Organisational Behaviour in Beyond Petroleum - Case Study Example

Organisational Behaviour Table of Contents Introduction 2 Individual Level 2 Attitude 4 Group Level 6 Leadership 7 Organizational Level 9 Organization Control 9 Conclusion 11 References 12 Bibliography 14 Introduction Organizational behavior is a study which investigates the contact of groups, individuals as well as on the arrangements within the organizations in the direction of improving the organization’s effectiveness. Organizational behavior mainly consists of three levels. These are individual level, group level and also organizational level. We take the example of BP, which is a UK based oil and natural gas major company to discuss about the three levels of organizational behavior (Webcache, n.d.). Individual Level In the last decade, most of the firms have erudite how to systematize themselves to provide extraordinary performance. BP is one of the successful companies in that sphere. Perception It is a kind of neurological procedure of the human through which interpretation and recognition of other’s behaviour are analysed. It is impossible to separate human perception and sensation and these two features are part of a continuous process. Perception is very important from the organizational point of view because it draws the societal interpretation as this mental process make inferences and provide meaning to the accumulated information. For almost 55 years, BP has been bringing out the full analytical view of world energy marketplace. This is highly steadfast source which may used to investigate general statements of people which stated that US people saves 25% of world’s oil. Since seven years, BP has work for rebranding effort which touts it’s another energy initiative as well as labels the organization as an environment friendly. Separate from the retail operations, BP’s products like gas stations, BP’s corporate operation implicitly positions it as honest energy company compared to other oil majors. BP’s “Beyond petroleum” operation has been praised by customer business press as well as have numerous awards that demonstrates it as the prophetic model of convincing corporate social accountability but is criticized as “green washing” by the competing oil producers as well as refiners. The enduring operation arise the questions about advertisement which is much action oriented. Managers of BP accredited approximately $260 million added value on the KM approach’s direct result. Different BP refineries, as a result of KM approach have kept aside an amount of $1 million - $10 million in the year of 2000 (BIM, n.d.). BP has received several criticisms for the company’s pro-social messages for shielding the environment. Campaigning publics, mainly the environmental groups such as Greenpeace International, have refused, rallied and also initiated many activities to challenge the company’s stance. To the few campaigning organisations, BP’s message about the pro-social activity is contradictory about the product that sits at central part of the company’s success. The main argument basically states that the nature as well as history of oil business is primarily responsible for the dreadful conditions of the environment. (“Activist protest at BP”) ( Garcia, M, n.d). Attitude Attitude is a mental state that responds negatively or positively towards any situations, ideas and objects. Affective, cognitive, conative and evaluative are the four different classifications of attitude. Attitude also depicts the readiness of one person to get into the assigned task. It is important from the point of view of BP because it shows the willingness of the different parties to get on with the organizational way. It also includes valence, stability and salience among other features. Many articles stated that BP and also many other oil and the gas companies painted a sloppy, greedy and careless executive’s picture who are preparing to put an end to scrimping company as well as to destroy the marine life of flora and fauna and also the birds through oil for profit. Now, BP has near about 19000 employees. They are working for 24 hours in a week on this drip. They have appointed thousands fishermen to help their work and huge number of new catastrophe recovery experts, engineers, scientists, consultants as well as many other people to work out an executable solution to get out for the grip of this problem. The procurement work of BP to facilitate this attempt is nothing but a short of valiant. SAP is brought in the BP system for managing the procurement process. The BP managers are working in weekends as well as overtime to extract the data manually. They also add new dealers who are doing the work on cleanup effort as well as work on invoices and payments. The most interesting attitude of BP is in their supply chain process which is adopted by their supply chain team. They are resolute to do all the things which are humanly likely to stop oil and also clean the mess. The procurement teams are documenting all the actions as well as steps they are taking, accordingly that the procurement teams can carry out thorough analysis to review the strategies, what went right or wrong and also work in partnership with the other oil and gas companies. This team has a belief that they will get out of this situations as the concentrated effort will reap expected benefits and also everyone is intent to do the right thing (Handfield, 2010). Baker panel assessment discussed the safety-related topics at five BP’s refineries and also made ten proposals to the management of BP. This panel does not scrutinize the accident. The crucial underlying statement of Baker panel statement calls for strengthening and reform of “safety culture” at the oil major. The “safety culture” goes ahead of specific rules. Some common yet complex characteristics about the large-scale technological methods like nuclear power, refineries and also chemical processing fields comprises of huge amounts of flammable, hazardous, pressurized or combustible materials are concentrated as well as processed in a single site beneath centralized control of few operators. Creating safety culture signifies installing procedures as well as attitudes in individuals and also for organizations which make sure that the issues of safety is treated as that of highest priority. The culture of safety creates the essential framework within the BP industry as well as attitude of the employee at all of the various levels that is quite responsive as is benefiting from the framework. To keep their employees safe, they need fair amount of good coordination and cooperation among operating companies, equipment manufacturers, regulatory agencies, operators’ unions, research and scientific communities as well as attentive governmental agencies (Trounson, R, 2004). BP has already started to shift to the “industry attitude” on environmental changes. They wish to reduce the product differentiation which will affect in improving in the climate change. Group Level The main principle of the organizational behavior is to gain greater indulgence of certain factors that influence group dynamics in organizational setting for that the groups from which they fit in, may be converted into more effective as well as efficient process. BP also applies such kind of principles in their group level organizational behavior. Leadership Leadership is an approach where leaders are forming a group to engage together in developing, sharing as well as moving keen on the vision. It is one type of social influence process where one person can influence their follower to achieve the goal of the team. The descriptive approach of leadership and the functional approach of leadership are the two prime types of leadership. Among the various theories, the trait theory, style theory, Fiedler’s Contingency theory and House’s Path Goal theory are the prominent ones. For BP managers who lead most of the oil as well as gas projects in the different parts of the world, opportunities and challenges exist on dizzying scale. In this world, energy giant pay out approximately $15 billion on the capital assignment in 19 nations across the world. This is more than “the Chunnel” cost from the England to the France or 25-year tag price of the Boston’s Big Dig. MIT Sloan School of Management and also MIT School of Engineering have collaborations with BP since the year of 2003. These two schools were launching and designing the innovatory BP Projects Academy. A dynamic group effort comprising of 10 managers of BP and over 25 faculty members of MIT, this pioneering agenda serves the company with a good number of experienced managers as the company’s main talented leaders are the resources from which they try to minimize risk as well as maximize their success. This academy put together a huge number of arrays of crucial knowledge into a yearlong, powerful learning and experience. The MIT engineering school provides technical wisdom; MIT Sloan supplies management expertise as BP puts together with necessary industry interface. From this collaborative business enterprise, BP has fetched together above 150 of its significant project leaders for develop some new imminent, challenging obtainable practices, as well as improve delivery system of important capital projects. The BP’s managers explore managing intricate projects and also attaining the technical excellence. The issues of team building, technological risk, personal leadership, financial system, geographic and cultural challenges, supply chain management and contract negotiation and also the overall project management are addressed by them. This improvements lead to enhanced project leadership, amplified capital productivity as well as improved networking and also into successful collaborations (Mitloan, n.d.). Today, BP is amazingly lean and flat for an industry with approximately $70 billion revenues as well as with 90 business segments all over the world. The workers of these business units are closest to the BP’s assets as well as their customers. The value which can be resultant from the sharing knowledge should coerce the communications among all business units. For this reason, network of BP’s virtual team is very important ( Browne, n.d.). Organizational Level In the organizational level, company mainly thinks about their control over the dynamic corporate situation, from which they can create a good image to their external as well as their internal customers. BP is one of the most profitable companies of Great Britain. They are also thinking to satisfy their external as well as internal customers. Organization Control The organizational control is mainly concerned with the organizations’ culture, values and norms which are lays down the policies to attain the long term goals. Among the various control processes, managerialist perspective, open systems perspective and political perspectives are the most prominent ones. In this regard, ‘Management by Objectives’ has been very useful. Also, the organization should be aware of the various resistance techniques that it can face while imposing control mechanisms. Since the last decade, most of the companies possess the requisite knowledge about how to systematize themselves to serve extraordinary performance. BP has been a leading company in this respect. BP’s story presents the organizational strategy from which they can achieve the outstanding results. BP has bureaucracy managed by awkward matrix structure. In the recent years, BP has reported high income by means of other corporation. The high price of crude oil has contributed this result. BP’s cost-efficient operations, particularly in its production and exploration business were generated a strong performance for business purposes over the last decade. BP is very much recognized in energy sector for the company’s effectiveness in ruling hydrocarbon deposits as well as efficiency in carrying them to the market. The company absorbed Alco and Amoco companies which were the two main oil industry participants (Roberts, 2005). BP Logix Process Director and Workflow Director possessed influential workflow management software capable to manage the crucial business processes. This system is the important components of the lean BPM which offer the organization automated design processes, not changing the employees’ procedure to conduct their business. This software was mainly designed for the business users so that it allows the organization to effortlessly model their approval and the review process. The BP Logix workflow engine allows tasks, forms as well as documents to be mechanically routed in line with defined the business process. British Petroleum is a vertically integrated. This company mainly deals with oil exploration, petroleum and natural gas product. BP is listed on London Stock Exchange and is an important constitute of FTSE 100 Index. Conclusion BP launched “Project 1990” which was rich in the human resource proposals. This proposal basically deals with vision, values and also the cultural change as well as essential behavior. All these are a transforming part of BP where the company gets a new form which advances and attracts the extraordinary personnel. The cultural change in BP is not only about the change; it is defined how they bring about this change and also strap up it to achievements of their objectives. The goal of the company has been to comprehend the old nature and also the recent culture, as well as to consign to new BP culture originated on the essential behavior. BP’s Individual Development Program (IDP) is an excellent example of assurance to the HR values. This program provides the training program and the career development of high potential employee. This program is considered to guarantee commercial resources for the company’s top most positions. This program includes mentorship, job rotation, personnel development planning and for few cases, external job postings. Inbuilt rigidities in BP industry, includes employment practices, distribution problem and wages, prevented by the flexible alteration. Now, old concept of BP is being discarded as the company invents the new paths of competing. References BIM, No Date. Knowledge Management and Strategic Cost Management. Article. [Online] Available at: http://www.bim.edu/pdf/lead_article/KM_SCM.pdf [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Browne, J. No Date. Sharing Knowledge Through BP's Virtual Team Network. University of Toronto. [Online] Available at: http://choo.fis.toronto.edu/iss/km/KC.BP.html [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Garcia, M. No Date. Perception is Truth: How Elite U.S. Newapapers Framed the “Go Green” Conflict between BP and Greenpeace. University of Missouri – Columbia. [Online] Available at: http://www.instituteforpr.org/files/uploads/Perception_is_Truth_Garcia.pdf [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Handfield, R, 2010. The BP Oil Spill: The Critical Role of Procurement in Managing this Disaster. NC State University. [Online] Available at: http://scm.ncsu.edu/blog/2010/05/18/the-bp-oil-spill-the-critical-role-of-procurement-in-managing-this disaster/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-bp-oil-spill-the-critical-role-of-procurement-in-managing-this-disaster [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Mitloan, No Date. BP: Fueling Performance Through Major Project Leadership. MIT Sloan School of Management. [Online] Available at: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/execed/pdf/BPcasestudy.pdf [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Roberts, J. 2005. Organizing for Performance: How BP Did It. Stanford Graduate School of Business. [Online] Available at: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0502/feature_bp.shtml [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Trounson, R, 2004. USC Has Global Strategy to Enroll New Trojans. University of South California. [Online] Available at: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:XnVQJJ07Dm0J:viterbi.usc.edu/tools/download/%3Fasset%3D/assets/033/52352.pdf%26name%3Dmeshkati.pdf+Attitude+issue+of+British+Petroleum+site:edu&hl=en&gl=in&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShGPOniSmaeZsOEjqi_DHs7rOW1szYL0GT7kUTuE8U6BqO5hiaYaN2vwVHY8GHrGOoqX_oXQkMhS_1YOfLg0PZ1A78UsK-fADgUAJ1uhVcZ_iQohsaOPK7ZWGrS6gRdS9YfkvZ&sig=AHIEtbTOge4So6UnFWy1luOydSDWq7uUvg [Accessed 22 May, 2010] Webcache, No Date. Organizational Behaviour. University of Utah. [Online] Available at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xik7pJyTkJ:www.business.utah.edu/~mgtab/OB01.ppt+www.business.utah.edu/~mgtab/OB01.ppt&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefox-a [Accessed 22 May, 2010]. Bibliography Armstrong, M. A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. Kogan Page Publishers, 2006. Harris, H. & Et. Al. International Human Resource Management. CIPD Publishing, 2003. Read More