Managing People in Organisations - Essay Example

?Managing People in Organisations Introduction Companies have long been reliant on manpower to get the job done for their businesses. However, with the increasing clout of globalisation, managing people have increasingly been challenging. This has been further compounded by the different culture of people from all over the world which has been very important for the companies that have presence globally. Evans, Pucik and Bjorkman (2011) have further highlighted the importance of the capabilities of companies to handle the people that they employ. Clearly, the need for a clearer understanding and utilization of Organisational Behaviour has been more pressing with the challenges being faced by different companies nowadays. Manpower has been a crucial element of a company’s production capability. However, among the factors of production, it is the most difficult to manage because of the intricacies of having to deal with the different personalities of the employees of the companies. Mullins (2007) links the need to be able to handle these different personalities in order for them to properly manage their labor force. Thus, organisational behaviour has been a very important element for companies to be able to successfully integrate their employees with their strategies. Organisational behaviour has enabled these companies to be able to understand the different people that they deal with. The various concepts and theories under this management discipline has been an indispensable tool for the proper understanding of the people that are very important contributors to the successful implementation of a company’s strategy. Personal touch Manpower management can be a very stressing facet of businesses. The demands differ greatly from those of the other functional areas. Hence, in order to be able to properly manage a company’s workforce, managers must be aware of the behaviour being exhibited by the people in their organisation. Usually, these behaviours become entrenched in the company and are greatly held by the company’s culture. However, challenging as this may be, it is an important element of a company’s strategy. Basically, these are the force behind the innovations or policies that will be implemented from the strategy that a company hopes to pursue. Hence, building the culture of the company has increasingly been gaining traction among today’s companies since it is a strong platform from which to launch the tactical plans of companies pursuant to their strategic plan. Hence, the capability of companies to utilize their manpower and to be able to harness their capabilities has been crucial for the success of these companies (Wang Wei 2006). The need for such awareness and understanding of the human behaviour in the organisation has been increasingly more pressing with the advent of globalisation. The different culture from which employees all over the world has been the norm for companies with global operations has made companies even more aware of the need for understanding the behaviour of the people and the organisation as a whole. Thus, the management of people necessitates the need for a personal touch. Hence, there have been varying ways in which the different managers handle the diverse workforce they have under them. This has called for a greater degree of flexibility to enable the managers to understand the people that they work with (HIckson and Pugh 2002). This has been a necessary skill in order to enable the company to achieve their various goals and objectives. The multicultural nature of organisations that operate internationally has called for varying styles of management in order to properly handle the differences that they will be encountering with their global workforce. Globalisation has opened up various opportunities for businesses over the past two decades. One is that they are able to source out new markets from different countries. In effect, companies are not anymore limited by the size of the domestic market from which they come from. Through globalisation, they have been able to access markets from different countries all over the world greatly expanding their reach and enabling them to experience faster growths. Managing manpower However, there is a two-pronged benefit from globalisation since aside from greater market access; they are able to move their production facilities closer to their target markets by expanding overseas. Moreover, they have also been able to source out manpower with lower labor costs. Thus, companies are able to bring their production costs down significantly since they are able to cut down on logistics by bringing the production facilities closer to the marker, they are also able to cut down costs because of the lower wages that they pay to employees. Clearly, expanding overseas can greatly benefit the companies. However, there is also a caveat to this situation since there are also threats that come with these opportunities. The most pressing of these is the cultural differences that they will encounter – both on their customers and employees. Hence, the capability of companies to muster their manpower and be able to truly make them a force for the betterment of their endeavours has been more important with the diverse cultures that companies deal with nowadays. The low cost provided by the lower waged labourers from other countries are truly critical success factors for companies venturing abroad. However, there is the need to manage these people and the different culture worldwide has effectively complicated this management task. Early and Singh (2000) lauds the development of the knowledge and capabilities to be able to handle this diversity. It is truly a demanding task since the cultural differences can produce conflicts rather than synergy to the company. Such conflicts result from the different behaviours exhibited by people which stems from the different cultural backgrounds that they have. It is very important, therefore, to have a working knowledge of organisational behaviour in order to be able to manage the company’s very important resource – their manpower. The diverse cultural backgrounds of different people require different approaches in order to be able to properly handle them and be able to make them more productive. Hodgetts, Luthans & Doh (2006) has necessitated the proper calibration of responses that the different people may have to varying stimulus that may be utilized in order by different managers. In simplest terms, what works for westerners may not necessarily be effective for easterners. People in the orient are usually more inclined to their ethnic groups and are more conservative than their westerner counterparts. Hence, in formulating the reward systems, motivational tools and the ways in which complaints are catered to must include the cultural difference in order to have a more effective impact. As mentioned, globalisation has provided companies with vast opportunities. When China joined the World Trade Organisation and opened its doors to international business, companies from all over the world had the opportunity to trade with the biggest market offered by the most populous country in the world. Moreover, labor costs are low in China. Hence, there has been an opportunity from increased market as well as to improve their production capabilities (Flannery 2001). However, even though the labor costs are low in China, it is important to note that there are cultural barriers that may tend to negate these advantages. There are differences in the practices and ways of the people in China that are different from those of the countries from where the multinational companies usually come from. Basically, it is a given fact that there are differences from every country that the company operates in. Thus, companies must be able to handle these differences in order for them to ensure that their overseas endeavour becomes successful and sustainable. Thus, it is very important to understand the different dimensions of the behaviour being exhibited by the different people in the organisation. Interlocking strategy and culture It has been a challenge for companies to cascade their respective corporate strategies. It has been a very tedious procedure in which the effectiveness of the strategy itself is adversely affected if it cannot be trickled down to all the levels of the company’s organisation. Therefore, companies ought to try to calibrate these strategies with the culture of the organisation in order to be able to fully utilize their resources and be able to truly implement their strategies that they are formulating for their company’s success. Thus, in order to be able to marry these two critical success factors, companies have utilized the cultural web in order to effectively channel a company’s culture to be congruent with the formulated corporate strategies in order for them to be able to capture all the necessary elements that can play out critically for the company’s success. Usually, the organisation’s culture gets much less attention than it actually deserves. Mostly, this has just been left to the minds of the people or as to how people might think about it in terms of the reason for the company’s existence. However, this reason for the company’s existence is mainly stated in the vision-mission of the company but the corporate culture encompasses more than that. Also, the culture can also be thought of as the routine of the organisation, its systems or even its structures. Put simply, it seems that culture has been relegated to the way things are done within an organisation. It is not easy though since this simplification has enabled people to have an easy grasp of their corporate world which would otherwise have been more tedious. Moreover, this can be the source from which a company’s competitive advantage can be derived from. It is easier then to implement these advantages since the culture would be very difficult to comprehend. However, by this seemingly simplified view, new ideas may be hard to come by and the difficulty of changing the culture can effectively weight down on the organisation especially if it has been the success driver of the past (Johnson and Scholes 2006). Basically, this underlines the need to understand the humanity of the organisation. However, dealing with this humanity takes into consideration the emotions and all the other facets of the human side of a company. Moreover, there is the need to be able to understand how the organisation behaves and essentially what makes it move and even how it has grown and eventually evolved. Recently, there has been a growing importance for companies with global operation to have a potent mix of strategy, performance and their manpower. Furthermore, the need for HRM to provide the company with a competitive advantage has strongly gained traction throughout the years and this is important for multinational companies since it is their people that are sourced from both the western and eastern hemispheres that can truly bring about success in their operations (Adler and Gunderson 2008). Hence, managing these valuable resources has presented pressing challenges for various Human Resource (HR) practitioners wherein they have to be able to ensure that these talents are able to provide the necessary boost for the company. Moreover, since it was mentioned that such people are valued for their technical knowledge, these people carry with them the knowledge when they leave. Capturing this very important factor is crucial for any multinational company since the globalisation has continued to gain traction throughout the years. Globalisation has indeed altered many ways of doing businesses since companies have found it very strategic to outsource their operations to other parts of the globe. Thus, it is a must for companies to be able to muster enough resources and allocate them to the betterment of their culture and calibrate these with their strategies. Also, by using the cultural web, companies can determine possible hindrances to the changes that they must implement that are critical to the success of the company. The culture of the organisation can be very complex and is therefore very hard to effect changes. As mentioned there is the fact that this may have been taken for granted and are not given enough attention to strategy formulations. Also, there are those people that are powerful enough to block changes since they very much identify with the status quo. A very basic reason is that this has been the source of their power as well as the hierarchical and authoritarian status that they enjoy (Johnson and Scholes 2006). This can put companies in a quandary because of the difficulty of re-calibrating the company’s culture in order to be able to match this with the company’s strategies. Hence, Norton (2003) highlights the increasingly pressing need for the companies to be able to truly understand the behaviour of their organisation and to properly calibrate their culture in turn making every possible solution to be able to match this with their corporate strategy in order to be able to get the most possible value for their company. As mentioned, in the business environment of today which has been greatly influenced by globalisation, it has increasingly been important for companies to be able to properly handle their manpower. Hence, companies ought to be able to properly manage their manpower and along with it the culture of their organisation in order to be able to have more congruence with the company’s corporate strategy. There are different styles of management for the diverse workforce and this has been very crucial in order to ensure that success and sustainability of the company’s international endeavour (Early and Singh 2000). References Adler, N. J. & Gundersen, A. 2008, International Dimensions of Organisational Behaviour, 5th edn, South-Western, Mason, Ohio. Early, PC and Singh, H 2000, Innovations in International and Cross-Cultural Management, Sage Publications, Inc. 1 ed, June 13, 2000 Evans, P., Pucik, V. & Bjorkman, I. 2011, The Global Challenge: International Human Resource Management, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York. Flannery, R 2001, “China goes global”, Forbes, 6 August 2001 Hickson, DJ and Pugh, DS 2002, Management Worldwide: Distinctive Styles amid Globalisation, Penguin Publications. Hodgetts, Luthans & Doh, 2006, International Management : Culture, Strategy and Behaviour, McGraw-Hill. Norton, GM 2003, Valuation:Maximazing Corporate Value, Wiley Finance Series , John Wiley, New York. Mullins, LJ 2007, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Prentice Hall , New York. Johnson, G and Scholes, K 2006, Exploring Corporate Strategy, Financial Times Prentice Hall, London. Wang Wei, J 2006, Concerning enterprise strategy and enterprise culture construction, Commercial Times, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 20-22. Read More