Category Archives: Organizational Development

Management, Organizational Development, People Management

Management & the Achievement of Objectives

October 23, 2019 Hutch Morzaria Leave a comment

Management is considered to be a universal phenomenon. It is a widely used and popular term. Management is the act of getting people together to work and accomplish desired objects and goals using the available resources effectively and efficiently in an organization.

It comprises of organizing, planning, staffing, directing, leading and controlling organizational effort for the purpose of accomplishing a certain goal. On the other hand, resourcing encompasses the manipulation and deployment of financial resources, human resources, natural resources, and technological resources.

It is also right to say that management is purposive because it is an activity done with a certain purpose. Management directs group efforts towards achieving certain pre-determined goals. Management is the process of working with other people or working through other people to achieve organizational goals by using limited resources in the ever-changing world. Different organizations have different goals to achieve. For example, an enterprise may be launching new products by doing market research, and for others, it may be minimizing cost and maximizing profit.

Management entails creating an internal environment and puts into use different factors of production. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the management team to create such conditions that are conducive to maximize people’s efforts to attain goals effectively and efficiently. This includes determining salaries and wages, ensuring that raw materials are available, and coming up with rules and regulations.

Good management includes being both efficient and effective. Being effective is doing the appropriate task such as painting a room while being efficient is doing the task with minimum wastage of resources and ensuring that the task has been done correctly.

Management has three main roles in the achievement of objectives in an organization:

Interpersonal Roles

Just like the name suggests, interpersonal roles involve people in an organization and other ceremonial duties. Leaders are responsible for training, staffing, and other associated duties. Liaison is responsible for maintaining communication between informers and contacts that compose an organizational network. The figurehead is typically the symbolic head of the organization.

Informational Roles

These are roles related to receiving, collecting and disseminating of information. It involves monitoring which is seeking and receiving information to be able to understand the organization. The disseminator is responsible for transmitting all the important information received from outside stakeholders to other members of the organization while the spokesperson gets information from the managers and transmits the information to outside stakeholders. Examples of this information include policies, plans and more.

Decisional Roles

These are the roles that revolve around making choices in an organization. In most cases, the people who play decisional roles are the negotiator, the entrepreneur, the resource allocator and the disturbance handler.

The entrepreneur looks for opportunities, searches for change, respond to the change and exploit it. The resource allocator makes and approves all important decisions related to resource allocations. The negotiator represents the organization when it comes to major negotiations. The disturbance handler has the task of taking corrective action when the organization faces any form of disturbances.

The Major Functions of Management

Every business has managers. They do the same type of work in different businesses. Whether you manage a factory or a hair salon, the job of the manager consists of the same tasks. Organizing, planning, controlling and leading serve an important part in achieving the vision of management. All the components of management are important and you need all of them to function together to achieve goals.

Planning

This is the first component of management. Managers should determine what the goals of the organization are and how they can achieve the goals. Most of this information can be found from the mission and vision of the company. Setting up the goals and following up on the execution of the business plan are important components of the planning function. A manager in a local bar will need to have a hiring plan, a marketing plan and a sales plan to achieve organizational goals.

Organizing

Organizing is another important responsibility for managers and this includes organizing resources and people. Managers should know how many employees are needed for particular shifts to accomplish the objectives of a company. If the company doesn’t have the necessary resources to tackle their jobs, the organization will fail. Employees will see a manager be unprepared without an organized workplace and this will make them lose respect for the managers and their management techniques.

Leading

Leading and managing are entirely different. Managers manage workers, and they ensure that the tasks are done and completed on time. They ensure that the policies are followed. The staff will follow managers because they are the supervisors in charge of the employees. Employees will see a leader as someone who motivates them. The manager works as a leader in an ideal situation. Managers who want to effectively lead need to discover what motives their employees.

Controlling

This is a function of management and involves monitoring the performance of the firm to ensure that goals are being achieved. Managers should pay close attention to the costs in relation to the performance of the organization. If the company has a goal of increasing sales over the next two months, managers may check the progress of achieving the goal at the end of one month and share the information with the employees. This will build trust and an involvement feeling for the employees.

Managers have a lot of different tasks to accomplish. They need to plan, organize, lead and control. Managers act as a balancing act of different components and good managers are able to keep the balance and motivate employees.

Organizations have different levels of management. We have the top-level managers, the middle-level managers, and the low-level managers. Managers at different levels have different functions. Top-level managers consist of the managing director, the chief executive, and the directors. The middle-level managers consist of departmental and branch managers. The low-level managers are operation managers and supervisors.

Organizational Development

MACHIAVELLIANISM IN ORGANIZATIONS

September 27, 2019 Hutch Morzaria 1 Comment

What is Machiavellianism?

Machiavellianism is a political theory by Niccolo Machiavelli. Machiavelli focused lots of time to writing after he was exiled in 1512. He then published a very famous book known as The Prince.

The Prince suggested that to keep power, leaders should be cunning, brutal, cruel and use any means possible to maintain power, rule and achieve their goals. This infamous recommendation is what has come to be known as Machiavellism.

Machiavellism thus is defined as the personality trait where someone is so focused on achieving something or maintaining the power that he/she is willing to used deceit, cunning, assassination, cruelty or any means possible to achieve it. Machiavellism is one of the three traits that form The Dark Triad. The other two are psychopathy and narcism. People that embody all these traits or score high on them are known to have malevolent qualities. Psychologists and psychiatrists see the Dark Triad as a mental illness, or a set of mental illnesses, whose victims end up either in jail or very successful.

People with Machiavellism personality tend to be unemotional and with little regard for human life and are not influenced by the conventional morality code.

In this article, we are going to look at why and how Machiavellism is used in organizations by business owners and managers and workers and how prevalent it is.

Machiavellism in organizations

Nicolo Machiavelli theory was developed mostly to point out how successful leaders manage to maintain power and build successful entities. He simply identified how great, or rather, effective leaders manage to exercise power over their juniors. Machiavellism thus existed long before Nicolo Machiavelli put his theory to paper.

Machiavelli described how organizations run within in all human societies then explained what the leaders had to do to ensure the survival of the organization. Note that it is irrelevant whether the motive of the organization is good or bad, the theory applies.

The theory is fully based on human nature – feeding on the tendency of human behavior in a natural environment where there is an unlimited choice. What he saw thus does not really describe the conventional good or moral behavior but a selfish urge to achieve whatever one wants to achieve.

Humans are naturally self-interested. We seek to satisfy and achieve our goals with varying degrees of zeal and rationality, and we employ varying levels of rationality to the means we use to achieve those goals. However, the things humans pursue in their lifetime are generally similar – food, shelter, pleasure and sexual/reproductive partners. There is thus a natural competition which we also indulge in varying levels of zeal and ruthlessness.

All organizations are comprised of people who are involved in one or more ruthless pursuits and zeal to achieve something selfishly at the expense of the organization or others. There are also individuals who are in a ruthless pursuit of achieving something for the organization and will employ any means possible to achieve what they want.

Machiavelli also noted that human beings are inclined to live communally and corporate with other social groups. However, this too is done with the sole aim of personal gratification and humans will only corporate with other humans if they see a possibility of the cooperation advancing their personal interests. This is one element of Machiavelism that helps organizations grow – everyone pursuing their own interests while in so doing, furthering the interests and growth of the organization.

Normally, great empires (both business and nations) have a criminal justice system that punishes unbridled self-interest within the organization and where possible, a military that deals with unbridled self-interest emanating externally. This is a clear manifestation of Machiavellism where the leaders assume that, where an opportunity shows itself, people, within and outside the organization, are likely to act in self-interest.

The emergence of trade unions in Britain in the 17th Century has its roots in Machiavelism in organizations. Even though they were formed to pursue a noble cause, they were also formed to pursue self-interest and oppose the ruthless self-interest of mining company owners in Britain.

Advantages of Machiavellianism in Organizations

Though running on ruthlessness and selfishness, Machiavelism has a good share of its advantages in organizations.

For one, the most successful organizations in the world have managed to reach where they are courtesy of Machiavelism. It is the zeal and selfish desire to succeed that made organizations become so successful. It is the competitive nature of its employees that led to innovation, hard work and giving up their all for the sake of self-interest and in the long run benefitting the organization. The famous phrase, ‘why do the bad guys always win’ is an example of how Machiavellianism has led to the success of organizations and individuals. The more ruthless one pursues their goal, the more likely they are to be successful.

Machiavellian tendencies also intimidate and frighten competitors giving organizations a better platform to better themselves.

Disadvantages of Machiavellianism

All elements of Machiavellianism can be described as unethical behavior in human society. All individuals with the Machiavellianism trait have a propensity to behave amorally and love manipulating other people. Machiavellian employees are likely to commit lots of counterproductive behavior that may not just lead to the suffering of other people but could also lead to losses within the organization. These actions range from behaviors that will affect other employee’s performance to ignoring the most important activities in their quest of achieving their own goals to outright thieving from the organization.

As much as they love being high achievers and would not let anything stand in their way, Machiavellians are also known to be thieves. Machiavellians will still from their colleagues and employers irrespective of how they are treated in the organization. This has a negative effect on the organization and will make it less competitive among its peers.

Machiavellians are also easily bribed. Somebody whose sole motivation is self-interest will not let an opportunity to enrich themselves without doing much pass and competitors are likely to use them to bring an organization down.

Organizational Development

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO MANAGEMENT

May 7, 2013 Hutch Morzaria 2 Comments

In contrast to the hard sciences like Physics and Chemistry, Organizational Behavior (OB) is a Social or soft science that is specifically focused on people and processes at work. OB studies the relationships between operational effectiveness and employee needs and how differing factors like job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job involvement relate.

Management while a key component of the study of Organizational Behavior does not in and of itself comprise the whole of OB. Management in fact deals with achieving the goals of OB through the people and resources of the organization. Manager`s jobs in the 21st century have changed from what they were previously (& the rate of change is increasing significantly with Generation Y) however and have taken on more of a focus towards coaching, mentoring and conflict resolution.

Values are enduring beliefs that a person has and they help drive their behavior and actions. Values are considered either Instrumental or Terminal.

Instrumental Values – how do you achieve the goals in your life?
Terminal Values – what are your life goals?

Read a detailed description of the information presented at the links below:

OB, ITS THEORIES AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOR

PERSONALITY TRAITS, JOB SATISFACTION & WORK ATTITUDES

Locus of Control

Internal Locus of Control – personal behavior drives specific behaviors and they are responsible for their own life.
External Locus of Control – environment controls behaviors and outcomes are driven by forces beyond their control.

Employee behaviors are shaped by –

Achievement – people high in this area tend to go into business for themselves if not properly motivated.
Affiliation – people high in this area tend to like groups and greater involvement.
Power – generally of two types (1) personalized and (2) socialized. Socialized is the better of the two as it can help energize a team and organization. A “bad” example of personalized is a Machiavellianism personality. This type of person has the urge to control, manipulate or influence others to achieve one’s personal ends. The high-Mach individual thrives and embraces fluid, unstructured organisational circumstances.

Job Satisfaction

Composed of various different factors, job satisfaction is not directly related to performance but rather has a complex relationship which is determined by the availability of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.