HR Management: Organizational Culture Essay

Organizational culture can be explained as the sum of beliefs, attitudes, traditions and behaviour of an organization. It is the summation of a company’s goals and the behavioural change of the organization in the process of achieving these goals. It therefore concentrates on human behaviour in organization, how the people interact in the organization and the organization itself (Alvesson, 2002).

The arrangement of the organization is also important because it through the structure that issues such as efficiency and effectiveness of the company can be achieved. This is usually done by the process of harmonization and control of the entity.

Organizational structure usually deals with issues such as the size, technological aspects, the pattern of activities, strategies, and the concentration of decision making power and also supporting features. It also tries to harmonize these differences for the overall best performance for an organization.

People do not work alone but are in contact with other persons and the organization in several ways such as fellow employees, managers, policies and changes put in place by the organization. To make the overall success of an organization, it is necessary to make sure of successful implementation of the policies and harmonization of these factors to the policies and goals.

Realistic decision formulation theory: This school of thought puts emphasis on problem identification, action plan formulation, alternative plan formulation and implementation and an overall mechanism for monitoring the progress of the so formulated plans.

By going through the problem identification all the way to solution logically helps in proper implementation process of ideas which have been given a proper incubation period to contribute. Decisions made properly will consequently give yield to better results and improve the organization’s performance.

According to Plantinga (1993b, 144-145), he put forward the criticism that the level of rationality usually differs from one person to another. Consequently, what appears rational in an organization in respect to another may be different to another.

In addition, Plantiga also added that it is in the nature of people to comply with the decisions and rules set within an organization but this does not necessary warrant that they agree with the decisions in regard to the firm.

The company can apply the Maslow’s ladder of requirements that was formulated by Abraham Maslow to appeal to the staff, the management needs to concentrate more on what the employees in the firm need. If the management needs the staff to participate in certain activities and behaviour then it should correctly identify and appease the needs of the staff (Maslow, 1954, p. 47).

The management needs to identify the needs in a hierarchical order and will need to satisfy the lower hierarchy needs before it proceeds to the next level. Therefore, one cannot achieve self actualization until the lower hierarchical needs are met (McClelland, 1962).

By attending to needs such as time to socialise with co-workers and secure work environment only once they have been achieved can the staff achieve better self esteem and hence better staff motivation. Mismatched motivation efforts and hierarchy need then these results to unsatisfied needs and consequently poorly motivated staff.

The areas of criticism for this theory may be attributed to the fact that it does not put into consideration the part organizational cultures plays in the success and activity of the firm.

The theory also ignores the fact that people who are deprived may still strive to attain self actualization. This is because self actualization is innate in people and this does not necessarily mean that just because one is deprived they cannot attain self realization (Kane-Urrabazo, 2006).

How Maslow attained those five categories is also another area that has raised disagreement. The accuracy of the needs and also order of those needs do not include an in depth study of the needs and order from a scientific point of view. There has been no evidence to point of the direction of a study being done by Maslow (Behling & Schriesheim, 2001).

Another point that is pointed out was the measurements needs. To quantify things such as love, security among other needs is nearly impossible to achieve. In addition, there may be some needs that also overlap like when he states that physical needs and safety needs. These two will have a point of intersection and this can be difficult to tear apart (Kane-Urrabazo, 2006).

The personality theory urges that so as to improve group performance, the managers should choose only the staffs that possess the right skills and trait geared more too self achievement. The effort made by a person to ensure that the task at hand is accomplished can be used a san measure of how much they are motivated towards success. Staff with a strong achievement orientation work hard to achieve socially accepted success and activities. Therefore, finished assignment, solved work problems usually means better performance of the organization and a successful one for that matter (Behling, & Schriesheim, 2001).

The five factor model (openness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness) (Rita, Richard, Edward, Smith, Bem & Susan, 2000) determines the level of performance across most jobs. It is exemplary good at gauging the level of success experienced at any given company. Staff with higher achievement levels set high individual goals and also put in effort and time so as to achieve them. Individuals with such characteristics are on wonder the one getting promotions in the work place.

With a staff with such qualities essentially means a greater successful organization that once goals are set, the employees do not settle until they have been achieved. The leaders can only manage to get such group of people right from the hiring process such as getting people with high score. With such, it is expected that an aggressive bosses will set aggressive goals with their staff and the staff will work hard to achieve them. It should not come as a surprise when you find the same staff going back to class or learning other trades related to the organization (Chavan, 2009).

One critic of the hypothesis is that personality conversion in individuals is inevitable. The characters that one meets and interacts with in that course of life modify the personality of a person. In addition, it can be very hard to be certain that those same characteristics in the staff are likely to remain the same after a year (Behling & Schriesheim, 2001).

In addition, the measurements of these five traits do not necessary give a forecast of the individual behaviour. A person may exhibit the personality of being an extrovert but the reality is that the person is an introvert. This will in turn affect the communication transmission within the organization (Ybema, 2011).

On the other hand, the personality of a person is affected by the situation one finds them in. During an interview, a potential employee may exhibit those personalities but upon arrival in the work place, the person is different from the expected (Ybema, 2011).

Goal setting theory is perhaps the easiest and common theory of improving staff motivation and improving the company’s performance. The leaders should set clearly the performance goals and objectives and device a systematic way into achieving them. Targets and goals demand attention, effort, development of achievement strategies and exert people’s efforts to achieve them. When the goals set have been attained greater and more difficult tasks are even set (Latham, 1979).

A study done by Locke and Latham (2006) showed that specific and difficult goals got higher performance and effort compared to those of do the best you can goals. Devotion to the goals and purposes of the firm was also very important. This is directly proportional to the goals individuals help set so long as the leader had authority, set clear performance levels and had confidence in the staff. Giving a summary on the success and failure of the tasks is also essential. Goals can be set for any activity in an organization such as cost reduction, better service and product quality among others (Locke and Latham, 2006)

However, care should be observed to avoiding setting goals that are contradictory because staff can only concentrate only such effort at a time. Goals achieved successfully give the staff a sense of satisfaction and the easier the goals are the easier they are to accomplish compared to more tough goals. A the same time extremely easy goals which require less effort lowers performance compared to more tough jobs (Alderfer, 1972).

The manager’s goal accomplishment expectation affects the level of performance by the staff and company in general. Therefore to improve an individual and consequently the organization performance, the management should set high but attainable goals and also show confidence and give support to the staff about the job being done (Doyle, 2001).

Criticism of this theory have been that , one, the theory has been over praised as being effective across all jobs in an organization but in reality some organizations do not agree with this. This is because there are some departments that goal setting might not be the best way of getting jobs done (Day, Sin, & Chen, 2004).

The theory focuses very much on the specific task. By doing this, the staff might spend too much time in trying to get these tasks done but ignoring other aspects of the organization hence negative consequences (Coulehan, 2004).

It is the inborn trait of individuals to only concentrate at one job at a time. However, since this theory advocates for multiple, small goals, the staff will still only achieve a goal at a time even if those two goals need to be achieved simultaneously to impact the organization performance (Doyle, 2001).

In addition, the time horizon of jobs does overshadow one another. Taking that organizations fix attention on short term jobs, the long term goals will be affected. This was not put in mind in advancing this theory (Latham, 1979).

It has not yet been determined if there is a linear agreement between the level of toughness of goals and job performance. There are times when jobs that are tough may lead to unwanted results in the organization.

If the employees fail to reach the set targets, it might lead to unwanted effects on them in that they may develop poor self esteem among others (Latham, 1979).

Generation of counterpoise scorecards is another theory. Financial performance is not the only way to assess the performance of organizations. By concentrating only on one such indicator will affect the other indicators and will suffer in the long run. It can take a short time to indicate the financial performance of an organization but other key organization indicator performance are little mentioned. They include satisfaction of the customer, turnover of employees among others. According to Norton and Kaplan, setting goals for all of such indicators will results to improved operational and financial performance (Coulehan, 2004).

This theory has been critiqued in that it lowers the certainty levels in an ever changing environment. There have been investigations carried out and they do affect the manager’s decisions in regard to budgeting plans. Consequently, strategic planning of operational activities is affected in the long run (Doyle, 2001).

Conclusion
Therefore, strong organizational culture has a positive correlation with the productivity of the organization, the staff, environment of the workplace and even staff motivation. This can be achieved by a strong incentive programs, fairness in policies and also good leadership. A motivated employee works more and harder, gives better results and also maintains a good attitude than a person who is not motivated.

To understand the organizational culture in favour of staff motivation and hence overall improvement in the organization performance, the management requires having an in-depth understanding of the goals, needs and expectation of the staff and also the organization.

Policy fairness is very important in creating a safe work place and also a great factor that contributes to motivation and hence improved company performance. Therefore, the way the structure of the organization is determines a lot how the culture will be.

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