How Managers Influence Employee Values and Behaviour at Work - Essay Example

Almost all top American companies have shown how a strong sense of organizational culture which making the concept essential to managers (Peters and Waterman, 1982).

The Organizational control theories include that of F.W Taylor’s Bureaucratic Control, Elton Mayo’s Humanistic Control, and Deal and Kennedy, Schein’s Symbolic Control.

SCHEIN’S MODEL OF CULTURE
There are three levels of culture that explain how culture is developed, passed on and changed (Three Levels of Culture). First are the surface manifestations, which are visual organizational structures and processes, e.g. artifacts, testimonials, physical layout, slogans, etc. Beneath them are espoused values that are attached to the artifacts and which result in preferring certain things over others. Finally, there are the basic underlying assumptions that are taken for granted, unconscious perceptions and thoughts.

Hence using Schein’s Model, a manager can influence employee behaviour by using the three levels of culture e.g. Tesco grocery store’s slogan ‘every little help’ serves as an artifact that reinforces the company culture, thereby affecting employee values and behaviours.

HANDY’S FOUR MAIN CULTURES
Handy has classified organizations into four broad cultures namely, power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture.

Power Culture
Power culture is usually found in small businesses, where the owner/entrepreneur is central to all business activities and power is concentrated in his hands (Culture –Handy). The owner himself is the source of influence and has his own style of motivating and rewarding employees, e.g. small businesses in India like crafts shops, interior designers and other small family-owned businesses.


Role Culture
Each individual in an organization has an assigned role and job description that serves as his domain. Employees in this culture are resistant to change as they have been influenced to work in their respective domains only (Culture –Handy). Examples of such cultures are present in almost all governmental organizations, especially in places like Japan where organization cultures are strictly bureaucratic.

Task Culture
Most organizations function in a manner where work is divided into small tasks and each of these tasks is performed by an individual or a group of people. Change is often required in such environments (Culture –Handy). For example, when Shell Oil Company is about to make a new product, research analysts of different kinds are needed to take out the feasibility of the new product line.

Person Culture
Organizations that follow this culture tend to reject formal hierarchies and tend to adopt an individualistic approach where each person is responsible for the tasks assigned to them (Culture –Handy). Authority is diffused with managers and employees working hand in hand to achieve organisational goals. This type of culture is found in IT-based companies but it usually works for NGOs.

GENDER AND CULTURE
Different cultures have different impacts on women in the organisation. Some, like the personal culture, might offer flexibility while in others women might face glass ceilings that prevent them from attaining higher posts within an organization and de-motivate them.

CRITIQUE AND LIMITATIONS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Organizational culture is a stakeholder’s perspective and may result in multiple sub-cultures and counter-cultures. Very strong cultures encourage complacency, lack of creativity, inflexibility and groupthink that hinder the problem-solving capabilities of employees.

FROM CULTURE TO BRANDS
A new concept is employer branding which is the process of building a unique organizational identity thereby attracting employees to an organization by representing the organization as reliable and sensitive to employee needs and wants (Ambler, T. and Barrow, S., 1996). According to CIPD Recruitment and Retention Survey 2007, almost seven in ten organizations describe themselves as having an employer brand e.g. Unilever. This shows that the employer branding concept is gaining much popularity in the market and may eventually replace concepts of Organizational Culture in the future.


CONCLUSION
Conclusively, every organizational culture has distinct properties and therefore allows a varying degree of space for managers to influence their employees. Some cultures restrict the power of the managers, while others give them too much authority that can have a negative impact on the behaviours of the employees. New techniques like employer branding might render Organizational Culture theories obsolete. Read More