Team Silo and Their Impact on Organizational Citizenship Behavior - Case Study Example

Team Silo and their Impact on Organizational Citizenship Behavior s Team silosand the organizational impacts Introduction Organizational behavior has attracted significant attention in the recent past leading to vibrancy in the area of corporate behavioral study and impact of certain organizational behavior in personal and interpersonal relations. Besides, organizational concepts have resulted following the recent growing interest in research on the organizational behavioral patterns. Team silo is one of the organizational behavior patterns that is often undesirable. It refers to an attitude in some organization where certain departments withholds information from the other members of the same organization. Certainly, informational flow is an essential component necessary for organizational existence. In an environment of limited flow of information, there will be an inefficiency and corporate culture will be severely compromised. Managers often spend a lot of time in ensuring that information flows freely across all departments and ensure all department functions executes collective responsibility as expected. In organizational citizen behavior, concept is a desirable phenomenon that each organization wishes to cultivate at every level of the organizations existence. It relates to how the employees perceives the company and how their interpersonal relations affect the company operations. In other words, the concept calls for collective responsibility of employees towards the organization and their continued effort to build and sustain positive organizations image. Team silo continues to impact negatively on the organizational citizens behavior. Arguably, this is a detrimental mentality that can ruin organization traditions, values and interpersonal relations among the employees. The sheer spectrum of organizational citizenship is a far-reaching in multiple positive aspects. Firstly, it ensures that the employees remain cohesive and integrate employees effort towards the desired results. Where employees create a cohesive teamwork approach in undertaking their daily duties, the company best interest is safeguarded at all times, and a positive organizational citizenship is achieved (Organ & MacKenzie 2006). Secondly, employees practices working or future approach, this means they put the life of the company a number one priority. Sadly, where silos mentality is practiced, this important forecasting is lost, and the employees get embroiled in endless strife that limits scope of the organizational achievements and the success probability greatly diminishes. Literature Review Team silo refers to an organizational mentality that restricts inter-departmental flow of information. In modern day organizational strategies, the ultimate realization of the pre-set goals and objectives relies greatly on the efficiency of communication. In fact, many successful organizations have established clear communication lines in order to facilitate efficiency. Sadly, silo mentality serves to restrict information flow and subsequently limit organizational operations. In a production company for instance, a clear two-way communication must be maintained between the production, packaging, storage and marketing departments. Failure to consistently communicate results in the disconnect of information and operation will significantly suffer from inconsistencies and inadequacies (McShane & Glinow 2014). Errors of omissions, erroneous projections, continue to bedevil organizations whose departmental communication employ silo mentality. While organizational citizenship appears practical and desirable, silo mentality continues to water down the positive steps that have been fostered by organizational citizenship theories. According to organizational behavior theorists, individual employee determines the overall organizational behavior, this implies that employees positive mentality can be achieved through positive motivation, attitude and workplace values (Palmer 2010). Causes of Silo Mentality Silo mentality is primarily human attribute that encourages a mindset that focuses on personal lines of duty for selfish gain. Lack of job satisfaction and detached team players in building organizational policy explains the reason for this mentality. The selfish information sharing could be caused by lack of employee coordination and poor organization communication policy. In addition, low morale and lack of motivation to work encourage this mindset thus growing information sabotage against management (Al-Zua 2011). Impact of Silo Mentality on OCB In any organization, there are five primary areas that silo mentality exert its organizational efficiency. Firstly, it enhances localized and disconnected decision-making process, thus slows down overall organization progress. Secondly, silo mentality creates an apparent culture of disintegrated leadership (Ramasamy & Thamaraiselvan 2011). It engages managers to struggles in bringing vital changes within the institution. Besides, it grows a primitive culture of resistance to changes, thus posing a threat to the progress of the organization. Also, managers will always be engaged in setting communication disconnects thus making management an uphill task. Through promotion of OCB, the managers will build employees commitment towards the organization. The fundamental principles of OCB is working towards organizational good (Lin 2008). It is through having shared vision, working for the future and building team work the OCB will enhance information sharing and discourage silo mentality. In addition, knowledge sharing will be inevitable when each employee becomes an ambassador of organizational good. Silo mentality creates lack of information through discouraging teamwork and coordination, under OCB team work is build, and coordination is inevitable (Guo & Zhou 2013). Team silos cause fragmented and hearsay communication within organization structures is posing a threat to potential fraudulent and ill-motive tendencies from unscrupulous employees. Besides, in a competitive marketing, the competitor will capitalize on the informational gaps within the organization thus creating a business niche even within the organizations traditional markets. Group or organizational culture and identity are best nurtured, where there is free interdepartmental access, a restricted information as seen in a silo team kills planning, and coordination is significantly impaired. Ideally, organizational philosophies, missions and goals ought to be shared at all levels, in addition, each department often crafts its specific objectives in line with its function. While departments may have different goals and objectives the hallmark. Contemporary management, psychology advocates for the eradication of the silo mentality as a motivation to employees (Diamond & Allcorn 2009). Silo mentality creates a reluctance to creativity since employees hardly get a chance to exercise autonomy in their daily duty. Sadly, under this mentality employee often remain in darkness in the management plans and a timeline of other departmental projects. …….states that with a silo mentality, employees are reduced to spectators while the managers enjoys the coercive power to unsuspecting employees. Besides, the ultimate achievements are, usually, distant from employees efforts and the employees desperately engage in interpersonal strife instead o focusing on the overall goals of the organization (Palmer 2010). Organizational citizenship is often confused for industrial actions in some quarters. However; it is distinct because unlike industrial unions. Its focus on the collective positive initiatives of all employees in creating a positive impression on organizational success explains its significance. Also, the concept of organizational citizenship explores the positive altruism and enhancing employees compliance with the managerial directions that are geared towards the organizational goals and philosophy. With silo mentality, there is an attitude of lack of confidence by the junior since there is a lack of participation of employees. Personality traits that include the conscientiousness, positive affection and organizational commitment towards organizational objectives are supposed to be nurtured within the organizational culture (Diamond & Allcorn 2009). Silo mentality confers negative implication on the personality features; it kills affection of the employees to the organization and kills creativity. However, there is no direct relationship between silo mentality and organizational success. The current policies on the organizational framework encourage the free flow of information with the ultimate intention of enhancing efficiency within organizational leadership. The employees who perpetually remain in dark relating to organizational information as it occurs in a silo mentality discourages employees contributions to the organization endeavors. Leadership behaviors influence the extent of the silo mentality, irrespective of the intention of information flow, employees should remain in light. Silo mentality should not be allowed on the contemporary organizational platform. Besides, the need to liberalize management and enhance accountability in the organization should precede the retrogressive silo mentality concept. Silo mentality also hinders interpersonal relations among employees of different departments. In fact, it creates a feeling of suspicion and untrustworthiness leading to internal strifes. Where a joint decision has to make, managers with a silo mentality do not share crucial information leading to expensive and lengthy decision-making process. OCB studies have been done concurrently with contextual performance, unlike OCB; the latter focuses on specific work-related behaviors and ignores the larger domains of the job description (McShane & Glinow 2014 ). Although the two concepts borrow heavily from the citizenship behavioral pattern, the latter omits the contribution of environmental and interpersonal patterns that faces todays organization. While silo behavior appears to affect work-related employees behaviors and attitude, it also affects the contextual performance. Certainly, the mentality of reluctance in sharing information within organizational structures encourages employees reluctance to change and limits personal efforts towards the realization of the organizational goals. It is incomplete to explore organizational behavior without bringing in the concept of Counterproductive Work Behavior (CWB). This refers to the direct reluctance of the employees to undertake legitimate duty that they owe the organization. This concept explains the reason managers are encouraged to promote individual employees independence rather than create silo mentality within the organizational culture (Palmer 2010). Early works on the OCB focused on the employees attitudes, dispositions and role of influence leadership. While these issues are adequately addressed by OCB concept, the impact of the silo mentality in organizational concepts is scarcely evaluated (Organ & Mackenzie 2006). Certainly, there is low job satisfaction in organizations with the silo mentality in operation. The primary function of management is to enhance employee satisfaction and enhance organizational commitment. While the effects of the silo mentality appear to have caused a slow organizational citizenship, the ultimate impact remains slowed decision-making at all levels of the organization because of impaired communication. For organization to continue fostering a positive citizenship organization, managers should be ready to engage employees through creation of independent, formal and consistent informational flow (Finkelstein 2011). Conclusion Silo mentality has impacted negatively on the Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB). While the role of employees remains diligent duty, there should be an alternate organizational strategy to ensure flow communication across al cadre of the employees. Silo mentality has been a great let down to the communication plan of most organizations. It has been found to cost enormous operational cost to the organization. Notably, the leading causes of this mentality include disgruntled employees, a low morale staff and poor leadership. When information sharing is inhibited, several areas within the organization suffer incoordination and fragmentation of services. Notably, it encourages the laxity of employees and increased tendencies of rebellion. In addition, it leads to slowed decision-making and managers often find themselves enslaved in a cycle of struggles in keeping the organizational goals alive. However, the increased calls for organizational citizenship have brought a new concept that ensures that organizations are build on a solid foundation of informational flow. In addition, it encourages coordination of activities and discourage fragmentation of services within an organization. Today, managers are trained on communication strategies, and OCB has build a concrete foundation of organization communication policy. References List Al-Zu’Bi, H. A. 2011. Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Impacts on Knowledge Sharing: An Empirical Study. International Business Research, 4(3), 213-215. Diamond, M. A., & Allcorn, S. 2009. Private selves in public organizations: the psychodynamics of organizational diagnosis and change. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Finkelstein, M. A. 2011. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and organizational citizenship behavior: A functional approach to organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture, 2(1), 19-34. Guo, G., & Zhou, X. 2013.Research on Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Trust and Customer Citizenship Behavior. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(16), 13-22. Lin, C. 2008. Clarifying the Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behaviors, Gender, and Knowledge Sharing in Workplace Organizations in Taiwan. Journal of Business and Psychology, 22(3), 241-250. Lin, H. 2007. Knowledge sharing and firm innovation capability: an empirical study. International Journal of Manpower, 28(3/4), 315-332. McShane, S. L., & Glinow, M. A. 2014. Organizational behavior (2nd ed.). New York: Mcgraw-Hill/Irwin. Organ, D. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & MacKenzie, S. B. 2006. Organizational citizenship behavior: its nature, antecedents, and consequences. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Palmer, B. 2010. Whats wrong with work: the 5 frustrations of work and how to fix them for good. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley. Ramasamy, M., & Thamaraiselvan, N. 2011. Knowledge Sharing and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. Knowledge and Process Management, 18(4), 278-284. Read More