Business: Organizational Culture and Change Management
Organizational culture is the manner in which members of a firm do things. Staff behavior in the office has underlying assumptions about the way to work. It is acceptable to do some things in the workplace while it is strictly forbidden to do others yet nobody formally teaches anyone what to do and what not to do. People observe other people’s actions and follow suit. For example, it is customary for people to greet all those they find in the office before starting off with official responsibilities. Studies show that human beings learn best through interaction and assimilation.
The concept of culture has developed from anthropology. Culture has a pervasive influence on the behavior and actions of people. However, most individuals are not conscious of the presence of culture and how it affects behavior. The casual manner in which staff takes things is fundamentally the conduit through which they tap and develop ideas. However, organizational culture takes various forms that make it not easily defined.
Classification of corporate culture takes four forms that include power culture, role culture, task culture and person culture. Power culture depends on a central source of power. The central figure spreads their influence to the every sector in the organization. Small and medium enterprises adopt such a centralized system and rely on social qualities such as trust, empathy, and personal communications communication to enhance effectiveness. For instance, the owner of a single business with two employees wields control over all the transactions. As such the firm experiences few rules and procedures and eliminates bureaucracy.
Role culture depends on the works of logic and rationality, the attributes of systematic organizational management and administration. Large corporations benefit from Role Culture as the system operations on the principles of division of labor and specialization. The functions of specialists such as finance officers, purchasing and procurement officers, production technicians, and marketing professionals define the flow of work and interactions at the workplace. Therefore, individuals operate within the set policies, rules, and procedures to a attain synchronization of activities. Also, the small bands of managers provide expert guidance as opposed to centralization of power.
Advanced specialized advice leads to task culture where the system is job-oriented or project-oriented. The structure of work culture is similar to networking where the stronger individuals support the weak to achieve common goals. Task culture takes the form of teamwork within the firms where the shared power and control exists within the cultural spaces of a team or department. As an example, the organizations that apply matrix organization seek to bring together the right resources and people and utilize the unifying power of groups. However, teams need to work for the overall good of the whole organization.
Person Culture is where all the members of the group concentrate on a particular individual mostly because the proprietor is a specialist such as a lawyer or a doctor. Therefore, staffs who work in his office follow his lead in all matters that involve his profession. Person culture is not prevalent in the contemporary economy since the practitioners prefer to develop corporations due to liability concerns. For instance, university professors would rather start a consultancy firm instead of offering the services as a single business unit. However, organizational culture changes over time as the structure and leadership of the company transforms.
Change Management
Change management is a logical tactic in dealing with change in an organization. For the firm to manage change, it must be in a position to adapt, control and cause change. The ideal and proactive ways of dealing with change are through perceiving it through the three aspects. Members of an institution should not view new ideas and innovations as threats. The efforts that the management makes to maintain the balance of socio-technical system influences the people’s attitudes, the behavioral factors of individuals and groups towards change.
Factors that affect change within the firm assist the managers predict change and respond proactively. The factors include resources, processes, and values. Access to abundant and high quality resources increases the company’s capacity to cope with change. Interaction patterns, coordination and communication processes among employees transforms resources into products and services. The processes may be formal and clearly defined and recorded in the company’s policy documents. Finally, the standards by which members of staff set priorities that enable them to determine whether a novel idea is attractive or marginal. The ability to evaluate business sense in plans depends on the company’s sensitivity to change.
The organization’s capacities change over time. The process starts with available resources transforming to tendencies and preferences. Such movement instigates visible, articulated processes and company values that solidify to culture. Therefore, it is vital for a firm to expect change and put in measures that help tap cultural transformation in the right direction. The three possible ways in which organizations can cope with change are first, create firm organizational structures. Secondly, create an independent agency with the existing structure and finally acquire different processes and values that closely match the current requirements help managers control change.
The Culture at King Supplies Limited is slow and sluggish. The Firm applies Power Culture where the manager, central figure, influences every sector in the firm. The employees and bored and seemed not motivated to work. Most of the times when the place is not busy, the staff waste the time away idling in the compound. Also, the employees have not mastered the customer service skills such that most new clients who visit end up ignored and frustrated. Therefore, business has been flat, and profit margin has been decreasing over time. In fact, it has come to the point that the manager lays down some workers because the place is not making enough money to pay employees. For example, Jamie did not find a replacement for one of the employees who left work because the company could not afford to pay him.
All the problems in the enterprise result from failed management over the years. Firstly, the director, Andy, does not seem to have any capacity for making a firm decision about work culture in his organization. Secondly, the previous manager had damaged the company’s culture by encouraging a lazy tradition at work. Employees often follow the lead of the management team. The situation would have turned out differently had they allowed proper tendencies to set in.
The new manager, Jamie, is finding it hard to instigate change in the company because the employees are not ready for it. They are so used to laxity and complacency that it is virtually impossible to make any further improvements on daily occurrences. Jamie is always worried about how the staff will take his decisions. Becoming stricter would be going against the norms of the company. Also, the fact that Andy is laid back such that he does not want to spend his time to help in straightening some of the issues negatively affecting his company leaves Jamie with hard task to make hard choices.
Recommendations
Jamie should take the central position of leadership and eliminate Tim for challenging his authority. The firm cultural structure is Power Culture; therefore, the manager should influence the tendencies that other employees adopt. However, to successfully remove the wrong overgrown attitudes, he should follow change management procedures. Firstly, he should take an inventory of all the resources within his jurisdiction. After learning what is in his control, he should charge different staff with specific responsibilities for managing each area of competence. As such, he can form different teams that work together to meet their targets. However, to accelerate employees’ motivation he needs to invent a reward system where the best performing team gets prizes at the end of the year. The second step would be to develop independence in the organization. Through setting clear rules and regulations in a written policy document would help each understand the consequences of their actions. As an example, the worker who had missed attending duty would have had to go through the procedure to apply for sick leave.
Reference List
Atkinson, P., & Hammersley, M. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.
Christensen, C. M., & Overdorf, M. (2000). Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Pub.
Harrison, R. (2013). Heritage: Critical Approaches. Abingdon: Routledge.
