[Writer’s Name]
Abstract
Employees’ morale at large global high-tech company is low. The key challenges that confront by this multinational company are cultural, language, political, and technological differences among diversified employees. Managers have to use sources of power i.e. legitimate, coercive, referent, expert, and reward powers for overcoming these challenges.
Leadership Theories
The given situation, in which the employees of a global high-tech company having myriad offices throughout the world with a low level of morale, requires a thorough analysis on the leadership theories and behavior approaches to understand the underlying cause. With the rise of a number of business models, the organizations must scientifically evaluate the crux of a situation that hampers the growth of its employees.
Path-Goal Theory
This theory refers to the idea that how identified and specific goals set by the leaders can incline the employees to get motivated. According to the research House (1971, 321), it expounds that leaders makes efforts to clarify the objectives and they also removes the obstacles, which guides the employees to reach the specified goals and to reach high-performance. According to the research House (1971, 321) the core of Path-Goal theory expresses the idea that people will have a high morale and will be more focuses if they believe that their individual efforts contributes towards the specified goals, believe that they have the ability to perform high, and believe the worthiness of their work to achieve the desired goal. This leadership theory gives us a clue that the high-tech company potentially misses a clarify in applying the path-goal theory in their organizational setup.
Transactional Theory
According to the research Weikum & Gottfried, (2002) transactional theory refers to theory that focuses on the leader and follower exchanges. It is based on the core that leaders’ primary job is to clarify the expected jobs that they want from employees by creating concrete structures. These structures signify the employees that what is expected from them and what are the consequences of their actions. According to the research Weikum & Gottfried, (2002) these systematic actions are created by developing proper rewards and punishments for the actions. Transactional theory is one of the most vital and widely practiced leadership theories. In the given case study, the basic reason for low morale also signifies the lack of a concrete structure that identifies the rewards and punishment in the organization.
Tuckman’s Four Stages of Group Development
According to research Rickards & Moger (2000), Tuckman’s group development model is distributed in four distinct phases including Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. In the forming stage of team development, the team establishes. They team creates a base level of expectations and identifies similarity within the team members. In this stage, the members agree on the commonality of goals by making contacts and bonding. Members of the group develop trust and they are inter-depended.
According to research Rickards & Moger (2000), in the storming stage, differences of feelings, ideas, and opinions amongst the members take place. They identify their roles and what problems they must address and which model of leadership they will apply. Primarily in this stage people share their opinions.
According to research Rickards & Moger (2000), in the Norming stage, the members of the team try to focus on a mutual plan and thus create a common goal. Some members here will also be required to give-up their different opinions and they are required to agree to the majority for assisting the team to function effectively. Since the team has got a direction and they have got an action plan; therefore, in the performing stage, the team can perform effectively without any external supervision or unnecessary conflicts.
Behavioral Approaches
Elton Mayo’s Hawthorne Study was a major landmark in involving behavioral science to the leadership and team management. To enhance a positive behavior in the organization, it must have its attention towards social needs and human relations.
Maslow’s needs theory recognizes the basic to the highest level of motivation of an individual could achieve. The same hierarchy of needs can be utilized in an organizational setup to guide a particular behavior. The most basic need an individual wants is of physiological needs that include food, clothing and Shelton. The next category of need include Safety needs, Belonging and love needs, Esteem needs, and the last one is the stage of self-actualization.
The high-tech company must have a very weak focus towards the behavioral approach management that’s why the company positive trend in terms of financial performance but the employees’ motivational level is low.
Importance of Internal Environmental Factors
Human beings a natural beings and therefore, they are heavily affected by myriad things that have don’t have a direct relation with the kind of work they do or the basic operation of an organization. An organization that operates in different countries must understand the differences of culture, politics, language and technology in the countries it operates. The world has become a global village and people have not got a somewhat better idea of how people in other parts of the world operates but still cultural differences should be understood to avoid any potential problem. For examples, in US organizations usually delegate decisions however, in southern European organizations decision making responsibilities are held by one.
Language and cultural differences also bring obstacles for manages to adapt that management style that best meet the needs of diversified workforce. For example, it is a common practice in Latin America that employees have to do what is asked from them and asking questions from the boss is considered as disrespectable act. In order to take a competitive edge over others, organizations are recruiting diversified workforce. Language differences among workforce create hindrance in effective communication. This notion inclines us to understand the language barriers in different countries.
Technological differences can also be a vital factor that create problem in an organization that is diverse and operated in different countries. For instance, a company in order to compete in the international market spends rapidly on technological advancements and has to train its employees so that employees would be equally efficient in operating new technology.
Those organizations face more political differences where leadership style is poor and managers’ decisions are biased. Organizations may face workplace politics if things are deliberately manipulated and extra favors are given to certain people.
Sources of Power for Overcoming Challenges
This company is facing five major challenges which cause low employee morale. These challenges identified as cultural, language, technological, and political differences. These challenges can be overcome by using sources of power i.e. legitimate power, coercive power, reward power, expert power, and referent power.
The cultural differences and communication barriers can be overcome by using legitimate and referent powers. Manages must use these powers to formulate a hierarchy that would be helpful in bridging communication gaps among employees. Employees belong to diversify cultures and it is not possible to motivate every employee of the organization. By using legitimate power, standard organization culture should be established and communicated to the employees, this helps in reducing employees cultural conflicts. Managers must play the role of leaders by practicing referent power; they must set positive examples for their employees by avoiding manipulations and favoritism. This also helps in reducing office politics in the workplace. Referent power helps in increasing employee morale and employee performance. Team work must be encouraged in the organization and tasks must be assigned to them in teams and on completing the required tasks manager must use his/her reward power by giving them extra incentives and rewards for the task they performed as a team. For eradicating the technological challenges, expert power should be practiced by managers by sharing their expertise and conducting trainings and workshops. Trainings and workshops are also helpful in overcoming language barriers among employees.
References
House, R.J. (1971). A path-goal theory of leader effectiveness. Administrative Science Quarterly, 16, 321-339
Rickards, T., & Moger, S., (2000) ‘Creative leadership processes in project team development: An alternative to Tuckman’s stage model’, British Journal of Management, Part 4, pp273-283
Weikum, Gerhard, and Gottfried Vossen. (2002). Transactional information systems theory, algorithms, and the practice of concurrency control and recovery. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
