Dynamics of Organizational Change and Learning - Case Study Example

?Diagnosis Open system approach to an organization assists the management of any organization in diagnosing the input, design components and output at different levels. These levels are organizational level, group level and individual level. This particular case related to the metric division of the organization revolves around the need to diagnose the particular organizational change or development that should be brought in the organization at different levels. After reading the overall case, it is quite clear that the organizational level and the individual level are showing satisfactory performances. The overall outlook of the organization is pretty much decent and the organization is successfully achieving its goals. Similarly, the individual level performances of the organizational members are satisfactory enough as the employees are happy and satisfied with their jobs. They do not find any hardship during the course of action in completing their tasks. Every employee is happy and satisfied with his/her job. Employees do have decent relationship among each other. All these employees do respect each other. They do share things with each other including work related information. They also assist each other in completing their tasks. In trouble times, they get together and work on ideas and strategies to get out of those troubles. They have good communication mechanism among each other. The orders and instructions of Joe, the president, are highly respected and taken care of, in a good faith. His instructions are obeyed. The leadership skills shown by Joe are also pretty much acceptable to the subordinated working under him. He is respected, and he respects others too. He gives chances to the subordinates to have their say. He gives and instructions and in response, he is reported by the subordinates. Group Level – No Signs at all Besides all these good things happening in the metric division, yet there is some serious lacking that can be observed quite easily. This is lack of groups and teams working in the division. There are no signs of groups or teams working together. There finds no image of project based teams. What really missing in this division is the group level that is not found anywhere in the organizational system. Overall, it looks as if every person works for himself and the organization, nobody is interested in working under a team. Teams do have their advantages and disadvantages, but their advantages are far more than their side effects. Teams normally work under a leader on certain projects within specified deadlines. They have a formal goal to achieve. That goal gives team members a sense of motivation, identity and a charm to work more and good for themselves, for their teams and ultimately for the organization. The team structure provides the synergy effect such that the efforts of all individuals working under a team are magnified to produce a better resultant in the end. More brains give more ideas and techniques of performing the tasks in a more efficient way. Thus, under the leadership of a sensible individual, team workings can bring advantages to the organization. Feedback The feedback method that should be used in this case is one on one Interview with each employee. The problem which is arising in this organization is that they are good in working at individual level and organizational level but while working as a team, there are numerous problems which they experience. They face problems especially in Group Functioning. It is essential for every organization to have such group members which coordinate and cooperate while working in teams. But in this case, coordination and willingness of participation is lacking. After doing one on one interview, it is essential to take a group interview as well. In group interview, a specific number of team members must be allocated and a group discussion should be commenced in order to find what problems are arising while working as a team. At the end of the discussion, there are chances of reaching to a particular conclusion and providing solution for that conclusion. This form of feedback is expected to be suitable in this case. An individual interview with Joan, the Personnel Manager has to be done so that she can provide with a clear cut idea about what issues usually arise when employees work in groups. If at any point divergence arises then she should be provided with the reports of data of interviews which were taken from the staff as evidence. The report would include the answer which staff provided for each question which was asked to them. This will help in getting a clear picture of the root cause of the problem. The form of the data will be interview which will be shown only to Personnel Manager, Joan. Feedback meetings will be conducted with Joan. The reason is because she has the sole authority of managing employee relationships, making teams, determining which members would be suitable for a specific team. Feedback meetings should take place after every 15 days, which is twice a month. If the meetings are held every week or every other day then it would not provide adequate result of feedback due to lack of substantial data required for analysis of feedback. Therefore, after every 15 days, a feedback meeting should take place so as to monitoring the performance of employees as group members and controlling if any deviations occur. The major issues that are related to our decision are the pros and cons of the feedback system. One on one interview has their own advantages and disadvantages. If interviews are taken individually, then there are chances of any personal biases to occur which can hamper the quality of authentic information. It can also be very time consuming to interview every individual employee. Therefore, in order to meet these discrepancies, a group interview is should be taken which can provide a complete picture of the conflicts arsing at workplace. Group interview can provide with a conclusion of the root cause of conflicts. There are chances of personal biases from the Personnel Manager as well, but that is the only source of getting information about the overall position of employees. Recommended Interventions Given the diagnosis and after then the followed feedback, there are some interventions that need to be implemented in the current organizational design and dynamics. These interventions include: Implementation of an organizational design mechanism in which team building is emphasized for the overall benefit of the organization Implementation of an organizational design mechanism to integrate the activities of all the teams working under the organization Introducing a culture of development of teams and working under them ease out the organization to achieve its goals. Goals of organization can be achieved without even introducing these teams, yet the overall resources of the organization will be wasted when the organizational members working and reporting only to their respective supervisors alone. In this way the organization becomes deprived of the advantages that it could have harvested, had it established the culture based on teams. Team effectiveness is of utmost importance in the development of teams because it lubricates the organizational friction. Those tasks and projects that cannot be completed on individual basis are easily catered by the teams. Since this division is more interested in improving its performance to considerable level, therefore, the most important element would be to increase the effectiveness of individuals working under team and in this way, the teams would be achieving their specific tasks which would result in higher and improved organizational performance and will enable the employees of the organization to be bestowed with the “perks” as per the wish of Joe. The second important intervention to be introduced in the metric division’s organizational design is to integrate these teams with each other. These teams should also collaborate with each other and work on joint basis as well, whenever required. This intervention would certainly be beneficial for the organization in such a manner that it would effectively utilize the activities of the individuals on individual basis, on group basis and finally on overall organizational basis. Team work can be implemented in several different ways. Firstly, while structuring teams, it is required to choose a team leader. A team leader must have expertise and leadership skills. Then appropriate team members should be identified and each team should be assigned certain tasks. It is essential to train your teams regarding how to work effectively and how to coordinate with each other. For effective team, good communication is vital. Barriers in communication can hamper the team objectives and can lead to conflicts. Participation must be promoted and effective teamwork strategies should be formulated. For implementing effective teamwork, management tools can also be utilized which are, flowcharts or story boards, baselines data, timeline, structured meetings. Flowcharts can be helpful in implementing strategies and selecting a certain approach. Baseline data will help team in planning their tasks and efforts. If there are no deadlines, then the team’s performance might deviate. Therefore, every task should be done in a timely manner. Structured meetings are the most important component while working in teams. In structured meetings, team members can come up with their work and can discuss about the future tasks. References Boonstra, Jaap J. Dynamics of Organizational Change and Learning. New York: John Wiley and Sons Ltd. 2004. Print. Bowditch, James L., Buono, Anthony F. and Stewart, Marcus Maharg. A Primer on Organizational Behavior. New York: Wiley. 2007. Print.   Cummings, Thomas G. and Worley, Christopher G. Organization Development and Change. Pennsylvania: Thomson/South-Western. 2005. Print. Plovnick, Mark S, Fry, Ronald E. and Burke, W. Warner.Organizational development, Exercises, Cases and Reading. Boston: Little Brown. 1982. Print. Read More