Developing a Shared Values Process - Case Study Example

Case study The following lines, will define the terms, identity, insecurity, power, knowledge, inequality and freedom. Furthermore we will be observing how all these terms play their role significantly in the following scenario: Maria Alveno works at a Shop Floor # 3 in the clothing Section of John Lewis. A multiple departmental Store in London. Maria Alveno is Spanish from both her parents’ side, but they have been long settled in London now. Maria is a business student, working part time at the Store. She is being paid well, and she foresees potential for her to be able join the administration after she graduates. But this part time work of hers has turned into one huge experience, which has left her thinking: should she quit the Job, or stay and wait for her promotion. She doesn’t have another potential job in sight, she has to manage her finances her self. Now, the situation Maria is in, regards to her identity we need to consider the articulate of identity, we over and over again mean the facets of individuality or the roles we take part in. If we were to for the moment think about the identity of an individual and in this case Maria’s. We would have to include all the distinctiveness and actions of Maria, without contemplating the probable contradictions between Bob and her. Her identity would until the end of time be by definition really remarkable. After all, nearly every one of us feels remarkable and not otherwise. Such a definition corresponds, at least ostensibly, to our consciousness of us and the humanity around us.1 The Insecurity that Maria is feeling is basically the condition or quality of being insecure; the want of safety; danger; hazard; as, the insecurity of a building liable to fire; insecurity of a debt. Also the behavior of Bob is making Maria confused and also bringing her to the state of feeling insecure; uncertainty; this scenario is causing within Maria the want of confidence.2 The main point that comes forth is that of the Power: that Maria feels she has. It is her capacity to do something: the ability, strength, and capacity to do something .Because of the strong feeling of insecurity that Maria is feeling. This Question automatically is bound to pop up what power do I have in doing my job? What can I do to be one of the favorite ones of my boss .3 Also Marias prime concern is to gain more Knowledge: about her work .but she expects her boss to at least consider her positive attitude towards her work. But by the way bob is with her; she can never be motivated enough or feel encouraged. This specific knowledge in Marias case would be the information or details that she would be able to acquire and also aspire to attain. Bob s attitude entails somewhere the element of Inequality also. This inequality within itself is the biasness, in terms of gender, race, creed or religion that occurs in a workplace or everyday life. The attitude of Maria s boss reflects purely the Marx’s Pure Model of Class. Wherein, the basic description is of a scenario where there exists societies and communities which are not pre historic or traditional in the actual sense of the word. These are basically societies which have groups and classes of individuals. By this is meant that characteristic of a society where we can visibly see the division that exists amid exploiters, and the exploited. The Theory outlines the fact in which one of the class. This class differentiation can be on the basis of the economical class and the political class which dominates some other group or class cultural wise. The fact that Freedom is the actual opportunity to let somebody be who they meant to be. Let them do what ever they want to do. Freedom can be freedom of speech, freedom of etc. this is what Maria lacks at work. She is unable to express her feelings to anyone. Even if it is regarding the boss. If she would have felt comfortable with bob she would have talked to him about her fears and her feelings directly. This might have helped alter the state of affairs. Main Argument: Maria and her relationship with some of her peers and her manager is quite strange. Since the first day at work. She felt Bob’s (the manager) reluctance on having a supervisor, who was Spanish. Bob has been since the first day not too nice to Maria and so Maria has felt, a serious identity crisis, insecurity in regards to her job, she feels she has been given lesser powers at work, the manager does not help her gain more or better knowledge of how to perform better at work, she also feels the manager is being very stern with her and she is facing sever inequality. She as the supervisor is not given the freedom to work in her own manner, and what she thinks is best for the store. Because of the way the manager has kept his relationship with her, has effected also how she has been with some her peers at work. She has been given her limited powers at work. She does not really enjoy the freedom of an actual supervisor, because there are most employees working under her supervision, who do not respect her. She has not being given due job security. She feels no matter how hard she works, she can be laid off at any point in time. She has to concentrate on her studies as well. The senior administration really admires Bob and he has produced real good results over the past few years. He has been with John Lewis now for 10 year s. Maria, also feels, that if she complains in regards to Bob and his attitude with her. She would not be taken seriously; she would rather have to face serious consequences. She is also now considering the fact that she is Spanish, very rationally. She is convinced that it is her origin which has become the cause of this, inequality. She also realizes, she has been deprived of all powers, is unable to gain more knowledge to improve her work, and is facing a severe identity crisis. The dilemma Maria faces now is that of the fact: Should Maria look for another job, should she face the music and through her hard work and zeal, there can be potential for her to improve on her relationship with her manager and her peers at work. Because of the fact, that these are major elements that can satisfy her and make her feel content enough to stay loyal to the company. The senior management at john Lewis is very cooperative with their employees. The salary includes a good benefit plan. This is why Maria does not really feel like quitting. The fundamental work visualization of an accurately mutual work environment is the one in which recruits are both fully prolific and absolutely contented. Developing a work environment within which recruits can beyond doubt flourish requires a swing away from control-based attitude (suppose the most horrible things in relation to people and generate regulations and systems to keep people in contour) to freedom-based belief (have conviction in people and give them the paraphernalia and information essential to make their personal preeminent decisions for the consumer and the company). A freedom-based place of work enables vanguard staff to deliver a remarkable customer occurrence during every interface. This creates an organization that is truly malleable. Developing a Shared Values Process: Bob Should try and follow guidelines of this Shared Values Process .As by doing this he would be able to escalate his echelon of employee commitment by creating a philosophical obligation to those employees. It transforms your organization into one that realizes talent and potential along with celebrating values. This is what Bob actually needs to do. But someone has to make him realize this. It will further facilitate Bob in identifying you the core element which is people and their values, also the core business values, and significantly, the placement and sense of balance between them. By putting those administrative centered values into practice, they tend to necessitate perplexed attitudes. The emotional association, and obligation that Maria will feel to an association that values her as exceedingly as it values the substructure line of her value system and her extraordinary drive of performance. . Altering the manner in which the Company and Bob in specific works for its employees Bob should ascertain the populace and business values, a standard for performance, and a way to address behaviors that are incompatible with those values and standards at work. Bob and all the employees under him should gain knowledge of the dynamics of a truly mutual work environment. This is for all employees and managers as it will tend to promote a successful ambiance and performance. Also this sort of a system, which is an expanded yet new-fangled system of hiring, point of reference, reimbursement, etc. that imitate the adopted principles and behaviors. Bob and the organization on the whole would be able to generate a customer-focused managerial structure, compatible with the company’s principles 4 How John Lewis can face and manage the challenges in Managing Organizational Knowledge Maria desperately needs to work on her management skills and also encourage her own self to move forward. She should be strong enough to not let these behaviors and perceptions hinder her knowledge gaining of her work and performance. Which is described as the capability of an organization to generate, contribute to and utilize the communal knowledge of its yield and processes and public to amplify workplace efficiency and trim down behavior that is being stimulated to the front position of many business agendas. As firms such as John Lewis tend to search for the manufacture of competitive advantage in progressive and more competitive markets. They are spiraling to a formerly unexploited reserve: their recruits’ knowledge. Some common pitfalls that John Lewis can avoid John Lewis which is running, with leading companies and management organizations. These roadblocks are: • The management at John Lewis failure to align knowledge management efforts with the organization’s strategic objectives • Also the conception of repositories and the administration devoid of addressing the need to administer content • The letdown to recognize and bond knowledge management into persons’ daily work activities Maria should know that these are not inevitable. To be a comprehensive list, they correspond to issues that can hold back the efficiency of a knowledge management effort, that costs organizations time and money, possessions as well as—perhaps, most prominently—their aptitude to have an effect on significant business consequences. Whether John Lewis is initiating a new-fangled knowledge management endeavor, or reviewing projects that are at present under way, mull over some of the subsequent common pitfalls: Malfunction to make parallel knowledge management efforts with the organization’s strategic objectives. Bob needs to consider the fact that flourishing knowledge management programs over and over again commence by addressing a grave business dilemma facing the company. On the other hand, a lot of firms fall short to bring into line their knowledge efforts with their most imperative trade issues.5 Conclusion The situation that Maria faces at work is because of two reasons, one being that Bob has been working with John Lewis for so long yet he has this attitude. Which means that the organization has not paid enough attention upon his behavior, thus secondly the senior management is as responsible as bob is in this situation. By following the guidelines above of how the management at John Lewis and Bob can improve their workings and knowledge sharing, and also how bob can learn to develop a process of shared values is essential. Essential to give Maria back her feeling of Security, Equality, power at the same time. As I have also described Bob’s (the manager) behavior; Bob knows the background Maria hails from and what she has busy doing and managing for all this time. Bob is also is aware of this place or the position which she is in, which is a good situation (level) for a student as a part-time worker. In addition to that Bob knows that she also knows this situation well, because he was student and has worked as a part-time worker (odd-jobs) while studying to cover his expenses and to pay course fees and etc. Thus, Bob knows exactly that loosing this job would cause to create economic insecurity to Maria. According to Knights and Willmott (2007) describe “Marxist analyses focuses on how ownership gives some power to exploit others through creating economic insecurity.” Therefore, we can’t argue that the manager has used his power (experience, status that he has been marinating so far relating to the company i.e. showing good performance over the last 10 years, etc.) (Or the relationship with Maria) purposely with the intention of economic insecurity. Further, Knights and Willmott (2007) state that employees are only motivated by extrinsic rewards (e.g. money) and jobs are then redesigned principally around such economic incentives. However they also claim that “modern motivation techniques play not just on economic insecurity but a person’s insecurity about the ‘value’ of the self”. Since, Maria has been given limited power, her ‘value’ or ‘personality’ as supervisor cannot be realized even by herself. Maria needs to feel encouraged. She needs to develop a secured feeling of power at the same time . Bob needs to consider better modes of motivation also. Bibliography 1. Alan McCluskey, Saint-Blaise, June 19th, 2001The following text was first written in Fench under the title "Troubles d'identité ou identité trouble?" as part of a course given at Fribourg University, Switzerland. http://www.connected.org/is/identity.html 2. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) die.net, http://dict.die.net/insecurity/. 3. Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P) 2007 http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861737554/power.html. 4. Vitalwork is a distributor for The Lebow Company, Inc. Shared Values® Process is a registered trademark of The Lebow Company, Inc. http://www.vitalwork.com/workplace-culture.htm. 5. By Michael Fontaine and Eric Lesser, Challenges in managing Organizational knowledge, IBM Institute for Knowledge-Based Organizations http://www-935.ibm.com/services/in/igs/pdf/g510-3234-00-esr-managing-organizational-knowledge.pdf Read More