Personal Case Study

Organizational Behavior, BA583
Week Five – Personal Case Study

Memorandum: What You Should Know About Organizational Behavior

Introduction:
I have compiled the following as a quick reference as to how Organizational Behavioral (OB) concepts will impact you as you begin your career as an engineer as well as some ideas specifically related to AM Equipment. To understand yourself and the company you have accepted employment at, I will provide some background information that will become invaluable in your quest to serve Christ as an employee to an unbeliever. I have selected several specific topics that will be important as you gain responsibility and are promoted which will influence your actions as well as improve how others view your relationship with Christ. First I will discuss several topics that will shed light on your personal actions and tendencies such as how you tend to interact with people to how you react to certain situations. The last portion I will cover are some key characteristics of your employer, his business and the culture and how these will prove challenging and even harmful to your career.
Background:
I submit a simple background to remind you where you have been which will highlight how OB will impact, and already has, your future. You accepted Christ as a young boy, and have been actively involved in your church your entire life. You have always been independent and left home as soon as it was practical. You were married at 19, had your first child at 20, had your second child at 22. That same year you bought your first house and remodeled it while working 30-35 hours per week and going to engineering school full time. You are a “practical leader”; in other words, you only lead when no-one else steps up to lead, or they do a poor job of it. Unfortunately, as you progress, you will find yourself in one of these two situations much more often.
AM Equipment is your first opportunity to work in an engineering related job. It is a small business operated as a sole proprietorship. The owner is creative, interesting and doesn't want anything to do with Christ. He has owned the business since 1972 and has poured his life into shaping it into an engineering and design company. There has never been an person in the engineering capacity that has lasted more then three years working for him, so he must be dealt with care and respect. He has a desire to influence those working for him to craft them into what he believes they should be. Although I am describing a person, it also describes the culture of AM Equipment. This company is also trying to grow and has tremendous potential from everyone's perspective. Quality is proclaimed as critically important, but is often sacrificed to move onto the next project.
Impacts of Organizational Behavior:
MTIBI (Robbins, pg35)- The Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator is one of the most commonly used personality tests. When you took this test you were rated as ENTP. “E” for Extroverted, “N” for Intuitive, “T” for Thinking and “P” for Precieveing. ENTP's are identified as conceptualizers which are innovative, individualistic, versatile and entrepreneurial. You tend to be “resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments” (Robbins pg35). It is always a challenge do the day-to-day tasks that are required in your work, but if you are able to identifying ways to improve the efficiency of the mundane, you will overcome.
One side effect of this type of personality is the willingness to take on responsibility with abandon (Kummerow, 1997). There is nothing that you believe is too difficult and frankly, you enjoy the challenge of something new. This will constantly be a source of excitement and anxiety as you progress through your career. You must learn to finish tasks before starting something else. This is true of anything from email to major projects with budgets upwards of $700,000. If you can learn this lesson you will be successful in your endeavors; but if you do not, you will often disappoint those around you, causing frustration and anxiety about how to clean up the mess you have gotten into. This personality trait is perfect for your new job at AM Equipment because job enlargement is part of the culture.
Job Enlargement (Robbins, pg74)- This method of improving job satisfaction stems from the mindset that efficiency is gained with job specialization which takes away any variety. This variety, it turns out, is very important to keeping people interested and engaged in their work. AM Equipments management has taken this Job Enlargement theory to an extreme. If you are remotely successful in the job you were hired for, they will add responsibility after responsibility until you fail. This is similar to the “Peter Principle” where a person is promoted based on their superior performance in a job (Sutton, 2009). Because they are good at what they do, it is assumed that they are the best candidate to take on more responsibility. In many cases the skills that made them good at a particular job are not the same skills needed to be successful in their promoted position.
As in most small companies AM Equipment have few skilled people who must do many different tasks. When a new person is on the scene there is a tendencies to take the overloaded portions of the old employees and pile that onto the new “Moses”. The fabled leader is expected to carry the weight of the world and shepard the company through the desert with little food or water. You will see this scenario play out many times, it will always end badly, whether it is just damaged reputation of the employee or it ends in termination of employment. Since you are predisposed to accept additional responsibility, it is important that you understand the impacts of overcommitment are not only personal; they can impact the company as a whole over the short term and long.
Political Behavior (Robbins, pg183)- There is a fine line between political behavior and Emotional Intelligence (Robbins, pg44 & pg169). One Eastern Oregon University professor defines political behavior as “behavior that focuses on getting, developing, and using power to achieve a desired result in situations of uncertainty or conflict over choices ” (EOU, 2009); which has a negative connotation. Emotional intelligence is different because it is how people modify their own behavior according to the situation to effect a particular outcome. It is not as self serving or cut and dried as politics, but will be critically important in this position at AM Equipment. You will be in many situations where you must sway the opinion of fellow workers. At times this will be selling the new company strategy, implementing less than desirable changes, finding the silver lining of a particular situation or encouraging fellow workers to be more Christ-like.
You will work in a unique situations where most of your fellow workers and employees have some sort of a relationship with Christ. Unfortunately, not all of them will behave as such. One of the most important challenges you will face is to respect those in authority even when they are making decisions which defy reason. Paul reminds us in Ephesians,
be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh..., with sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not...as men-pleasers, but as [workers] of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. With good will render service as to the Lord. (NASB, 6:5-7)
These verses will serve as a reminder to you. Your first responsibility it to personally behave in this manner, but then you must encourage others who have the same calling to heed Paul's words as well. This verse was speaking specifically to slaves, who had it much worse than you ever will, but the concept is the same. Superiors make decisions that directly effect us all, it is hard to give respect appropriately when the choices made are not in sync with reality. However that does not remove our responsibility to Christ. When you are promoted to Management, it will be your task to raise the concerns about decisions. To question and present alternatives, but in the end you must support the decision made and work toward that end as long at there are no ethical, legal or personal conviction conflicts.
The second area where you will need to develop skill is in who to present information to different people. This may be included in the politics category, but you will find that your emotional intelligence will be required to be sensitive to peoples reactions. When people react poorly to information, do not try to hide the “bad”. Instead, look for ways to make the conversation expected. One method for accomplishing this task it to identify as early as possible if there is going to be bad news. Then, present the bad news as a possibility along side the things being done to prevent the potential problem. This method raises the awareness of the potential problem as well as gives comfort that you are working hard to prevent it from happening. A side benefit is that occasionally with this raised awareness other alternatives are suggested. After all, it is in the best interest of the entire company to have good results.
Appreciative Inquiry (Robbins, pg276)- This is an interesting topic because it ties in will with the emotional behavior discussed in the previous section. When we look at problems we quite often are dealing with the past. Appreciative inquiry seeks to identified where the organization has succeeded, highlight those areas use them to create the plan forward utilizing these strengths. You must first identify what the areas of success are and promote them in your mind. When you can articulate the strengths to yourself, you are now in a position to pass that on to your fellow workers.
There are several benefits to the process of appreciative inquiry but they all lead to improved job satisfaction (Robbins, pg24). As a manager, much of your job will be to ensure that the people working in Engineering are targeting the same goal as the company. Sometimes the “strengths” of a strategy are hard to find, let alone communicate how those will personally affect each person in a meaningful way. However, this will be your job. You must point out the benefits to stimulate a positive atmosphere. The alternative, negative atmosphere will make the goal of working “with sincerity of heart” nearly impossible. It will lead to disrespect, anger, frustration and in some cases even sabotaging behavior. The last benefit identifying strengths has, is the potential to improve the culture. In fact, it may be feasible to reverse thinking of the entire organization, making the culture more positive and even accepting of change.
Cultural Liability (Robbins, pg232)- Culture is a extremely powerful force within an organization. Top management plays one of the most important roles as far as setting the culture. AM Equipment has a unique situation in that the owner is still the CEO and has virtually established all of the culture. Some by personality bent and other areas with shear will power. Unfortunately, the things that are easiest for us, those formulated by our personality, tend to be the ones that stick most rigidly. We all have things that we know should be done, but we do not do those things when the pressure is on. Well, the same is true of this organization.
AM Equipment values quality in all areas of the business; from accounting to shipping , from engineering to sales. It is a mantra. It is the first, most important thing referred to in nearly every conversation. This virtue is what AM Equipment knows should be done. The problem comes in times of trouble, money is tight, sales are down so the most important thing is getting product out the door to satisfy the customer. Although satisfying the customer today is of extreme importance, allowing quality standards to slide will likely cause long term dissatisfaction. For AM Equipment long term relationships are the reason we are still in business. Cultural change is hard but you will be called upon to be a significant change agent in how to tackle the problem of ignoring quality at the expense of long term customer satisfaction.
Another cultural liability present, especially in the engineering department, is the tendencies to rush to the next challenge. This error typically involves getting to the end of the exciting stage of design, then “throwing it over the wall” (Liker, 2004). This concept is referring to the lack of understanding of how the product impacts others in the organization. The documentation side of engineering is not “fun” nor is ensuring proper testing has taken place. The last but most important aspect is how this product will be assembled in a repeatable manner so that customers are satisfied every time they purchase. The assembly equipment and processes are the what will determine end customer quality. If these processes are ignored customers will receive product that has variation and likely a higher failure rate. This Culture must change and you must be instrumental in making this change a priority.
Conformity (Robbins, pg106)- AM Equipments culture is evident from the first meeting you will attend. It is obvious that the cultural norm is to find a reason to agree with top management on any decision. The strategy of those who last revolves around identifying positive aspects of managements directives, and using those to convince themselves it is the right direction. This culture has been bred into the company because those who do not follow this strategy have short careers.
One of the problems of having this conformity culture is that poor decisions are made and reinforced by mid-level managers as they try to find a way to support their leader. In place of constructive conflict, people are looking for any possible way to agree. Conflict in the decision process typically results in better solutions, though they are not made as quickly as single person making the calls on their own (Collins, 2001). You will need to develop a communication style that will enable contradictory statements without the emotional response which can encourage different thinking. The additional conversation will likely spawn better solutions for the short term and the long. It will likely establish more trust for management because it will be perceived as listening and not only rejecting.
Trust (Robbins, pg171)- Trust is an important part of leadership, that is, more often than not, earned rather than simply given. In the American mindset, people generally believe that those in authority will take advantage of them if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, management at AM Equipment has a long standing reputation for doing what it believes is best. But, the question is raise, “isn't that the responsibility of management?”. The answer is, “Absolutely!” So what is not working? The decision process is not understood by employees, and often time does not make logical sense. You must work to establish the understanding of how decisions are made. It is important that employees see middle managers in support of these choices as well.
The final aspect of trust from the viewpoint of AM Equipment is that employees must clearly understand how the choices, although possibly not the most logical were made in their best interest. When decisions are made it is critical to communicate the decision, why it was made and the personal impact it will have on them. You will need to play a role in selling the choices as well. As a manager, you need to ensure that your direct reports can support a direction even if they do not fully agree with it.
Conclusion:
These are the items that are of highest importance, read this often to ensure you are serving Christ to the fullest and developing good work habits. Organizational behavior is an interesting animal because so many aspects of work, spiritual life and company dynamics are wrapped up in how people interact. What motivates us to behave in a particular manner is extremely complex, but understanding the patterns that have been identified will help you to be more successful in your life as an active part of society. It is critical to personal improvement, company success, culture rebuilding and your testimony for Christ to the unsaved who are inspecting your life every day.











Sources:
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap...and others don't. Harper Business Books, New York, NY.
EOU (2009). BA 321 Principles of Management/Org Behavior Retrieved November 9, 2009 from: http://www2.eou.edu/~blarison/mgtpower.html
Kummerow, et. al. (1997). Work Types. Warner Books, Inc. New York, NY.
Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
New American Standard Bible, Updated edition. La Habra, Ca: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
Robbins, S.P. (2005). Essentials of Organizational Behavior - 8th Edition. Pearson - Prentice Hall.
Sutton, Bob (2009). A New Look at the Peter Principle. Businessweek Online. Retrieved November 10, 2009 from: http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/mar2009/ca20090331_822526.htm