Management and Organizational Behaviour - Research in Motion - Term Paper Example

Demotivation has replaced motivation as the employees are not being appropriately empowered by the senior management. A lack of coordination takes place when teams working on the same project do not coordinate and this lack of coordination is represented both vertically and horizontally. The unclear accountability mechanism further adds fuel to the fire of depleting the aggregate performance of the organization. Centralization cannot be termed as an effective way to manage an organization like RIM. There is no clear marketing strategy.

Section II: Statements of the Problem

Research In Motion (RIM) has failed to develop and maintain a sustainable motivation, accountability, and effective marketing strategy (Castaldo, 2012). The organization has grown unorganized and unmanageable; where a lack of clear-cut direction and conflicting opinions have compounded the aggregate management of the company (Castaldo, 2012).

Section III Causes of the Problem

Demotivation

Motivation is the degree to which an employee wants and selects to carry out a specific behavior (Mullins, 2009, p. 471). This specific behavior is nurtured to obtain intended departmental and organizational goals and objectives. As motivation has both aspects in the form of intrinsic and extrinsic manifestations, the employees of RIM were not given a sustainable workplace environment in which they could convert their potential into the desired results.

For instance, according to a former employee, the new operational staff members were never fully empowered to carry out their jobs (Castaldo, 2012). This means the staff did not receive authority, a sense of work ownership, and a clear-cut direction to attain a particular set of objectives. 

As a result, sustainable motivation did not continue instead demotivation replaced motivation.

Lack of Coordination

“It was common for a few teams working on the same project to realize they were unlikely to make the date, but no one spoke up, under the belief that another team was even farther behind”(Castaldo, 2012). This statement mentions that there was no active and consistent coordination between teams working even on the same project. They were on their own and they did not feel the necessity to obtain information and see their progress on the project. Additionally, there was no strong check from the senior management whether the teams assigned to work and complete the same project were working in the suggested direction or the teams were facing issues related to the same project. There was a complete absence of vertical and horizontal coordination in the organization. In the absence of coordination, there would be no way to entertain department and organizational objectives.

Unclear Accountability Mechanism

Accountability can also be defined as the systematic inclusion of critical elements of program planning, implementation, and evaluation with an aim of achieving desired results (Wandersman et al., 2000, p. 389). At RIM, nobody was accountable when a proposal or project failed to meet the expected level of performance. In the absence of an accountability mechanism, it would be very difficult to learn from mistakes and derive certain result-oriented lessons from such steps. When the accountability mechanism is not present and nobody is ready and willing to take and accept responsibility, strategic loss and strategic decline are unavoidable and it is what is happening with RIM.

High Centralization

Centralization can be defined as “the degree to which decision-making is concentrated at a single point in the organization” (Robbins, 1990, p. 104). More clearly, the higher the degree of concentration in the decision-making process, the higher the degree of centralization (Marinaccio, 2007, p. 29). Centralization may be effective for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) but may not productive for companies like RIM. In small companies, owners know and monitor almost all activities and consequently, they prefer to centralize decisions in order to entertain business objectives. However, it is totally opposite to larger companies as they do not have a limited number of employees and they do not have a few activities to be monitored by owners. The larger organizations have a considerable number of employees and activities and it would be committing a blunder by not introducing the concept and application of decentralization.

The central leadership of RIM has concentrated powers but has not introduced and applied the concept of decentralization. As a result, many decisions were taken by the central leadership and that centralized decision-making did not allow the organization to meet the expansionary needs and appropriately compete with the competitors.

Ambiguous Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is that sort of sustained pattern of resource allocation decisions that are related to certain propositions and customers; within this concept marketing strategy can be defined as having two essential parts including having an unequivocal definition of the “target market” and having a statement of  ‘product’ aimed to achieve the target (Smith, 2003, p. 288).

“Determining the intended audience for the tablet was an issue” (Castaldo, 2012). This statement clearly authenticates that RIM management miserably failed to select and appropriately work on a particular target audience. Strategically speaking, a company like RIM having a marketing strategy issue indicates that the management did not consider these issues seriously and they did not assign this particular strategic task to any responsible employee or a team of a dedicated workforce. This ambiguous marketing strategy at the strategic level negatively affected the advertising campaign for the tablet. As a result, the required level of sale was not achieved and the organization faced the severe consequences of loss, and issues of reshuffle became an immediate necessity for the organization in order to survive the effects of such mistakes.