Public Safety Management - Research Paper Example

? Public Safety Management This paper aims at examining what can be done to improve the performance of a public safety company based in Illinois. The company has not been experiencing problems related to race and labor relations as well as budget management. With regard to these problems, this paper analyzes the appropriate leadership styles that will effectively improve performance, the necessary approaches to manage the budget, organizational culture transformation, ways to solve personnel issues, strategic plan for improving performance, and last, the paper provides a rationale for addressing issues affecting the minority group members. With the implementation of all these, the organization will definitely improve. Leadership Styles As a new public safety director in a medium sized city, which has been experiencing problems associated with budget management, race relations, and labor relations issues, I would use the situational leadership model and the put forward by Paul Hersey & Kenneth Blanchard, and least preferred co-worker theory. Situational leadership is dependent on interplay among the amount of direction (task behavior) and guidance that a leader gives, the amount of socio emotional support that he or she provides, and the level of readiness that the followers in this context will reveal while carrying out particular functions, tasks, and objectives (Mackay, 2007). In this case, the leader has to be able to adjust the style of leadership and that of the followers. The situational model of leadership was developed by Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard, and the two scholars related four diverse leadership styles to the confidence of the followers and their capacity to carry it out. This model of leadership is most applicable in this situational because the level of readiness to accept change is very important in this case. The type of leadership in this case has to be centered on the followers. In the medium sized city, the morale is low throughout the public safety department, there are many grievances concerning hostility and discrimination in the work place, the minority groups are ill treated, and there is a history of grievances because of people’s dissatisfaction with lack of fairness in the promotion process. In eliminating these problems and heightening the performance of the public safety department, a leader needs to move back and forth between the four styles identified by Hersey & Blanchard in their situational leadership model. A leader capacity to offer support for the workers depends on his or her capacity to offer a motivating environment. In this context, employees should receive support and coaching needed to carry out their tasks, this would build morale among the workers. This hands-off approach employed by a situational leader with committed and highly skilled workers can motivate the workers to work at their full capacity. A situational leader offers a supportive work environment to workers of every skill level. Employing this leadership approach can increase workers morale, and create a productive working environment. The basic assumption of situational leadership is that leaders have to adjust their style to the maturity of the follower depending on the readiness and willingness to carry out the required duties (Mackay, 2007). There exist four styles of leadership that accompany the four combinations of low/high willingness and readiness. The four styles suggest that leaders should put less or greater attention on the task (task orientation) in question and/or the relationship between the follower and the leader (relationship orientation). The leader efficacy in this case would result from employing a behavioral style that is fitting to the environmental demands to increase morale, lessen or diminish hostility and discrimination, and reduce or diminish ill treatment of minority groups. According to the situation leadership framework, the leader’s effectiveness would result from employing a behavioral style that is fitting to the work demands. He or she has to learn to diagnose the environment, which is the first competency of leadership. Second, the leader has to adapt to the environment with the correct style of leadership and communicating that style to those in lower positions. The environmental variables in this case have two major constituents; expectations and style. More than one style of leadership is required in this case because there are diverse problems, which call for different styles of leadership. An effective leader is adequately flexible to change his or her style as well as techniques to the people that are being led. There are employees who work well when coaxed, others when offered suggestions or through gentle prodding (FM 22-100). In situations that leaders employ style S2 (sell), those in lower positions take part in the decision making process to the extent that they offer information about the decisions (Schermerhorn, 2010). The leader stills has the upper hand in the decision making process however, even the minimal subordinates involvement in the process offers them some ownership in that same decision, which increases their commitment level to that particular decision. The S2 style has a potential for creating circumstance in which the leader will delegate thus enabling the group to take responsibility for the task decisions in a low relationship, and low task style like in the present case where there is low morale and discrimination. There will also be emphasis on participative decisions and shared ideas in a low task and high relationship situation. The leader will also explain task directions in a persuasive as well as supportive way in a high association and high task scenario. The leader will also issue particular task directions and keenly supervise work in a low relationship and high task style (Schermerhorn, 2010). This type of leadership will enable the leader to treat the entire crisis using a style of leadership that is appropriate for optimum effectiveness. The leadership theory applicable in this case is the least preferred co-worker theory (Fiedler, 1967). This model uses the style of the leader as a trait and shows that best leadership style is dependent on three aspects. The leadership style is dependent on the motivational system of the leader; the fundamental needs structures that motivate behavior in certain interpersonal scenarios. This model uses the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale to measure this attribute. Using the scale, a respondent chooses the person with whom he or she works least well, that is, the least preferred co-worker) and then describes that person on the scale. An individual who scores high in the scale describes the least preferred co-worker in a positive manner as being loyal, warm, efficient, and kind among other positive attributes. On the other hand, a person who scores low on the scale describes the least preferred co-worker negatively- cold, not kind, not efficient, and not pleasant among other negative factors. According to Fiedler (1967), this score shows the extent to which the person sets a high value of priority on the accomplishment of a task (task-motivated) or on maintaining good interpersonal skills. The least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale makes known workers emotional response to the other workers that they are unable to work with. This scale would thus be very useful in this scenario because there is ill treatment of the minority employees, and it would be used to show the emotional reactions among the workers. Budget Management Approach The type of budget management approach suitable for this case is the participative or bottom up approach. In the participative approach, employees are normally more readily to accept the budget, morale is also improved, and the budget input is offered by numerous persons (Walther, 2010). The budget process is normally initiated by the top management using general budget guideline, nonetheless, it is the lower level personnel’ that drive the budget development for their particular units. Connecting the budget to the entire corporate strategy as represented by numerous key business drivers would also be an advantageous budget. In using the linking approach, it is much more complex for leaders to twist the budget as they wish because this clearly weakens the organizational strategy. When all the available funds are allocated into the targeted activities, it becomes clear when someone tries to redirect funds into the development of unnecessary areas (Walther, 2010). Incorporating business drivers into the budget also tends to decrease the duration needed to complete the budget as less time is spent on budgeting minutia and political battles. Organizational Culture Transformation I would change the organizational culture to support excellence by surrendering using various human resources practices such as promotions, selections, performance appraisal, career development, and training to reinforce the culture of the organization. The organization cannot uphold results that its culture cannot support. The culture of the organization has to be in position to sustain excellence. The firm has a dominant culture, which is shared by most of the organization and subcultures characterized by groups of people with dissimilar and unique beliefs, and values that are not consistent with the dominant culture (McDonnell, 2002). By using the human resources practices, a strong culture that increases consistency of behavior and lessens turnover will be created. Shared goals, vision, and practices are some of the other factors that would also be used to promote a culture of excellence (McDonnell, 2002). It would also be promoted through a commitment to excellence in fulfilling the mission and vision, joint support by staff for each other’s support, clearly affirmed and aligned goals on agreements and principles for working together, emphasizing on communication up and down the line. Laying emphasis on staff development and training would also create a culture of excellence (McDonnell, 2002). To increase the workers morale, the management and staff would set individual performance objectives and also promote interactions and communications that are based on commitment. The work norms, communication practices as well as the thoughtful stances by employees can be influenced by organizational beliefs. Employees who share and comprehend the organizational values have a better basis for making choices that match the goals of the organization (McDonnell, 2002). In transforming the organizational culture to support excellence, I would also time and again communicate the cultural values openly through corporate credos or mission statements. I would also show what the organizational value are through words and actions, what I reward, who I make a friend, and how I motivate compliance. An environment where the employees are asked to contribute to each other and to the organizational success would be created so that there is a sense of ownership and team. One of the aspects that would discern the culture of excellence from other kinds of culture would be the management philosophy. Attention would be paid more on management of goals, results, personalities and commitments, as well as processes. The culture would emphasize standards and outcomes and self expression, staff development, satisfaction, and contribution (Collins, 2001). The right spot would be discovered for the right people and the employees would endeavor to achieve their personal best without tolerating weakness. A culture of excellence would be easily enabled by the employees’ readiness to change (Collins, 2001). Fashioning a culture of excellence necessitates willingness for the employees to be free from the past and to create a future that is not only founded on history. This will also mean sacrificing behaviors that are not in line with the new system. There will be practices that will be incorporated and others that will be deleted to make sure that the minority are not ill treated, to completely get rid of hostility, and discrimination in the workplace in both the police and fire departments. Statements such as ‘this will never work’ and ‘we have always done it this way’ will have to be given up and the issue of fixing the blame on other people as opposed to fixing the problem will be given up. Changing the culture will be made a priority such that all people in the organization will have to be committed to the process of change as well as outcomes. The process will involve all the employees so that the time as well as the resources invested fashion the culture and keep all people informed. Success will be dependent on offering paths for input as well as paths for feedbacks. Excellence will be applied to every part of the organization because inventing a new culture of excellence means identifying the meaning of excellence in the firm as well as making a choice on how to foster it in daily action (Collins, 2001). Eventually, the culture of excellence in the organization will be termed as everything from the way employees think about their colleagues, the organization, the rules for cooperation and the practices that all people employ to be excellent and to accomplish the organizational duties. The staff as well as the management will work together and articulate a collective vision for a new culture as well as defining its qualities (Collins, 2001). A team of people from every department organization will be recruited to manage the process as well as the team. The human relations theory is the most applicable theory in this situation. According to the human relations theory, the behaviors of all employees can be exactingly controlled through actions carried out by the management. The principles related to this theory were generated by Elton Mayo who conducted an experiment on whether the employees’ productivity was influenced by their response to diverse work environments. Workers reacted to the fact that they and their actions were being observed as opposed to the interventions introduced in the work environment. Mayo saw organizations as having a particular culture and in other cases numerous subcultures affected by the participants’ values as well as the persons inclinations to create informal groups (Kettner, 2002). According to this theory, leaders or the managers can influence the behavior of the organization members. Group performance is affected by the social norms that the members share, the leaders as well as the employees’ attitude towards the performance of the group. Mayo argued that employees should be involved in the decision making process in a bid to motivate them. The leader has to motivate employees as well as offer supportive leadership for the subordinates. Mayo argued that workers benefit from rewards as well as better treatment; this is translated into higher work productivity. By employing the human resources practices such as promotions, selections, performance appraisal, career development, and training to reinforce the culture of the organization, there will be improved work productivity which will in turn promote a culture of excellence. Personnel Issues Relating to Promotions and Race Relations The personnel issues relating to promotions and race relations would be addressed by barrier-elimination measures to get rid of or change discriminatory practices against the minority groups, and also positive or special measures, which can eliminate the residue for past discrimination especially for the minority group. There is systemic discrimination in the organization, which needs to be addressed in order to foster a culture of excellence, which will in turn increase the workers productivity. Systemic discrimination in the employment environment refers to favoritism and prejudice that arises from simple operation of the procedures placed by the organization on hiring, recruitment and promotions, none of which is essentially intended to encourage discrimination (Abella, 1984). This discrimination is then reinforced through exclusion of disadvantaged groups for the reason that exclusion promotes the belief in an out of the group. The personnel issues of racial discrimination and promotion have arisen from the everyday structures and rule in the organizations that are not deliberately meant to discriminate. The organization normal way of accomplishing things has a negative effect on the minority group. In addressing the personnel issues, the organization needs to take practical steps so as to ensure that the rules and structures are not allowing and upholding racial discrimination and unfair promotions. There is ill treatment of minority of employees and also lack of fairness in the promotion process. There is need for identifying and minimizing barriers resulting to ill treatment of minority groups. The best way to start this would be to establish a firm antiracism program which can address and prevent systemic and individual kinds of racial favoritism when it comes to discrimination. This program would be first focus on collecting statistical data in suitable circumstances, accounting for the past disadvantages, evaluating practices, policies and decision making processes and also the culture in the organization for unfavorable impacts such as unfair promotions. This would then be followed by setting up and ensure adherence of anti harassment and anti discrimination educational policies and programs. An anti-racism program would also be important in this case as it would make it easier to promote fairness and diversity goals. A good case in point is the employment equity policy used in Canada. The policy was introduced after the Abella Commission report. The policy was established to tackle the drawbacks and limits of complaints processes (Canada, House of Commons, 1992). The equity employment policies are practical and yield positive results because the employers are asked to systematically look at the bottom line which is the adequacy of representation of the certain groups such as the minorities in the organizations in comparison to the supply of labor and to focus into potential problematic areas. In case considerable under-representation is evident, the employers are asked to evaluate their employment systems for the likelihood of underlying obstacles. In Canada, the policy has the potential to tackle each and every form of favoritism that may affect a certain group in an adverse manner. This means that establishing a firm antiracism program for addressing and preventing systemic and individual forms of racial favoritism and unfair promotions would ensure adequacy of representation of the minority in the organization. Strategic Plan for Improving Performance in the Public Safety Department The first step in improving organizational performance in the public safety department is identifying the forces of change and cultural norms in the organization. There is need to address some of the weaknesses of the organization. One of the weaknesses that need to be addressed is that of low morale through the public safety department. Most of the employees are satisfied with average performance and thus there is need to boost their drive so that their performance can be improved. The mayor has not been pleased with the general performance and responsiveness of the fire and police department, this shows that generally employees are not working at their utmost capacity. The second weakness is that of hostility and discrimination in the workplace which has made many grievances to be filed. There is need to reduce this hostility and discrimination through creating a culture of excellence where all employees are treated equally. The minority groups have also voiced their concerns with the mayor regarding the perceived ill treatment of minority employees. This ill treatment need to be addressed because it adversely affects the ill treated workers performance and this has an overall effect on the organizational performance. The third weakness is lack of fairness in the promotion process. In order to improve the performance of the organization throughout the public safety department, all these weaknesses need to be addressed so that room is created for improvement. An action plan for ensuring the participation of the minority is important in this case. The strategic action plan suggests that the following steps be taken to ensure minority participation. Step I involves setting benchmarks for visible minority participation in the organization through wide staffing options such as promotions, recruitment, acting appointments, and development of chances at the executive levels. The organization also needs to implement support tools for helping managers to achieve their targets. The corporate culture also needs to be changed to make it cordial of diversity. There is also need to develop methods for strengthening existent accountability and implementation frameworks. Financial support should also be offered to support implementation. In order to accomplish diversity benchmarks in the organization, the managers need to be held accountable for results. By holding managers answerable to diversity, there is need for a change in organizational culture. They have to recognize, reward, and share good practices in visible recruitment. The leader also needs to explicate the sanctions that the managers will face if they do not meet the set objectives. By first addressing the weaknesses of the organization, room is created for achievement of organizational goals Step 2 entails identifying business drivers. This is a significant step in creating a strategic plan. Both internal and external factors create business drivers. External drivers are normally beyond the control of the firm and include human resources drivers, economic drivers, public perception drivers, government drivers, and customer or market drivers. The internal drivers are generated by event and factors in the control of the organization. They include financial or shareholder drivers, technology drivers, organization or leadership drivers, and key policy drivers. Identifying both internal and external drivers for the organization lays foundation for areas where shared business alliances are present. The drivers are also important in identifying differences in business and their impact on the strategic plan of the group. Step 3 of the process entails mapping the needs of the department. This mapping will be helpful in profiling the organization vision, mission, and culture in its present state, composing a picture of the nature of the organization which can be compared to the desired image for the future and also creating a comprehension of the type of changes that need to take place for the organization to identify performance gaps. The strategic plan for the organization also needs to focus on education managers and workers in the significance of a workforce that is highly skilled and diversified. The recruitment efforts for a diversified workforce also need to be stepped up whereas the retention of a diverse workforce also needs to be improved. The organization also needs to have a zero tolerance for retaliation, harassment, and discrimination to tackle the current situation of ill treatment of minority groups. The vision of the public safety department will be to also be created. It will state that the department will ensure and uphold public safety through administrating a fair and caring system that caters for the client needs. The mission will also state that the department relentlessly evaluates and improves its efforts to improve public safety with the aim of enhancing the quality within Illinois, while simultaneously preserving respect for human dignity and individual rights. The mission of the department will also be created. It will state that the department mission is to protect life and property, maintain peace, avert and detect crimes, enforce the law, and safeguard all citizen rights. In addition, it will also state that the department is devoted to working in partnership with the community to recognize and solve matters that have an impact on the safety of the public. The corporate values of the organization will be to operate in line with the best standards in all associations with the community, environment and the suppliers. The other value will be to promote an environment which encourages diligence and innovation among the employees and rewards consequently. The business objective will also be summarized as follows; to develop the department aggressively and provide above-average services to the community. Key strategies, major roles and strategic action programs will also be laid out. Addressing Concerns Expressed by Minority Group Members The concerns expressed by minority group members can be addresses by promoting inclusion as well as diversity. Doing this enables the organization to reap the full advantages of a diversified workforce. Increasing workers diversity would improve organizational performance. The racial relation issues can be addressed by structuring contact and managing tasks along cultural and racial lines within the organization departments. Organizing for diversity approach entails structuring situations in which employees from different race actually work together in a situation that is managed with attention to interpersonal and intergroup interactions. The organization goals and outcomes should be linked in beating long established discrimination patterns; this will add a formal authority to diversity activities. By using this strategy, each person will have a culture as well as a race. The idea is that dynamically managed interface with each other will assist in breaking down racial barriers. When the minority group works together with the rest in a work environment that maintains their accomplishment in collaboration, they learn their similarities; discover ways of appreciating their diversities, and work together in jointly supportive manners. This exposure approach accounts for outcomes as well as processes. According to Morrison (1996), realignment for diversity has turned out to be an issue for the leadership in most organizations. Leaders need to be from different backgrounds and effective leaders of organizations that have diverse cultures have to come up with manners of attaining the maximum potential of workers in spite of the cultural form that is taken. Morrison (1994) identified five steps of tackling diversity concerns by an organizational leader. These five steps are discovering or rediscovering current predicaments, strengthening the top management dedication, choosing practices in a careful manner, demanding results and also building in past achievements. To discover or rediscover the current predicaments, an organization needs to perform an organizational audit for defining problem areas, assessing the organization perceptions and identifying barriers that hinder progress across different groups. The barriers to advancement across different groups can be a bad work environment, poor career development, lack of mentors, isolation, less skills, being comfortable with one’s race, less knowledge and career versus family (Morrison, 1994). A leader needs to identify assumed and real problems. Strengthening the top management necessitates the top management support to do well. The least that the top management can do is be tolerant of amendments. Data has to be offered to those in high positions in order to characterize the problems. According to Morrison (1994), no news is not good news and the top management should be dynamic and apprehensive. A leader needs to choose practices in a careful manner because there are many diverse practices. The data should match with the obvious organizational culture to be practicable. Leaders should work towards a tactical balance of certain practices such as development of training and education, recruitment (programs and scholarships) as well as liability, apparent targets and goals with performance review and compensation, educating employees so that they may alter their attitudes gradually, enforcing behavioral change and exposing employees to structural change as a personal level. Leader should be challenged, acknowledged and eventually given support. Demanding results implies that the numerical goals and data are necessary. A leader should develop and employ numerical goals regardless of issues with quotas. Success measures like job satisfaction and morale should be included and what managers can deliver should be expected. Building on past accomplishment means leveraging earlier successes. This last step entails adding diversity to diversity so that race, ethnicity, disability, gender and international issues can be included. Morrison (1994) argued that there is need to recognize the influential role of group identity in the interactions of the organization. Effectively organizing for diversity is an important issue for most leaders in contemporary organizations. The ability to efficiently employ and aid the reduction of ambivalence and denial among organizational leaders is definitely at the core of defining achievement in training and development in maintaining organization for diversity. The potential benefits of the organization will not be attained if it fails to address diversity problems. The diverse culture in the organization shows that group differences affect the way the problem emerge. The organization should respond to the racial diversity by encouraging the majority to respect the norms and values of the minority group. The organization should appreciate the diverse values and skills that different employees bring to the table. This will generate an organizational culture in which workers in both the minority and majority groups feel comfortable and are appreciated and are offered a chance to create consequential contributions. In this inclusive culture, the skills, knowledge, insights, and experiences from diverse groups will be taken as precious resources, which the organization can use to advance its mission. References Abella, R. (1984). Report of the commission on equality in employment. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada. Canada, House of Commons. (1992). A matter of fairness. Report of the special committee on the Review of the Employment Equity Act, A. Redway, Chairman, May. Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t. HarperCollins. Fiedler, F. E. (1967). A theory of leadership effectiveness. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kettner, P. (2002). Achieving excellence in the management of human service organizations. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Leadership Styles:  What are Common Types of Leadership? (2011) Retrieved from http://www.what-are-good-leadership-skills.com/leadership-styles.html. Mackay, A. (2007). Motivation, ability and confidence building in people. Amsterdam, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann McDonnell, P. (2002). Everybody wants to go to Heaven: Six steps to organizational excellence. Sunrise Publishing LLC Morrison, A. (1992). Developing diversity in organizations. Business Quarterly, Summer, 42- 48. Schermerhorn, J. (2010). Management. 11th edition. US: John Wiley & Sons, Inc US Army Field Manual (FM) 22-100. (1999). Army leadership (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office [GPO]. Walther, L. (2010). Principles of accounting. Retrieved from http://www.principlesofaccounting.com Read More