27 Mar Concept Analysis on Organizational Behavior

ASSIGNMENT

For your assignment each week, you are first required to choose ONE main concept of interest from EACH of the chapters which you have read this week – one main concept from Chapter 3 and one main concept from Chapter 4.

 

You must then find an employment focused/work related news article from a reputable source within the last 4 years which bridges both of your chosen main concepts from each chapter and shows how each of the main concepts are interconnected with each other.

 

Using the news related article as your context, you must then critically analyze each of your related concepts as well as their inter-relatedness. Analysis involves examining concepts from multiple and varying perspectives to develop the fullest and most complete view of said concepts, and a full discussion of your analysis must also be included in your response.

 

All analytical discussion of concepts and their relatedness must be substantiated using evidence from your readings as well as from external sources. Unsubstantiated points in your assignment response are merely opinion and do not constitute evidence!

 

Lastly, to round off the analytical discussion in your assignment response, it is also important to discuss what you see as the potential implications and conclusions in the near future as well as long term for these concepts and their inter-connectedness as they relate to the workplace. Be sure to justify the reasoning behind your thought process regarding the implications and conclusions which you identify.

 

As you put together your written assignment IN PARAGRAPH FORMAT without the use of bullets, your response MUST:

 

clearly make the case for and specifically show how your chosen work related news article incorporates BOTH main concepts from each chapter.

 

clearly show how your article of choice bridges or demonstrates a connection/shows the relatedness of BOTH core concepts.

 

provide only a BRIEF summary of your work related news article to frame the more substantive areas of your response (In other words, your assignment response should not describe your work related news article in great detail but should be a small portion of your response to provide a workplace context for illuminating and clarifying the relationship between your chosen core concepts.)

 

meet ALL of the relevant criteria clearly outlined in the assignment rubric.

 

include a link to the full work related news article at the end of your response and reference all external sources used in APA format. The use of external sources serve as supporting evidence to substantiate your arguments so that they are not merely opinion. PLEASE NOTE THAT YOUR LIST OF REFERENCES SHOULD INCLUDE A HEADING TITLED REFERENCES TO AVOID YOUR REFERENCE LIST INADVERTENTLY INFLATING YOUR TURNITIN SCORE.

 

Please also keep the following in mind:

 

You must submit the full text of your assignment response in a single document – including in text citations, references and web link to your article.

Your submission will receive a Turnitin score once you submit your assignment (Turnitin is integrated within this submission portal)

Your Turnitin score must meet the required 15% threshold (score must be 14% or LESS)

Your Turnitin score may be generated immediately or may take minutes, several hours and possibly up to 24 hours depending on TurnItIn’s queue length – SO PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU COMPLETE YOUR SUBMISSION WITHIN ENOUGH TIME TO EDIT IT AND RECEIVE A REVISED SCORE BEFORE THE DUE DATE).

If your score is greater than the 15% threshold, please REVISE and RESUBMIT your response PRIOR TO THE DEADLINE.

You will be able to edit and resubmit your response as many times as necessary up until the deadline.

Submissions which exceed the 15% threshold after the deadline on Sunday night at 11.55pm CST WILL EARN ZERO POINTS.

If you opt to reference the course text, this does NOT count as an external reference but is a reference which is internal to the course.

Within this course, Wikipedia and other open source sites are NOT considered reputable sources.

Webster’s dictionary and other online dictionaries WILL NOT be counted as a valid external reference.

 

LISTED BELOW ARE THE 2 CONCEPTS TO BE ANALYZED PER ASSIGN> INSTRUCTIONS

 

1st CONCEPT:

Maintaining Cultures Through Steps of Socialization

Once an organizational culture is started and begins to develop, there are a number of

practices that can help solidify the acceptance of core values and ensure that the culture

maintains itself. These practices can be described in terms of several socialization steps.

Richard Pascale has identified the sequence of these steps.69

Selection of Entry-Level Personnel

The first step is the careful selection of entry-level candidates. Using standardized procedures and seeking specific traits that tie to effective performance, trained recruiters interview candidates and attempt to screen out those whose personal styles and values do not

make a “fit” with the organization’s culture. There is research indicating that newcomers’

and their supervisors’ perceptions of organization culture fit are related to organizational

commitment and intention to leave the organization.70 There is also accumulating evidence

that those who have a realistic preview (called realistic job preview, or RJP) of the culture

will turn out better.71 An example of effective selection for cultural fit is North Shore

Bank, a community bank in Wisconsin. One approach that they have implemented in order

to maximize the “fit” as well as productivity is through recruitment and selection in neighborhoods closest to its branches. This helps customers and employees alike identify with

the unique differences between their local bank and their large national bank competitors.

Placement on the Job

The second step occurs on the job itself, after the person with a fit is hired. New personnel are subjected to a carefully orchestrated series of different experiences whose purpose is to cause them to question the organization’s norms and values and to decide

whether or not they can accept them. For example, many organizations with strong cultures

make it a point to give newly hired personnel more work than they can handle. Sometimes

these assignments are beneath the individual’s abilities. At Procter & Gamble, for example,

new personnel may be required to color in a sales territory map. The experience is designed

to convey the message, “Although you’re smart in some ways, you’re in kindergarten as far

as what you know about this organization.” The objective is also to teach the new entrant

into the culture the importance of humility. These experiences are designed to make newly

hired personnel vulnerable and to cause them to move emotionally closer to their colleagues, thus intensifying group cohesiveness. Campus fraternities and the military have

practiced this approach for years.

Job Mastery

Once the initial “cultural shock” is over, the next step is mastery of one’s job. This is

typically done via extensive and carefully reinforced field experience. For example, Japanese firms typically put new employees through a training program for several years. As

personnel move along their career path, their performance is evaluated, and additional

responsibilities are assigned on the basis of progress. Quite often companies establish a

step-by-step approach to this career plan, which helps reduce efforts by the personnel to

use political power or to take shortcuts in order to get ahead at a faster pace. Highly successful “Coca-Cola slowly steeps its new employees in the company culture—in this case,

an understanding of the trademark’s image. The people system then ensures that only Coke

managers who have been thoroughly socialized into worrying about the company as a

whole get to make decisions affecting the company.”72

Measuring and Rewarding Performance

The next step of the socialization process consists of meticulous attention to measuring operational results and to rewarding individual performance. These systems are comprehensive and consistent, and they focus on those aspects of the business that are most

crucial to competitive success and to corporate values. For example, at Procter & Gamble

there are three factors that are considered most important: building volume, building profit,

and making changes that increase effectiveness or add satisfaction to the job. Operational

measures are used to track these three factors, and performance appraisals are tied to milestones. Promotions and merit pay are determined by success in each of these critical areas.

Motorola personnel are taught to adhere to the core cultural values through careful monitoring of team performance and through continual training programs. Typically, in companies with a strong culture, those who violate cultural norms, such as overzealousness

against the competition or harsh handling of a subordinate, are sent to the “penalty box.”

This typically involves a lateral move to a less-desirous location. For example, a branch

manager in Chicago might be given a nebulous staff position at headquarters in Newark.

This individual is now off-track, which can slow his or her career progress.

Adherence to Important Values

The next step involves careful adherence to the firm’s most important values. Identification with these values helps employees reconcile personal sacrifices brought about by

their membership in the organization. They learn to accept these values and to trust the

organization not to do anything that would hurt them. As Pascale observes: “Placing one’s

self ‘at the mercy’ of an organization imposes real costs. There are long hours of work,

missed weekends, bosses one has to endure, criticism that seems unfair, job assignments

and rotations that are inconvenient or undesirable.”73 However, the organization attempts

to overcome these costs by connecting the sacrifices to higher human values such as serving society with better products and/or services. Today’s firms in the global economy must

give special attention to cultural differences around the globe, but maintain the core values.

For example, when Wal-Mart Stores entered the German market several years ago, it took

along the “cheer”—Give me a W! Give me an A!, etc. Who’s Number One? The customer!—which went over as well with the German associates as it did with their counterparts in the United States. However, the cultural value of greeting any customer within a

10-foot radius did not. German employees and shoppers were not comfortable with this

Wal-Mart custom, and it was dropped from the German stores.

Reinforcing the Stories and Folklore

The next step involves reinforcing organizational folklore. This entails keeping alive

stories that validate the organization’s culture and way of doing things. The folklore helps

explain why the organization does things a particular way. One of the most common forms

of folklore is stories with morals the enterprise wants to reinforce. For example, Leonard

Riggio, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, often tells stories about his childhood experiences in

Brooklyn and in particular his father’s stint as a boxer. These often-told stories have been

a great help to communicate a populist culture that needed to shed its elitist past. Also, Bill

Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard is known for the often-told story of him using a bolt cutter to

remove a lock that he encountered on the supply room. He left a note behind instructing

that the door never be locked again to forever communicate the important cultural value of

trust at H-P. 3M is probably the best known firm to use stories and sagas to emphasize cultural values. The famous Post-it Notes legacy is a great example.

The idea originated with Art Fry, a 3M employee who used bits of paper to mark hymns

when he sang in his church choir. But these markers kept falling out of the hymnals. He

decided that he needed an adhesive-backed paper that would stick as long as necessary

but could be removed easily, and soon found what he wanted in a 3M laboratory. Fry

saw the market potential of his invention, but others did not. Market survey results were

negative; major office supply distributors were skeptical. Undeterred, because he had

heard stories about other 3M employees that conveyed the importance of perseverance,

Fry began giving samples to 3M executives and their secretaries. Once they actually

used the little notepads, they were hooked. Having sold 3M on the project, Fry used the

same approach with the secretaries of other companies’ executives throughout the

United States.74

The rest is history. Post-it Notes became a huge financial success for 3M, and retelling the

story over the years reinforces cultural values of innovation that can come from anywhere,

perseverance, and championing of your good ideas.

Recognition and Promotion

The final step is the recognition and promotion of individuals who have done their jobs

well and who can serve as role models to new people in the organization. By pointing out

these people as winners, the organization encourages others to follow their example. Role

models in strong-culture firms are regarded as the most powerful ongoing training program

of all. Morgan Stanley, the financial services firm, chooses role models on the basis of

energy, aggressiveness, and team play. Procter & Gamble looks for people who exhibit

extraordinary consistency in such areas as tough-mindedness, motivational skills, energy,

and the ability to get things done through others. There is considerable research evidence

that recognition can serve as a powerful reinforcer,75 and thus those exhibiting cultural values that are given either formal recognition or even one-on-one social attention/recognition

from relevant others can build and sustain the organizational culture.

 

2ND CONCEPT:

The Theoretical Background on Money as a Reward

Money has long been viewed as a reward and, at least for some people, it is more

important than anything else their organization can give them. Some surveys of employees

rank money at the top of their list of motivators6

and others rank it lower. It seems to vary

widely with the individual and the industry. However, as the well-known scholar and consultant Manfred Kets de Vries declared, “It’s easy to say money isn’t everything as long as

we have enough of it. Unfortunately, though, the typical scenario is that the more money

we have, the more we want.”7

Also, commenting on money, Steven Kerr, the well-known

organizational behavior scholar and executive at both GE and Goldman Sachs referenced

in the last chapter, noted that “Nobody refuses it, nobody returns it, and people who have

more than they could ever use do dreadful things to get more.”8

By the same token, a large

majority (82 percent) of employees in the United States and worldwide (76 percent) indicated they would take a pay cut to pursue their dream job.9

Money Can Explain Behavior

Money provides a rich basis for studying behavior at work because it offers explanations for why people act as they do.10 For example, Mitchell and Mickel have noted that

money is a prime factor in the foundation of commerce, that is, people organize and start

businesses to make money.11 Money is also associated with four of the important symbolic

attributes for which humans strive: achievement and recognition, status and respect, freedom and control, and power.12 In fact, in most of the management literature dealing with

money, researchers have focused on money as pay and the ways in which pay affects motivation, job attitudes, and retention. In particular, money helps people attain both physical

(clothing, automobiles, houses) and psychological (status, self-esteem, a feeling of

achievement) objectives. As well-known moneymaker Donald Trump has said, “Money

was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is

playing the game.”13 As a result of this perspective, money has been of interest to organizational behavior theorists and researchers who have studied the linkages between pay and

performance by seeking answers to questions such as: How much of a motivator is money?

How long lasting is its effects? What are some of the most useful strategies to employ in

using money as a motivator?14

Money has also played an integral role in helping develop theories of organizational

behavior. For example, if employees are interested in money, how much effort will they

expend in order to earn it, and how much is “enough”? It is like the philosopher Arthur

Schopenhauer once said, “Wealth is like seawater, the more we drink the thirstier we

become.”15 Moreover, if people work very hard but do not receive the rewards they expect,

how much of a dampening effect will this have on their future efforts? Answers to these

types of questions have helped develop some of the most useful theories of motivation,

which will be covered in Chapter 6.

An Agency Theory Explanation

Another important perspective on money as a reward is provided by agency theory, a

widely recognized finance and economics approach to understanding behavior by individuals and groups both inside and outside the corporation. Specifically, agency theory is concerned with the diverse interests and goals that are held by a corporation’s stakeholders

(stockholders, managers, employees) and the methods by which the enterprise’s reward

system is used to align these interests and goals. The theory draws its name from the fact

that the people who are in control of large corporations are seldom the owners; rather, in

almost every case, they are agents who are responsible for representing the interests of the

owners.

Agency theory seeks to explain how managers differ from owners in using pay and

other forms of compensation to effectively run the organization. For example, the owners

of a corporation might be very interested in increasing their own personal wealth, and so

they would minimize costs and work to increase the stock value of the enterprise. In contrast, their agents, the managers, might be more interested in expending corporate

resources on activities that do not directly contribute to owner wealth. Agency theory also

examines the role of risk and how owners and managers may vary in their approach to risk

taking. For example, owners may be risk aversive and prefer conservative courses of action

that minimize their chances of loss. Managers may be greater risk takers who are willing to

accept losses in return for the increased opportunity for greater profits and market share;

when their decisions are incorrect, the impact may be less than it would be on the owners

and thus not greatly diminish their willingness to take risks.16 Finally, agency theory examines the differences in time horizons between owners and managers. Owners may have longer time horizons because their goal is to maximize their value over time. Managers may

have much shorter time horizons because their job tenure may require good short-term

results, in addition to the fact that their bonuses or merit pay may be tied closely to how

well they (or the corporation) performed in the last four quarters.

This last point about managers trying to look good in the short run is given as one of

the major reasons for the 2008 economic crisis. For example, Cascio and Cappelli conclude

in their analysis by noting that even one of the founding fathers of agency theory recognized that “Where questionable ethics intersect with company and individual incentives,

managers may end up cheating on practices such as budgeting because it makes their lives

easier.” They go on to note that “every scandal has involved executives pushing the financial and accounting envelope to the point of breaking to inflate profits, cover losses and

make their own performances better.”17 There are also other analyses critical of agency

theory predictions such as the spectacular rise and sudden fall of Nortel (the large multinational Canada-headquartered telecommunications company) that illustrates “excesses of

actors within, and contradictions of the system of corporate governance implied by the

agency model.”18 Despite these limitations, there is still considerable evidence that agency

theory provides useful insights into pay as a reward.19 This becomes increasingly clear

when research on the effectiveness of pay is examined