Designing an Ideal Organisation Health Wise - Term Paper Example

Organisation culture The organisation practices a collaborative culture where there is openness, sharing, and putting great value on teamwork. The values and beliefs are widely shared where a team of sales representatives ensures cooperation, commitment, control and communication within the organisation and in their direct contact with the customers. By working as a team, they show respect and integrity as they deal with their customers as a way of sharing their values. The team members hold a common ground and they are held together through a similar way of solving problems with their customers. Every member of a team is has a common approach and platform towards work. The company culture is made effective and strong through well developed strategies of communication from the top management to the sales representatives that interact with the customers. Given that the success of the company depends on effective communication, the company culture is creative and proactive in order to reinforce daily styles of communication within the employees and between the representatives and the customers (Ke & Wei, 2008). For instance, they have empowered culture of warmly engaging the customers by asking them open ended questions that arouse communication between them. There is a good connection between culture and marketing where as the sales representatives interact with the customers, they consider that every market does not function the same way. That is, the approaches in marketing and sales are different on basis of demography, region and lifestyle among others. For instance, the sales representatives use different approaches between the customers in the city and the others in the country. This also applies to customers on the grounds of age, occupation, and lifestyle. Thus, they consider different factors in order to meet different needs of their customers (Sun, 2008). The desirable culture of this organisation was clearly defined at the initial stages of this organisation especially in the behaviours and attitudes of the sales representatives in their significant role of dealing with customers directly. The desirable culture was also developed during the recruitment and hiring process where the company culture is led by including the value needs and culture in the description of sales representative job, incorporating of questions on culture and values during interviews, reinforcing desirable behaviours in interaction with customers, hiring based on the required values and skills. Other indications of desirable culture include going beyond the company’s usual aspects such as teamwork and integrity and getting real values such as competitiveness. Thus, desirable culture of this organisation is justified by a good fit between the culture of the organisation and inherent attitudes, behaviours and beliefs of the sales representatives (Harper & Utley, 2001). This has resulted to engaged workforce and continuous improvement of strategies in order to conform to the advancing technology and varying needs of customers. Different perception on desirable culture However, others may have a different perception on how good the culture of this organization is. This is because they have evidenced variations in the culture of our organization. Due to these changes, they think that the culture is not desirable. But according to the nature of our organization, there is unavoidable change due to rapid growth in technology worldwide. According to Ke & Wei (2008), without that change in organization culture the organization cannot be able to pursue improvement in the performance of the organization. Based on our organization, change in culture is an indication of a desirable culture. Communication problem One of the main communication problems in our organisation is inadequate feedback. Lack of feedback has resulted to the two main issues between the customers and salespersons. First, some people want to cancel the contract when they feel dissatisfied with the service. Such problem has been related to lack of clarity between customers and sales person in regard to terms and conditions of the contract. The other issue is the complaint from the customers after signing the contract when they feel that their bills are more that they expected. Based on the nature of our company, the changes in technology also indicate that there will always be changes in customer needs. In order to handle different issues, sales representatives need to address them with the help of the management. This will help to find the best solution. Such a situation calls for feedback which is lacking between employees and the management. A one-way communication in the organisation is an ineffective way of exchanging information with the organisation. Sales representatives are given the responsibility of interacting with the customers by their supervisors. But when an issue occurs, they do not discuss it with the management in order to come with an effective solution but they rely on previous experiences and database to solve such issues. The managerial staff and the employees should consider providing feedback frequently in order to address upcoming issues as well as improving the performance of the entire organisation. Inadequate feedback in our organisation will be addressed by providing frequent feedback between the supervisors and the sales representatives through appraisals and active participation. The feedback will be based on the distribution of organisational goals from the management to sales representatives through specific objects in performance appraisals. Once the employee presents an issue to the supervisor, the supervisor discusses the issue with other managers and finds a solution. Then the supervisor discusses the issues with the employee while allowing the flow of ideas between them. Both must agree on the best solution for any arising issue. Such discussion must be done frequently in order to identify any issue between the organisation and the customer and make effective changes at the right time. In order to make this process effective, the sale representatives must be provided with feedback in a frequently and consistent way (Ashford, & Tsui, 1991). According to Walker & Smither (1999), effective feedback will lead to various benefits to the organisation; It will provide our team and the customers an a way to resolve any problem in regard to our products and services It will allow a continuous feedback and forecasting of the customers’ needs It will our organisation with the required data in order to create a lasting and real improvement. In addition, the morale of the sales representatives, the quality of services and the reputation of our organisation will all improve. Acting on feedback will help our organisation to develop a strong relationship between the customers and sales representatives. Above all, the organisation will achieve it main goal of increasing profitability. Decision making Our organisation follows a strategic way of making decisions where it involves all levels of management but the final decision is made by the top level management. The non-management employees usually identify problems because they are directly dealing with the customers. After forwarding the problems to the upper management, the upper management has the responsibility of diagnosing the problem, consider what caused it and decide whether it is controllable or uncontrollable or whether it deserves significant attention by upper management. After the manager recognizes it as of significance, a team which involve all levels of organisation is given the responsibility of analysing the depth of the problem. At this stage, the relevant data for defining the problem is collected. The information that is analysed comes from all levels of the organisation (Hart, & Banbury, 1994). The team combines all the relevant information and utilises it to come with various alternatives. The team determine the alternative ways or courses of action with possibility of solving the problem at hand. The team considers the alternatives that are realistic. After consultation, the team selects the two best alternatives that seams most rational for solving the existing problem. Upon consultation, the best alternative has to be communicated to the employees that are likely to be affected directly (Miller, 1996). After selecting the two alternatives the team forwards them to the top management who decide on the best among the two alternatives. The top management makes the final decision ( Basi, 1998). The conversion of the best decision into action is delegated from the top management, to the middle level management, to the first line management then to other employees. At this process the management only takes up the follow-up steps to ensure the decision taken is executed. The first line management and non-management employees have the greatest role of executing the decision. In addition, feedback at this point is very essential where the managers ensure continuous feedback in order to test the actual developments on execution against the expectations. Through feedback our organisation is able to decide whether the decision should either be continued or modified in order to conform to change in any condition (Hart, & Banbury, 1994). The way our organisation makes decision is the best way since it considers various factors of effective decision making. These include; Identification of various alternatives or decisions for solving the problem through consultation with all levels within the organisation. Thus, it provides a wide range of choices for making suitable decision through consensus. The team ensures extensive consultation and consideration of the benefits and drawbacks of every alternative. There is such of a variety of information that is relevant to the problem from all levels. Implementation of the best decision is well managed from top to lowest level within the organisation and feedback enhances creativity in case of any changes. Health of organisation Teamwork This organisation is not a healthy one because it lacks an effective team work. The success of this organisation depends on a good relationship between the sales representatives and the customer. But there are two issues that have led to complaints from the customers. In addition, there possible ways of solving the issues but there are no efforts. This shows that teamwork is not effective since the employees and managers are not working together towards a common goal of improving customer satisfaction. Teamwork is determined by various components which include communication, effort and coordination among others. The organisation lacks communication and efforts of finding a solution to the two issues. Due to lack of effective communication between sales representatives and the managers, they are not able to discuss on the causes of such issues and determine the course of action in order to eliminate the problems as well as preventing such occurrence in future. This is an indication of poor team work (Stevens & Campion, 1994). Lessons An ideal organisation health wise does not exists since all characteristics of organisation cannot be effectively implemented. Due to the advancement in technology, the success of organisations depend on continuous adjustment of strategies according to changes The success of organisation depends greatly on management of human resources Aspect of organisational behaviour One feature of organisational behaviour that I plan to follow in future is group. In an organisation, individual and group behaviours are observed in an organisation in distinctive way. Group performance seems to be more effective as compared to individual performance. References Ashford, S. J., & Tsui, A. S. (1991). Self-regulation for managerial effectiveness: the role of active feedback seeking, Academy of Management Journal, 34(2), 251-280 Basi, R.S. (1998). Administrative decision making: a contextual analysis. Management Decision, 36, 232-240. Harper, G. R., & Utley, D. R. (2001). Organizational Culture and Successful Information Technology Implementation, Engineering Management Journal, 13(2), 11-15. Hart, S., & Banbury, C. (1994). How strategy-making processes can make a difference, Strategic Management Journal, 15, 251-269. Ke, W., & Wei, K.K. (2008). Organizational culture and leadership implementation. Decision Support Systems, 45, 208-218. Krumbholz, M., & Maiden, N. (2001). The implementation of enterprise resource planning packages in different organizational and national cultures, Information Systems 26(3), 185-204. Miller, S.J., Hickson, D.J., & Wilson, D.C. (1996). Decision making in organizations. In S.R. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W.R. Nord (Eds.), Managing Organizations: Current Issues (pp.43-62), London: Sage Publications Stevens, M., & Campion, M. A. (1994). The Knowledge, Skill, and Ability Requirements for Teamwork: Implications for Human Resource Management, Journal of Management 20 (2), 503–530 Sun, S. (2008). Organizational culture and its themes, International Journal of Business and Management, 3 (12), 137-141 Walker, A. G., & Smither, J. W. (1999). A five-year study of upward feedback: what managers do with their results matters, Personnel Psychology, 52, 393-423 Read More