Changing Nature of Organizational Behavior - Essay Example

THE CHANGING NATURE OF ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR [Insert al Affiliation] Introduction The way organizations are managed today and the past 100 years and beyond are not the same. Management of organizations have undergone a transformation over time justifying the difference (Griffin & Moorhead, 2011). The management perspective and practice has considerably changed over the past 100 years due to improvement in comprehending of human and organizational behaviour, the economic environment and historical context and the generation’s changes over the period. Manager’s roles One difference between today’s management and that of the last 100 years in organizations is the role and duties of the managers. Early organization managers depended on authority and strong-harm tactics to accomplish their objectives. In the contemporary management, organization leaders act as the servant of the people. Today’s management leadership put much emphasize on the impact of the individual leaders on organizations. Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) assert that the present day management leadership expects them to set personal examples by practising the values and the principles they wish their subordinates to accomplish. Earlier organization management entails formal hierarchies that give specified roles to employees (Adler & Gundersen, 2007). The management was focused on the roles and it put all powers within the spheres of the managers, who had the duty to administrate employees by planning, organizing and controlling their works. In essence, the management was comprised of a top-down restricting function. Conversely, the present day roles of managers is managing themselves and to create relationships with strategic partners, suppliers and customers. Today, management is much more focused on what the managers perform to achieve the goals through employees. In the past 100 hundred years managers assumed the roles of thinking and managing at the same time. The implication for this is that the managers’ thinks and does all the work in the organization but the presence of the employees is to help and facilitate duties given. The present day managers are necessitated to get work done through engaged, self-managing knowledge employees. The modern managers behave like investors, customers and partners. Today managers have changed immensely. The roles they assume are that of a leader and that of managing a team to meet the goals of the organizations. In the last century, the roles of a manager were understood as administrative and control ones rather than leading. Assets and employees significance Furthermore, the management of the last 100 years was much more concerned with physical things rather than the worker, who are the people (Weihrich & Koontz, 2005). According to the scientific management, the keys aspects of managing people in the earlier days include determination of the task, planning, proper selection and training of the employees’ bolstered techniques. Moreover, it included factors such as the organization modification and mental revolutions. This type of management resulted to failure to realized production efficiency and hence boredom at the work place. This form of management in the earlier time caused the dehumanization. On the other hand, the modern management system focuses more towards the efficiency of workers (Dos Santos, Powell & Sarshar, 2002). The contemporary organizations are concerned with people and believe in investing in them to achieve efficiency. Adaptability to changes Another aspect that differentiates management in the past 100 years and modern management is the flexibility. The earlier management is slow in adapting and it was characterised by a rigid structure that is based on a command and control notion. The model of such the earlier management was well suited to an environment that is slow in adapting to changes rather than a rapid and revolutionary environment. The essence of such a model in that time helped organize processes and to promote accountability, order and discipline. Today’s approach to management allows for flexibility. The modern management model ensures that organizations can compete successfully at the international scale (Matten & Moon, 2008). Impacts of globalization According to Edwards and Rees (2006), in the past 100 years national borders barred most businesses from competition from external. But in the contemporary world, capitalism has slowly replaced the control of the government and companies are no longer restricted to do business within the borders. Multi-national conglomerates now develop operations across the world and organizations have created joint ventures with foreign partners. Due to this the workers are increasingly chasing for jobs activities across the national borders. Consequently, businesses have become more global, and their workforce has thus become diverse culturally. Essentially, globalization has brought people from diverse backgrounds together with different values, cultures, and beliefs and work together for a common goal (Edwards & Rees, 2006). The diversity we see today in the workforce is something that was even unimagined about in the last century. Globalization has affected the skills of managers in two dimensions, both in a foreign country and the domestic nation. It is factual that today organizations are faced with the challenge of adapting the workforce that is diverse. Decision making Organization that existed hundred years ago where inefficiently managed because of the way decisions were made. The management at that time were bureaucratically managed as suggested by Pavlou, (2007). Bureaucratic management required people to be compliant to the rules and the regulations that were fixed by the authority. For leaders to arrive at any decision they have to based it on personal relationship and loyalty. Organizations followed this type of management, which was rigid and obstinate. In the contemporary world business are more liberal to the extent that informal groups have a role to play in all organizations. It is also argued modern management allows leaders to be designers, stewards and teachers that are always responsible for building organizations. These organization build in turn expand the abilities of the workers to grasp the complexity, clarify vision and enhanced the shared mental models (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Modern management is thus responsible for encouraging learning and encouraging individuals to take a stand for building their organizations. On the contrary, the management in the past 100 years perceive leaders as individuals who are special and can set direction, make major decision and motivate people as deriving from a deeply individualistic and non-systematic view of the world (Mullins, 2006). Moreover, it perceives workers as powerless, devoid of personal vision and insensitive to changes. Contemporary organizations incorporates Maslow’s hierarchy of motivation and hygiene theory ideas in the management of employees, a clear realization that more factors that affect employee performance are being contemplated as compared to the past where managers solely motivated employees through pay increment (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). Technology The level of technology used in the working place a hundred years ago is nothing compared to the one used today. The work place in the past hundred years has no any significant resemblance to the modern one under the today’s management (Robbins et. al, 2013). There are numerous changes that have occurred in the work place due to the presence of technological innovations. In the modern workplace for one to produce multiple copious documents, one simply employs the word processor. The use of such technology shows that we have moved from hand writing that was used a hundred years ago to typing to word processing. Furthermore, the way we store documents today in the work environment has totally changed. To store documents in the contemporary workplace, we have shifted from boxes to file cabinets to the use of floppy disks to the use of drivers, servers, CDs and flash drives. In order to exchange messages over distant places, we have change from messengers that were commonly used hundred years ago to the use of the telephone and even social media. In fact communication today in the work place is more computerized something was unheard of hundred years ago. In addition, formal meetings have now been replaced with computer conferencing and the use of video and call conferencing. What is more is that the way organization operates today has radically been transformed by internet technology. The World Wide Web (WWW) is an aspect that characterises today’s workplace. Individual workers in modern ay work place use the web to gather appropriate policy information or relevant technical information to check on the activities of the other competitors as well as partners. For an organization, it serves as a platform to enhance the desired image and to communicate with clients as well as carrying out business of any sorts of business. According to Mullins (2006), the use of technical and learning tools like statistical process control, process mapping and the bar graphs are crucial in aiding workers and management today. The tools are critical in the sense that they help management to point out quality issues and to provide a way to measure the success of quality initiatives. Diversity in workforce Ultimately, the contemporary management concerns are different from those that were faced by organizations hundred years ago and beyond. Today’s management is concern with the diversity of its labour force (Beardwell & Claydon, 2011). In the modern organizations, the work places are increasingly becoming more culturally diverse. Currently, the number of women in the workforce is higher than it was in a century ago, and almost equating the number of men. Diversity in the work place in the contemporary is a factor to be considered as many organizations have come to the wake that they have to treat certain segments of the populations fairly. The aspect of equality was not something to be considered a hundred years past and beyond (Maher, 2001). Some genders tend to be more favour 100 years ago especially the male while woman had few opportunities in most organizations. Conclusion In summary it’s evidently clear that there are some radical transformations in the management of the work place a century ago and today. The way in which managers are perceived today is totally different from the way it used to be 100 years ago. In the modern organizations managers acts as leaders whereas a century ago they tended to be more authoritative and rulers. The modern day management are flexible and allow workers to engage in creative thinking to adapt to the dynamic business environment. On the other hand, organizations in the past 100 years were unbending, and workers were required to follow rigid rules that do not foster creativity. Reference List Adler, N. J., & Gundersen, A. 2007. International dimensions of organizational behavior. Cengage Learning. Beardwell, J., & Claydon, T. (Eds.). 2007. Human resource management: a contemporary approach. Pearson Education. Dos Santos, A., Powell, J. A., & Sarshar, M. 2002. Evolution of management theory: the case of production management in construction. Management Decision, 40(8), 788-796. Edwards, T., & Rees, C. 2006. International human resource management: globalization, national systems and multinational companies. Pearson Education. Griffin, R., & Moorhead, G. 2011. Organizational behavior. Cengage Learning. Maher, M. W. 2001. The evolution of management accounting research in the United States. The British Accounting Review, 33(3), 293-305. Matten, D., & Moon, J. 2008. “Implicit” and “explicit” CSR: a conceptual framework for a comparative understanding of corporate social responsibility. Academy of management review, 33(2), 404-424. Mullins, L. J. 2006. Essentials of organisational behaviour. Harlow, England: Financial Times/Prentice Hall. Pavlou, G. 2007. On the evolution of management approaches, frameworks and protocols: A historical perspective. Journal of Network and Systems Management, 15(4), 425-445. Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. 2013. Organisational behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU. Sveningsson, S., & Alvesson, M. 2003. Managing managerial identities: Organizational fragmentation, discourse and identity struggle. Human relations,56(10), 1163-1193. Weihrich, H., & Koontz, H. 2005. Management: A global perspective. Singapore: McGraw-Hill. Read More