Impact on Organizational Citizenship - Case Study Example

Case study Pasha’s Fashion Inc Leadership Styles and their impact on organizations Inserts His/Her Inserts Grade Customer Inserts Tutor’s Name (26, 09, 2010) Introduction Here we are presented with a case study about Pasha’s Fashion Inc. Pasha Fashion Inc was started as a small business eight years ago by Isobella who had an Italian background and had a diploma in Fashion designing. Isobella’s main focus was to provide fashionable garments to the common Australian women. Her clothes were not ordinary clothes but were designer wears. While Isobella was the head of the company the company ran successfully and the employees were happy working in the company. But Isobella had to go and the leadership was given to Alice who was MBA graduate with little practical experience of work. Alice’s leadership styles were very different from those of Isobella and the employees weren’t happy under the leadership of Alice. She changed the focus of the company from creating fashionable garments to making common clothes wore by the Australian women. Delia an old employee and the Chief designer at Fashion Inc decided to resign after Alice took over in charge. This case study shows us that the leadership styles plays an important role on the organizational cultures how and what a leader does, dedicates the success or failure of the company. Organisational Culture Organizational Culture is the set of shared values and beliefs that underlie a company’s identity. It is basically the set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that a group holds and that determines how it perceives, thinks about, and reacts to its various environments. The organizational culture being followed at any organization is a picture of how and what their leaders are doing. The leadership style determines the type of organizational culture. Under different leadership styles we have got different organizational cultures. Fashion Inc fostered an open culture and by large it succeeded in doing so. All employees were well integrated into the system and each individual and his/her thoughts were considered important. It promoted a rational approach to work where there are proper guidelines and procedures. Any problem with the employee be it work related or personal was listened to and the boss tried their best to give solution to the problem. Top management encouraged a supportive culture to provide a satisfying work environment for employees so they can deliver their best. Employees were delegated through their work and the boss worked with the employees side by side. Relationship between leadership styles and organizational culture Organizational heads sometimes do not realize that how important role the organizational climate plays on the financial performance of the company. It accounts for nearly one third of the financial performance according to some research studies. And the organizational climate of a company is a mixture of many things the organizational climate is made up by the leadership style of the manager how they are performing their job what Is their way of motivating, making decisions, initiating any big or small change in the organization, gathering and using information and etc. There are thus many different type of manager each doing their job in a particular way he thinks it best. But to see a broader picture there are basically six different types of leadership styles. The different leadership styles are derived from different emotional intelligence competencies of the leader and there is no one best leadership styles which suits best in all situations for different situations there are different leadership styles. (Daniel Goleman 2000:1) 1. Coercive style : demands immediate compliance 2. Authoritative style : mobilizes people towards a vision 3. Affiliative style : creates harmony and build emotional bonds 4. Democratic style : forges consensus through participation 5. Pacesetting style : sets high standards for performance 6. Coaching style : develops people for the future (Daniel Goleman 2000: 1) Comparison of new leadership to old leadership Mostly there is no one best leadership styles. What is the best leadership style usually depend on what the situation is and how it should be handled. In our case study the type of leadership which was followed by Isobella was a combination of authoritative and affiliative styles where as Alice observed coercive and pacesetting leadership style. Impact on Organizational Citizenship Organizational citizenship behavior is defined as extra input from the employee without expecting extra reward or perk in return. Two main antecedents for organization citizenship are job satisfaction and motivation. With Isobella the needs, wants and desires of the employee were given primary importance. It was this care of the needs of the employees that gave them a positive signal. Basic physiological needs were met for through salaries. The peace of mind evident amongst all employees was due to job security. They weren’t on the edge of losing their jobs via one announcement at the meeting that the company needs to cut off its employees. The need for love and belongingness was thoroughly fulfilled in Fashion Inc because they all remain on good terms as one big happy family rather than as coworkers, they weren’t afraid of going to their boss for any advice in fact their boss worked with them in collaboration instead of being locked up in a room and just keeping an eye on them instead of giving her own input. Decision making was shared and people were not afraid to disagree with one another even if it were the leader they had to disagree with. The esteem needs were satisfied through assigning tasks, giving responsibility and delegating. Through all this the company satisfied all the needs in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. These needs influence the behavior of individuals when needs are being full filled employees are tend to be motivated more. These things built up strong motivation with the employees at the time of Isobella and these were also the things which lead to low motivation level in employees during Alice’s period. Impact on job satisfaction Job Satisfaction is an effective or emotional response to one’s job. The level of job satisfaction in any organization depends on factors such as job security, work flexibility, interpersonal relations, leadership style, organizational climate, career opportunities, difficulty of task and quantity of work assigned, etc. with Isobella the organizational climate was very friendly and people were closely related as a family. Even when assigning tasks the employees were involved and their opinions were valued. There was flexibility about the timings and no hard and fast rule was established though work was always done on time. That’s why under the leadership of Isobella Manchi job satisfaction was great. Employees were satisfied with their work, “Isobella made sure employees enjoyed their work”. According to the studies performed by Srivastava and Pratap (1984) there is a strong positive relationship between job satisfaction and organizational climate. Dimension of organizational climate which describe or built the organizational climate such as leadership style, decision making process, goal-setting and control, communication are all related to and influence job satisfaction. ( K.K.Jain, Fauzia Jabeen, Vinita Mishra and Naveen Gupta, 2007 : 195) Survey of the literature on occupational stress reveals that there are a number of Factors related to job which affect the behavior of the employees and as a result of it, normal life is disturbed. (McLean, 1974; Brief, Schular and Vansell, 1981). When Alice took over in charge many occupational stress factors were observed in the job design. The main stress factors were work overload and role overload. To make sure that delia is getting the pay she deserves Alice over burdened delia and this was not only done with delia but with all the other employees as after the retrenchment every employee had greater amount of work to do although no salary or perks were increased to comply with the increase in work. This thing exhausted the employees of fashion Inc physically as they have to work through weekends too, and job satisfaction in the employees’ decreased. The constant complains of the employees to those above them also exhausted the heads psychologically. With low job satisfaction and motivation employees had low organizational citizenship after Alice joined the company. Impact on Turnover Turnover according to some research studies is directly related to job satisfaction. High level of job satisfaction results in lower level to resignations. But there are other important key roles which determines job turnover such as extra perks and salary being given to the employees. Isobella compensated the extra work of each employee and also arranged occasional recreational activities for them she made sure that employee have enough time to balance their family and work life in her organization. It is quite evident from the case study that turnover rate was low during Isabella’s period as Delia was working their for such a long time, but even old employees at high post started resigning when Alice came in charge. Above industry turnover rate presents a bad picture of the company and good talented employees try to stay away from such companies, high turnover rate does not only takes away good employees from the company but also chance of hiring new potential ones. Impact on Absenteeism Although absenteeism results from illness and other family problems but studies have shown that more then one third of total absenteeism results from company environment. According to experts the environment of the company should be such that where the people like coming and enjoy. If job is a place where the person has to come and go through stress every day he will definitely not be inclined towards coming. Organizations which give their employees hardly any time off obviously tend to have high absenteeism rate. As with all the other trends with the coming of Alice absenteeism also increased the reasons were both that the work place became such an environment where people didn’t want to come and high burden and low off days plus calling employees during off days resulted them to take unscheduled offs. How Alice should have approached the changes The over all picture shows it very clearly that Alice didn’t implemented the changes wisely. New research studies are stating that a person or a leader should have good emotional intelligence in order to handle changes and people. Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is the ability through which we handle our own self and those around us. Alice should have approached the changes using emotional intelligence traits to cope up with the situation. A visionary leader has got all the four capabilities of emotional intelligence. The four capabilities of emotional intelligence are: 1. Self awareness: knowing and understanding our own self 2. Self management: having the skills to keep our emotions under control 3. Social awareness: having a know how about the organization, having empathy and organizational awareness. 4. Social skill: knowing how to deal with people. (Daniel Goleman,2000) Through social awareness Alice should have first tried to understand the overall organizational structure and its environment before implementing her own ideas. She should have known her employees better and understood them more closely. What Alice very much lacked was an important part of social skill was: communication. Alice’s communication skills were very she didn’t even try to interact with her employees. When we listen to others then only others listen to us although Alice was on a post where others have to listen to her and do whatever she demanded but they weren’t convinced or ready for what they were doing which decreased job satisfaction for them. To take people to a new direction and initiating new ideas the leader needs to have a change catalyst behavior, in which any change which the leader needs to bring is catalyzed by the leader. The leader helps the organization to move through the change with better outcomes. Some of the policies bought in by Isobella were good but the way in which they were implemented was not accepted by the employees. It was good to keep a record through check in and check out sheets but doing it directly without discussing it with her employees led to disapproval as the employees must have thought that the leader does not trust them. As the system wasn’t present there in past to bring it needed more employee involvement rather then just Isobella giving her say and doing what she wanted to do. Changing the whole organizational motto which was to create designer and elegant wear and bringing it out of designer and into regular company was a very bad idea. As it did not only drift the focus of the employees from the targets and took away one goal statement but it also introduced them into a new market without any planning. This was something which alice shouldn’t have just avoided doing but done the other way round. Everything that Alice did under her tenure lacked emotional intelligence and good leadership styles. Alice should learn how to work with people and how to delegate employees through work. She should consider her employees as humans and not just machines who will do whatever she orders them to do. She should have tried to build strong bond with her employees and then should done and solved all the problems faced by the company with them. Conclusion I would like to conclude after analyzing this case study that effective leadership is very important for any business to run successfully. The absence of effective and good leadership can make the organization a well established organization to lose its track and peril. Leaders are people who set direction and example for the rest of the organization to follow if the leader isn’t doing well how is any one under him supposed to perform well. The example could very well be explained through this that if parents set up correct foots steps to follow then only can their child grow up to be a good person but if they don’t set up a good example for their kid chances are very low that the kid will grow up to become a good citizen. If they want to leaders can make people do and also make them out perform from their existing capabilities through energizing them and giving them proper direction to follow. But if the leader is not a good leader he can also make the person under him under perform, as Alice did in our case study References: Min-Hue Chien ‘A study to improve organizational citizenship behaviours’. Available from http://www.mssanz.org.au/MODSIM03/Volume_03/B14/03_Chien_Behaviours.pdf McLean, A. (1974). Occupational stress and strain. Springfield, Illinois. Thomas. Lambert, Eric G.; Hogan, Nancy Lynne; Barton, Shannon M. (2001) ‘the impact of job satisfaction on turnover intent: a test of a structural measurement model using a national sample of workers’ The Social Science Journal [online]. Available from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-75479484/impact-job-satisfaction-turnover.html K.K.Jain,; Fauzia Jabeen,; Vinita Mishra, and Naveen Gupta(2007)’ Job Satisfaction as Related to Organisational Climate and Occupational Stress: A Case Study of Indian Oil.  International Review of Business Research Papers [online]. Available from http://www.bizresearchpapers.com/Jain.pdf Daniel Goleman (2000) ‘leadership that gets result’. Harvard business review[online]. Available from www.hpsp.harvard.edu Merrelyn Emery, Ph.D.(2010)’ When the Cure is the Cause: the Turnover and Absenteeism Problems’ The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Volume 15(1), 2010, Article 6. Alison Pullen `Its All About Me!: Gendered Narcissism and Leaders Leadership February 1, 2008 4: 5-25 Brigid Carroll ‘Defaulting to Management: Leadership Defined By What It Is Not’ Organization January 1, 2008 15: 75-96 Read More