Solutions to Assignments
MCO-01 - Organisation Theory and Behaviour
Master of Commerce (M.Com) - 2nd Year
Question No. 5 Comment briefly on the following statement:
(a) Redesigning jobs based on feedback is also a technique of job redesign.
Restructuring the elements including tasks, duties and responsibilities of a specific job in order to make it more encouraging and inspiring for the employees or workers is known as job redesigning. The process includes revising, analyzing, altering, reforming and reshuffling the job-related content and dimensions to increase the variety of assignments and functions to motivate employees and make them feel as an important asset of the organization. The main objective of conducting job redesigning is to place the right person at the right job and get the maximum output while increasing their level of satisfaction.
Job Redesign Process
Revising the Job Content: Job redesigning process involves recollecting and revising job-related information to determine the inconsistency between person and the job.
Analyzing Job-related Information: Once the job analyst is through with recollecting and revising the job content, analyzing the discrepancies is the next step. It is done to determine the hindrances in performing job-related tasks and duties and investigate why an employee is not able to deliver the expected output.
Altering the Job Elements: The next step is to amend the job elements. It may include cut back on extra responsibilities or addition of more functions and a higher degree of accountability. The basic aim of altering the job content is to design a job in such a manner that encourages employees to work harder and perform better.
Reformation of Job Description and Specification: After altering the job elements, a job analyst needs to reform the job description and specification in order to make sure that the worker placed at a particular place is able to deliver what is expected of him.
Reshuffling the Job-related Tasks and Duties: Next is to reallocation of new or altered tasks and functions to employees. It may be done by rotating, enriching, enlarging and engineering the job. The idea is to motivate the performers while increasing their satisfaction level.
Advantages of Job Redesigning
Enhances the Quality of Work-Life: Job redesigning motivates the employees and enhances the quality of their work life. It increases their on-the-job productivity and encourages them to perform better.
Increases Organization’s and Employees’ Productivity: Altering their job functions and duties makes employees much comfortable and adds to their satisfaction level. The unambiguous job responsibilities and tasks motivate them to work harder and give their best output. Not only this, it also results in increased productivity of an organization.
Brings the Sense of Belongingness in Employees: Redesigning job and allowing employees to do what they are good at creates a sense of belongingness in them towards the organization. It is an effective strategy to retain the talent in the organization and encouraging them to carry out their responsibilities in a better fashion.
Creates a Right Person-Job Fit: Job Redesigning plays an important role in creating a right person-job fit while harnessing the full potential of employees. It helps organization as well as employees in achieving their targets or goals.
Therefore, the purpose of job redesigning is to identify the task significance and skill variety available in the organization and reallocating the job-related tasks and responsibilities according to the specific skills possessed by an employee.
(b) Informal channel is the result of the operation of social forces at work place.
Informal communication is casual communication between coworkers in the workplace. It is unofficial in nature and is based in the informal, social relationships that are formed in a workplace outside of the normal hierarchy of business structure. That is why informal business communication can take place between the CEO and an hourly worker. This type of communication is important in the workplace as it can help with employee morale and can encourage the feeling of belonging for the employees as well as a client or customer.
Good examples of informal communication in the workplace can be seen whenever one employee interacts with another employee in a casual and conversational way. They can talk about the game that was on last night or even about a company policy change.
One of the great informal communication examples is to think of it like a conversation between a family at a dinner table. Any child can turn to the mom or dad of the family (or the boss of the company) and casually ask them questions about something they brought up in a family meeting. It’s a calm and carefree scenario to discuss things.
Informal communication is casual and carefree while formal communication can seem cold and distant. Both these types of communication are important for the workplace, but informal communication is beneficial because it can bridge gaps between departments and create a sense of belonging. Informal communication is friendly and inviting and is a great sign that someone has a friend in the company.
Informal communication is an advantage to business because if employees have friends to communicate with they will enjoy their job more, which can increase productivity. A disadvantage to informal communication is just that, it’s informal. Unofficial or unconfirmed information can be spread to employees, leading to mass disinformation. A great benefit to informal communication is that employees have someone to go to when they don’t understand an aspect of the business. It is a great way for employees to feel connected and to keep abreast with how the business works.
Informal or Grapevine communication is an indispensable part of entire communication system. Formal communication is compared to arteries of a living being, whereas, grapevine or informal communication are like veins. The later is a supplement to the former. Where formal communication fails to operate, grapevine or informal communication is used.
Sometimes, grapevine communication is more effective than the formal communication. In fact, it carries more information than formal communication. Not only is a large volume of information, important and vital information also conveyed through it.
In an organisation small groups of people work together. It is quite natural that they will become interested about each other and want to know various information regarding each other’s service condition, salary, facilities available, appointment, retirement, transfer, punishment, etc.
They will also be interested to know any private, secret and confidential information which includes any romantic affair, family disputes, marriage, birth of a child, examination results of their children, special treatment or favour by boss to any member and so on.
The employees generally exchange their views with their peers openly during lunch break or at an interval and get emotional relief from monotony and stress. Thus, the informal or grapevine communication promotes social relationship among the participants. It helps to build up unity, integrity and solidarity among them and boosts up their morale.
Grapevine or informal communication is faster than the formal communication. Being oral in nature, it has little or no cost and can reach maximum number of people irrespective of their positions within a very short time.
Since there is no official procedure and formalities it is not binding and compelling, rather it is flexible and spontaneous. The managers can get feedback from their subordinates quickly on the plan and policies through grapevine. New ideas, suggestions, opinions may come out as people can express their feelings without fear.
Effective Use of Informal or Grapevine Communication:
Since grapevine communication is an integral part of communication system it works side by side with the formal communication. The nature of grapevine communication can be guessed from its name. Like a grapevine plant it grows fast, spreads to any direction and goes a long way in creating informal relationship.
Here, information spreads very quickly in geometric progression from one to a few and from a few to many persons irrespective of their formal positions. Spread of half true information or rumor is not congenial to the organisational health.
It breeds conflict, weakens consolidation and unity, diminishes morale of the workers and creates a chaotic situation within the organisation. It becomes more harmful for an organisation when the managers take decisions depending upon such unreliable, inaccurate and incomplete information.
The efficient managers can make proper use of informal or grapevine communication and apply it for the well-being of the organisation if some general steps like the following are taken:
i. The managers should keep a watchful eye on the leaders who spread rumors and keep them well-informed about the actual situation.
ii. The managers should contradict rumors as soon as possible.
iii. They should involve the employees in decision-making, etc.
The managers, on the other hand, can supplement formal communication with grapevine communication. They can feel the pulse of the organisation through informal communication. They can even use it to convey any official information with a bit of care.
(c) Organisation Development is the modern approach to management of change for human resources development.
Organizational development is a critical and science-based process that helps organizations build their capacity to change and achieve greater effectiveness by developing, improving, and reinforcing strategies, structures, and processes.
There are a few elements in this definition (adapted from Cummings & Worley, 2009) that stand out.
Critical and science-based process. OD is an evidence-based and structured process. It is not about trying something out and seeing what happens. It is about using scientific findings as input and creating a structured and controlled process in which assumptions are tested. Lastly, it is about testing if the outcomes reflect the intention of the intervention.
Build capacity to change and achieve greater effectiveness. Organizational development is aimed at organizational effectiveness. It, therefore, has a number of (business) outcomes. These can differ between organizations, but usually, they do include financial performance, customer satisfaction, organizational member engagement, and an increased capacity to adapt and renew the organization. These are not always clear-cut. Sometimes it is about building a competitive advantage, in whichever way we define that. We will explore these outcomes later in this article
Developing, improving, and reinforcing strategies, structures, and processes. The last part of our definition states that organizational development applies to changes in strategy, structure, and/or processes. This implies a system-approach, where we focus on an entire organizational system. This can include the full organization, one or more locations, or a single department.
Organizational design has become more crucial over time. Today’s world is characterized by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA). This VUCA world requires new agility from organizations, and organizational development is the means to that end.
In organizational development, the main stakeholders are both internal and external to the company. Management and employees are internal stakeholders. External stakeholders include customers, investors, suppliers, communities and governments.
Globalization leads to a much greater interconnectedness and opens up organizations to world-wide opportunities and threats.
On top of that, IT is redefining how traditional business models work, creating innovative companies with the ability to scale their services to a worldwide audience in the timespan of only a few years. Just a year after launching, Facebook hit one million registered users. A few years later, Snapchat hit 10 million active users in its first year. This exposes incumbents to disruption.
Finally, business systems become better at measuring relevant data, changing the way success is measured. On top of that, advanced people analytics can help to further drive organizational outcomes.
Human Process Interventions
Human process interventions are change programs that relate to interpersonal relations, group, and organizational dynamics. These are some of the earliest and best-known OD interventions.
1. Individual interventions. These interventions are targeted to the individual, often aimed at improving communication with others. An employee is coached on interpersonal behaviors that are counterproductive.
2. Group interventions. These interventions are aimed at the content, structure, or process of the group. The content is what the group is focused on. The structure is how a group is designed to act on the content. The process is the way in which the group carries out its core tasks. For example, a contact center focuses on taking complaints from customers. The contact center has a hierarchical structure with a director, managers, and customer service staff. The contact center’s process is to record as quickly as possible, all complaints. Only a certain percentage are escalated to management depending on how serious and complex, a complaint is.
3. Third-party interventions. Third-party interventions are often used when there are conflicts. Not all conflicts are bad, but bad conflicts should be resolved quickly. The third-party intervention helps to control and resolve the conflict. Often, the third party is the OD consultant.
4. Team building. Team building is the best-known OD intervention. It refers to activities that help groups improve the way they accomplish tasks. Examples of team-building activities are volunteering, team sports, and Pictionary.
5. Organizational confrontation meeting. A confrontation meeting aims to identify problems and improvement targets, and set priorities. It is a starting point for addressing identified problems, across your organization.
6. Intergroup relations interventions. Intergroup interventions are aimed at diagnosing and understanding in-group relations. Similarly, problems are identified and priorities and improvement targets are set, before working on the identified issues.
7. Large-group interventions. These interventions are somewhat in the middle, of confrontation and intergroup interventions. The aim is to bring a large number of organization members and other stakeholders together. Internal and external stakeholders work together collaboratively. Large-group interventions may address organization-wide problems, or implement changes of structure or direction. For example, if you run a care home, you would seek feedback from service users, relatives, and staff on ways to improve the quality of life for residents. This could be starting new activities or changing the menu options. They are often referred to as “open space meetings”, “world cafes”, “future searches”, and “appreciative inquiry summits”.
Human Resource Management Interventions
These are organizational development techniques that focus on the way the individual is managed. Many of these are part of HRM functions.
1. Performance management. Good performance management includes techniques such as goal setting, performance appraisal, and reward systems.
2. Developing talent. This includes talent management practices like coaching & mentoring, career planning, development interventions, and management and leadership development.
3. Diversity interventions. Diversity is a source of innovation. This includes age, gender, race, sexual orientation, disabilities, and culture, and value orientation. These OD intervention techniques are aimed at increasing diversity.
4. Wellness interventions. Employee wellness interventions include stress management programs, and employee assistance programs. They address social factors and aim for a healthy work-life balance.
How Human Resources and OD relate
You can see that there are many OD interventions, relating to Human Resource Management functions. Policies such as performance management, goal setting, appraisal, and talent management practices are all important in achieving effective organizational development.
However, whereas HRM focuses specifically on people practices, OD takes a more holistic approach. Using tools like organizational design, individual and group interventions, work design, and more traditional people interventions, OD can operate at all levels of the organization. These levels are organizational, group, and individual. However, the focus is always on strategic themes, whereas HR is often a lot more operational.
Sometimes, OD functions are located in the HR function, but not always. Sometimes it’s part of a services department, corporate strategy, or internal consulting. External strategy consultants also frequently utilize OD techniques in change management projects.
Both HRM and OD have their roots in the business strategy – the mission, values, and vision of the organization. Both outline the actions needed to implement that strategy in their respective fields. In addition, many early people analytics initiatives originate from the OD department.
What’s clear is that the OD techniques we listed above are very powerful. For an HR professional, there are huge benefits to mastering them. The term OD emerged in the 1960s, as a way to describe managing the behavioral aspects of people, within organizations. Understanding OD means you can identify which elements of core HR functions need to be focused on, in order to support the organization as a whole, in becoming more efficient. OD provides an integrated way of approaching these challenges.
(d) The components of organisational effectiveness are managerial policies and practices, employee characteristics, organisational characteristics and the environmental characteristics.
Organizational effectiveness means to study the organizational structure in order to understand the basic working. It helps in evaluating and analyzing the performance of the organization. There are various components of organizational effectiveness they are:
1. Managerial Policies and Practices
2. Environmental Characteristics
3. Employee Characteristics
4. Organizational Characteristics
1. Managerial Policies and Practices: It helps to combine the organization as a whole in order to maintain a balance between the various interest groups in an organization and to accommodate them according to the environment of the organization. There are various policies and procedures which need to be formulated and implemented at various occasions of the organization they are:
a) Strategy: It refers to the plan in order to interact between the competitive companies to achieve the goals effectively. These strategies are selected on the basis of environmental needs, and then are redesigned by the top management to achieve the desired results.
b) Leadership: It enables to influence the employees towards the effective goal achievements. Leaders enable to identify the organizational goals and also try to initiate the steps towards them.
c) Decision Making: Managerial decisions play a very important role in the success of an organization which is taken out of the various alternatives available at a given point of time.
d) Rewards: Rewards are given to the employees to recognize their efforts towards effective achievement of the organizational goals. It is done to encourage the employees and boost their morale which enables them to improve the quality and quantity of work.
e) Communication: It contributes a lot in the event of organizational change as it helps in the proper communication and linkage between the members of the organization.
2. Environmental characteristics: The external environment plays a very important role in achieving organizational effectiveness. It has various characteristics of environment which helps in understanding the status of the organization they are:
a) Predictability: It refers to the state of certainty or uncertainty in an organization towards supply of human resources, human, raw material etc. Predictability is an element of external environment.
b) Complexity: It refers to the heterogeneity and the range of activities that proves relevant to the operations in the organizations.
c) Hostility: It is an environment in which the foundation of the organization is threatened. It refers to the view by which people view the organization.
3. Employee Characteristics: It is an important characteristic as the source of human resources can make or break an organization. Employee Characteristics reflects the success and failure of the organization and its major characteristics are goals, skills, motives, attitudes and values.
a) Goals: It refers to the direction in which an organization is inclined to go. They can be termed to as intentions that an individual of an organization would like to accomplish during his course of working. It provides directional nature to behaviour of the people and guides their thoughts and actions.
b) Skills: It refers to ability to engage in a set of behaviour that is related to one another. It is the ability that leads to a desired performance in a specified are and it can be technical, administrative, managerial, behavioral etc.
c) Motives: It is an inner state of mind that helps a person to be energized, motivated and directed towards the accomplishment of a pre-defined goal. It is observed that motivated employees have high zeal and enthusiasm to perform better to achieve their respective organizational goals.
d) Attitudes: They are evaluative statements (favorable or unfavorable) concerning objects, events or people and influences job behaviour as well effectiveness of the organization.
e) Values: It refers to as specific code of conduct or basic sincerity possessed by an individual in the organization. It is highly influential in individual attitude and behaviour. It influences the motivation of an individual as well as his behaviour in the organization.
4. Organizational Characteristics: It refers to the general conditions that exist within an organization. The various characteristics that influence the effectiveness of organizations are structure, technology and size.
a) Structure: It defines the formal division, grouping and coordination of the job tasks within the organization. There are six important elements in an organizational structure that are needed for organizational effectiveness. These six elements are work specialization, departmentation, chain of command, span of control, centralization and decentralization, and formalization.
b) Technology: It refers to the ways and means by which an organization transfers its inputs into outputs. The organizational efficiency is largely dependent on the choice of technology and its use.
c) Size: It refers to the number of people in an organization. In broader sense, it can also be referred to as the physical capacity of the organization, the personnel available to the organization, the organizational inputs or outputs and the optional resources available to an organization. The effectiveness and efficiency of an organization is dependent on the size of the organization.
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