People and Organization: IBM - Coursework Example

People and Organization- IBM Contents Contents 2 Introduction 3 Analysis 4 Analysis of the of Leadership in IBM 4 Analysis of the Power in IBM 5 Analysis of the Employee Diversity in IBM 6 Conclusion 7 Reference List 8 Appendix (Company Description) 10 Introduction Organizational Behaviour is the study for understanding human behaviour in an organizational framework and Power, Leadership and diversity are the three major aspects for evaluating individual activities of employees within an organization. In this era of changing business environment, multinational companies continuously experience changes in business model, changes in nature of competition and innovation of technologies. Hence, in order to survive with the exponential growth rate of business environment an organization will have to exercise strong power and leadership models and they should also diversify their human resource in order to capture basis of knowledge from all possible sources. Leadership in an organization may be defined as a person’s capacity to understand the organization’s objective and translate that into reality. It is a process of influencing individuals to maximize their contribution towards the common objective of organization (Adeniyi and Adeniyi, 2010). Power is another key aspect of organizational behaviour which involves capacity of an individual to influence people to accomplish a work that he would not do otherwise. Managers in the organization exercise their power position to influence the employees. Otherwise they should adopt a coercive practice of their power to force the employees for accomplishing their assigned job. The concept of power and leadership are narrowly related in organizational behaviour. Employees tend to follow those who are powerful in the organization and those persons who are followed by his subordinates and have the power to motivate people, is presumed to be a leader. However, these two aspects are substantially different. Power can be used for personal motivation, either to add some incentives to a person’s life or to demotivate or demoralize a person from his current activity but leaders are expected to exercise their power in a uniform way in order to motivate employees towards excellence (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg and Coulte, 2011). Diversity of workforce i.e. engaging people of different race, gender, age and sex across nations have shown positive impression on organization’s culture as these factors integrate skills of every individual which enriches the organization’s competitiveness. After discussing the characteristics of Leadership, Power and Diversity, implications of these factors on organizations such that on International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) will be analysed (Cummings and Worley, 2014). Analysis Analysis of the of Leadership in IBM In the ambiguous global business scenario, techniques of leadership management changes frequently to keep pace with changing in technology, economic and financial environment and other events related to the uncertain business climates. Such uncertainty cannot be eliminated; hence it becomes responsibilities of the leaders of an organization to formulate strategies and motivate their employees in order to strive in such environment and to ensure organization’s sustainability in the long run. Over the period, IBM has given rise to substantial number of excellent leaders. From the statistics published on the occasion of IBM’s 100th anniversary, it is evident that, smooth running of the company has become possible due to contributions of the eminent leaders such as Sam Palmisano, Frank Cary, John Opel, John Akers, Louis Gerstner, Ginni Rometty (Current CEO of IBM) and many more. Each of these CEOs have managed and led the company according to their unique way of handling situation. Though expertise of IBM leaders for transforming the organizational practices in a timely manner may envy management of any other company, Sam Palmisano has largely contributed toward transition and long term growth of the company (Bel, 2009). However, such expert management group of IBM is not a miracle. The human resource team of IBM strictly finds pre determined leadership traits while recruiting or promoting individuals in the top management level. Innovative mind is the first and foremost criteria for employees to achieve the position of leadership in IBM. It is clearly stated in the mission statement of IBM that innovation will be given top most priority in terms of product development and consulting solutions. Clearly, to incorporate innovations in products and services, leaders are required to think independently (Carr, 2010). For the purpose of addressing new clients or capture business opportunities in potential market, the leaders should provide leverage to the company so that the company can stretch their capacity in order to capture business opportunities. However, such strategic decision for providing leverages should be determined on analysing immediate as well as long term implications. Leaders should be enough potential for taking calculative risk in order to enhance exponential growth using multiple resources from internal and external environment of IBM and they should also have the capability to control the situation, if such strategic decision proves to be defective for the organization’s perspective (Gitsham, 2012). The leaders should have the mind set of adding value towards the success of all the stakeholders of the company. With strategies of mutual interests, the leaders should also be capable of building and maintaining sound relationship and long term collaborations with clients as well as potential enterprises (Karjoth, Schunter and Waidner, 2002). Finally, trust is another factor that IBM finds in their leaders. The company believes in maintaining long term relationships with its employees. Therefore, IBM includes those employees in their top management level who are highly trustworthy and the company’s secrets are secured to them. They should also have the power to influence all the employees to improve their performance align with the organizational goal and train managers for incorporating leadership quality among them. In summation, the leaders should be passionate for IBM itself and should have the mindset towards contributing sufficiently on IBM’s future growth (IBM, 2014). Analysis of the Power in IBM Leadership of IBM has established exemplary instances towards all the corporate and multinational companies worldwide. Such leadership practice have become fruitful due to the controlled exercise of power of the leaders of IBM, be it in the time of transformational changes of the company in 2002 or in cases of external issues arises over the period of time (McGuire and Rhodes, 2009). As interviewed the top managers to reveal the success secret of IBM, several leaders from the management itself have identified that their strategy to exercise authoritative power on employees i.e. to motivate and counsel employees to reduce resistance to changes and introduce reward systems from time to time, on successful completion of assigned work is the main source of success (Turkay, 2010). The management tries to avoid coercive power practices in order to reduce employee dissatisfaction and turnover ratio as much as possible. Hence, promoting organizational culture through well managed exercise of power is the key strategy of IBM. Such practices of IBM helps the company to maintain sound and long term relationship with the clients, peers and stakeholders and to meet their short term as well as long terms objectives (Ready and Conger, 2003). IBM leaders do not believe in one time selling. According to Harris Ginsberg, the CEO of IBM, clients tend to transform, hence it is the organization’s capability to use their authoritative power in such a way so that they can transform the company itself to maintain longstanding relationship with the clients (Ready and Conger, 2003). For the requirement of such successful transformation, the leaders use strategies such as collaborative influence, to incorporate power among employees so that they can adapt to frequent changes and technological innovation quickly. For instance, IBM’s vice president, Fank Squilliante developed and deployed company’s intranet to ease workload for 3,25,000 people and 1,00,000 business partners. This is a perfect example of collaborative influence used by IBM leaders (Ringo, 2005). In this interconnecting world IBM’s initiative to exercise such authoritative and employee oriented power rather than rigid, coercive power practices, makes the organization more sensible for operating in the global economy. High cultural ethics linked to clearly stated business strategy, constructs a powerful combination for IBM. Analysis of the Employee Diversity in IBM As a result of operating in as much as 1200 countries in the world, IBM’s human resources are characterised by employees across religion, gender, culture, colour, social status and sexual orientation (Agrawal, Watson, and Lobo, 2005). Involving such diversified resources has made the organization’s internal activities related to recruitment, compensation, promotion, transfer, relocation and retrenchment highly unbiased. IBM is adhered to fair employment practices for all workers regardless of their citizenship and immigration status. The administration and employee benefit policies of IBM also complies with the central, state and local legislations where they are operating. IBM also creates accommodation for religious beliefs as the company believes that showing respect to an individual’s religion improves the work culture of the organization and widens mindset of all employees which leads to reduce discrimination or harassment within the organization (Childs, 2005). In order to provide equal opportunities for all employees, IBM conducts various programs such that women empowerment programs, activities for minorities and people with disabilities. As per the regulations of Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Act, 1974, IBM creates special provision for protecting the veterans with a view to establish equity and appropriate interrelationship among employees (Flamholtz and Randle, 2011). Carrying out such programs helps the management of IBM to outreach all their human resource for integrating them and reaping seeds for future growth and development. Effective management of workforce diversity involves strategic objectives. Hence, each and every employees of IBM is expected to abide by these policy regulations and make significant contribution towards these practices of the company (Jeffrey and Maury, 2008). IBM also prioritizes equity in health, well being and safety for global workforce. Employee well-being is also taken into consideration in every stage of business process starting from planning to operations, product development, acquisition and outsourcing (IBM, 2014a). As IBM continues to expand into the global market, they have evolved from a product-manufacturing centric employee base to a more dynamic, customer centric and mobile workforce. Additionally, as global economic, demographic and emerging healthcare trends tend to challenge IBM’s ability to ensure the health, safety and well-being of the workforce, IBM’s initiative to implement “total health management” policy framework helps them to excel in integrating and promoting interest of global workforce (Agrawal, Watson, and Lobo, 2005). Conclusion For any multinational organization working in this global competitive environment, aspects such as leadership, power and diversity can prove to be a reason for making or breaking of a company. As a result of integrating more and more nations into their business operation, companies are getting an opportunity to experience different organizational cultures, business considerations and different nature of exercise of power (Watson and Petre, 2013). IBM is one of the unique companies in the nation that examines and integrates all the positive factors of organizational behaviour that they experience in the countries they operate. Such vivid organizational practices have helped the company to sustain smoothly in this complex, ever changing business world for so long (Lesser and Prusak, 2003). Leadership traits observed in IBM can be the reason of resentment for any company. Such well defined characteristics of IBM leaders and the company policy to promote from within i.e. elevate and include those experienced talents who are well accustomed with IBM culture, facilitate it to deliver eminent leaders for decades (Salomon, Mary and Joan, 2003). The company’s strategy of using authoritative power and control the exercise of power within limits have resulted in establishing employee well being with a reduction in employee dissatisfaction, coercion and attrition rate. The company’s commitment towards integrating employees across nation results in elimination of practices of any kind of favouritism (Murrell, Trammell and Bing, 2008). Such integration leads IBM to construct world’s largest globally integrated and diversified human resource and create a distinct identity for all IBMers. Reference List Adeniyi, M. A. and Adeniyi., 2010. Effective Leadership Management. Bloomington: AuthorHouse. Agrawal, D., Watson, J. and Lobo, J., 2005. Policy-based management of networked computing systems. Browse Journals & Magazines, 43(10), pp. 69-75. Axson, D., 2010. The Management Mythbuster. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Bel, R., 2009. Leadership and innovation: Learning from the best. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 29(2), pp. 49-60. Carr, A., 2010. The Most Important Leadership Quality for CEOs: Creativity. [PDf]. Fastcompany.com. Available at: Chen, D., Heidelberger, P. and Sugawara, Y., 2012. The IBM Blue Gene/Q Interconnection Fabric. IEEE Computer Society, 32(1), pp. 32-43. Childs, J, T., 2005. Managing workforce diversity at IBM: A global HR topic that has arrived. Human Resource Management, 44(1), pp. 73-77. Cummings, T. and Worley, C., 2014. Organization Development and Change. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Field, A., 2013. Discovering Statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics. California: SAGE Publications. Flamholtz, E. and Randle, Y., 2011. Corporate Culture: The Ultimate Strategic Asset. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Gitsham, M., 2012. Experiential learning for leadership and sustainability at IBM and HSBC. Journal of Management Development, 31(3), pp. 298 – 307. IBM, 2014. A smarter planet is built on smarter ideas. [Online] Available at: < http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/leadership/overview> [Accessed 15 December 2014] IBM, 2014a. Diversity and Inclusion. [Online] Available at: < http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/diverse/> [Accessed 13 December 2014] Jeffrey, A. and Maury, A., 2008. Staffing Policy as a Strategic Response: A Typology of Career Systems. Academy of Management, 13(10), pp. 588-600. Karjoth, G., Schunter, M. and Waidner, M., 2002. Privacy-enabled services for enterprises. IEEE Ixplore Digital Library, 2(2), pp. 483 – 487. Lenox, M., King, A. and Ehrenfeld, J., 2012. An Assessment of Design-for-Environment Practices in Leading US Electronics Firms. Interfaces, 30 (3), pp. 40-70. Lesser, E. and Prusak, L., 2003. Creating Value with Knowledge : Insights from the IBM Institute for Business Value: Insights from the IBM Institute for Business Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McGuire, J. B. and Rhodes, G., 2009. Transforming Your Leadership Culture. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Murrell, A. J., Trammell, S. and Bing, D., 2008. Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge, and Relationships. Bengaluru: Pearson Education. Ready, D. A. and Conger, J. A., 2003. Why Leadership-Development Efforts Fail. MIT Sloan Management Review, 1(1), pp. 4-6. Ringo, T., 2005. IBM Explores New Frontiers in Collaborative Innovation. Academic Journal Article, 50(5), pp. 120-123. Robbins, S., Bergman, R., Stagg, I. and Coulte, M., 2011. Management. London: Pearson Higher Education. Salomon, Mary, F. and Joan, M., 2003. Turn Diversity to Your Advantage. Research-Technology Management, 46(4), pp. 37-44. Turkay, S., 2010. Youth leadership development in virtual worlds: A case study. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2(2), pp. 3175–3179. Watson, T. J. and Petre, P., 2013. Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond. New York: Random House Publishing Group. Appendix (Company Description) The International Business Machines Corporation, renowned by the name of IBM is an America based multinational company which provides consultancy and technology solutions. Headquarter of IBM is situated in New York, United States. The company deals with manufacturing of computer software and hardware, marketing and distribution of their products worldwide and consulting services in the areas ranging from mainframe computer to nanotechnology (Gitsham, 2012). M was established in the year of 1911 as a result of merging three separate companies and it was named Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Company at that time. In 1924, CRT was renamed as IBM according to the name of its Canadian Subsidiary. Observing the company’s fondness for using blue in their products, packaging and logo, analysts nicknamed the company as Big Blue (Chen, Heidelberger and Sugawara, 2012). In the year of 2012, IBM was ranked world’s second largest firms in terms of their number of employees and fourth largest according to their market capitalization. The company also comes under top ten lists of most profitable company, best global brand, green company, leadership, most respected company, most admired company and many more as ranked by magazines and news papers like Newsweek, Forbes, Fortune and Barron etc. The company has experienced several structural changes as a result of a series of merger and acquisition with companies like SPSS and PwC Consulting Business (Field, 2013). Recently, on 11st of August, 2014, a leading cloud security service provider, Lighthouse Security Group was acquired by IBM. In the same year, the company had sold their x86 server division to Lenovo, leading computer electronics company (IBM, 2014). This employee and environment oriented company has been able to sustain in the complex, ever-changing, global business environment due to their clearly stated corporate mission and vision. As on 2003, the company’s mission was to become a leader in the creative aspect and to manufacture the most advanced information technological solutions to their clients so that they can perceive the core value lying in their service and consultation. However, in 2013 the company has incorporated a stronger mission statement which gives emphasis on the success of every client and the company’s responsibility towards establishing trust and long enduring relationship with them. IBM enhances the requirement of innovation as well, as it is important not only from organizational perspectives, but also for the world at large (Axson, 2010). The organization exhibits sustainable business approaches which involve environmental and societal accountability in their business practice. IBM has exemplified sustainable corporate practices through implementation of environment friendly ways of manufacturing and distributing goods and services. The company strives for optimizing cost (not minimizing it) and proactively plans for employee engagement activities. IBM also engages all their stakeholders in order to pursue long term relationship with them. Reduction of using limited energy resources in the enterprise, designing products in way that it can serve the purpose of environment protection and monitoring supply chain and distribution process complying with the labour standard are some of the examples of corporate social responsibilities, exercised by IBM (Lenox, King, and Ehrenfeld, 2012). Therefore, the company has been able to continue with such practices in terms of governance, innovation, supply chain responsibilities and social responsibilities because of sound organizational structure, diversity in human resource and commendable leadership and exercise of sources of power. Read More