Key Insights into Organizational Behavior - Essay Example

?RUNNING HEADER: Key Insights into Organizational Behavior Key Insights into Organizational Behavior BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE Key Insights into Organizational Behavior Introduction: Issues that Occur in Organizations The organizational environment, generally speaking, is conflicted with various political systems that drive behavior, such as the level of accepted power distance between subordinate and manager as well as issues of worker autonomy versus vertical authority hierarchies where employees do not receive adequate human resources support for development. It depends largely on the type of culture or organizational hierarchy, whether centralized or decentralized, as to whether the organization will ultimately meet its long-term goals. In the organization, issues occur related to worker satisfaction, cultural conflict, lack of trust, resistance to change demands, and poor communications. The fundamental catalysts for why these situations occur are attributed to poor management philosophy, inferior cultural development and awareness principles, badly-implemented change processes, and a perceived lack of procedural justice. At the same time, psycho-social characteristics among a diverse group of employees and managers are considerably different and, therefore, each employee or manager at the organization responds differently according to their emotions or political objectives. The end result with all of these issues is conflict that must be mitigated in order for the organization to have a well-developed and unified culture where trust is found throughout the entire organization. Organizational Trust Organizational trust is characterized by the level of confidence and reliance that individuals within the organization maintain for their coworkers, managers or the organization itself. Several theorists offer the concept of authentic trust, in which employees start with small steps to gain trust, generally progressing upwards based on experience. “Building such a relationship in the workplace is a reciprocal process with both the employee and the employer voluntarily assume responsibility for its initiation, development, and maintenance through high levels of affection and respect” (Starnes, Truhon & McCarthy, 2010, p. 5). Breakdowns of trust-building in the organization can include individuals with highly self- motivated political objectives or those who illustrate poor integrity, essentially promising one action and then delivering opposite action or behavioral outcomes. Social learning theory provides the concept of role modeling in which individual in an organization will be attracted to those who are perceived to be credible and thus attempt to adopt their role model’s characteristics. This is akin to transformational leadership, where the manager or employee maintains very high morals, sets the example for others, and uses vision and mission statements in communications to foster organizational support (Ackoff, 2008). If, at any time during interpersonal discussion or through social negotiations, the individual illustrates unreliable or conflicting action versus pledges, organizational trust is reduced between the two parties or groups. Ultimately, breakdowns in trust lead to long-term suspicion and perceived threats to social security and thus conflict positive teamworking and organizational culture unity. In general, employees in the organization have a very dark view of the term “politics.” Leaders and managers within the organization need to, oftentimes, abandon their own ambitions in favor of the organizational constituents. This is a form of emotional intelligence that is required to be an effective leader and also satisfy diverse employee needs at the psychological level. This often means rejecting self-motivated political objectives to illustrate a transformational philosophy that is people-centered and focused on human development and honesty through both communications and actions. Kacmar, Bozeman, Carlson, and Anthony (1999) describe the true definition of organizational politics as a concept or action where one pursues their own self-interests while often rejecting regard for the welfare or security of others in the organization. Abandoning these principles re-injects trust into the organization by promoting job security, ensuring perceptions of human capital development, and avoiding the use of sanctions as a means to control employees and gain productivity. Communications Problems and Diversity The organization requires individuals or groups to establish open, honest and functional communications to ensure that inter-dependent divisions remain focused on achieving short- and long-run goals related to mission. Communications problems arise in the organization when employees or managers do not have adequate information technology to support real-time discussion which can lead to uncertainty or project failures. Additionally, some managers do not maintain the competent social skills needed to provide employees with transformationally-based discussion and thus can be perceived as harsh or uncaring to employee needs. To facilitate more effective communication, there should be more dedication by the human resources personnel to establish more group-minded activities, provide opportunities for role playing to achieve empathy and emotional intelligence, or ensure that technological systems are developed to improve effective discussion and knowledge exchange. In terms of diversity, organizational culture development is highly important to achieving goals related to corporate vision and mission. All individuals throughout the entire value chain must be focused on team-working, which means social and technical awareness. This is oftentimes difficult to establish in the organization due to different ethnic, social or emotional values maintained by employees. Problems can arise due to differing attitudes related to accepted power distance between management and subordinates or even comfort levels associated with certain risk-taking activities. For example, a multi-national company or one that recently acquired an international business must consolidate job roles and then integrate highly different cultural actors into the organization that share significantly different social value systems. There is a concept in management known as the halo effect, where the manager treats those from the host culture differently than those from the international locations, thereby creating perceptions of injustice. Ferris, Frink, Bhawuk, and Zhou (1996) offer that when procedural justice and fairness are not perceived between different employees, it leads to perceptions of a politicized organization and thereby reduces effective work outputs. Managers, as just one example of many opportunities to improve diversity, are to establish fair and balanced systems of appraisal and communications to ensure cultural unity and avoid cultural conflict. Managing Change Grieves (2010, p. 8) offers that “change is a negotiated order in which groups seek to exert agenda-based influence on multiple constituencies.” The key word in this phrase is negotiated, meaning a bargaining process involving multiple employees or work group members. One of the main issues with managing change is that some employees within the organization, whether rational or irrational, perceive a change as a threat to their job security or that it will be too difficult to manage and thereby resist adherence and compliance. When this occurs, it becomes too difficult for the person attempting to drive change to negotiate with the resistor and thus productivity is reduced. To successfully enact change, the organizational management should assign a change champion, one who follows the change from start to its completion to work with employees to outline concerns or grievances about the change policies. This not only gives employees a resource by which to build trust, but also gives employees a sense of decision-maker power in the change that ultimately leads to better productivity and motivation. The change champion is an effective organizational component and one of many options to ensure that change is managed properly and the end results of the change imperative are positive. The resistance factors to change are often unfounded and based on the psycho-social characteristics of the employee and thus need someone skilled with emotional intelligence to ensure that resistance is reduced and more effective communications systems and channels are developed through the change. Managing Conflict Conflict in the organization stems from multiple sources and is caused by many different factors or differences in attitude. One type of conflict that can occur is between management and subordinates, who perceive a limited role in decision-making authority and demand more autonomous working environments. Employees who are not given creativity in their job roles or allowed to work independently of highly-visible management teams can become resentful, experience job burnout, or generally become de-motivated and low performers. According to Barrett (2011), a successful democracy must contain elements of fairness, equality, trust, and freedom in order to function properly. Employees must not only trust their management team members, this same mutuality must be communicated and illustrated to employees by providing opportunities for better human capital development and autonomy. By showing employees that the organization has confidence in an employee’s ability to work independently of management-induced sanctions or restrictions, they are likely to be more loyal and dedicated to the organization and, therefore, create better job role outputs. Conflict, in this case, is reduced by reducing dependencies on management oversight and helping to build the self-esteem of employees by providing opportunities for better and more rewarding working conditions. Conclusion Though there are many sources and rationales for why negative issues arise in the organization, this paper described several different ways for managers and leaders to minimize these problems. Whether it is cultural diversity problems, lack of trust, ongoing conflict, or poor communication, there are always methods by which to improve the organizational structure and leadership philosophy to ensure that change, when implemented, does not meet with significant resistance. This paper described only a small handful of problems that can arise in the organization; however, they represent effective solutions when such issues occur and thereby reduce productivity. References Ackoff, R. L. (2008). A systemic view of transformational leadership (p. 4). University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved August 12, 2012 from http://www.acasa.upenn.edu/leadership.pdf Barrett, R. (2011). Stages in the evolution of democracy (p.1). Retrieved August 11, 2012 from http://www.valuescentre.com/uploads/2012-06-19/Stages%20in%20the%20evolution%20of%20democracy.pdf Ferris, G.R., Frink, D., Bhawuk, D., & Zhou, J. (1996). Reactions of diverse groups to politics in the workplace. Journal of Management, 22(2), 23–44. Grieves, J. (2010). Organizational change: Themes and issues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kacmar, K.M, Bozeman, D., Carlson, D., & Anthony, W. (1999). An examination of the perceptions of organizational politics model: replication and extension? Human Relations, 52(1), 383–416. Retrieved August 12, 2012 from ProQuest.com. Starnes, B., Truhon, S., & McCarthy, V. (2010). A primer on organizational trust. ASQ Human Development and Leadership (p.5). Retrieved August 11, 2012 from http://rube.asq.org/hdl/2010/06/a-primer-on-organizational-trust.pdf Read More