The Impact of Management on Individuals and Groups Within an Organization - Essay Example

As an assistant manager in the beauty and hair salon industry, I am assigned the task of training supervisors to understand the effect of management on individuals and groups within the organisation. What I want to do is keep my employees motivated, and to do this, I can look to theories of the past to see what works, and what does not work, within this paradigm of action. From early theorists like Weber and Taylor, to more modern theories like Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, theory can inform practice in many ways. Leadership theory is also important to motivate employees in a way that is proactive and authentic. Although theories of Weber and Taylor are slightly outdated today, they still offer a beneficial perspective. To Weber’s perspective, society, and also the workplace, is something that arises out of a state of chaos, so people want to make order out of chaos and make a workplace as real and rational as possible for them, and often this is in the form of the modern bureaucracy as Weber saw it. All industries have some degree of bureaucracy, and the beauty and hair salon industry is no different. Weber thought that people should look to the past and look at bureaucracies and also how they relate to the present situation, and we can still do this today. Weber also believed in the ideal type of the bureaucracy, or the optimal ideal. The ideal represents the idea, and the actual is represented by how things really are. There are possible problems in the situation because ideal types often do not live up to the real situation. Weber believed that focusing on the bureaucracy would yield positive results that could be construed in the value-neutral position of the bureaucracy. This led to his formulation of the ideal type methodology, which later functionalists would see as an automatic pattern of stability to be looked for in a societal context. Weber saw that the object of science was to make subjective observations of the bureaucracy’s function and look at these observations along methodological lines. Other early bureaucratic theories like those of Taylor stressed the presence of an ideal condition where complex tasks were simplified, so Taylor borrowed these notions and thought about how absolute standards could be put upon the subjectivity and reality observed by social science. “Taylors strongest positive legacy was the concept of breaking a complex task down in to a number of small subtasks, and optimizing the performance of the subtasks. This positive legacy leads to the stop-watch measured time trials which in turn lead to Taylors strongest negative legacy” (Management, 2010). More modern thinkers such as Maslow are perhaps more appropriate for my industry, since people working at hair salons can be seen to be motivated psychologically from this perspective. Maslow (1970) states in terms of physiological and safety needs that, in some cases, “They may serve as the almost exclusive organizers of behaviour, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service, and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism” (p. 53). It is difficult to determine whether Maslow means this to signify that the mechanism, or hair salon employee, in this instance would be so dominated by safety needs as to have no need to go higher up the scale to needs of social contact, feelings of self-worth, and the ephemera of self-actualization in their motivational needs. It is also important to think about the relationship between the needs of employees under my management, and Forces of Motivation arguments. This is crucial to understanding how Maslow can be applied to a context of motivating the hair salon employee, because in the theories of the psychologist, cognitive abilities such as perception and learning are capable of being environmentally blocked or limited, which in turn hinders the employee in terms of the human needs that they are able to fulfil through their job. This is a key tenet to Maslow’s needs hierarchy, because it means that the hair salon worker basically achieves the needs in ascending order through using cognitive tools. As Maslow (1970) states, “If we remember that the cognitive capacities (perceptual, intellectual, learning) are a set of adjustive tools, which have, among other functions, that of satisfaction of our basic needs, then it is clear that any danger to them, any deprivation or blocking of their free use, must also be indirectly threatening to the basic needs themselves” (p. 68). Therefore, training structures at the beauty and hair salon must be tailored with this stipulation clearly in mind. As an assistant manager, I need to also motivate my employees through leadership. The hair salon and beauty industry is dynamic and often changing. Proactive leadership works well with systemic change because like systemic change, transformational leadership takes a step back and looks at the problem as a whole, to see how the larger good of the organization is affected by the decision making of the manager. I can affect the values of subordinates deeply, if I able to inspire them and improve their self esteem, pride, and self concepts through dynamic leadership. This style of leadership also motivates others to look at changes that are being made and that can be made on the systemic level. Leadership has a positive functional definition, but there are also elements of a leadership style that has more negative connotations in the beauty and hair salon industry, that of autocratic leadership. This is not wholly negative, but represents more independence than teamwork or group thinking. “The autocratic leader or manager makes decisions with little influence from others. This leader tells others what to do and usually enforces sanctions against those who do not comply. The autocratic leader views followers as essential” (Shockley, 2006). It is sometimes difficult to determine transformational and autocratic leadership in opposition, which has been a really big problem foundationally. This ambiguity of terms is often a problem In terms of the leadership of the assistant manager along the lines of providing conflict resolution and providing a valuable way of diversity and sensitivity, communication is also the key. There is a difference between positive and negative communication, and often this difference is that in positive communication, the person knows how to listen as well as how to speak in a way that shows no discrimination or prejudice. In terms of solving conflict between these groups in this context, communication must be a two-way street in which both the sender and receiver of information benefit. Staff, including hairdressers and salon workers, needs to be motivated. This brings the subject to teamwork and how it relates to motivation, which is another important part of leadership. There are also legal considerations, and considerations for the level of teamwork in the organizational environment. The main ethical imperatives that are included in my plan for motivating employees are openness and transparency, equal participation, involvement, conflict resolution, consensus, and morale building. I value the social and ethical fabric of the organisational environment over any sort of rationalized behavioural standard, but still follow basically rational structures for control of the organisational environment through controlling social and ethical factors. In the wake of recent happenings such as the events at Enron, WorldCom and Parmalat new movements are emerging that concern my role as an assistant manager. It is believed that managers today are among the least trusted members of society. Regaining this trust for the profession of management is what these modern theories wish to point out as an important responsibility for all individual managers. Khurana and Nohria (2008) propose that management cannot be regarded as a true profession because true professions have codes of conduct, governing bodies and licensing requirements (p.72). This means that as an assistant manager there needs to be certain ideals and social purposes that I must embrace. One school of thought, anchored by economists like Milton Friedman, argues that management’s aim should simply and exclusively be to maximize shareholder wealth using means consistent with prevailing laws and customs. We now know with certainty where such maxims have taken us – think Enron, WorldCom and the global financial crisis we are just beginning to recover from. The other school of thought, anchored by organizational theorists like Chester Barnard, view management’s purpose as being to prudently balance the legitimate, potentially competing claims of all stakeholders whose joint effort creates value for an organisation. I for a fact know how impossible it is to keep everyone happy. My role therefore, as an assistant manager, is to seek a sensible compromise between the two schools of thought. I acknowledge from social science that the behavior of human beings is greatly influenced by the expectations placed on them. Therefore I must act like a true professional. Khurana and Nohria (2008) say that I must wield my power with humility and respect to ensure that the interests of those who do not have power are protected and the voices of those who may not enjoy decision rights are heard (p. 77). REFERENCE Maslow, Abraham (1970). Motivation and Personality. London: Harper & Row Shockley, P (2006). Fundamentals of Organizational Communication. London: Pearson Management theory (2010). http://www.kernsanalysis.com/sjsu/ise250/history.htm Khurana, R. & Nohria, N. (2008). It’s Time to Make Management a True Profession. Harvard Business Review. October. 70 – 77. Read More