from successful leaders as the traits a lone cannot determine if a person is fit to be a potential leader. The core traits required in a leader include leadership motivation, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, emotional maturity, cognitive ability, achievement drive as well as creativity, charisma and flexibility. The company needs to employ organization strategies and effective leadership as a recommendation for solving its structural problems. This can be achieved through good organizational structure, effective communication and organizational culture that involve the interest of all the employees and thus make them feel like part of the company and not outsiders. Due to mergers and acquisitions, the AT&T Company need stable structures of organization that cannot be shaken during these mergers and thus help the company maintain its culture, values and performance (AT&T, 2009). The company also needs to identify leaders using the trait model that can steer the company into achieving its goals and objectives through effective team work and creating healthy relationship between them and the rest of the employees. The relationship between authority responsibility and groups and also other individuals in the company and the organization greatly influence on the organizational behavior. Therefore they need to create a functional organizational structure that flows efficiently from the higher level of governance to the lower levels. This should be structured in such away that there is effective communication and flow of information from one level to another. Each level of the organization should also be able to identify and understand their roles and position in the company and thus work effectively to achieve maximum profitability. The structure should also clearly outline the powers and responsibilities of each organizational level so as to avoid unnecessary conflicts in the company. AT&T Company is also faced with the challenge of proper communication within the organization and feedback mechanisms. The main sources and channels of communication used in the company include blogs, wireless phone calls, email, wired phone calls, text messaging, and the social media such as Facebook and Twitter (AT&T, Inc., 2011). Even though the process of communication is efficient, the employees do not feel satisfied with how they are communicated with as they are communicated to and not with. Feedback mechanisms in the company used by managers and team leaders are also poor and not provide effective problem solving strategies. An interview below of one of AT&T employee gives a clear view of how the employees are treated with regard to motivation, communication and feedback. Farmer: How do you like your job and those that work with you? Employee: OK Job, people are hard to get along with due to competition. The Boss pushes too hard and is not easy to deal with. Farmer: How does your company communicate with you? Employee: Email and fliers (memos), Boss reads them to us, Boss doesn’t care – says to produce or go home. Farmer: How is your pay structured? Employee: Tiered sales, more sales, more money, 3, 5, 7% tier bases on sales total and is incremental, will downgrade tier if returns on sales are made within 180 days. That’s too long most others are 30 days for sales. Basic salary is too low. Farmer: Do you feel like you are part of the company? Employee: No, I just feel like another employee, talked at, not to, if someone does something wrong or has a problem it is brought up in the group by the Boss and the person is singled out. Everybody knows about it, it’s not fair (Employee A. , 2011). Significance of Effective communication Communication is good because brings efficiency in collecting and disseminating data but it also can result in alienation of individuals such as the elderly who are not familiar with the new technologies. Current technologies like the social networks such Facebook are not friendly to the older people and is enjoyed by the younger generation who find it easier to use. This most certainly leads to discrimination and exclusion of the unprivileged groups. As a recommendation the company should employ channels that will enable efficient flow of information and communicate in such a way that the employees feel like they are part of the company and not a set of strangers on a short contract. The employees should also be involved in deciding which channels of communication should be used for passing on information. The company should also create an environment where juniors can easily and freely interact with their seniors. Feedback mechanisms in a company provide efficient and productive ways of confronting a problem and solving conflicts without offending the employees or accusing them wrongly. The 360 degree feedback technology helps in boosting the company’s productivity because it gives the employees an accurate sense on their weaknesses and strengths. As a result it is recommended for the AT&T Company to utilize the feedback technology to measure the strengths and weaknesses of the employees and thus find strategies for improvement in areas where more efforts is needed. With the rapidly developing world, technology has become a very important element of a company. Thus technological advancements are a great challenge as well as innovation of new products that will meet the needs and requirements of the customers and are unique only to the organization. Innovation challenge comes as a result of many players in the market dealing in the same sector of technology as AT&T. For example previously there has been competition to provide smartphones that accept 4G network (AT&T, 2011). The organization then is faced with the challenge of costs that is for acquiring and maintaining and running operations related to the invented technologies. The invented technologies or products of innovation may also have a short life span causing the company to reinvest from time to time in order to keep up with the ever changing world. Technology also plays an important role in the work place on the context of communication. This is because a good information technology will enable the company to communicate efficiently and thus ensure that all employees get the information that they need at the right time. Communication influences the behavior of individuals in an organization which can negatively or positively impact on the performance of the company. Some technological advancement is however challenging like the communication channels which are not friendly to the older people in the organization. As a result the company needs to find ways in which technology can be used to promote organizational communication and prevent alienation and exclusion within the company. OB expert recommendation for improving technological advancements and innovations it through developing a perfect and stable strategy that tackles the challenges, possible impacts on the market and the organization as well as the costs associated with the new product. Thus it is important for a company to set up a team that is specifically charged with the task of carrying out research on the market. This will ensure that the product conforms to the quality standards, satisfy customer requirements and is capable of staying in the market for long before being out dated. The new product should also be unique so that other rival companies cannot copy it and this will give the competitive advantage and thus be the leader in the telecommunication industry and achieve maximum profitability. AT&T Company is facing stiff competition in the telecommunication technology market which is flooded with several products from other players such as the Verizon Communication Company. The situation is further worsened by the fact there are constant complains by the customers on the poor services and products offered by the company. This greatly reduces their chances of beating the competitors and gaining competitive advantage of the market. This could be due to lack of employee motivation which makes them offer poor services to customers leading to customer dissatisfaction. The challenge is thus how to find ways and strategies that can be utilized in diverting this situation and steering the company towards success. Porter’ generic competitive strategies provide a means through which companies can measure their capabilities and overcome competition. These generic strategies include cost leadership, differentiation strategy and focus strategy. It is therefore recommended that AT&T Company employs strategies to analyze the market and its inputs and outputs. This can be done by assigning the task to a special team who will be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses and utilize the outcome to gain competitive advantage in the market (Heller, 2008). One of the strengths is that they are involved in community services and thus able to win trust of the consumers. They are popular and this opportunity can be used to expand its markets and sales. Customer satisfaction should be a priority in every company in every company since without the customers the company would not be in existence. Thus it is recommended for the AT&T Company to improve its quality of service provision to customers and revise their billings systems which seems to be the big issue leading to customer dissatisfaction in order to achieve customer satisfaction. The sales team should be put to task to ensure that there is efficient delivery system and the customers get the products on time. Effective management of the sales team through proper authority and empowerment is the key to making them perform and thus achieve customer satisfaction which is the number one priority of the company. Motivation and reward of the sales team help in appreciating their value in the company and in turn they are motivated to work efficiently for the productivity of the company and this steer the company towards achieving competitive advantage among its competitors. Companies experiences several challenges in their day to day operations ranging from diversity, ethics, communication, technology and innovation, motivation, leadership, organizational structure and most importantly competition. Organizational Behavior is important because it can be utilized to provide solutions to these problems. The company is people and people are the company hence the understanding of how different people, groups, teams and channels in an organization react to each other is important in improving performance and productivity of the company. The AT&T Company has several weaknesses and challenges which can be overcome by effective leadership and operational strategies. References AT&T. (2011). AT&T: Rethink possible. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from AT&T Company Information: http://www.att.com/gen/investory-relations?pid=5711 AT&T. (2009). Executive Summary: 2009 Citizenship and Sustainability Report. Retrieved February 15, 2011, from AT&T: http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=18039 AT&T, Inc. (2011, January). AT&T Code of Business Conduct. Retrieved February 2011, from AT&T: http://www.att.com/Common/about_us/downloads/att_code_of_business_conduct.pdf Employee, A. (2011, February 4). (R. Farmer, Interviewer) Burlington, Washington. Employee, V. (2011, February 5). (R. Farmer, Interviewer) Burlington, Washington. BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Heller, R. (2008, July 8). Employment policy: choosing and implementing the right employment policy is a vital ingredient to the success of a business. Retrieved February 18, 2011, from Thinking Managers: http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/employment-policy.php Mick, J. (2009, December 23). Amid low employee morale, AT&T turns to inspirational speech from Luke Wilson. Retrieved February 17, 2011, from Daily Tech: http://www.dailytech.com/Amid+Low+Employee+Morale+ATT+Turns+to+Inspirational+Speech+From+Luke+Wilson/article17211.htm Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational Behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Silverthorne, C. P. (2005). Organizational Psychology In Cross-Cultural Perspective . New York: New York University Press. Stephen, R. P., & Langton, N. (2004). Foundamentals of Organizational Behaviuor. Pearson Education Canada Inc. HYPERLINK "file:///E:\\What%20Are%20the%20Challenges%20Faced%20by%20Organizational%20Behavior%3f%20|%20eHow.com"What Are the Challenges Faced by Organizational Behavior? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/info_11369752_challenges-faced-organizational-behavior.html#ixzz1vIJAorAU Read More