Importance of Organizational Culture - Case Study Example

THOMAS GREEN CASE An Analysis Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: 3 IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: 3 LACK OF TRAINING: 4 PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND SELF SERVING BIAS: 5 FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE: 5 RECOMMENDATIONS: 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 8 INTRODUCTION: The case deals with Thomas Green, an employee of Dynamic Display (an organization providing self service options for banks, airlines, hotels and car rentals) who went through a quick route promotion from an accountant executive position, in the Travel and Hospitality division to Senior Market specialist within just seven months of his appointment. In the case Green is portrayed as an ambitious employee with specified personal goals, who makes good use of social networking skills to effectively market his skills and achievements as the accountant executive. These played no small part in him getting noticed by the division vice president Shannon McDonald who eventually selected him for position of Senior Market specialist, bypassing the decision of his immediate boss Frank Davis. While not stated explicitly in the case, the understatement was that this decision could have set a negative tone in Davis and Green’s relationship from the start as Davis’ authority was undermined. This becomes an important point as the first few months of Green’s new job are filled with manager-employee conflicts leading to a threat to his job. Throughout the case we can identify several specific areas of Management principles which had the most influence in Green’s performance and his Marketing director’s dissatisfaction with his work and the tensions which arose. IMPORTANCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: An organization culture refers to a set of shared values, customs and work style which is followed within any organization. The cultural aspects may be on the surface or deep level but they are accepted by employees and created according to the principles set by the top management. From the start, it seemed Green was unaware or unwilling to follow the set culture after his new promotion. From the case we get the evidence that a lot of importance was given to documentation, use of visual media and constant interaction between employees and supervisors in the department. The company prefers programmed decisions with the correct information, facts and data available for customer presentations- it is not a culture which would supports innovation and out-of-the-box thinking without the approval of your boss and some concrete data to support the process. These things were made clear to Green in the very first week of his work when he had several meetings with Davis who explained to him that while his ideas were good, what was expected was that there would be proper research and figures included when these ideas were presented to the clients. However, as we see in subsequent appraisals meetings and through his coworker’s comments this was the one thing Green consistently chose to do his own way- face to face communication with clients without physical material available. This went against the organization culture and was a negative mark against Green. LACK OF TRAINING: However, looking from another perspective it can be seen as a fault of the management that they did not provide adequate training for Green to assimilate in his new position. This was even more important since he had in effect got a double promotion, skipping the position of Market specialist which would have provided him with a good work experience in the field and cleared confusions regarding work presentation. Human resource development practices like mentoring and orientation training would have eased Green into the new culture and department, allowing him to form a good rapport with his boss. As he would now be in charge of a whole region (Eastern) rather than territory (Southeastern) and his duties would include making strategic as well as tactical decisions, the organization should have provided him with extra support. Another good strategy would have been provision of On-The-Job training for Green. While his talks with Davis gave him an explanation of what was required from him, practicing on the field with another Senior Marketing specialist would have given him a much better idea of how to perform and any inadequacies could have been explained on the spot. Two possible explanations for this negligence could either be high expectations from Green- he had an exemplary performance as an accountant and this fast promotion could have marked him out as someone who would have been able to adapt and respond to the position challenges without much help- or it might have been a test to measure Green’s professed skills and talent in the new position. PERSONAL ATTITUDES AND SELF SERVING BIAS: Even without formal training for the new position, the problems might not have arisen if Green and Davis had formed a productive and collaborative relationship. But in the very beginning Green showed a subversive attitude towards Davis in challenging his pro forma projections in the budget plan meeting of 2008. While he may have been correct in his assumptions, the lack of hard data to back his claim, not to mention his inexperience in the sector, hardly made it appropriate to raise the issue directly against his boss in the actual meeting. Davis was not pleased and made his feelings clear. That one incident painted a negative initial impression of Davis for his boss who considered his attitude too negative and not in tune with the organization culture. Green chose to concentrate on this fact in his first appraisal meeting and dismissed all the problems Davis had with his performance as stemming from a personal prejudice. This seems immature and over confident of Green who neglected some legitimate concerns leveled against him, like the failure to keep in contact with his boss and answering client concerns. Instead of clearly discussing his misgivings and feeling of being discriminated against in a clear, rationale way with his boss, Green resorted to making scathing remarks to his co workers and made his own assumptions that Davis just wanted to get rid of him. Even though, in the letter written to McDonald after the first appraisal, Davis accepts Green’s efforts to improve his performance and the contextual tone is positive. In later months we see that Green’s assumptions turn into a form of self serving bias where he chooses to ignore input from Davis and takes solace in the fact that some other managers and coworkers are more appreciative of his new strategies and work style. He does not notice however when the market specialists working under him echo the same client concerns about lack of physical material that Davis indicated to him at the very beginning. FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE: At this point open and effective communication could have solved a lot of perception problems. Davis felt that Green was wasting time and didn’t have enough enthusiasm for the job, while Green increasingly felt that Davis was deliberately trying to get him fired and wasn’t taking his efforts into consideration. The fault at this time falls squarely on Green who not only failed to give proper reports to Davis (as asked) he actively avoided him during his project on developing a new software program. He had a lack of trust in his superior’s abilities since the budget plan meeting and showed a disdain for communicating with him. This kind of attitude translated to Davis as being unprofessional and uninterested and he cannot be blamed for thinking that Green’s performance was under par. The second appraisal showed exactly how bad the communication was between the two, with Green not only being openly critical of the points Davis raised but showing disrespect with his brusque and challenging replies. Saying none of his strategies are documented was a clear show of rebellion against his boss who had explicitly been asking him to do so since the beginning. Another facet of the communication problem is that between Green and McDonald. Green himself admits that even though he had been counting on her support and backing, since his promotion he had just two face to face meetings with McDonald- as someone who acted as an informal mentor to him, McDonald should have been his first confidant when he noticed the criticisms falling on him. However, as self assured as he was of his own ideas and expertise he did not take the time to find ways to improve his relations with Davis and his performance through discussing it with McDonald. RECOMMENDATIONS: All of these managerial problems culminated in the present scenario where Davis has already made the suggestion to let Green go and McDonald wants to hear Green’s explanation with the regard to his performance before making a decision. Green is perplexed but still thinks that he is the victim here and that Davis has a personal vendetta against him because of the budget plan meeting. Even if Green believes this is the case, he should accept his own shortcomings in being unable to merge his work style with the requirements of the position. For once, he should do what was asked of him and document his strategies, data and analysis to provide evidence of his hard work to both McDonald and Davis. The discussion about his disagreement with the projected financial statements and personal feelings about Davis’ bias should come later after he has been able to prove his commitment to the new position and taken accountability for his actions. A successful negotiation could result in more delegation to Green and acceptance of his strategies and plans as long as they comply with the requirements of the department and take care of client needs first. But there is still the possibility that it is too late to change the boss’ perception of Green; and unless he is able to convince them with the appropriate work evidence along with an explanation of his past behavior he might soon be looking for a new job. For the organization it is a hard lesson about being too hasty in making judgment calls and failing to match personal attributes with job requirements and the importance of training and orientation for any new promotion or hire. BIBLIOGRAPHY Roberts, K. H & OReilly, C. A., 1974. Failures in upward communication in organizations: Three possible culprits. Academy of Management Journal, Vol 17(2), Jun 1974, 205-215 Tang, Y. & Chang, C-H., 2010. Impact of role ambiguity and role conflict on employee creativity. African Journal of Business Management Vol. 4(6), pp. 869-881, June 2010 Evans, J., 2012. Does Organizational culture matter?Part 1 [Online]. Method Frameworks Blog. Available at: < http://www.methodframeworks.com/blog/2012/does-organizational-culture-matter-part-1-2/index.html> [Accessed 14 June 2012] Gou, L.K. & Sanchez Y., 2005. Workplace Communication Ch4 [Online]. Pp77-100 Available at: < http://healthadmin.jbpub.com/Borkowski/chapter4.pdf> [Accessed 14 June 2012] Daft, R.L., 2012. Management. Vanderbilt University, 10th Ed, Ch3, 12. Read More