New Leaf Book Store in Sydney - Organizational Culture - Case Study Example

SMALL BUSINESS DESIGN PORTFOLIO [Your name] Business name The name of the business discussed in this portfolio is New Leaf Book Store. This is a new business that will be operating in Sydney. New Leaf Bookstore is a retail business that specializing in distribution of books and magazines within the city. Mission Statement New Leaf Book Store is a business that aims to be a leading source of books and magazines within the city. Book sales will be ranging from educational, professional and reference to pleasure while magazines will include business, fashion, sports or leisure, teens and adults. Business goals New Leaf aims at promoting a reading culture within the community through provision of a wide variety of choices to our customers. It aims at securing and making agreements with the major distributors of magazines and books within the city. It also seeks to maintain and attain a leading position as a book and magazine retailer in the city. In addition, the business goal is to gain a 40% share of the market share of all books and magazines that is sold in the city by the end of operations during the first year. This portfolio examines five topics in management required by New Leaf Bookstore in order to achieve its stated goals. These are leadership, organizational culture, job design, group/team and decision making. Leadership Leadership is the ability to control and influence a group within an organization with an aim of achieving the organization’s set goals or vision. The source of influence to a group may be either formal such as the managerial rank of a person within an organization or informal where the ability to influence is developed from outside of the organization’s formal structure. Leadership goes hand to hand with management as management deals with coping with the organization’s complexity. Management on the other hand brings consistency and order to any organization through design of organization structures that are rigid, drawing up of the formal plans and also monitoring of the results against the organizational plans. There is need for both strong leadership and management for effectiveness in the organization. An organization requires a good leader to tell it where to go and also a good manager is required to make sure that the organization gets there as one piece (Wood et al., 2010). Leadership is portrayed using various theories such as trait theories, behavioral theories and contingency theories. Trait theory can be summarized as predictive ability and the leadership success. The predictive ability shows that traits are not predictive but they separate non leaders from leaders. Leadership success shows that a trait also distinguishes effective and ineffective leaders. In behavioral theories, leaders that show structuring and consideration behaviors end up being more effective (Robbins, 2005). Leadership can also be approached in terms of inspiration where leaders tend to inspire workers through ideas, words and behaviors such as transformational, charismatic and authentic leadership. I will employ transformational leadership in the bookstore retail as it inspires workers in the retail business to move beyond their self interest for the success of this organization. The transformational behaviors I will apply in this retail store are pays attention to the workers concerns and needs on the business management (Schermerhorn, 2005). Motivation will be very important as it will begin from the store manager, to the assistant and the workers in orders to positively change the individual behaviors and drive performance in through effective sales, operation and service approaches (Tresero, 2012). Organizational culture The source of organizational culture is the shared values and beliefs which influences the behavior of the members of the organization. These cultures vary with different organizations. Organization culture can be focused on bases of the levels of the organizational culture and also weak and strong cultures. The levels of the organizational culture include the fundamental assumptions which are regarded as the core and the most essential aspect of the organization culture, values, and behavioral norms, patterns of behavior and symbols and artifacts (Wood et al., 2010). Some cultures in an organization appear more deeply rooted and stronger as compared to other cultures. A strong culture is seen as having a coherent set of values, beliefs, assumptions and also practices which are adopted and embraced by most of the workers within an organization. A culture that is a strong and pervasive is seen as beneficial to the organization as it promotes motivation, identity, sameness, commitment and solidarity. This in turn leads to facilitation of internal coordination and integration. A culture that is strong may be more essential to some of the organization as compared to others. On the other hand, a strong culture may further lead to displacement of organizational goals as the ways of performance and behavioral norms may seem so important to a condition of overshadowing the organization’s original purpose (Wenger, 2000). The main factor that the book store business will focus is the diversity of the organization culture. This business will advocate for adoption of a culture that encourages diversity to enable competition in the firm through hiring of the best employee which are not based on race, gender, religion or ethnicity but based on qualification according to job description. This retail business is going to incorporate a culture that expects the employees in any level to learn about the industry and then transfer this to the customers (Denison et al., 1995). Job design Job design is one of the methods employed in order to translate the worker motivation into performance. Job design involves the way different organizations define and structure their jobs. It is defined as specification of the methods, contents and relationships of various jobs within an organization with an aim of satisfying the organizational and technological requirements and also the personal and social requirements about the job holder. The theory of job characteristics is based on the argument that job description can be done in terms of motivational characteristics that are set specifically. The managers should also work in a way that will ensure availability of these motivational characteristics in various jobs and should also put into consideration the individual differences. Modern opinions determine the employees’ job attitudes and perceptions using social information and properties of the objective task (Wood et al., 2010). A job design assists in determining how the tasks will be done, what tasks will be done, how many tasks will be done and in what order that these tasks will be done. Various aspects of job design include job structuring which involves giving responsibilities for various levels and types of work and self organization, work organization which includes replacing and rearranging work and job enlargement and scheduling. The problems to be addressed by the job design include work overload and under load, delaying of positions that are vacant, repetitiveness, excessive working hours and limited understanding about the process of the job (Campion, M. et al, 1993). A good job design in the New Leaf book store will address the following features; giving a sense of accomplishment to the employees, allowing for the input of the employees for them to vary the activities in different section of the business according to work habits and personal needs, providing feedback about the performance of the employees, training in order to know what to do and how to do it in a proper way and providing good rest and work schedules. The goal of this job design will be making adjustments in case of any change of tasks or conditions within the business (Kelly, 1982). Groups or teams Team or group dynamics are forces that are unseen and tend to operate in a team within a group in an organization. Team dynamics are very essential as they can strongly influence either negatively or positively how a team behaves reacts or performs. The effects of a group or a team are very complex as they affect the entire organization. Team dynamic can be recognized by studying the forces which influence the behavior of the team. Some of these forces include the personality styles, the roles of a team, layout of the office, organization culture, procedures such as methodology for problem solving and tools and technology such as bulletin board and email (Wood et al., 2010). Formation of a team or a group in any organization goes through stages that are observable and predictable as they progress from loose collection to a cohesive group united for a common goal. These stages are; familiarity, storming, constructive, performing and adjourning. Familiarity stage is characterized by relation building and awareness of the group and the main challenge is creation of identity and making the team important to the organization. Storming stage is characterized by negativity, confusion and resistance in the group. Conflicts emerge at this stage over power and leadership structure and the challenge letting everyone to express their feelings. Constructive stage is characterized by integration and cooperation in the group and the challenge is channeling skills of the team members to a work that is coordinated. The performing stage is characterized by unity, productivity and group commitment. Adjourning stage is where the targets of the group or a team have been achieved and new process of team building begins (Newstrom, 2007). The retail business will constructively manage the team dynamics through identifying the forces that are at play within the team. I will also determine if the forces identified are for the good of the business and finally, I will make intervention to make sure that the effects of the dynamics prove to be more positive for the success of the business and satisfaction of the workers (Metarasa, 2011). Decision making Decision making is very crucial and is an essential skill needed for the success of any business. Decision made for the organization’s mission and vision will define the aspirations and identity of the business. These decisions in addition to the core values will determine the values and morals for the organization. Strategic decisions define the organization’s target markets, core competencies, funding and competition. Decision making is performed at all levels of an organization. It starts with the top management such as the board of directors making a grand strategic decision regarding the organization’s future growth direction and investment. Mangers also may then make decisions that are more tactical on departmental issues which contribute to the objectives of the entire business. Employees are also make decisions regarding the conduct of the specific tasks, business practice improvement and responding to customers. Decision making process requires a careful selection and recruitment, enlightened management and adequate training (Wood et al., 2010). Types of decision making in an organization include programmed decisions, non-programmed decisions, strategic decisions, tactical decisions and operational decisions. Programmed decisions involve the decisions that will always follow the same routine. These decisions can be written in steps that are fixed for anyone to follow. Non-programmed decisions are not the same as the previous decision that was made. Strategic decisions are meant to affect the business’ long term direction. Tactical decisions are regarded as medium term about how a strategy is to be implemented such as the number of extra staff for recruitment and the kind of marketing to adopt. Operational decision making involves decisions that are short term on how the tactics will be implementation such as the firm to use in making deliveries (Clegg et al., 2005). This retail business will employ all levels of decision making beginning from the top management to the workers level to ensure that the business will accomplish its strategies as a team with satisfaction of every worker within the business (Bowett, 2012). References Campion, M. et al (1993). Relations Between Work Group Characteristics and Effectiveness: Implications for Designing Effective Workgroups, Personnel Psychology. 46, 823-847. Clegg, S., Kornberger, M., Pitsis, T. (2005). Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd. Denison, Daniel R., Hooijberg & Robert E. (1995). Paradox and Performance: Toward a Theory of Behavioral Complexity in Managerial Leadership. Organizational Science 6(5), 524-540. Kelly, J. (1982). Scientific Management, Job Redesign, and Work Performance. New York: Academic Press, Inc. Metarasa (2011). Team Dynamics. Retrieved on 22nd January, 2012 from: http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/team-dynamics.html Newstrom, J.W. (2007). Organizational behaviour: Human Behaviour at Work. NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin Robbins, S.P. (2005). Essentials of organizational behaviour. (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education International. Schermerhorn, J. R., Jr, Hunt, J. G., & Osborn, R. N. (2005). Organizational Behavior (9th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. Tresero (2012). Organizational Behavior: Terminology and Concepts. Retrieved on 22nd January, 2012 from: http://tresero.hubpages.com/hub/Organizational-Behavior-Terminology-and-Concepts. Wood, J., Zeffane, R., Fromholtz, M. Wiesner, R., and Creed, A. (2010). Organisational behaviour: Core concepts and applications. (2nd ed.). Milton: John Wiley and Sons. Wenger, E.C. & Snyder, W.M. (2000). Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier. Harvard Business Review 78(1), 39-145. Marking Criteria. Name:__________________________________ Tutorial Day:_________ Time:__________ Topic ( 5 only) Explanation, relevance and application of issues Comments Marks V Poor (0) Poor (2) Average (4) Good (6) Excellent (8) Max (8) Empowerment Org Structure & Design Leadership Goal Setting Job Performance Job Design Groups or Teams Decision Making Process Org Culture Motivation Total V Poor (1) Poor (2) Average (3) Good (4) Excellent (5) Comments Max (5) Referencing Written skills Presentation Organisation Total Read More