+4474648-84564 Unit 12 Organizational behavior Marks and Spencer
Report on Organizational Behavior and Motivation
Introduction Unit 12 Organizational behavior
Organisational culture is becoming a popular concept in business organisations. It explains the psychology, beliefs, values and experiences of organisation. It is seen that when positive organisational culture is provided to the people in an organisation, people tend to behave in a positive way and thus, strive for attaining organisational excellence as they are attached to the organisations. Unit 12 Organisational Behaviour
Organizational culture is also characterised by motivation which helps in achieving organizational goals and objectives (Weng et al. 2015). In the below discussion, influence of culture, power and politics on the behavior of individuals along with theories of motivation are discussed in Part A. In Part B, effective team working and concepts and philosophies of organizational behavior are discussed. A UK based organization named Marks and Spencer is considered for the discussion which specialises in selling of home products, clothing as well as luxury food products.
1. Part A LO1 Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behavior of others in an organizational context.
1.1 Task 1 P1 Analyze how an organization’s culture, politics and power can influence individual and team behavior and performance.
Each and every organization is characterised by behaviors of individuals as well as group of individuals when formed in a team. Human behavior is complex in nature and each and every individual is different from one another. Human behavior constitutes to be an important consideration in the success of organization as it is the humans who perform the work in an organization for its success. With respect to individual and team behavior, it is seen that culture, power and politics are the major factors that influence the human behavior whether at individual or group level.
Organisational culture is a popular concept which explains the psychology, beliefs, values and experiences of organisation.
It is seen that when positive organizational culture is provided to the people in an organization, people tend to behave in a positive way and thus, strive for attaining organizational excellence as they are attached to the organizations. This can be seen in Marks and Spencer where a positive organizational culture is provided (Cocci 2014). The Company has a customer driven culture wherein all the people involved in the organization make a real effort in enhancing customer satisfaction, employing right people and provide right training. The business is dynamic and thus, it always looks for ways to change the way they work. Also, it has been observed that effective communication practices are used by the Company to gather, collect and communicate the information which is required to carry business operations which provides a positive work culture to the employees.
Good organizational culture provided by Marks and Spencer states that the behavior of individuals is also positive. It has been identified that the employees and the workforce behave properly in the Company. The individual behavior is continuously nourished by healthy organizational culture. However, it has been criticized by Kitchen (2017) stating that organizational culture has a negative influence on the individual and team behavior. To achieve market competitiveness, internal competiveness arises in the organization which affects the behavior of individuals as well as teams as each and every person and team is considered to be a competitor.
Through this thinking, performance of the organization is negatively impacted and thus, organizational culture sometimes plays a negative role in impacting the performance by impacting the individual as well as team behaviors. The positive culture provided by the Company controls the behavior of an individual as a result of which individual interests are overpowered by organizational interests. Thus, it is recommended to the Company to inculcate positive work cultures which can result into positive team behavior wherein the group of individuals work collectively by understanding each and other’s point of view which in turn affects the performance of the whole team. It is seen that the organizational culture of Marks and Spencer has been effective enough in influencing the team performance which is characterized by individual as well as group behaviors. The customer driven culture of the Company helped in enhancing the value to customers which is made possible through effective team working which increased the performance (Taylor 2018).
Apart from organizational culture, politics is another important factor that influences the behavior of an individual as well as team which in turn impacts the organizational performance. Marks and Spencer is one such Company wherein employees who do not work hard make use of dirty politics to secure their positions. Politics, here means the irrational behavior of the individuals in an organization to gain advantages that are beyond their control. It leads to a negative ambience. With regards to Marks and Spencer, it is seen that the Company has a tall structure with many employees and the responsibility goes down the line of management for its smooth functioning. However, there are a high number of employees at each level who are more interested in spoiling in the image of people in front of others (Pereira, Malik and Froese 2017).
The employees in the Company by indulging themselves into dirty politics spoil the ambience of the workplace which in turn impacts the relationship of all the employees. Negativity among employees result into negative behaviour of individuals which are involved in politics either who are the reason of politics or are the victims. Individuals have callous attitude with each other which hampers the communication between them. They behave differently with their peers and colleagues to and a feeling of frustration and anger prevails. Also, team behaviour gets affected as a lot of information gets manipulated and is not passed in its desired form. Superiors get a wrong picture as a result of which team behaves in a negative way.
All this affected the working of Marks and Spencers as a team. Thus, it is seen that individual as well as team behavior is affected by politics prevailing in the organization. However, Pettigrew (2014) criticised the above point stating that it is the politics which helps the employees to grow in their careers as politics teach them how to work in corporate and how to be more competitive which in turn affects the behavior as well as the performance.
Power is another factor which influences the behavior of individuals as well as team in turn affecting the organizational performance. With regards to power, it is seen that more the power an individual or a team has, more influence it has on the organization. In the context of Marks and Spencer, it is seen that employees who have major power, especially senior managers have a high degree of point of pursuing power which enables them to control their own environment (Anitha and Begum 2016). The behavior of the employees is changed when a powerful leader leads the whole team.
M1 Critically analyse how the culture, politics and power of an organization can influence individual and team behavior and performance
For this criterion, a critical evaluation of the influence of the organizational culture, power and politics on the behaviour of individual, group as well as performance of the organization has been discussed.
D1 Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and motivation that enables teams and organizations to succeed, providing justified recommendations. To achieve distinction criterion, it is seen that the particular task, recommendations to Marks and Spencer are provided.
LO2 Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal.
P2 Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and motivational techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an organisational context.
Motivation is a key factor determining the achievement of goals in an organisation. Individuals and teams within an organisation are motivated to achieve organisational goals. Motivation in an organisation is explained by two types of theories- content theory and process theory. The content theory of motivation deals in explaining why the human needs change over time. The specific factors that affect the motivations behaviour are elucidated in these theories which are the internal factors. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y are popular content theories which provide a greater understanding of motivation (Al Saifi 2015). Theory X states that employees in an organisation do not perform their job as they dislike and try to avoid their work. They are forced to work in an organisation as they do not wish to take responsibilities and lack ambition. On the other hand, theory Y completely contradicts theory X. As per theory Y, it is an optimistic theory in which employees are creative and are self-employed. This is a great theory of motivation as it is gaining popularity in modern day organisations. Self-empowered teams are the basic characteristic of this theory.
Considering Marks and Spencer, it is seen that the Company’s motivation skills and attributes can be aligned with Theory Y in which employees are motivated to perform better. The Company deals in many clothing and luxury food products which demand high degree of creativity and innovation. For the Company, human resources are one of the most important assets as they lead the organisation towards creating new products and services which are a product of the imagination and creation of employees. In Marks and Spencer, majority of the employees are self-motivated and appreciate responsibility (Pettigrew 2014). They are motivated to perform well as they are considered to be an important part of the organisation.
This motivation plays an important role in achieving organisational objectives as the objectives are fulfilled by the team work of employees who use their skills, talent, expertise as well as innovation in creating value for the customers by providing outstanding products and services. The goals and objectives of Marks and Spencer to create a global brand has been made possible through its highly motivated employees who tend to perform well for the organisation by providing it with amazing ideas and creativity in relation to product and service offering. However, some traits of theory X has also been identified in this company as some of the employees despite of providing motivation do not take their responsibilities efficiently. They dislike their work and thus, are not able to direct organisation towards achievement of goals (Geppert and Dorrenbacher 2014).
Considering the another type of theory which is process theories of motivation, it is seen that these theories, unlike content theories, address factors which determine the degree, modification as well as continuation of effort. One of the most popular process theories of motivation is the Porter-Lawler Model which is an integrated approach including all elements of all motivation theories. It is a complex model which explains that performance leads to job satisfaction through role perceptions and abilities (Miner 2015). The three elements of this theory are effort, performance and satisfaction. Effort is the amount of energy exerted by an employee, performance is the leading function of the efforts of individuals and satisfaction is the leading function of the performance. In the context of Marks and Spencer, it is seen that the perception of effort-rewards probabilities among employees is high because employees are provided with values and rewards. The motivation culture in Marks and Spencer included effort-performance-reward-satisfaction in which employees were motivated to perform better which in turn helped in increasing their performance on the basis of which they were rewarded. The reward system increased the level of job satisfaction among employees which made them more hard working helping in achieving organisational goals and objectives. The reward system as mentioned in this theory enabled the Company to provide honour to those employees who work hard to help the organisation achieve its goal of expanding the business as well as customer base. However, Miner (2015) criticised motivation stating that organisational goals and objectives are achieved through other factors as well. Apart from motivation, financial and operational factors are equally important in helping the organisation achieve its goals and objectives. Finance and business operations determine the level of success an organisation can achieve in a given period of time. This has been counter criticised by Miner (2015) who stated that the major factor responsible for achievement of organisational goals as if the employees are not motivated to perform well an organisation cannot achieve success despite huge amount of financial resources and strategic business operations.
Apart from the behavioural theories of motivation, motivation techniques also play an important role in influencing the behaviour of others which helps in achievement of goals and objectives. Marks and Spencer strictly followed daily activity schedule to break out lethargy cycle and get motivated for basic activities. The activities are listed and are ranked from 0-5, and the employee is able to refocus on simple pleasures and mastery (Jelphs and Dickinson 2016). However, this particular motivation technique is not so effective as it depends on the behaviour of an individual.
After considering the motivational theories and techniques used by Marks and Spencer, it has been identified that the Company uses effective motivation techniques and models to keep the employees motivated to strive for organisational success. However, the effectiveness can be increased by the Company by enhancing the number of Reward and Recognition program on a quarterly level. The employees of the Company should be rewarded at quarterly levels to keep them motivated (Lawter, Kopelman and Prottas 2015). In addition to this, it is recommended to the Company to provide some room for regular breaks to refresh the employees which in turn helps them in gaining their strength and health so as to achieve goals. Furthermore, technique of providing regular and supportive feedback is required to help achieve organisational efficiency as the employees work on their areas of operations.
M2 Critically evaluate how to influence the behaviour of others through the effective application of behavioural motivational theories, concepts and models.
This merit criterion is achieved by presenting critical evaluation of the process and content theories of motivation along with motivation techniques that are used by Marks and Spencer in helping the achievement of goals and objectives. These theories and models influence the behaviours of individuals as a result which achievement of goals is impacted either positively or negatively.
D1 Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and motivation that enables teams and organisations to succeed, providing justified recommendations
To achieve this criterion, the discussion provides recommendations to the Company to improve their motivation skills and techniques that is likely to help the organisation in future on the basis of the critical evaluation of motivation has been done.
LO3 Demonstrate an understanding of how to cooperate effectively with others.
P3 Demonstrate an understanding of what makes an effective team, as opposed to an ineffective team.
Co-operation among team members is the most essential element required for successful and smooth business conduct. Co-operation in the workplace inculcates the engagement of employees in open communication. Co-operation in the workplace is highly characterised by team which can be effective or ineffective. It has been observed that mere presence of team does not help the organisations. A team has to be effective in order to achieve goals and objectives. A team can gain the status of being effective when an open discussion prevails wherein members are allowed to express their views freely in an organisation, situational leadership style is used and members listen to each others’ views and opinions (Senaratne and Gunawardane 2015). An ineffective team is totally in contradiction with effective team as the members in such teams do not listen to each other, closed discussions happen in the organisation and authoritative leadership style is followed. The decision making of effective teams is characterised by a form of consensus in which general agreement is taken from each and every member whereas in ineffective teams, decisions are generally taken prematurely before the real issues are resolved. Furthermore, it is seen that team roles play an important role in making the teams effective or not. This can be understood with the help of team development theory propounded by Meredith Belbin. According to this theory, there are a total of none team roles that affect the effectiveness of teams which in turn impacts the behaviour. These roles are as follows:
Action oriented roles
- Shaper- He is the one who challenges the team to improve who are extroverts and dynamic.
- Implementer- He gets the things done by others by turning the plans into actions.
- Complete-Finisher- He ensures that there are no errors and omissions in the completion of the projects.
People Oriented Roles
- Coordinator- Coordinator is the one who acts as the traditional team leader who guides the team.
- Team worker- He is that person who provides support and ensures that whether team is working effectively or not (Muchiri, Kinyanjui and Assumpta 2017).
- Resource Investigator- He is the innovative and curious person that explores available options and negotiates resources.
Thought oriented roles
- Plant- He is the creative innovator who provides new ideas and approaches but is not so good in communication.
- Monitor-Evaluator- He is the analyser who evaluates the ideas. He is shrewd and critical in nature as he identifies pros and cons before making and decision.
- Specialist- Specialists are those people who possess specialised knowledge and skills to perform a certain job.
Considering this theory, it has been identified that Marks and Spencer also follow this model in defining team roles of different departments in the organisation. The Company provides home products, luxury food products and clothing which consist of different departments such as Finance and Accounts, Technical, Logistics, Human Resources and many more. The reason behind effective coordination and communication between departments is the effective team role played by different employees in an organisation that enhanced the effectiveness of the team. With respect to teams, it is seen that effectiveness is dependent on the roles played by different individuals in an organisation. Another major theoretical framework adopted by Marks and Spencer is the Tuckman model propounded by Bruce Tuckman which is a popular method in providing the base for effective team building (Woodcock 2017). There are four phases according to Tuckman theory. These are Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. Forming is the initial stage of team development wherein majority of the team members are positive and polite and leaders play dominant roles. The next step is storming in which individuals are pushed against the boundaries. The team members challenge the authority of each other which results into conflicts between them. Norming is the third phase in which people resolve their conflicts and understand the opinions and strengths of their colleagues. The last phase is of performing in which team goals are effectively achieved through hard work. With regards to Marks and Spencer, it is seen that the Company followed Tuckman’s theory to some extent. The forming stage was effectively executed by the people when the Company decided to introduce its new range of food products. The overall team between different departments coordinated very well in the Company which enhanced the working of team. The employees showed excellent communication skills in the first phase itself which helped the Company to carry out their functions smoothly (DiazGranados et al. 2017). However, at the second phase which is norming, high degree of conflicts arose when new range of food products was introduced. Conflicts took a long time to get resolved which somehow affected the effectiveness of the whole team. Considering the two other stages, it is seen that Marks and Spencer performed well in coordinating all the departments including new food range. At all these stages, different individuals exhibit different behaviours which are responsible for affecting the team working and team development. It is seen that effective team results into open communication which fosters good and positive behaviour among people in the organisation, whereas, an ineffective team facilitates negative behaviour among the employees who affects their ability to achieve goals.
With respect to both these theories, it is seen that despite the usefulness of the theories in analysing the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of teams, somewhere these theories lag in providing detailed knowledge of the team working as only theoretical area is covered.
M3 Analyse relevant team and group development theories to support the development of dynamic cooperation
Relevant team group and development theories like Belbin model and Tuckman model are used to explain the concept of effective and ineffective teams in relation to Marks and Spencer.
D2 Critically analyse and evaluate the relevance of team development theories in the context of OB concepts and philosophies that influence behaviour in the workplace
To meet the distinction criterion, the team development theories like Belbin and Tuckman in the context of organisational behaviour, critical analysis has been done to present the discussion in relation to influence on the behaviour of the individuals in the organisation.
LO4 Apply concepts and philosophies of organizational behavior to a given business situation
P4 Apply concepts and philosophies of OB within an organisational context and a given business situation
With respect to the concept as well as philosophy of organisational behaviour, it is seen that they are based on key elements which are nature of the people and nature of the organisation. Nature of people refers to the basic qualities of persons and individuals involved in an organisation that can be similar or unique. Factors affecting nature of people are individual difference, whole person, motivated behaviour and perception (Chumg et al. 2016). Considering the first factor, individual difference, it is seen that the individuals are approached individually through one-on-one. Managers of Marks and Spencer, generally conduct one-on-one discussions on a quarterly basis with the employees to identify their point of view. However, this has been criticised on grounds of being biased and judgemental. The second factor of the organisational behaviour is perception which is an ability to observe and conclude things. Motivation is another factor which influences the behaviour of individuals in a positive as well as negative way. The employees of Marks and Spencer are more positively motivated by the HR strategies as well as the reward strategies offered by the management however, there are certain low level employees who are not satisfied by the policies of the Company which instils negative behaviour of employees. Whole person involves the emotional conditions of the employees which are non separable from physical conditions.
The other element of the concept and philosophy of organisational behaviour is the nature of organisation which also plays a significant role. The factors affecting nature of organisation are social system, ethics as well as mutual interest. Social system is the social connectivity of the organisations with its customers, suppliers as well as other stakeholders. It can be formal and informal. The behaviours of individuals are affected by these social systems as it acts as the mirror reflection of the values and beliefs of organisations (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016). Group and individual drives affect the behaviour. Ethics is the moral principles of organisations. Marks and Spencer meets moral standards and ethics in its business operations like values, integrity, discipline as well as client centricity. Moreover, the code of ethics training rewards has been recently added to the company culture for notable ethical behaviour. Mutual interest refers to the mutual understanding of the employees as well as organisation. The mutual interest is an important determinant of behaviour prevailing in the workplace. With respect to Marks and Spencer, it is seen that the Company to a great extent has undergone various challenges pertaining to mutual understanding between employees and organisations (Weng et al. 2015). Thus, mutual interest can lead to positive as well as negative behaviours. With regards to the team development theory of Tuckman, it has been analysed that the elements of concepts and philosophies of organisational behaviour are in complete alignment with the four phases of forming, norming, storming and performing.
M4 Justify and evaluate a range of concepts and philosophies in how they inform and influence behaviour in both positive and negative ways.
To achieve this criterion, the concepts and philosophies of organisational behaviour are presented to explain the impact they have on behaviour in positive and negative way.
D2 Critically analyse and evaluate the relevance of team development theories in the context of OB concepts and philosophies that influence behaviour in the workplace.
To attain this, the critical analysis of the concepts and philosophies of organisational behaviours are discussed. Moreover, the concepts are aligned with the phases of Tuckman theory.
Conclusion
Through this discussion, it is concluded that organisational behaviour and motivation are important in an organisation. Considering the case of Marks and Spencer, it is seen that a positive organisational culture is provided which created a positive behaviour among the teams and individuals. Organisational power and politics highly impact the behaviours of others as well as the performance of individuals and groups. Both content and process theories of motivations like Theory X and Y and Porter-Larlow models are considered to identify the type of motivation followed by the Company. It has been identified that the effective team working is a major characteristic of the Company; however, certain traits of ineffective team working have also been identified. The concepts and philosophies of organisational behaviour are identified.
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