Is the Attempt to Manage Employee Cultural Values and Emotions Reasonable or a Step Too Far - Literature review Example

Running header: OB Student’s name: Instructor’s name: Subject code: Date of submission: Organisation Behavior Is the attempt to manage employees’ cultural values and emotions perfectly reasonable or a step too far? Introduction This paper argues that it is wrong for organisations to seek to manage the values and emotions of employees despite the fact that there is acceptance that there may be some good intentions behind the attempts by management to do so. The argument in the paper is presented by way of three sections. First, the paper discusses the reasons behind the proposition that organisations should attempt to manage the cultural vies and values of employees. In this regard, it will be argued that organisations should establish corporate culture that will guide various actions in the organisation and hence give a sense of direction to organisational stakeholders while providing identity for the organisation. This generates pride among the employees and hence enhances corporate productivity (Peters & Waterman 1982). The paper then discusses why employees being social beings ought to be given some level of control on their cultural views and values (Knights and Roberts, 1982). In the third section, the paper will argue that attempts to manage employees’ emotions and cultural values may not be a solution to achieving improved satisfaction and hence production for employees and may in lead to the undesired results of employee rebellion. This is because employees may view this as a manipulative attempt (Willmott, 1993) and an additional level of control thus resulting in resentment by employees (Ackroyd & Crowdy, 1990). Managing of employees’ cultural values and emotions is essential in establishing a corporate culture which is essential for enhanced performance and corporate identity. Willmott (1993) state that corporate culture emerged in the 1980s and was highly endorsed as a tool of gaining competitive advantage for the organisation. According to Peters & Waterman (1982), strengthening of corporate culture was a way of achieving enhanced corporate performance as it helps in achieving greater employee commitment and flexibility. Such improvement in quality and productivity arise from corporate cultures which systematically recognize and reward employees by aligning their sense of purpose with organisational values. According to Peters & Waterman (1982), the essence of corporate culturlism is winning the hearts and minds of employees as well as defining their purposes through management of what they cultural values and emotions and not just their behaviors. This results in a strong corporate culture which is key to achieving unusual effort from the employees. The notion that management should manage employee’s cultural views and emotions is advanced by those who view culture as something organisation has. According to Brewis (2006), this mainstream approach to organisational culture encourages managers to shape and modify organisation culture. It would thus be expected that managers will make attempts to control and manage employee’s cultural views and emotions in a bid to shape organisation culture. In addition, this view encourages managers and hence organisations to make every effort in ensuring that employee’s acquire the right values, beliefs and norms. This is aimed at achieving a culture unique to the organisation which engenders harmony and stability in the organisation while ensuring that employees are behaving in the ‘appropriate manner that befits the organisation’. In this regard, managing employees’ cultural values and emotions is seen as critical to organisational success. According to Brewis (2006), managing and hence changing the employees cultural views and emotions was for instance critical in turning around the British Airways from an organisation that was almost collapsing in early 1980s to the profitable company that won the business traveler ‘ world’s best ‘ airline award for seven years. This according to Brewis (2006) resulted from changing the airline’s cultural views of being antagonistic to a new view of ‘putting people first’. The view that management should make efforts to manage employees’ cultural values and emotions is also supported by Peters and Waterman, 1982 book that demonstrates how organisations can become better by managing the employee’s culture. It is in the interest of every organisation/ mill-owner to organize his moral machinery on equally sound principles with his mechanical, for otherwise he will never command the steady hands, watchful eyes and prompt cooperation, production requires (Andrew, 1861). This demonstrates the need for management to be able to control the general organisation thinking, emotions and hence culture in a bid to ensure successful production process and hence organisational success. After all, managing employee’s cultural views and emotions and hence establishing a corporate culture will not only be beneficial to the organisation but also to the employees themselves. This is because improved performance would imply better salaries and wages for employees. In addition, employees would also benefit from the incentives that management use in motivating them in its attempt to manage their cultural views and emotions (Jaffe 2001, 48). It has been established that managing employee’s cultural views and emotions may be seen as necessary in establishing harmony in the organisation and hence organisational success. But is it really necessary to go to such an extent? Will organisations only succeed and operate in harmony only if we manage to manage employees’ cultural views and emotions? Employees being social beings ought to be given some level of control on their cultural views and values. As Knights and Roberts (1982), puts it, attempting to manage employee’s cultural views and emotions stems from management’s failure to recognize the unavoidable interdependence of their actions and those of the staff. This is an individualistic view of power which is behind employer’s (organisations) traditional utilisation of resources of ownership and control in attempting to manage employees’ cultural values and emotions. However, such coercive attempts according to David and John will always be met with resistance. This is because it fails to recognize that employees being self conscious creatures will always retain a great deal of control over their actions and any attempts to rob them of this control will always be met with more or less the same force of resistance which can not be healthy for the operations of the organisation. As such, organisations should seek to recognize the interdependence that exist between them and their employees and grant them the basic freedom of action which will ensure the two parties have a relationship of trust. In my view, the role of the management should be that of developing a general code of conduct that should be observed by organisational stakeholders which gives the organisation its image while creating harmony within the various subcultures that exists in the organisation. Attempting to control employees’ emotions and cultural views would therefore be a step taken too far. Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990), work behavior as well as the basic conception that workers have of themselves is shaped by factors that are external to the workplace as deeply as those factors that are internal to it. This view is also supported by Brewis (2006), who states that some organisational values will be shaped by management while others will be a product of collective /sub cultural accommodation to the slings and arrows of organisational life. This implies that despite managements attempts to manage employees’ cultural views and emotions, the end result will be a combination of factors both internal to the organisation as well as factors that are external to the organisation. For instance, my cultural views will be shaped by the experience I get from the university, my family background, the professional group I am in as well as the environment existing in the organisation I will work for among other factors. This coupled with the fact that rational human beings are able to think independently implies that attempts by the organisation to control my cultural views and my ways of thinking may not be fruitful. In fact, it may produce undesired effects if I deem the organisation as going too far in controlling me both from within and without the organisation. If management will recognize that organisational culture is shaped by factors both internal and external to the organisation, it will not go the extra mile of controlling factors that are external to the organisation as this will be met with resistance and may not produce the desired results. On the other hand, giving employees a free hand on their cultural views and emotions may even work to the management’s advantage and hence foster organisational success. This view is supported by both Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990) and Brewis 2006, who clearly show that the culture (and hence cultural views and emotions) exhibited by the English Slaughter men which has been of great help to management in terms of getting work done in the right manner and time does not result from attempts by management to manage their cultural values and emotions. In fact, they state that the culture results in opposition to management’s attempt to manage their culture. This is a clear indication of the fact that management does not have to control employee’s cultural views and emotions for the organisation to be successful. It has been established that organisations ought to respect their employees’ rights to manage their own cultural views and emotions. This is in recognition of the fact that employees being social beings ought to be given some level of control on their cultural views and values (Knights and Roberts (1982). This therefore implies that attempts to manage employees’ emotions and cultural values may not be a solution to achieving improved satisfaction and hence production for employees and may in lead to the undesired results of employee rebellion. Jaffe (2001, 62) has demonstrated that the control of human beings as attempted by early industrialists is the most challenging aspect of the organisation. Taylor’s scientific management method was supposed to change employee’s cultural views by introducing a completely scientific management of labour. However, this was met with resistance as workers saw this as attempts to change them into mere machines as opposed to human beings. In fact, the resistance to these attempts was so much especially in the United States necessitating the commissioning of The Hoxie Study (Jaffe, 2001, 56) whose recommendations were against Taylor’s scientific management system. Although the system today finds some use in the modern organisation, it has been greatly modified and only aspects that seem to benefit the worker seem to be useful today. The management’s attempts to manage employees’ cultural views and emotions continue to face resistance even today. Even where employees seem to comply, they do so for their own interests mainly in attempts to keep their jobs. Even in such cases, employees will only give in to such attempts as long as they are being supervised. Where it is totally impossible to comply, this results to counter reactions which are always disadvantageous to the organisation. Brewis (2006, p.366) clearly demonstrates that employees will not just passively accept management’s attempts to manage their cultural views and emotions. At best, they will give unequivocal adherence to the values advocated by management while at worst, they will portray open non adherence to such cultural values and even bully their fellow employees when they try to comply with management’s attempts to manipulate their cultural values. This is not healthy for the organisation and may even water down organisational success. Brewis (2006) for instance states that workers at British Airways exhibited secret non-adherence to management’s attempts to manage their cultural values. In other words, the workers outwardly complied with management values just in attempt to keep their jobs despite the fact that they did not accept the values and would always expose their disapproval to the new values whenever they felt safe to do so. This probably explains why BA was failing in late 1990s despite the enormous cost that went into their people first campaign. If the attempt to change the workers’ ethical thinking and emotion had been successful in BA in the first instance, there would never have been the need to u8ndertake a second people first campaign. This is a clear indication of the fact that attempting to manage employees’ cultural values and emotions may not after all be the key to organisational success. That attempts to manage employees’ emotions and cultural values may not be a solution to achieving improved satisfaction and hence production for employees may well be demonstrated in the English Slaughter men case study by Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990,p.4). The slaughter men seem to derive a lot of joy in their work despite the fact that they are autonomous and have resisted management whims to control their culture. It has been demonstrated that the unique culture at the slaughter house results from the particular demands of their work as well as some factors external to their work. It should be noted that the culture is that of hard work and aggressiveness. The culture also contravenes the health and safety regulations as well as formal abattoir hierarchies is actually advantageous to the management in that it gets works done and eliminates the need for supervision. This is a clear indication that employees’ cultural views and emotions do not have to be managed to ensure organisational success. Conclusion This essay has established the reasons behind the management’s attempts to manage employees’ cultural views and emotions. This is to enhance organisational performance through securing greater commitment and flexibility from employees (Willmott, 1993). However, it has also been established that management should not insist on managing employees’ cultural views and emotions since employees being rational beings will always attempt to resist attempts to manipulate their thinking. Attempting to manipulate employees’ culture can at times be met with resistance and result in undesired results. Finally, the paper has analysed cases where attempts to manage employee cultural views and emotions have not been fruitful. In addition, the case of the slaughter men has been used to show that employees’ should be left to manage their own cultural views and emotions. As such it has been established that attempting to manage employee culture is wrong and should be discouraged. The role of management should only be that of providing the general framework to guide the organisation while leaving the decision to manage cultural values and emotions to the employees for maximum productivity. References: Ackroyd, S. and Crowdy, P. (1990) ‘Can culture be managed? Working with “raw” material: the case of the English slaughter men’ Personnel Review 19(5) p3-12. Jaffee, D. (2001) ‘The rise of the factory system’ Organization Theory, Boston, McGraw Hill, p 42-63. Brewis, J. (2006) ‘Culture’ in Knights D. & Willmott H. (eds.) (2006) Introducing Organizational Behavior and Management, London: Thompson. Knights, D. And Roberts, J. (1982) ‘The Power of Organization or the Organization of Power?’ Organization Studies 3(1) p47-63. Peters, T. and Waterman, R. (1982) In Search of Excellence: lessons from America's best-run companies Sydney: Harper & Row: Chapter 3. Willmott, H. (1993) ‘Strength is ignorance, slavery is freedom: managing culture in modern organizations’ Journal of Management Studies 30(4) p515-552. Read More