How Managers Utilize Key Elements of Organizational Behavior Concepts - Assignment Example

The Way Managers Utilize Key Elements of Organizational Behavior Concepts This paper analyzes how manager uses primary elements of organizational behavior concepts. It examines the views of Maureen Portee, the branch manager of Sun Trust Banks, Inc. branch in Atlanta. It also analyzes the views of William H. Rogers Jr., the Chief Executive Officer SunTrust Banks, Inc. Furthermore, it evaluates the views of Guy Wollaert, the Innovation and Chief Technical Officer at the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta. The Way Managers Utilize Key Elements of Organizational Behavior Concepts Introduction Organizational behavior (OB) is an area of study, which investigates how organizational structures influence behavior within organizations. It is also the study of the way human behavior influence the organization itself. OB has three sections. They are the micro-level, meso-level, and the macro-level. Individuals are study at micro-level, work groups at meso-level, while the behavior of an organization is a study at macro-level. Decision-making, motivation, leadership, job satisfaction, personality, employees’ mistreatment, and counterproductive work behaviors are some of the facets of OB. Others are the managerial role, national culture, organizational culture, occupational stress, and work-family (VanHoose, 2010). This paper analyzes how manager uses primary elements of organizational behavior concepts. It examines the views of Maureen Portee, the branch manager of Sun Trust Banks, Inc. branch in Atlanta. It also analyzes the views of William H. Rogers Jr., the Chief Executive Officer SunTrust Banks, Inc. Furthermore, it evaluates the views of Guy Wollaert, the Innovation and Chief Technical Officer at the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta. Personality What personality characters do the manager has? Personality includes behavior patterns, emotion, and cognition. Personality traits are the personal characteristics, which are revealed in various situations. They have a real impact on real life. Portee has several personality traits that have helped her and the bank’s employees meet the demands of the business and the working environment. She is empathetic, fair and impartial, patient, helpful, and considers the interest of every employee. Over one year and eight months that she has served as a branch manager, she has been able to help several employees adapt to the new and ever changing demands of the working environment. Furthermore, she put much interest into knowing every employee. The tendency has helped her foster her fairness and impartiality as she can know and understand everyone’s weakness, strengths, and interest. It has also helped her offer assistance in individual situations, and utilize her patients as she assist and expect employees to adapt to new situations. What do you think this managers Myers-Briggs personality assessment is? Why? Maureen Portee is not emotional in her personality. Instead, she uses rationality. Therefore, her personality is INTJ personality as per the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. Personality Assessment for Employees What kind of personality evaluation do the manager’s employees have? Understanding the natural behavioral preferences and personality types of job candidates is necessary for a successful start and smooth integration of a team member. When hiring, managers face the challenge of identifying the personality of prospective employees. They face the challenge of finding suitable questions to ask and the determining the abilities of potential employees. However, SunTrust Banks, Inc. branch in Atlanta use Jung Typology Profiler for Workplace (JTPW). JTPW looks at interpersonal and communication, leadership, empathy, skills, rationality, analyticity, and diligence, which are then presented using Personality Radar graph. JTPW is utilized because it portrays clearly the personalities of prospective workers and is easy to use. Motivation What kind of motivational theory does the manager utilize? Why? How? Motivation is a scientific word that is utilized to refer to the reasons for people’s desires, needs, actions, and others. In the workplace, there are two main theories that used for motivation of employees. These are the Herzberg’s two-factor and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs models. Maureen Portee utilizes the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. According to this model of motivation, people are motivated by deficiency of requirements. Portee uses this fact by encouraging her employees to meet particular needs. For instance, she usually encourages employees to meet esteem needs through recognition of extraordinary employees. The best workers of the month are usually portrayed monthly in company’s magazine to motivate other employees to work extra hard. What motivates their employees? Portee chose the Maslow’s model because she believes that everyone has unique potentials, which can differentiate him/her from the rest. Utilizations of these individual possibilities make people achieve esteem and self-actualizing needs. Therefore, the branch manager utilizes employees’ deficiency of needs, which has the potential to influence workers to work extra hard. Stress Where does the manager source her stresses? Stress disturbs people’s mental or physical equilibrium. A stressful event might cause the fight-or-flight response, causing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to move through the body. Stress comes up due to the interaction of an individual with a situation (Greenberg, 2011). In the workplace, it is caused by several factors. For Maureen Portee, stress are caused by lack of cooperation of some employees, high volume of work, difficulty solving a problem, and failures of some workers to perform as expected. How is it managed? Portee acts on stress other than react to it. She identifies the sources of stress and act on those, which she can control leaving those she cannot. For instance, in the case of employees who are not cooperating or performing as expected, the branch manager uses her understanding nature and influence to encourage them to make amendments on their actions. In the case of the high volume of work, Maureen Portee eliminates interruption, schedule her day for energy and focus, and relax well after work for the coming day. Where do the managers employees source their stresses? Several factors stress Portees workers. Some of them are conflicts between employees, conflicting roles, demands of work, involvement in hard decision-making, work overload, and personal factors. How does this manager handle their employees stress? Stresses reduce employees’ performance (Eunson, 2007). Therefore, they should be controlled. In the SunTrust Banks, Inc. branch in Atlanta, employees are helped when they are stressed. As mentioned earlier, the branch manager acts on issues that cause stress other than acting on them. Therefore, she tries to motivate her employees in every stressful situation. For instance, she motivates them when they have a lot of work or when there are experiencing stressful situations. Employees are also involved in decision-making and job design in order to eliminate conflicting roles. Again, the branch manager usually takes employees involved in conflicting roles through job description. Decision Making What types of decisions do this manager often makes? Why? Decision-making is the cognitive process that involves the selection of a course of action or a belief in many alternative possibilities. Every decision-making process generates a final choice, which may or may not cause action. Decision-making is one of the essential elements of management (Schoonhoven & Dobbin, 2010). In the SunTrust Banks, Inc. branch in Atlanta, the branch manager, Maureen Portee makes several decisions. The decisions she makes differ according to situations. She makes programmed decisions in repetitive, well-structured, and routine cases using predetermined decisions rules. Many programmed decisions are based on established procedures and practices. Furthermore, she makes non-programmed decisions on ill-structured or novel situations. Portee makes these decisions because they determine the stability of the company. What style of decision-making is used? While making these decisions, Portee utilizes pros and cons techniques while also basing her decisions on bounded rationality, rationality, or intuition. Are employees involved in decision-making? Portee involves her employees on decisions touching on their work and working environment. Through staffs meetings and workers’ emails, she encourages her employees to offer their views on certain situations. She then analyzes various suggestions before coming up with several alternatives, which she passes through range voting to come up with a single decision, which is acceptable to most people. The involvement of employees in decision-making is essential as it eliminate conflicts of roles. It also makes employees feel part of the company and thus dedicate themselves towards meeting the demands they set. Dedicated workers ensure the agility of the business and themselves in an ever-changing business environment. Guy Wollaert, the Chief Technical, and Innovation Officer at the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta Team Dynamics What teams are in this organization? Teams enable organization to move through different challenges without difficulties. There are several teams in the Coco-Cola Company in Atlanta. These teams are leadership team, motivation team, safety and environmental team, and employee wellness team. What are their characteristics, size, and composition? The Coco-Cola in Atlanta has 5,136 employees. In order to represent this number of people, the teams created by the company have between ten to twenty members. The leaders and members of each group have direct conduct with the management of the organization. What are the teams’ norms? Every team has its standards. However, honest, unity, equal responsibility, equal representation, and freedom of expression are the common norms, which shape the actions of all teams. Coco-Cola is a big company, which employs different people. These norms are thus important as they ensure representation of each member without discrimination. They also bring the groups together thus providing togetherness in the company. Is the team cohesive? Due to the above-mentioned norms, the company’s teams are cohesive. Workers follow similar values, which make them feel equal. They also make them pursue similar goals and objectives. Therefore, the norms unify the teams by making the members focus on similar targets. How does the manager approach social loafing? Social loafing is an occurrence where individuals in a team exert less effort for the achievement of a goal than when they had work alone. The occurrence is one of the main why people are usually less productive when they are in groups. Guy Wollaert, the Chief Technical, and Innovation Officer at the Coca-Cola Company at Atlanta understand the adverse impacts of social loafing. Therefore, he usually encourages every member to act in the team. He does this by helping every member to offer his/her personal solution to the problem at hand that making members feel important members of the groups. Team Building In what way does the manager create trust in his teams? A team that its members lack trusts with each other is not a real team, but a group of people working together and making unsatisfactory progress (Wirba, 2012). The members may not cooperate or might fight over responsibilities and rights thus reducing the capacity and the development of the team (Burke & Cooper, 2010). In order to eliminate such phenomenon and build trust in an organization, Guy Wollaert communicate openly, lead by example, place no blame, discusses the issue of trust and discourages cliques. How does team building occur? The employees themselves instigate development of most teams. However, Guy Wollaert usually offer support for organizing workshop where he encourages his employees to develop effective teams. The employees then chose leaders who then arrange meetings for the creation of guiding principles. Communication What form of communication usually occurs in an organization? Guy Wollaert often encourages interpersonal communication so that he can create trust between himself and his employees. Interpersonal communication thus often happens in the organization. Communication of this kind is a one-to-one communication between individual in the form of verbal or nonverbal messages (Greenberg & Edwards, 2009). What is the most useful form? Why? Interpersonal communication is the most effective as it eliminates barriers that usually exist in communication. What communication barriers commonly exist? There are no obstacles to communication as a form of communication allows every worker to communicate directly with the management. What cross-cultural and gender issues in communication exist? Coca-Coca Company is an international company that recognizes various issues affecting its diverse employees. Due to this fact, every employees and staff member is encouraged to respect each other, thus eliminating possible gender and cross-cultural issues. Furthermore, the interpersonal communication gives everyone equal opportunities thus reducing possible gender and intercultural issues. William H. Rogers Jr., the Chief Executive Officer SunTrust Banks, Inc. Power What are the sources of power evident in the manager’s organization? There are several sources of power in the SunTrust Banks, Inc. the Chief Executive Officer; William H. Rogers, Jr. portray several. They are reward power, personal power, expert power, and position power. How does this manager influence their employees? The CEO affects employees through articulate communication, where he motivates and makes the goals and the objectives of know to them. Conflict and Negotiation What are the sources of conflicts in the organization? Conflicting roles, competition among workers, failure of workers to perform as expected, and lack of cooperation among workers. How is conflict managed? William H. Rogers, Jr. utilize the interest-based relational approach to solving conflicts within the company. The approach helps the CEO to focus on creating a good relationship between workers, separating problems from people, paying attention presented, setting out the facts, exploring options with others and listening first. Leader What kind of leadership style does the manager utilizes? William H. Rogers, Jr. employs transformational leadership style. Is it effective? Why? Rogers’ leadership style is effective because it push every worker to his/her potential. The method encourages every employee to transform his/her situation. Conclusion There are several issues within a company or an organization. Apart from an organization or a company, individuals in an organization have their problems that influence the organization. The factors like the structure of an organization influence people in an organization. Managers of different companies or agencies utilize the Organizational behaviors (OB) to develop various methods to manage their businesses for achievement of objectives and goals. References Burke, R. J., & Cooper, C. L. (2010). Risky Business: Psychological, Physical and Financial Costs of High Risk Behavior in Organizations. Farnham: Ashgate Pub. Eunson, B. (2007). Conflict management. Milton, Qld: Wiley. Greenberg, J. S. (2011). Comprehensive stress management. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Greenberg, J., & In Edwards, M. S. (2009). Voice and silence in organizations. Bingley, U.K: Emerald Group Pub. Schoonhoven, C. B., & Dobbin, F. (2010). Stanfords organization theory renaissance, 1970-2000: Volume 28. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group. VanHoose, D. D. (2010). The industrial organization of banking: Bank behavior, market structure, and regulation. Berlin: Springer. Wirba, A. V. (2012). Leadership Styles. Saarbrücken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing. Read More