Introduction
The ability to unionize chaotic working groups and individuals into productive organizations is a key aspect of successful modern business venture (Mejia, Cardy & Balkin, 2008). The practice demonstrates that it is no longer possible to create and retain effective competitive advantage without relying on skills and abilities of other people, who are sometimes more qualified in 'hard skills' than a business owner or a general manager themselves (Wagner & Hollenback, 2010). Charles Schwab acknowledged that he knew absolutely nothing about the production of steel, yet he managed to create the most formidable steel empire of the United States. His gravestone, which states that ‘Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself’ is the most expressive summary of the today's secrets to business successfulness.
However, the modern financial environment is very dynamic, bringing recessions unpredictably and without prior notification (Kotler & Keller, 2006). Therefore, a successful manager should be always prepared to brace for impact, and to minimize damages inflicted to the organization and to its stakeholders. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to discuss about the most important issues, which an organization should address before the crisis occurs and what methods of imposing a new organizational culture are actionable in today's business environment. Its second objective is to discuss in which cases lying at the one’s workplace is justified
Issues, which should be addressed before the crisis unfolds
There are different types of crisis is in an organizational environment (Wogner & Hollenback, 2010). In particular, they may be connected with organizational inability to keep in line with the mounting technological growth, inadequate human resources policies, problematic marketing approaches, intolerable management practices, general economic recession etc. However, all these factors have exactly the same consequences - sales decline (Kotler & Keller, 2006). As a result, the company gets less money than it initially expected to receive. For the large market behemoths like Apple, Coca-Cola or BMW such problems may be temporarily only. These firms have large reserve funds, which can be used to satisfy the interests of the stakeholders as long as it is necessary. However, for the small and medium-sized businesses the consequences can be graver. In practice, the overwhelming majority of the American business is strongly dependent on the yearly, or even quarterly sales to function successfully. Thus, if a crisis occurs layoffs, reduction of compensations, project phasing out and other negative scenarios quickly become a reality. In order to minimize their impact during the crisis times, which are unfortunately inevitable, it is advisable to the management to focus on the following issues.
Firstly, the stakeholders should be hierarchically structured to understand whose interest should be prioritized during financial storms. The position in such hierarchy should not necessarily correspond to the position a particular stakeholder occupies in the corporate structure. For instance, satisfying the interests of professional engineer with a unique skillset is particularly more important than two pay dividends to the company founders. Wogner and Hollenbeck (2010) stated that from the accounting point of view, the founders' demands encumber the company in turbulent state, while the engineer may be useful and indispensable in the future projects.
Secondly, the company should know who its crisis manager is, when the recession occurs. The practice demonstrates that the crisis never comes announced and introduced. Instead, it sneaks up and delivers a cunning, painful and usually unexpected blow. The business scholars highly recommend to refrain from trying to overcome the problems under usual management (Tepper, 2000). Instead, specialists should be implicated in the process, and it is better to know these specialists in advance. These seasoned professionals should become acquainted with the specifics of the company as soon as possible, so that they will be capable of adjusting it to the crisis economics, with which they are always better familiar than the staff managers.
Lastly, the company managers should develop specific crisis policies, which should be similar to the military ‘curfew’ rule. In other words, the employment contracts of the company staff should explicitly recognize that if a global, unforeseen recession befalls, then their working benefits may be temporarily suspended. Despite the fact that this approach may seem somewhat repulsive to many potential workers, it is a necessary aspect of corporate survival during the crisis times.
Imposing a new culture to the organization
Uprooting a deeply ingrained organizational culture is one of the most difficult tasks faced by the managers. However, under today's economic conditions this operation is often necessary to support sales cycles in general market efficiency of the company. The practice demonstrates that making flat-styled managerial changes into the organization, which has customers to the hierarchical Japanese style corporate governance is extremely difficult, though sometimes it is vitally necessary (Mejia, Cardy & Balkin, 2008). Generally, the following principles of bringing in new culture into the company are relatively effective:
Firstly, it is often necessary to replace C-ranked officials. Despite the fact that their contribution to the company success might have been enormous, these people are usually the one, who inspire old cultural rules and principles. Therefore, their removal and subsequent hiring of the managers, who share a vision of the chief executive officer in this regard is indispensably required. The practice demonstrates that sometimes all executive may openly support the ideas of introducing the new cultural environment, but in practice they will sabotage them, though sometimes inadvertently. For instance, if a company’s general manager decides to introduce the new methods of communication into the business cycles, his C-ranked colleagues may continue using the old ones, thus encouraging this conduct among the employees.
Secondly, splitting former working groups is another important element of the process. Such groups have well-defined leaders, old communication approaches and other elements, which are not consistent with the new cultural framework, imposed by the new CEO.
Finally, developing new methods of communication and responsibility standards is essential. The employees should be expressly informed about their new scopes of accountability, as well as about the way they will be communicating and collaborating. All other forms should be either prohibited or penalized.
The Policies towards lying in a contemporary working environment
Lying is a socially criticized practice. However, it is not a professional crime, although many organizations have explicit corporate policies which prohibit this form of conduct (Chemers, 1997). Some scholars also speculate that ‘white lie’ or omission should be allowed in the workplace. Others argue that all forms of the intentional distortion of the truth should are not socially permissible.
However, a tiny fraction of today’s business analysts do seem to have the most reasonable attitude to this issue. In particular, they argue that this problem should be analyzed through the lenses of the most popular philosophical framework – consequentialism (Kotler & Keller, 2006). In other words, whatever action an employee or a manager commits, if this action leads to the positive result, under all circumstances this form of conduct, even if it is the most flagrant lie should be authorized. To illustrate, a CEO of the company may forge the audited statements to show that the company performance was better, than it was in reality, knowing that a profitable contract is in the pipeline, which would save the corporation from bankruptcy. This is a form of a so-called “white lie:” In case he reveals the truth, his dismissal and enforcement of the anti-crisis may be imminent. As a result, hundreds of employees may be dismissed. In contrast, his lie, although socially unacceptable, saves many careers, including his own. If however, the same reasonably believes that the contract is precarious, then a truthful declaration is essential, because the consequences of his actions are not predictable, and therefore can hardly be positive. In any case, developing a rule, which is applicable to all scenarios is not possible. Each case should be judged individually from the positions of consequentialism.
References
Mejia, L., Balkin, D. & Cardy, R. (2008). Management : people, performance, change. Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin
Chemers, M. (1997). An integrative theory of leadership. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kotler, P. & Keller, K. (2006). Marketing management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall
Wagner, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2010). Organizational behavior: Securing competitive advantage. New York: Routledge.
Tepper, B. J. (2000). "Consequences of abusive supervision". Academy of Management Journal, 43(2), 178-190
