Organizational Environment, Management Theories - Essay Example

First and Management Whether an organization wants its all functions to be coordinated and resources used wisely and efficiently to accomplish business goals and objectives, it should put its all efforts on managing its operations and activities the best way. Through well thought planning, proper organizing, selecting and involvement of the best qualified staffing and the ability to lead people, each organization has chances to achieve the best outcomes as for the itself as for the stakeholders involved. Proper management ensure setting of such activities as planning and decision making, organizing, leading and controlling of all organizational activities. Since the organizational environment is a complex comprised of different activities and with the involvement of numerous sides in it, management theories help to make sense in that complexity. Management theories enable organization to realize its activities in order to determine what is relevant for the business, for instance, viable product and compliant workforce. Management theories have changed due to different historical and social times and places still addressing issues of relationships of particular times. Thus, at the turn of 20th century, organizations were large and mostly industrialized whose activities were ongoing with routine tasks that were concentrated with the manufacturing of different products. Thus, in the U.S. there were highly prized scientific and technical organizations that included careful measurement and specification of their activities and outcomes. Management was mostly the same, espousing careful specification and measurement of all organizational tasks. Tasks were standardized and employees either rewarded or punished. This approach was developed by Frederick Taylor and known as scientific management theory and appeared to work well for organizations with mechanistic and routine activities. The scientific management theory was changed with the openings of Max Weber, who developed his bureaucratic theory focusing on dividing organizations into hierarchies and establishing strong lines of authority and control within them. Weber proposed that organizations should develop comprehensive and detailed standard of their operating procedures for all the routine tasks (McNamara, n.d.). Organizations run their activities using bureaucratic management principles across the world, managing their activities in formal processes and hierarchies that enable them to achieve stable structures and consistent results. However, bureaucratic principles are slow to adapt to changes and with the constant innovations in the world, businesses need to be more flexible and adaptable which is not possible while they follow bureaucratic management theory.  Instead, scientific management theory is more responsible for steady improvements of operations that organizations conduct and thus ensure better job definitions, compensation schemes, etc. Such organizations also search how to connect motivations with performance (Basu, 2014). Utilizing different management theories within organization, companies should be aware of the impact they make on their performance. It is obvious that workplace environment also influences employees’ performance, their morale, productivity and engagement with poorly designed workstations, unsuitable furniture or lack of ventilation. Inappropriate lighting, excessive noise and insufficient safety measures calls for lower performance of employees and leads to occupational diseases. Employees’ productivity and performance are decreased due to such workplace environment. It is one of the main factors that impacts on the level of motivation and subsequent performance within organization. The highest level the organization arranges its working environment, the more engagement it receives from the staff, especially with their immediate environment that greatly influences the level of collaboration between employees, the level of their absenteeism and the requirements of organization. That is why it should be essential for the business to create a work environment in which employees will be productive and able to increase business profits whether it is corporation or small company. The relationship between the workplace and the level of performance of certain job is the integral part of work itself. The leaders that dictate how to maximize employee productivity should also pay attention on such areas as personal motivation and the infrastructure of the work environment (Chandrasekar, 2011). For many people money is not the sufficient motivator in encouraging them for superior workplace performance that an organization requires in modern competitive business environment. That is why managers and supervisors should be more aware of the new factors that in influence employees’ motivation. Thus, among the skills required there should be mutual goal setting, managers should also clarify role expectations and provide regular performance back. The key factor in goal setting is that each employee should be actively engaged in the goal-setting process and takes ownership for personal accomplishment and working results. They should also perform their work with the expectations that are required by the organization. These expectations are typically reflected in formal documents, such as job descriptions or role specifications. What also increases employees’ motivation is the regular feedback on how they perform their assignments. They should be as objective as possible and given avoiding interpersonal attitude or any conflict work situation (Heath, 2006). The two main organizational concepts, leadership and culture are established as two areas independently linked to organizational performance (Mozaffari1, 2008). Speaking about organizational culture, Schein (2004) describes three levels of culture. The first consists of apparent organizational structures and actions which may represent the culture of official clothes of the organization and its policies. Such level is easy to observe to all the stakeholders of the organization. The other level of organizational culture is represented in business strategies, goals and organizational philosophies. They are established by norms of certain organization. While the third level consists of basic organizational assumptions such as unconscious beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings, they determine the way employees should behave and the things that are highly valued within the organization. Moreover, culture theory is comprised of different groups whose members can or cannot share or keep norms, values, practices, beliefs and meanings within the organization. It also views staff as monolithic entities, which enable organization to analyze them in multicultural contexts with different priorities, traditions, and values. Whether one examines culture and leadership theories closely, it is obvious that both are the sides of the same coin. Cultural norms define how a certain organization defines leadership by getting promoted, getting the attention of the followers. Leaders at the same time create and manage culture within the given organizations and their talent is in their ability to realize and work with culture. At the same time certain misconduct of leaders is able to destroy culture (Schein, 2004). Culture is always considered as the result of a complex process while it is only partially influenced by leader behavior. Finally, the interconnection between two theories is noticeable since each of them depends to some extent upon the other. Leadership theories were examined by the number of researchers and many define them as those that allow leaders to stand apart from the mass. With the core leadership theories such as the trait, behavioral, the situational leadership and the power and influence theories leaders are able to organize, manage and lead employees with their personal traits, showing them their own behavioral models and how to act based on the situation. While trait theories state that effective leaders are able to share personal traits, such as integrity, empathy, decision-making skills with the employees, these traits help managers to lead others. None of these traits, however, are able fully bring success to a leader and its employees. Traits are the external behaviors appearing from someone experience and they are the internal beliefs and processes. They, however, are essential factors for effective leadership. Behavioral theories explain how leaders behave toward their ability to conduct activities of the organization. Based on such theories, there distinguish different types of leaders, such as autocratic, democratic and laissez- faire leaders. Each leadership style is appropriate for different situations, such as decisions need to be made or when the team need to be provided an input before making certain decision. For instance, laissez-faire leaders do not interfere into the working process, relying fully their teams to make decisions. It is should be mentioned that such leadership style is good if the team is capable to work alone, it is motivated and does not need close supervision from its leader’s side. Researchers also state that such leaders may be appropriate at different times and the best are those who are able to utilize their behavioral styles for each concrete situation. Behavioral theories try to predict a style that is best in certain situation. Thus, the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory is best contingency-based leadership framework that connects certain leadership style with the capability of individual members to accomplish the task and reach the set goals. Power and influence theories use completely different approach, which is based on the ways how leaders use their power and influence to manage working tasks. Unlike behavioral theories, situational leadership theory views the leadership styles that appear as a result. The best-known of such theories is French and Ravens Five Forms of Power, a model, which highlights legitimate, reward and coercive positional powers and sources of personal power, such as expert, referent and one’s personal appeal. The model suggests that using power is better alternative of leadership theories as it comes from being a real expert in the job and thus the power and influence ensure managers capability to lead other for achieving more. References Basu,C., 2014, What Is the Difference Between Bureaucratic & Scientific Management? The Houston Chronicle, Available form http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-bureaucratic-scientific-management-35869.html Chandrasekar, K., 2011, Workplace environment and its impact on organizational performance in public sector organizations, International Journal of Enterprise Computing and Business Systems, Vol. 1 Issue 1 Heath, V., 2006, The Importance of the Workplace Environment, Available from http://www.leader-values.com/article.php?aid=465 McNamara, C., n.d., Historical and Contemporary Theories of Management, Free Management Library, Availble from http://managementhelp.org/management/theories.htm Mozaffari, F., 2008, A Study of Relationship between Organizational Culture and Leadership, International Conference on Applied Economics, Available from http://kastoria.teikoz.gr/icoae2/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/articles/2011/10/079-2008.pdf Schein, E., 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3d edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc Read More