Organization Behavior Module - Assignment Example

Answer for question one Organizations are a constituent of informal and formal rules coordinating actions of numerous people. However, how organizations ensure that these people having diverse backgrounds, interests, and understandings comply with the respective rules is what holds as astonishing. Raising questions of organization management mean that the way forward is to look into organizational power, politics, and narrowing down to how the two concepts of the organization influence the decision-making process (National Defense University). Power is the ideal concept encompassing the processes, mechanisms, and dispositions, which try, not successfully always, to ensure that persons within the organization act according to the stipulated rules. Hence, power holds as a critical concept in both theory and management practice, therefore, a influential factor when it comes to decision-making (Kreitner and Kinicki 2001). Organizational politics, on the other hand, are an intrinsic and inescapable reality. Organizational politics intricately wolves with management system of the organization that processes, relationships, norms, performance and outcomes of decision making in that organization are influenced hugely and affected by the politics. Organizational politics entails self-serving or relatively, manipulative behaviour of peoples or groups in an organization in promoting their self-interests ideally at the expense of others (National Defense University). This even goes to the extent of compromising organizational goals. Through such politics individuals in the organization structure decision making processes to go their way and to benefit them. It is from the politics within the organization that sometimes it becomes difficult even to reach certain decisions, which are critical for the operations of the organization. This is why in the 21st century where decision making in organizations need to be sound and helpful, organizations have to create political awareness, as well as skill (National Defense University). With these, the organization is able to avoid facing the inevitable prospect of ideally becoming immersed specifically in parochial politics, bureaucratic infighting, and destructive power struggles that profoundly retard organizational morale, initiative, innovation, and performance (Kreitner and Kinicki 2001). Organizational politics and power manifests itself through personal conflicts, leadership, struggle for resources, and competition for power and tactical influence ideally executed by people or groups in a motive to attain power, and in building personal stature, as well as control information access and build coalitions (Kreitner and Kinicki 2001). These are the main areas in the organization of which these affects how it proceeds with its operations. The whole concept determines what decisions come around in the managements of the organization as well as the teams involved in respective sectors of an organization. Politics and power, therefore, have a greater role to play in effecting the decision-making process and facilitating the decisions made (National Defense University). In affecting decision-making, politics and power within an organization help in mobilizing support for a decision, inspiring the decision-making teams, individuals or people to make decisions. It is, therefore, arguable that organizational politics and power influence decision making in organizations by either making the decision making process faster or slowly. It also influences on the type of decisions made, who benefits from the same, and finally, it determines the final say in passing decisions within an organization. Answer for question two Organizational culture is a hard thing in definition. Nevertheless, organizational culture includes systems, values, actions, behaviors, and beliefs persisting over time in a given organization. It is expedient to note that it is possible to assess organizational culture. In fact, without appropriate assessment of organizational culture, organizations are usually not successful in reaching their overall goals (Leigh 2006). This is what separates successful organizations and branding them as future prospective organizations. There are two main approaches used to assess organizational culture including archival methods, which use historical data, for instance customer relations, absenteeism, turnover, productivity records, and retention among others (Michael and Nick 1982). The other significant way of assessing organizational culture is through gathering information using surveys, whether open-ended surveys, numerical surveys, or a combination of both. This involves a consultant systematically observing individuals, meetings, or discussions within the organization’s operations (Leigh 2006). Through assessing organization culture, it is possible to ascertain the level of success of that given organization. An assessment of the organization culture will tell you the levels of success or failure as well as the potential of a given organization. It is from the same assessment that you can evaluate the organizational improvements (Leigh 2006). Harvey and Brown (1996) defined organizational culture as a system of culture shared meanings, among them the patterns of behaviour, language, dress, value system, interactions, feelings, attitudes, and group norms of organization employees (Michael and Nick 1982). It is, therefore, arguable that these are some of the expectations to have in conducting an assessment within an organization. Among other expectations from assessments of organizational culture, include shared values by employees, which distinguish an organization from another, therefore, highlighting that the assessment is supposed to give the uniqueness of a particular organization (Leigh 2006). An organizational culture assessment indicates patterns of basic assumptions within an organization developed by leaders in helping adapt to both its internal environments as well as the external world. Therefore, the assessment is excellent, as it will indicate how well an organization is fairing in the internal environments as well as the external world (Leigh 2006). Specifically, it will indicate the standing of the organization in a global market making it clear on how the organization builds its competitive advantage over the others. Organizational culture assessment will also indicate how employees fell regarding their work, therefore, holds as an important too of management in any given organization (Leigh 2006). It is from the assessment of organizational culture that measurable aspects of performance of that given organization come out. These measurable aspects align what is best for organizations and its prospective practices. It also brings up the criteria that leaders of that organization implicitly use in determining the operations of the organization (Leigh 2006). Finally, an organization culture assessment will indicate the kind of environment created in a given organization for work and how good or bad the employees handle the same. Generally, the organizational culture assessment indicated the strengths or weakness of an organization of in its operations, therefore, indicating its future prospects and progress. Answer for question three Performance within an organization is critical and should be progressive. This is because; performance is a factor of productivity, which an organization relies on in its modules of planning for excellence (David 2009). Performance in an organization comprises the actual output or relatively all the results of an organization ideally measured against its projected outputs. This is in summary, the goals and objectives of an organization. In any organization, performance is always subject to numerous factors. These factors determine whether the performance succeeds or some inhibitions prevail leading to failure of drop in level of performance. These factors generally surpass all levels of work in any given organization be it in leadership or the employee at the lowest rank. Communication is a critical facto that determines successful performance of work organizations (Charles 2010). Wherever within an organization, communication is vital to help unite the operations of the organization and reduce compromises or failure of some routines. Without proper communication, many organizations fail in their performance because some issues are left unattended (David 2010). It is out of communication that decision making is, made efficient of which this is a critical factor of effective performance. On the same note, communication helps in conflict resolution within an organization, therefore, this helps in increasing the level of performance of work organizations. Knowledge and skills are two expedient factors that any organization cannot rule out as affecting its performance. They are out rightly determinants of how employees perform. These two factors determine the levels of qualification and experience the employees have in respective roles within the organization and how trustworthy they can work on the same (Charles 2010). For an employee to function well, the employee must have adequate skills meaning that it is a factor of concern when it comes to performance. Support is also a factor that determines the success of performance in work organizations. There are many and different types of support that an organization should give to employees if they are to perform efficiently and contribute to the success of performance (David 2010). For one, superiors and department heads should support employees in respective sectors. This includes knowing the needs of employing and understanding how to fulfill them. This way, employees are comfortable in their work and perform excellently on their respective tasks. Conversely, there are many obstacles to effective organizational performance. These obstacles are what bring down the level of performance in an organization (Charles 2010). They lower the motivation of employees in performing their tasks. Some of the principal obstacles include poor communication, poor leadership, improper culture diversity and poor working environment including poor safety culture (David 2010). It is essential for the organization to think of how best it can handle these obstacles and improve performance. Overcoming these obstacles require some basic approaches including performance appraisal, employee training, teamwork building and fostering culture integration (Charles 2010). It is from proper application of these approaches that an organization can salvage the obstacles and develop proper strategies for improving performance. References Charles, J 2010, Five Barriers to Effective Learning in Organizations, 2010 April 7, from, http://charles-jennings.blogspot.com/2010/04/five-barriers-to-effective-learning-in.html, retrieved on 21 July 21, 2010 David, D 2009, Factors affecting the performance of employees in an organization, 2009 July 25 from, http://www.saching.com/Article/Factors-affecting-the-performance-of-employees-in-an-organization/3277, retrieved on July 21, 2010 Kreitner and Kinicki 2001, Effects of Organizational Power and Politics” in Influence, Tactics, Empowerment, and Politics, Organizational Behavior, Fifth Edition, the McGraw-Hill Companies, from, http://www.scribd.com/doc/28932957/Effects-of-Organizational-Power-and-Politics Leigh, Z 2006, Assessing Organizational Culture in a Private Hospital in the Western Cape, from, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_Ou2An1hIssJ:etd.uwc.ac.za/usrfiles/modules/etd/docs/etd_gen8Srv25Nme4_8714_1182227222.pdf+assessing+organisational+culture&hl=en&gl=ke Michael, P. and Nick, O 1982, Communication and Organizational Cultures, Western Journal of Communication 46 (Spring 1982) 115-13, from, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jjL9k2WLdZAJ:wms-soros.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/NR/rdonlyres/ea7iql3xy4kntt7i7wogh3dtk3ayuaiwgynvfhq27vrzxhy4qehuivwt3fmk65kiw6smm7hx5lzezp/Assessingorganizationalculture.pdf+assessing+organisational+culture&hl=en&gl=ke National Defense University, Strategic Leadership and Decision Making: leveraging power and politics, from, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt4ch17.html Read More