Mandatory Soft Body Armor: Safety - Essay Example

Concepts of organizational theory, organizational behavior, and organizational culture in making sound management decisions Managing people is the most important and difficult part of a manager's job. Managers today face increasing challenges in managing their internal operations because of rapid changes taking place due to technology and globalization of business. Restructuring organisations to meet competition and using human resources for getting a competitive advantage will be important decisions that may break or make the organization and this cannot happen unless these are based on a sound understanding of concepts of organizational theory, behavior and culture. Organizational Theory Organization theory (OT) focuses on the organization as a unit rather than individual and is concerned with its design and structure for achieving its goals. Historically several theories have been developed based on perspectives of bureaucracy, efficiency, structure, people orientation and environment in which they work. Organizational theory gives a conceptual framework on how organizations should be structured and how people will be integrated into it for effective performance. The basic objective of a theory is to explain the nature of organization and help to predict how it would behave under various circumstances (Tosi p 6). OT analyzes the structure and process of the organization by describing the effects of different variables on the behavior of people of the organization. It therefore gives a theoretical basis for managers to be able to predict the behavior and therefore design the organization to influence their behavior to meet the goals of the organization. A highly centralized and formalized (mechanistic bureaucracies) type of organization would be best suitable when various tasks to be performed is well-understood, unchanging and how to best execute is clearly spelt out. On the other extreme there may be organizations which do a high level of non-routine tasks (research), where there is no well defined or right way of doing defined, but has to be done through innovation and intuition. These may require highly decentralized organizational structures with empowered teams with powers suitably delegated. Contingency theory gives insight to managers on design of organization when facing different situations. Management decision making at various levels be it corporate strategy level decision making (how to design organizational process), functional level such as marketing (how to align operations with its strategy), IT and communications (how to design information systems) and Human Resources (how to fix compensation structure, training) will all need a conceptual understanding of organizational theory. Decision making on organizational structure and design, be it for the entire organization or for specific functional areas, can be made better, if concept of organizational theory is well understood. Organizational Behavior Organizational Behavior is concerned about the individual in the organization within the context of an organization. Human capital is an important resource in the organization and a manager has to get the best from it he needs to understand human behavior in organisations. Concepts of individual personality, traits, and abilities will help management in their decisions at the time of recruitment, promotion and making career development plans for its employees. It will help management decide on the best fit for various positions. Enlightened managers understand that an employee, very often, perceives management action affecting him as something quite different from what management intended it to be. An appreciation of one of the concepts of OB, perception, will help a manager to understand such situations better and come out with better decisions. Attitudes can significantly influence the behavior of person at work. Management is constantly worried about attitudes of its workers towards its policies and decision making on pay, compensation and rewards. Positive employee attitude is a key measurement of organizational effectiveness. Understanding what shapes attitudes, how they are formed and they can be changed will help management in making the right decisions. The concept of what motivates a person to perform, i.e., what drives him to perform, what are the individual expectations from the organization, what are his needs and wants, is a very important topic in OB. Understanding the motivational aspects of OB will play an important role in deciding various rewards policies, as well as placing people within the organization. Very often management tasks and activities are done by people working in groups. Appropriate decisions on size, composition, delegation need to be constantly taken by managers. In group dynamics for instance, intra-personal and interpersonal conflict, its management, channeling of conflicts in a way that it has a positive impact on the organization are useful concepts managers need to understand. It will help them make the right approach towards conflict management to increase organizational effectiveness. Understanding of OB is crucial in management of human resources of the organization. Culture Culture is a very difficult term to define and is more seen as a set of implicit beliefs, practices and values of an organization. It is a characteristic and typical way in which an organization approaches and solves issues within. It is very often perpetuated at selection, by ensuring only the correct fit people are selected, and later on with explicit and implicit training (Morehead p 510). It is important for any manger to understand the culture and value systems of the company in his decision making. His decisions must be aligned to the culture of the organizations. Very often it may seem to lead to decision making which may be sup-optimal. For e.g., a company with a culture of never having a debt component in its financing, may lose out on an investment opportunity where debt is the best financing option. Therefore, culture, which is shaped and built by values and beliefs of the company, can be both useful as well as dysfunctional. Very often culture of organization, how it deals with its employees (model employer), its customers (customer is always right) and stakeholders may help the company create a distinct and positive brand image. It will also give the manager an appropriate framework and implicit code of conduct in all his aspects of working including decision making. Many organizations have a culture of being adaptive to needs of the market themselves. It seems that an organization which has a culture and value of being responsive to change, will be the one that best facilitates sound decision making. There have been cases such as in IBM, Sony where certain cultural practices had to be abandoned or modified to meet a changing market. Actions to be taken to create and implement soft body armor mandatory wear policy: The new police chief of Steelhead Police Department has introduced the policy of soft body armor mandatory wear policy, obviously out of concern of increasing the safety of the police officers. However, there has been a history of failed implementation of a similar policy in the past. The new chief's action, however rational and sound, has failed to allay the doubts and misgivings of the officer on the policy. The decision on the policy seems to have been unilaterally taken by the police chief in his authority as head. This is typical of decision making described in the in the bureaucracy classical and scientific management organizational theory, where rules and regulations are made at the appropriate level in the hierarchy based on sound scientific principles. In this case even though it is based on a sound reasons, borne out of genuine safety concerns of police officers, it has failed to understand the perception of officers to such a move by the management. The move could also be to satisfy the community members that law enforcement officers are being better equipped to deal with law and order. Systems theory of organizations will show police department as just one component of law enforcement, other subsystems being the legal, judiciary and the general social system. There is an increasing belief that police alone are not the sole agency for law and order maintenance, but the local community also has responsibilities towards this (Kelling, 1988). Here there could be a perception among the officers that they have to bear the brunt of reforms, where other components are left untouched. Past experience of using body armor has obviously the explicit reason for the resistance among the officers. Complaints about body rashes, heat and discomfort cannot be dismissed as imaginary. The organization seems to be having a having strong union culture. Even though unions are generally known to be conservative in their approach (Juris, Hervey A, Feuille, Peter 1973), any attempt to implement it at this stage bypassing the union will snowball into a wholesale rejection and confrontation. Any new implementation policy must address these two issues, the perception of the officers on being targeted for reforms and the genuine concerns of the officers based on their past experience. The first thing to do is to create a mechanism by which the police officers through their union are involved in the total process of reforms that the police chief is contemplating and make them aware of the total picture. This would help the management to alter the negative perception of the officers behind the move. Involving them at least in a limited extent in the decision making process concerning the reforms proposed in the police department would be useful in avoiding similar future occurrences. This will create some trust between the officers and the authorities making decisions. The next would be to explain to the officers the context under which the mandatory body armor rule is being proposed. Assuming that the new soft body armor is superior to the one tried out earlier, detailed explanations and demonstrations on the usage of this new body armor suit should be explained to the officers. To prove that negative effects are minimal, management could offer to try it out on a trial basis on a few volunteers, with a well outlined procedure of studying the ill effects, as well as usefulness. Appendix Bratton, John and, Gold, Jeffrey, Human Resources Management, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 Griffin, Ricky W and Moorehead, Gregory, Organizational Behavior, Houghton Mifflin, 2000 Juris, Hervey A and Feuille, Peter, Impact of police unions, Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 20402 (Stock No. 2700-00248, $0.65), 1973, http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal accessed 9th January 09 Kelling L. George, Police and Communities, The Quite Revolution, Pers[pectives of Policing, June 1988, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/criminaljustice/publications/pop1.pdf, accessed 9 Jan 09) Tosi, Henri L, Mero, Neal P, Fundamentals of Organizational Behavior, Blackwell Publishing 2003 Read More