Challenges of Organisational Behaviour Upload PDF

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Introduction We have started out in the 21st century just a decade ago. At this stage, we are looking forward to an era of change, at a pace faster than ever could have been anticipated. The economies all around the world, with just a handful of exceptions, are now working together and are intertwin...

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Introduction We have started out in the 21st century just a decade ago. At this stage, we are looking forward to an era of change, at a pace faster than ever could have been anticipated. The economies all around the world, with just a handful of exceptions, are now working together and are intertwined like never before. Hence, the same observations shall follow for organisations, big and small; government or private and working in varied fields. With this background, it can be observed that the organisations too shall have to adapt to changing environments, internally and externally. The principle objective of this report is to enlist and analyse in brief; the challenges that are posed to Organisational Behaviour because of the aforementioned factors and many more. The authors have referred to existing academic & research texts and categorised the challenges into five major categories according to their origins, as follows:

1. Demographic factors 2. Diversification 3. Technology 4. Resistance to change 5. Globalisation

In the following pages, the authors have analysed various facets of these factors and how they create challenges to Organisational Behaviour.

1.

Demographic Challenges to Organisational Behaviour

Managing Workforce Diversity: The most important challenge organizations currently facing is adapting to people who are different. The term that we use for describing this challenge is workforce diversity. Globalization focuses on differences between people from different countries but workforce diversity addresses differences among people. Workforce diversity means that organizations are becoming a more heterogeneous mix of people in terms of gender, race, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Gender Issues: The number of women entering the workforce is increasing in India because of many factors like increased economic need, grater equality of sexes, education and so on; additional measures for managing different kinds of problems arise at the workforce. Indian women are employed in many professional jobs like engineers, doctors, lawyers and also in the field of services for nation and services to people which include army, navy, banking sector, nursing etc. At the enterprise level there are some administrative issues like maternity leave, transfer to the location of husband’s place of positioning, child care leave, and placement in hard and soft jobs all these things tend to cluster and create administrative issues. To attract and retain women employees many organizations are providing alternative career paths, extended leave, flexi time, job sharing and the option of telecommuting.

Age Factor: 1

The workers age profile is also a contradictory factor leading to the diversity of work force. Discrimination based on age can be applied in comparison between a worker aged 40-70 with another aged 18-25.

Implication of Workforce Diversity: Workforce diversity in the case of gender, socio-economic, ethnicity and age is here to stay and there is no going back to the demographic setup of the organizations as they were 20 years ago. To be successful in this type of environment one has to learn to value and respect cultural styles and the ways of behaving that are different of one’s own. Managing workforce diversity effectively should be given a high priority because of mainly two reasons. a) It’s an opportunity to serve the needs of customers better and to penetrate new markets b) Diverse teams make it possible to enhance creativity, flexibility and rapid response to changes.

Dealing With a Diverse Workforce It is important to understand the effect on OB due to workforce diversity. Organisational Diversity mainly deals with the individual character. It mainly depends on different aspects such as age of people, their caste, religion, gender, and ethnicity. It also highly depends on capabilities and disabilities of an individual. Suppose an organisation is having different people having same age, religion, gender, caste, etc. then the behaviour of all the people would likely to be same. Members will share same attitude and work in similar ways and also handle various difficulties in the same manner. But, if the people are of different religion, gender and other characteristics, then the manner in which they do the work will also be different. The number of minority employees entering and being promoted to higher-level positions has increased partly because of affirmative action and equal opportunity employment legislation. At the same time, the number of women entering the work force has also been increasing dramatically and they are ascending to higher and higher positions in management. Due to because of increased globalization, the diversity of the population is increasing rapidly.

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Three challenges for organizations and their managers due to increasing diversity of the work force presents: a fairness and justice challenge, a decisionmaking and performance challenge, and a flexibility challenge.

Fairness and Justice Challenge: Getting a job is a scarce resource, and obtaining jobs being very a competitive process. Managers are having a challenge to allocate jobs, give promotions, and rewards without being biased. Achieving fairness can be difficult in the short run. Seniority plays a role and many minorities are recent hires. This imbalance rectification done by actively recruiting and promoting increasing numbers of women and minorities; can lead to difficult equity issues because this attempt to fix the traditional imbalance reduces the prospects for white-male employees. An increase in diversity can thus strain an organization’s ability to satisfy the aspirations of its work force, creating a problem that, in turn, directly affects the work force’s well-being and performance. Organizations must learn to manage diversity in a way that increases the well-being of all employees, but deciding how to achieve this goal can pose difficult ethical problems for managers.

Decision Making and Performance Challenge: It is also a challenge to utilize the attitudes and perspectives of people with different religion, gender, age, etc. so as to improve decision making and improve the performance of the organization. Many organizations have taken advantage of this potential of the various employees to improve Organisational behaviour.

Flexibility Challenge: In this challenge of diversity we need to be sensitive and careful about the various kinds of employees working in the organization and to try to development of flexible employment approaches that increase employee behaviour. Some of its examples are given below and they contain the following approach:

 The needs of different groups has to be understood and new benefits packages has to be customized according to their needs, it can be of single employees having no child and family, gays in long term relationship commitment and also to the employees having aged parents.

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 Performance can also be increased by providing the employees the time according to their interest and it should be flexible such that they can input their maximum effort into that work and accordingly set their schedule.  Job sharing facility should be provided so that two individual who are having mutual understanding can perform the job even if one of them is having some issue with him.  Handicapped employees (and customers) should be taken care of specifically and design of job should be accordingly.  Management programs should be conducted time to time and feedback has to be received about their personal style of dealing with minority.  Relationship between employees should be established mentoring.  Establishment of informal networks is also providing employees a social support.

2.

Diversification :-

With the advent of 21st century, the nature of organisations and the way they function is becoming more & more complicated. Be it manufacturing sector, retail, services or any other, the expectations of the consumer are higher. The organisations of today have to collaborate with a variety of stakeholders, consultants, execution contractors & sub-contractors, financers and so on. This has a profound effect on the structure & functioning of organisations. Let us take an example of a Real estate development project being undertaken by a developer firm for housing development. The firm, at first, has to involve a planning firm to create the master plan for the project. Then the consultants for urban designing, architecture, landscaping and structures come into the picture. There are also separate consultants the services and specialities, e.g., MEP, fire-fighting, interiors, façade, security, green and sustainable design strategies, BIM and so on. As the planning and design phase reaches certain accepted level, the project is tendered and awarded to a contractor. The principle contractor may be either be held responsible for the whole project or the project may be divided into sectors and awarded separately. The principle contractor may in turn divide the work amongst a number of sub-contractors for execution. Hence, the management of the realty developer will have to co-ordinate 4

different people, who might even be located in different countries and time zones, have varied skill sets and technical expertise levels & work cultures! And we haven’t yet started considering the collaborations for finance, marketing and facility management. As we can judge from the example above, with a variety of speciality projects, products and services being introduced, the overall complexity escalates. This is the diversification, that requires restructuring for the organisations, which has to be adaptive to the pace of the diversification itself. Thus, this poses a challenge to the organisation to change internally as well as externally, with ever dynamic conditions to respond to.

3.

Technology:

Technology is the practical application of science, knowledge and engineering for producing goods and providing services. The technology of a firm includes the physical aspects such as tools, machineries and equipments and knowledge and the skill set of the employee to operate them. For any organization to survive and remain competitive, the technology of the company should be improved in both of the above forms. It can be achieved only through human intervention. It is observed that whenever a new technology is being introduced it affects operation of the organization in all the aspects. These aspects include need for adjustment in methods of marketing, supply of materials and spare parts, in cost control, in wage scheme, in the assignment of responsibilities to workers and managers and in the financial and organizational structure of the Enterprise. This process is very cumbersome because, any organization has to monitor the technological advancement, train and motivate employees to innovate in all aspects of the organization. The main challenge of any organization is to manage the rapid and radical technological change. This increase in increase in technological challenge necessitates the need for the employment and development of skilled labors and motivates them to cope up with the change. The level of technological development of the employees 5

and organization influences its ability to produce quality goods and services and to be profitable, to create wealth and to improve the people’s performance and well being. The management of the technological innovation can be achieved through Sociotechnique approach which involves the management of proper interface between the Human resource and the technological system. The technological system involves the workflow, job rules and relationships, task configuration, policies and procedures. The human resource system involves organizational environment, motivation, commitment, satisfaction with policy and work group facilitated by the organization. When this interface (socio – technical) is properly managed such that no problem arises, then it can be called fit. Normally, attainment of such fit situation is impossible. This problem mainly happens when major transforming process takes place within the technical system e.g. nature of raw materials, machineries, etc. These complexities can be solved by a proper industrial relation system which analyze and structure the organization carefully. Thereby it enables to assess new skill for supervisors and specification of development plan.

4.

Resistance to Change.

As quoted by Charles Darwin “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” Why Is Change So Hard? It is a natural instinct for a human that when change occurs it can cause a loss of stability which results in the development of a predictable and measurable set of symptoms within itself. These natural instincts can also come into affect even in professional organizations as well. The path in which the symptoms occur is shown below. Organizational Change

Instability

Occurrence of symptoms

Organizational Loss of Effectiveness

The symptoms that are caused by the organizational changes are as follows: Symptoms in the Individual

Organizational Behaviour Equivalents

Frustration

Loss of Productivity 6

Anxiety

Morale

Rejection Of The Environment

Conflict

Retardation Of Development

Motivation

Withdrawal

Turnover

Refusal To Participate

Absenteeism

Hence when there is a significant number of these symptoms occur simultaneously, an organizational loss of effectiveness will occur. It should be that understanding the change in process can also be used to resist the change as well as to encourage it. Organization should know that change is not always the solution of every problem company Hence, to prevent such issues from happening, the higher authorities may need to prioritize various change proposals and defuse poor ideas, rather than always responding to changes from the internal and external environment. In other words we can also say that the change is a positive response. What needs to be preserved may be just as important to understand as what needs to be changed. Any organization in today's fast-moving environment that is looking for the pace of change to slow is likely to be sorely disappointed. In fact, business and organizations should accept change as change is important for any organization. Without change, businesses would likely lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the needs of what most hope to be a growing base of loyal customers. Technology Without change, the people in higher authorities would still be stuck in their age old ideas which would lead to a stunt in growth. These changes are quite necessary because adaptation of new technology and technological know-how can lead to an increase in technology. Technology also has an affected how we communicate. No longer do business people have to laboriously contact people, in person, to find out about other people who might be useful resources - they can search for experts online through search engines as well as through social media sites. Today's burgeoning communication technology represents changes that allow organizations to learn more, more quickly, than ever before. Customer Needs The organization should change according to the need of the customers. The market is ever changing and with that the outlook of the customers also needed. If an 7

organization does not change according to the needs then it will suffer grievous losses. The best example can be seen for Organizations like Nokia and Samsung where the latter growth was higher than the former due to the evolution of Samsung’s smart phone. Economy The impact of economy on an organization can be both negative and positive, but both of them are quite stressful on the organization. A strong economy and increasing demand for products and services will mean that companies must consider expansion that might involve the addition of staff and new facilities. These changes offer opportunities for staff, but also represent new challenges. A weak economy can create even more problems as companies find themselves needing to make difficult decisions that can impact employees' salaries and benefits and even threaten their jobs. The ability to manage both ends of the spectrum is critical for organizations that want to maintain a strong brand and strong relationships with customers as well as employees.

Growth Opportunities for Employees The change in an organization is not only good for its growth but also for the employees as well. When there are changes the employees can develop a creative outlook which would lead to their growth as well. Preparing employees to deal with these changes involves in an analysis of their growth by some tools and training is required to help them learn new skills. Training can be provided through traditional classroom settings or, increasingly, through online learning opportunities. Importantly, organizations need to do a good job of evaluating employees' capabilities and then taking steps to fill the gaps between current skills and the skills required to respond to growth.

5.

Globalisation:

Telecommuting :Introduction: Telecommuting, remote work, or telework is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work. Definition:

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Telecommuting refers more specifically to work undertaken at a location that reduces commuting time. These locations can be inside the home or at some other remote workplace, which is facilitated through a broadband connection, computer or phone lines. Technology: Telework is facilitated by tools such as groupware, virtual private networks, conference calling, videoconferencing, and Voice over IP (VOIP). It can be efficient and useful for companies since it allows workers to communicate over long distances, saving significant amounts of travel time and cost. Benefits: Telecommuting offers benefits to communities, employers, and employees. For communities, telecommuting may offer fuller employment , reducing traffic congestion and traffic accidents, relieving pressure on transportation infrastructure, reducing greenhouse gases, reducing energy use, improving disaster preparedness, and reducing vulnerability to terrorism. Telecommuting individuals, or more specifically those in "work from home" arrangements, may find that it improves work-life balance, In general, telecommuting benefits society in economic, environmental, and personal ways. The wide application of ICTs provides increasing benefits for employees, especially ones with physical disabilities. It also leads to a more energy-saving society without adversely impacting economic growth Challenges: Telecommuting, however convenient it sounds but the truth is that it is yet to be introduced in the Indian industry. One of the biggest challenges of telecommuting is that mostly there is no job security for such telecommuters or “work from home” personnel. They are hired when there need is felt and they can be thrown off the grid as soon as the job is done or as per organizational needs, this mentally breaks the work force and in turn may affect the performance. Another big challenge that telecommuting faces is the involvement of its resources in the economic and business industry. Trust is a concept that lags behind when studied in junior - senior relationships in the industry trends today due to various personal and social reasons. Due to these trust issues working from a site which cannot be observed by superiors isn’t yet popular. Another major drawback is the involvement of a lot of technology in between the remote place of work and the permanent place to work, which in India is yet to be developed at a par! . Influence of MNCs :9

Multin...