Dunworth Center - Case Study Example

Dunworth Centre Case Introduction Managing the human resource is a challenging activity. It requires both experience and theory to succesfully handlethe human behaviour in order to promote order in an organisation. Futhermore, one’s skills is tested when there is a chance to handle some problems involving the human resource. In an organisation almost every form of problems concerning people and their varying behaviors exist. This is the reason why leadership is required in order to maintain running the group with constant control particularly in employing influence and emancipating change. This is the relevant case associated with Dunworth Centre, a company which has an existing problem about its human resource and now it has to acquire an appropriate course of action to address the problem. This paper tries to address the issue by employing relevant theories in handling the human resource. Statement of the case problem According to the given case, one of the Community Development workers at Dunworth Centre, Eddy Green, has a problem as manifested by his inability to submit any funding applications for his organisation. Added to this is the deteriorating number of attendance for his football club for twice a week. Sharon, the new Senior Community Development worker at Dunworth Centre also finds out that Green is a person who might be bombarded with low self-esteem. Green might be a significant problem for the team knowing that as a part of the team, he needs to be more productive in order that the Dunworth Centre would be able to achieve efficient outcome for it to continously and effectively work as an organisation aiming to provide a quality service for the community. Sharon has to deal with this situation in a way that Green would be able to recognise the great responsibility that he has to play. This paper includes the various alternative course of actions that Sharon could possibly implement to address the above stated problems. However, prior to those moves, there are things that she needs to find out. Things Sharon needs to find out before taking actions Sharon has to understand the entire situation within the team. Based on the actual situation, Sharon may evidently see the lack of motivation on the part of Green to achieve the organisational goal on the ground of his actual performance. Understanding the situation will eventually guide and motivate Sharon on the right course of action to implement. Below are the following justification of this approach based on the contingency theory approach to leadership (Hersey and Blanchard, 1988). This theory tries to promote the idea that the actual behaviour of the team or the human resource would significantly justify the right course of actions that Sharon has to undertake. Considering the point that Green might be lacking of motivation to do his function, Sharon may eventually apply varying styles linked up with contingency theory approach to leadership. These include encouraging style, coaching style, delegating style and structuring style (Hersey and Blanchard, 1988). The effectiveness of the appropriate style may depend on the level of response of the human resource and the actual formation of the degree of relationship behaviours along the way. Therefore, the next point that Sharon has to implement is to evaluate the level of response that she could generate when she would perform various styles of leadership associated with the actual situation. Performing this would just actually help Sharon determine further the actual needs of the human resource as she would be able to develop a certain degree of flexibility in handling specific situations, by which her knowledge on the right thing to do would substantially grow. The implementation of contingency approach to leadership at some point may require understanding whether it has to be task or person-oriented. Fieldler’s contingency theory specifies these and tries to expound the importance of leadership styles and the leader’s influence over the outcome (Borkowski, 2009). On the other hand, Sharon may significantly influence the team and understand the actual problem by trying to set a reward and define the required behavior to achieve it. This is a remarkable point of House’s path goal theory of contingency approach to leadership by which a leader’s behavior and situational variables should come to work together for an effective outcome (Borkowski, 2009). Furthemore, along the way, Sharon has to evaluate what decision-making method may significantly apply with the team. For this reason, she needs to evaluate whether or not an autocratic or highly participative decision-making method is necessary. This approach is eventually making sense from the point fo view of Vroom and Yetton’s normative theory of contingency approach to leadership, by which it gives substantial idea to the leader on how decisions have to be made in specific situations (Borkowski, 2009). Now that Sharon’s leadership may be potentially assessed in the midst of a certain situation, the following courses of actions are the next priorities she needs to consider in order to understand further and address the actual problem in her organisation. Knowing the needs to guarantee motivation Here is the first course of action that Sharon has to significantly highlight in order to address the prevailing problem of the organisation, which concerns Green and perhaps other members of the team too. Sharon has to consider understanding the current needs of each member. It is a basic understanding based on the issue of motivation that humans do what they do in oder to satisfy their complex needs (Mullins, 2008; Bratton and Gold, 2012). For instance, in order to live a man has to eat, find a living to be able to earn money and successfully acquire life’s basic necessities. In other words, there are many things that could motivate men to do what they do and this is because they have certain personal needs they have to address in the first place. Therefore, the reason why there is a need to understand the existing needs at Dunworth Centre within its human resource is for Sharon to have fundamental basis on how to motivate her subordinates or perhaps potential followers, and ensure the entire team that they are working on with the same goal. Thus, it is clear that to motivate a team it would essentially require the move to understand the human needs (Bratton and Gold, 2012; Feldman, 2003). Understanding the human needs has long been part of the achievement of success in an organisation. In fact, the very reason why reward systems, incentives and other promotional programs are developed because they could stand as fundamental tools in order to motivate the human resource and to guarantee a wonderful output. All of these are based on the following theories associated with understanding the human needs. According to Maslow’s theory of hierarchy, our needs could be structured in a way that the first essential need should be fully satisfied before the next level of human needs could be fullfilled (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman, 2010). It might be useful to evalaute the prevailing level of needs within the human resource at Dunworth Centre in order to identify what specific action Sharon should take to let them come into full action especially Green. The idea of Maslow on the hierarchy of the human needs would depict the point that there is a great possibility that not all are in the same stage on which their individual needs require a necessary fullfilment because of the associated hierarchy of needs (Montana and Charnov, 2008). This means that in order to address all the level of needs of each individual, Sharon must take relevant actions to find out them out. Assessment of personnel’s needs is the primary general action she could probably do. Other theories of needs also try to emphasise the idea of human satisfaction. One of them includes Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors, which emphasises things that can cause satisfaction and dissatisfaction within the human resource (Lucey, 2004). It is therefore important on the part of Sharon to identify the relevant factors that can either cause satisfaction or dissatisfaction within an organisation in order to know the right action to take. If critically analysed, the relevant factors are associated with needs that one should try to consider in order to understand what could satisfy a person in the working place. On the other hand, based on Adam’s equity theory, a person’s input reduces when it is not properly rewarded (Daft et al., 2010). This necessarily means that the human resource has the need to be substantially rewarded or recognised in order to fairly compensate their associated effort. This means that Sharon could use this concept to identify the things that motivate the individuals. The above theories generally have the basic assumption that something that could satisfy the human resource may potentially stand as significant motivating component to guarantee an effective output. For this reason, every manager or leader is encouraged to employ the idea of motivation by primarily understanding the human needs. Concerning the above theories, Sharon could deduce the assumption that Green should have relevant needs. It would just be a matter of understanding them. As a manager, Sharon has to take hold of the things that could motivate Green to improve performance and encourage him to play the role he is intended to join in, for the organisation to come up with an efficient output for the community. Involving influence In leadership, a successful leader should be able to create followers and not just mere subordinates, which would require high level of influence (Boddy, 2010). In the given case, the influence is most likely to be generated if Sharon would be able to understand the actual behaviors of her followers. She might try to initiate understanding their needs, then employ the appropriate course of actions in order to observe the actual response or created behavior. This would eventually determine the kind of action she needs to initiate as she would be able to identify what might be the most effective approach to take to ensure creation of appropriate influece. Based on the concept of situational leadership, Sharon may be able to influence the team by understanding the real cause of the problem. In the case it is clear that personnel like Green could be a potential problem. Situational leadership tries to showcase the idea that the actual behavior of the team or specifically a follower determines the associated behavior of the leader (Adair, 2011; Hersey and Blanchard, 1988; Foot and Hook, 2008). Based on understanding the needs of the followers, Sharon will generate the actual behavior of the team, which in return determines the kind of response she must create just to motivate or influence her followers. Assessment and control Sharon needs to ensure if the plans are totally carried out. If so, the idea of control is necessary in order to evaluate performance and undergo important corrective measures. In an organisation, planning is important and putting it into action is just the beginning of making the goals possible. The problem in some organisations lies on their failure to assess the achievement of their goals, making it to the point that some subordinates may not be driven by goals and are not walking on the path that the organisation would want everyone to take. In the case of Dunworth Centre, it is necessary to assess whether the personnel have the goals in their minds and adhere to achieving them. Those who are trying to live by the goals and want to achieve them are the most qualified candidates to be part of the team in order to achieve the organisation’s vision. However, strategies for resourcing are necessary. These would ensure that the right person works on the right job, the abilities of the human resource fits to their assigned tasks, and training people to improve their performance or skills (Handy, 1990; Foot and Hook, 2008). Based on the case, there is a need to select the qualified person for the job. If the qualified person works for the job, then the outcome of the organisation could depict substantial positive results, as those who are assigned to the right tasks should be able to do what is right. Part of the corretive action is to ensure that Sharon together with her subordinates has to undergo a remarkable training which could be highly elaborated in the presence of empowerment, which is a process by itself that specifically requires the concept of training. Empowerment Empowerment is a need, but has to be applied at the right timing. For example, based on Sharon’s initial assessment, it could be deduced that Green has inferiority complex, which requires a need for empowerment to encourage him to create the right moves for the team. As already stated, control which could be in a form of giving formal training and other related activities are associated with empowering the human resource. The idea behind empowerment is to ensure attainment of goal which is also the same direction that control contribute to organisation’s success (Argyris, 1977). However, in the case of Sharon and her being a newbie at Dunworth Centre, she needs to create a culture that would allow her to successfully initiate change, the way she would want it to happen for the benefit of the entire organisation and its future progress. For this reason, considering the fact that Green together with his peers may be used to doing things prior to some significant changes to be imposed by Sharon, the need to use of authority aside from ensuring influence is an issue that requires a high level of concern. This should be the starting point in order to apply situational leadership in which Sharon has to adjust with the situation. At this point, she has to consider the level of area of freedom she has to allow for the entire team, for as long as she is still setting the appropriate working culture for her followers. Based on the idea of situational leadership, she needs to understand the specific behavior that the team is showing and this should suppose to allow her to identify the appropriate course of actions she needs to implement for the team. Considering that Green might have the possibility to deviate from what Sharon might be implementing, the latter should therefore take a careful stand to consider the level of authority she has to employ for her potential followers to recognise. A case from a real-life organisation Let us take the case of Panga Support Service, a real-life organisation in the community in the UK consisting of manager, social workers, and four support workers. I have known this company as I hear most about it from other people involved in it. The manager has the following problems with the staff. The manager observes their poor work performance. There is also poor service for the service users who are asylum seekers. This is due to the fact that the staffs are always late, absent, and do not follow company procedures. As the manager evaluates further, there is a need to add more facilities for the service users, to make them comfortable with their actual work. This is a case that tries to present the problem by which the manager has something to do in order to improve the quality of service of the staffs. The manager is recently having trouble with the service users staffs as generally they are not consistently giving the right output as evaluated. Generally, the entire team has poor performance and this does not add high value to the actual given service. There are many issues raised in the above given real-life case organisation. However, it is clear that one could potentially relate it with the same case occuring with Dunworth Centre. Although the setting might be slightly different, but the actual principles involved concerning on how to effectively handle the human resource have closer resemblance. The manager has to ensure knowing the prevailing needs of her subordinates in order to motivate them to work for the organisation and achieve its vision and the prevailing long-term and short-term goals. Knowing their needs would mean discovering something that would lead the human resource to acquire motivation to do things, particularly in achieving certain organisational goals (Bratton and Gold, 2012; Feldman, 2003). Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors and Adam’s equity theory could further support this claim by presenting the point that the human needs are linked up with an individual’s level of motivation (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman, 2010; Lucey, 2004; Daft et al., 2010). The manager’s influence as time moves forward might be deteriorating at some point as authority or control over the subordinates might be less likely remarkable. The presence of strong leadership and generating followers are just strong indicators of influence (Boddy, 2010). However, the manager might have poor assessment and control over the personnel, which leads to the inability of determining various needs. As determination of different needs among the human resource leads to motivations, its success would therefore lead to the creation of stunning influence of the manager over the team members. Just like the case of Dunworth Centre, Panga Support Service has failed to essentially apply the appropriate empowerment technique. The manager might have been too so confident to ask for output, knowing that the input might not be sufficient enough for the team. From the perspective of Adam’s equity theory, the human resource is expecting a remarkable reward from their given input and this might explain why the staffs have become demotivated to go on with their organisation’s vision (Daft et al., 2010). This also leads us to understand that there must significant issues that the manager has to understand about the staffs’ behaviours and from Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors, the manager needs to assess the idea behind what could satisfy the human resource in an organisation (Lucey, 2004). On the other hand, the manager must be able to understand the staffs’ level of needs to understand that they might not be primarily focused on physiological needs, but based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs might be higher or lower than that (Zastrow and Kirst-Ashman, 2010). These are just some of the essential ideas linked with point of empowerment. Empowerment is such a powerfiul move to ensure attainment of organisational goals (Argyris, 1977). However, in the case of Panga Support Service it is not just about creating a way to maximise the authority given to the subordinates for them to create essential output, but the point is to create a motivating force in order for the empowerment action to work better. This sounds like a wake up call for the manager to evaluate her actual leadership style. The shown behaviours of the manager’s subordinates are just actual symptoms of what is actually going awry with the entire team. Conclusion It is therefore important that prior to implementing the appropriate course of action, a manager or a leader must therefore try to implement necessary moves with the human resource for the purpose of evaluating their behaviours and specific response to certain actions. Their responses could therefore help the leader or manager create the necessary alternative course of actions in order to address the problem. Furthermore, managers or leaders should successfully integrate the theories involved in handling the human resource into their chosen alternative courses of actions. This will not only justify further their actual moves to consider, but will help them come up with a sound decision from time to time. After all, handling the human resource is a complex activity, so they need relevant theories that will prove effective when they apply it in the actual setting. References Argyris, C. (1977) Double loop learning in organisations. Harvard Business Review. 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