Managing People and Organisations: Structure and Culture - Case Study Example

 Managing People and Organisations - Structure and Culture Introduction “Organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes the organization from other organizations.4 This system of shared meaning is, on closer examination, a set of key characteristics that the organization values.” (Robbins, 2005, p. 485). Organizations are physical ‘structures’ where employees from different background will do their allocated work under the direction and supervision of a leader, for the organization’s benefit as well as for their own benefit. These workers like the five different fingers in human’s hand will be different from one another as most of them will have different characteristics, different attitudes, different education, etc, etc. Uniting these different humans and making them work under a common organizational culture will always be a difficult proposition because their differences will mostly lead to singular or different working cultures. In that scenario, the success of the organization will be minimal or even null. Thus, if a common, feasible and effective corporate working culture is ‘operationalised’ through out the organization, the organization can achieve maximum unity, productivity and success. The one person who can formulate, actualize and operationalize an effective organizational culture will have to be an effective leader. One of the important first tasks of a leader in an organization (both in a new organization or in a existing organization) is the creation of a Culture. That is, the task of the leader is to create a working culture, embed the working culture in the working group and environment, sustain it and also rectify it, when faults occur. According to Schein (2004, p 17) “The culture of a group can now be defined as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. So, the leader, who as a founder of an organization need to create a culture incorporating as part of the organization structure and employees’ behavior, then as a managing director of an organization need to manage and implement the culture, and then as a wise creator of a culture tune it, according to the needs of the situation. Normally, Culture is created by shared experience of the group working, but it is the leader who initiates this process by imposing his or her beliefs, values, and assumptions at the outset. That is, instead of restating the existing organizational culture or modifying the existing culture or copying another organizational culture, it would be better and optimum if the leader creates, his/her own according to the organizational structure and the employees behavior. “Organizational cultural interventions involve more than simply restating values, beliefs, or norms and communicating them to individuals. Cultural changes involve a complex process of replacing an existing paradigm or way of thinking with another.” (DeSimone, Werner & Harris, 2002, p.34). The aim of this report is to analyse the influence of organisational culture on the structure and employees’ behaviour in the fictional organisation organization of Galactic Office Furniture (GOF). The influence of culture on the structure and employees’ behaviour will be analysed in terms of ‘all employees/managers’ and in relation to ‘teamwork, leadership and communication. Influence of organisational culture on structure related to leadership, communication and teamwork According to Mintzberg Strategy, strengthening organizational culture and structure should be a correlated exercise. Without effective and common organizational culture, effective organizational structures cannot be actualized and vice versa. Although, organizational structure is mainly a kind of physical arrangement of management teams and various employees on the basis of hierarchy, there should be a common line, which will unite this structure. Although, common organizational goals will unite and activate the organizational structures, common organizational culture can do that influencing duty in a more optimal manner, and that was missing in GOF. Since the reason for establishing an organizational structure is to organize and distribute work among the employees, with common organizational culture to complement it, GOF managers are likely to experience problems dealing with employees. Organizational structure at GOF is very much influenced by the company’s size. Since GOF as a company is big, the matrix organizational design that the company is following becomes more complex in the sense that it is characterized as FLAT and TALL which is characterized with a wider range of departments combined with a multitiered hierarchy as compared to a smaller business organization which commonly uses TALL hierarchy. Because of the FLAT and TALL hierarchy, it becomes difficult to actualize a common organizational culture all over in GOF, leading to issues in leadership, communication and teamwork. . Chart I – Organizational Chart and Structure Leadership As leaders are the men/women in lead, they usually have a major impact on how the organizational culture evolves and integrates into the organizational structure. Typically, the leaders have strong assumptions and ideas about various things. They will, therefore, be quite comfortable in imposing those views and personal cultures as the organizational culture on the organizational structures. Apart from creating an organizational culture, the leader should become an integral part of all the processes and influence the culture in a positive way. His / hers ‘touch’ both mental wise and physical wise should be found in all aspects of an organization structure. He/she should not shy away from his/her responsibility particularly in critical situations because apart from having a negative connotation on the subordinates, it would also be a sure recipe for the failure of the organizational culture. This kind of leadership was only expected from the managers at GOF. That is, leaders and managers at GOF as part of creating an optimal organizational culture should integrate with the organizational structure by being honest to themselves. However, there are self-doubts among the managers inside GOF whether they are performing the leadership role optimally. These self-doubts was clearly exhibited by Jim Barratt, General Works Manager, who thinks that all the managers including himself are not performing up to the expected levels and this is having a negative impact on the integration and influence of organizational culture into the structure. “I’ve been the general works manager for the last eighteen months and one thing is obvious to me, as clear as bloody daylight, …they’ve never been remotely average, let alone great’ says Jim, ‘Look, if we’re going to make changes around here then we’ve got to start off by being honest about things. Honest to ourselves. Honest to each other.” (Case Study). Likewise, GOF particularly its Managing Director, Englebertdown wanted to incorporate Total Quality Management approach (TQM) as part of organizational culture and integrate into the structure. Here also, the leaders and managers were expected to play the key role to actualize that, however they exhibited hands-off attitude. So, from this analysis, it is clear that no positive and effective leadership was exhibited by the leaders and managers inside GOF, as part of organizational culture. As mentioned above, leaders to influence and strengthen organizational culture as part of structure, should play an integral role, however that is not happening in GOF, with one of their own leader accepting that fact. Communication ‘Working in unison’ is the key aspect of any organizational structure, and the ‘key’ which opens up the minds of the workers working in the department, and aid ‘unison’, is communication. Barrier free communication channels should be actualized and incorporated into the organizational culture and thereby organizational structure. Leaders by formulating and implementing various strategies can establish a streamlined, interactive, responsive and restriction free communication system inside an organization as part of its organizational culture, influencing it in a positive way. Lack of common organizational culture and the resultant lack of communication line among the managers has become a serious problem inside GOF. One of the main problem that arose because of this shortfall is that employees and even managers does not know their exact roles and responsiblities. That is, without correct culture integrated structure, communication suffered and that so the leaders and managers were not able to communicate to their subordinates their roles. A strong organizational structure is important since it serves as a framework that informs employees on what is expected from them in each department. Since GOF has a no organizational culture and weak organizational structure, many of the top level and top-down management team are experiencing serious internal problems. For example: GOF’s employees like Rob Freeman – the QA Manager is confused about what his real job is all about. The organizational chart revealed that he is managing 20 people but not in reality. In case GOF management is really following organizational culture incorporated organizational structure the company has implemented right from the start, employees like Rob will know exactly what is expected from him in the company ladder (MacIntosh, & Doherty, 2007, p. 54). Also, during communication across the organizational structure, gender biases are exhibited by certain managers. That is, in an optimal organizational culture incoporated structures, all the employees will be treated equally without any biases including gender biases. However in GOF, Maggie of the Marketing department voiced concerns about Jim Barrat’s lack of support in launching a new product. Although Maggie spent hours trying to write down the specific details of the new project, Jim was never serious about the whole plan due to the fact that he treats female employees different from male employees (Watson, 2006, p. 67). Teamwork The trait of merging different employees into teams and focusing all of them on a single target is a key component of optimal organizational culture and structure. Because as any organization will be a hotbed of human activity, it could give rise to groups and subgroups, which will eventually share enough experience to create subcultures based on occupational, national, and uniquely historic experiences. Once such differentiation has taken place, the leader’s task is to find ways of coordinating, aligning, integrating and influencing the different subcultures in the structure into individual teams with common organizational culture. So, building an effective organization is ultimately a matter of meshing the different subcultures and the leader should do this job, by encouraging the evolution of common goals, common language, and common procedures for solving problems. This formulation of common goals and common procedures, and thereby common organizational culture is clearly missing in GOF and this can be seen in the way the employees struggle to come up with a manpower plan as a team. For example, a strong specialisation and team formation leads often to the setting to feel responsible for nothing, unless, the own area of responsibility would be concerned immediately by it. The HR department’s manpower plan is a perfect example for this. The Personnel Manager, William in a bid to facilitate team formation and thereby incorporate the organizational culture of teamwork into the structure asks his subordinates to give inputs to the plan. However, nobody wants to put up there hands and join others as part of team because they do not feel responsible for this. “No one puts there hand up and the room is silent apart from the tap, tap, tap of William’s pencil on his desk.” (Case Study). Another case of lack of team formation or team work as part of culture and structure happened when the employees did not contribute their inputs for the formulation of a business ness. Up to the present time, nobody has bothered to come up with an actual business plan. This is due to the lack of team formation initiatives by the top management group. Team formation and team work can be actualized as part of organizational culture and structure only when the leader or management place their ideas and strategies among the employees, and ask for their suggestions and feedbacks. When the employees are productively involved in this manner, majority of the employees will try to contribute that too in unison and thereby lead to the formation of teams. However, in the case of GOF, although the company marketing strategy paper is available, the fact that only the board of directors and senior managers have access to the paper makes the rest of the employees clueless with regards to the marketing strategy, and thereby not motivated. If the employees were updated about the strategy paper and importantly asked for feedbacks, it would have surely lead to teamwork as part of optimal organizational culture, positively influencing the structure. Influence of organisational culture on employee behaviour related to leadership, communication and teamwork In any organization, to implement and actualize the positive changes, employees’ behaviour need to be tuned, reoriented and changed accordingly and this is applicable to GOF as well. To optimally tune the employees, there should be a common organizational culture to guide the employees and this is a problem in GOF. Since organizational culture is a pattern of behaviour that enables an organization to cope with problems related to external adaptation and internal integration aside from enabling the employees to feel and think positively (David 1999, p. 143). GOF has a too weak organizational culture to positively change the employees’ behaviour optimally. GOF managers are having trouble in terms of effectively managing its employees. Rather than having employees willingly support the organizational goal, most of them are not cooperating well with their managers. Leadership Effective leader is the one who creates culture, manages it by incorporating it into the employees’ behaviour or functioning, modifies it when there is a need and thereby strengthens it for the advantage of the organization. When the leader creates organizational culture at the earliest, they will quite comfortable in imposing those views and personal cultures, on their employees as the organization copes with challenges and targets in the initial stages. This initial stage imposition of leader’s assumptions and culture is one of the good leadership traits, because as the employees’ mind will be fresh and curious about the new organizational culture, their mind will be willing to make a good beginning and thus the new culture could be easily adopted. Since organizational culture is a collective attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values shared by group of employees within an organization (MacIntosh & Doherty 2007, p. 127), the top management or leaders or managers of GOF should have taken it as a challenge to develop an organizational culture that is diverse and importantly cooperative. Cooperative in the sense, all the leaders or managers inside GOF should interact, cooperate and coordinate without any complexes and inhibition as part of the common organizational culture. But, this culture of cooperation does not actualize inside GOF with majority of the individuals in leadership position failing to coordinate. Since the top management of GOF decided to cut down the number of employees by combining the seven distributions and production sites, some of managers were unconsciously developing a sense of internal rivalry. This can be clearly seen in the lack of coordination between the factory manager and the regional sales manager. Another approach leadership issue as part of organizational culture which could have an influence on the employees’ behaviour is the secret bonus scheme for selected managers. The concept of the scheme is, if any department achieves a set of revised targets then a bonus payment equivalent to 20% of annual salary will be payable. But, the important aspect is, manager are prohibited from divulging the existence of this scheme to any other employee. This approach will put bigger onus on the manager and will test their capability. With his/hers leadership skills, the manager has to ‘work’ on his/her workers, so that they work efficiently and provide workable solutions. Communication Organizations by actualizing a common organizational culture and incorporating effective communication channels can positively influence the employees’ behaviour, as it will provide the employees an interactive and motivating working environment. The absence of effective communication between the leaders and the department heads as well as between the departments are among the major problems for GOF employees. Inside GOF, the relationship between the departments and thereby the employees were riddled with problems due the lack of strong and effective communication in the form of non-compliance of certain orders. That is, the finance department had sent a clear communication or directive to all the departments to maintain a strict budget and prevent over expenditure, to avoid the financial situation from worsening. “He has announced that a series of systems’ audits will be carried out over the next six months to ensure that all regulations and procedures are being strictly adhered to by ‘all areas of the business” (Case Study). However, some of the departments did not follow the directive of less spending and thus contributed to financial instability. So, this communication problem in the organizational culture between the departments clearly had a negative effective on the employees’ behaviour because the employees did not follow the directive in true spirit. Because of this problem in employees’ behaviour, the finance director again sent a communication expressing concern that senior managers and their employees should need to fully appreciate the need to 'stick to the budget'. However, there were no responses for that communication as well. This clearly shows that common organizational culture did not positively influence the communication and so managers and thereby employees’ behaviour was not tune with the organization’s success. Teamwork When the organization attains some success or great success, the organizational culture will become shared, and it will continue more as a process of socializing new members to the group, thereby leading to team formation. So, the role of the organization and leader is to hold on to the culture and make it work, so all the workers have no other choice but to follow it and work as teams. “He had to seduce the employees into a situation in which they had no choice but to rethink their identity.” (Schein, 2004, p. 306). Likewise, employee involvement also makes it easier for the leaders to promote team work which is important in preventing unnecessary organizational conflicts (Moynihan & Pandey, 2007, p. 256). In any organization including GOF, team work between the factory employees and the sales persons are crucial, as both should compliment each other to support the organization’s strategic goals. So, they need to interact and coordinate with each other as a team to prevent any shortfalls in the demand and supply setup of an organization. However, in GOF, there seems to be lot of conflicts, with many of the factory managers making life too difficult for the regional sales teams. That is, the factory managers do not respond to sales person’s queries about the products and this lack of teamwork causes many problems particularly in the customer sphere. This lack of information creates a lot of mis communication between the sales team and the customers. Sales people, who only interact with the customers will know the customers’ interest, and if theirs views are not seriously taken by the factory managers; it can lead to deficiency in service. This lack of teamwork between departments at GOF will lead to unfocussed workers who will provide substandard products, leading to drop in sales and further drop in profits Conclusion Any organization and also its leader should not stagnate and saturate, and should continue to develop further. Schein (2004, p. 234) pushes forward this idea by stating “that the leader of the future must be a perpetual learner”. Perpetual learner in the sense, the leader should learn new levels of perception and acquire lot of insights for running an organization. In relation to organizational change, developing a strong organizational culture that openly accepts change is important to the success of implementing the new business plan. To enable the managers to effectively implement a strong organizational culture, having a strong leadership and communication skill is crucial in terms of being able to persuade the team members to fully support the need for a change.Unison of workers into teams, with an urge to usher an organization into top echelons will be successful, if the leader creates a perfect organizational culture. And, if a perfect organizational culture is created, the organization would have a ubiquitous presence all over the world. References David, F., 1999. Strategic Management: Concepts. 7th Edition. NJ: Prentice-Hall. DeSimone, RL., Werner, JH., &Harris, DM. (2002). Human resource development. Orlando: Harcourt College Publishers. MacIntosh, E., & Doherty, A., 2007. Extending the Scope of Organisational Culture: The External Perception of an Internal Phenomenon. Sport Management Review , 10:45–64. Retrieved: http://www.academia-research.com/files/instr/330004_MacIntosh%20and%20Doherty%202007.pdf [Accessed 25 October 2009] Moynihan, D., & Pandey, S. (2007). Finding Workable Levers Over Work Motivation: Comparing Job Satisfaction, Job Involvement, and Organizational Commitment. Administration & Society , 39(7):803-832. Retrieved: http://aas.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/39/7/803 [Accessed 25 October 2009] Robbins, SP. (2005). Organizational Behavior. 11th Ed. New York: Prentice Hall Schein, E., (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership. 3rd Ed. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Watson, T. (2006), Organising and Managing Work. 2nd Ed. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited Read More