Introduction
Organizational environment and work relations have a great impact on an employee and his motivation, objectives, and personal achievements. For this reason, every employer tries to select the best place he/she can contribute to and fulfill his life aims and career goals. The essay examines scenario 2 as a place to work with a large professional firm. The paper aims to explain why my personal needs and values, expectations, and career goals are met by this organization. The essay also addresses the general environment that affected the organization and its business-level strategy, competitive position, and organization structure. The essay concludes by explaining why scenario twp meets my values and expectations and is the best place for me to work.
Needs, values, and expectations
Needs, values, and expectations are the main factors affecting employees and their achievements. In the selected organization, effectiveness is construed as changing the environment, reducing costs, improving the quality of life, reaching a high-quality decision, being seen as effective, improving return on investment, lowering the crime rate, or any number of things. Following Armstrong (2001), effectiveness is certainly no one thing, not even within a work unit or a single problem. Many acts may be construed as effective and they all maybe if they attack different facets of a problem. One act may increase profits, another may improve working relationships, and each may negate the effects of the other. Since effectiveness is a value judgment, we believe it must be given meaning within a specific context.
The chosen organization meets my personal values and supports my personal goals. According to Senior (2001) “personal values developed early in life may be resistant to change. They derived from those of particular groups or systems, such as culture or religion” (p. 92). This company allows me to work hard and make money. The main problem of modern organizations is that they need an average employee who works 5-8 hours a day and is deprived of an opportunity for career promotion. The professional firm allows me to prove my professional knowledge and skills. Working 10-12 hours per day, I will not find another job as an additional source of income. I suppose that employee-job performance is a function of ability, job design, and motivation. If the employee has the adequate ability and the job is designed well, then performance is solely dependent on the level of motivation. Assuming ability and job design are in order, high motivation becomes a necessary and sufficient condition for high performance. Work should be beneficial because only in this case it is interested and rewarding. The job in a large professional company will help me to prove my abilities and skills. On the other hand, low ability and faulty job design limit the effect of effort on performance.
My work needs will also be fulfilled because I want to have a chance to be promoted and earn much. Following Robbins (2002) for employees to perceive that effort will in fact result in performance, they must sense they either have the ability or can easily get it. Providing readily available help, or guidance, makes them feel they can easily gain the required skills and knowledge if they do not already possess them. I must know that when I run into difficulties because of a skill or knowledge deficiency, I have ready access to a source that can resolve the deficiency. Accessible help allows me to sense that the lacking ability is not a “block” to performance. A supervisor, available to willingly provide help when such is needed, is one key source. Supervisors should let employees know that one of their major functions as supervisors is to provide help when it is really needed. I like variety in my work, so the company will help me to fulfill this personal need. Perhaps too often supervisors make themselves unavailable either by not being around or by giving the impression subordinates should not “bother” them with problems.
Rewards must not only rise with improvements in performance, they must rise substantially. The greater the reward increase for a given change in performance, the greater the motivational impact of the reward. If an organization’s rewards are only slightly or moderately contingent on performance, it may not be enough to make the employee fully realize that performance does make a difference. Every employee has an awareness threshold, and the rewards one experiences must be high enough dependent on performance to break through this threshold. In the eyes of the employee, the rewards associated with high performance must be significantly greater than the rewards associated with low performance.
The increase in rewards for given units of increase in performance must be sufficient overall ranges of performance too. For example, simply providing relatively high reward increases for changes in performance over the medium to high ranges of performance may not motivate if relatively small reward increases are provided over low ranges of performance. But rewards will not motivate unless a relatively large percentage of the total reward package–of the different kinds of rewards offered by the organization-is made dependent on performance. I prefer to control my tasks and assignments and be responsible for their quality and complexion. There should be at least some performance-contingent rewards for each of the five types of basic human needs–physiological, safety and security, social and belongingness, esteem and status, and self-actualization. I suppose that work should provide significant rewards and financial growth. The professional company gives a chance to employees express their opinion and needs. I need that my work will be meaningful and become a part of my life. I hope that this work will provide an opportunity to strengths my abilities and talents.
My life expectancy is to become a very well-paid expectative. Expectations are defined as “events likely to happen” (Senior, 2001, p. 98). People feel better about themselves when they look better when they know it, and when they know others know it. I suppose that my ‘dream’ can be fulfilled by hard work and self-improvement, training, and effective support from management. Employees will be convinced they are maintaining or improving their competencies to perform if they have periodic opportunities to participate in formal training programs. Having employees frequently upgrade their skills through training increases performance directly, of course, because employee ability, affected through training, along with motivation and job design are the primary determinants of the quality and level of their performance. But the training also boosts performance through its indirect effect on motivation. When people are trained well, they believe their efforts can pay off. Ability is not perceived as a barrier. A strong contingent relationship is seen between effort and performance. To sense a strong performance-reward correlation, one must sense that rewards are received on a performance contingent basis. One must get high rewards for high performance and low rewards for low performance. One must not feel that rewards are experienced independent of performance.
General Environment
Companies do not operate in a vacuum but interact with other originations and communities in general. For this reason, the general environment influences the organization and its strategies. Taking into account the nature of work and the industry, competition and economic demand will have an impact on an organization’s operations and performance. At the conceptual level, strategic credibility may confer a “competitive advantage to those firms that are successful in sustaining a positive strategic image over time” (Campbell, 1997, p. 34). If “reputation” constitutes a barrier to entry, as some have claimed, certainly strategic credibility is one important element in a firm’s “reputation.” Another benefit of strategic credibility is a potential reduction in the cost of capital. Credibility and the disclosure of strategic information services to reduce investor perceptions of risk and uncertainty, lowering the expected rate of return on their investment–or so the financial theory goes. A shifting environment may require a departure or change in corporate strategy. Many corporate executives concluded that, on balance, the benefits of communicating strategy outweighed the potential problems. They also suggested ways of minimizing negative outcomes. The company should resist competition and innovate in order remain competitive (Doyle & Stern 2006).
Following Campbell (1997) communications about the future are of special importance. While various stakeholders are interested in a company’s candid appraisal of poor performance, they can be even more sensitive to information about management’s strategic intentions which allow them to make judgments about future corporate prospects. Here, the experiences of some of our companies diverge from the results reported in the global strategic communications survey. It departed from the more usual corporate practice (according to respondents in our study) of “providing little information that would tend to reduce future uncertainty” (Campbell1997, p. 87). Another important communications characteristic is simplicity; keep the strategy message simple, but communicate it with great frequency. Also, resist the temptation to rest on one’s laurels when things seem to be going well; avoid complacency and the “frontrunner” phenomenon. The job of strategic communications is never done. Also, self-serving attributions that take too much credit for good performance while blaming poor performance on uncontrollable, external factors can erode strategic credibility (Doyle & Stern 2006).
Another important factor that forces the organization to innovate is technological changes. Technology has been forcing and enabling organizations to become more competitive. Technology is also changing the nature of work. For example, telecommunications already makes it relatively easy for many to work at home, and the use of computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems plus robotics is booming. Manufacturing advances like these will continue to eliminate blue-collar jobs, replacing them with jobs requiring greater skill, and these new workers will require a degree of training and commitment that their parents never dreamed of. As a result, to remain competitive, jobs and organizational charts will have to continue to be redesigned, new incentive and compensation plans instituted, new job descriptions written, and new employee selection, evaluation, and training programs instituted—all with the help of HRM. Technological innovations will help the professional organization to compete with other companies and deliver high-quality services to potential buyers. Without innovations, the company will fail to meet changing demand and can lose its brand image (Doyle & Stern 2006).
A business-level strategy
Businesses seek to influence potential customers to purchase their products and services through a process of differentiation. The benefit of differentiating an offering from that of the competitor is that it encourages initial customer purchase and ongoing customer loyalty. It may also enable a price premium to be commanded. The way in which a business differentiates can be considered using a simple matrix. The business-level strategy accepted by the company is uniqueness. Following Schien (1996) “this is where the business provides a distinct basis of differentiation (uniqueness perceived by the customer and regarded as valuable) which enables the business to be won and normally a price premium attracted” (p. 82). Uniqueness will help the company to sustain credibility and strong brand image, compete with other service providers and ensure high profits and growth rates. There is a further choice that defines the breadth of the competitive arena in which the business operates.
Industry-wide — this is where the business operates across the breadth of the industry providing products/services for a wide range of customer needs. Particular segment only — in this context the business has chosen to concentrate attention on a defined segment of the market. Competitive positioning enables a tailored approach to be adopted. Following Campbell (1997) in turn, this may lead to cost efficiency by ensuring that only the specific competitive requirements of the segment are addressed rather than, for example, market/industry-wide differentiation approaches which may add significant cost. The differentiation strategy is often the most attractive’ in that it provides the opportunity for a more creative approach to the market. For this reason, the organization tends to be marketing-led. It is vital in these business units that the cost/benefit analysis of any new form of differentiation is thoroughly evaluated. In addition, sensitivity analysis must be used to look at the viability of the associated cost base at different levels of sales performance and in different market conditions (Paley, 2006).
The primary challenge with differentiation is one of competitor replication, where the advantage is temporary and, once replicated, becomes an increase in the industry/market cost base for all competitors. This upward migration of the cost base can over time destroy an attractive market segment. It is these tensions between either providing a differentiated approach to match customer needs and gain competitive advantage, or pursuing cost leadership to gain profit margin and value advantage, that often leads in practice to a mixed approach. This means that the advantages of neither competitive position are achieved. This being stuck in the middle’ yields no competitive advantage and erodes the position of the business unit. When using the matrix, care needs to be taken to ensure that the stated competitive positions reflect reality rather than management perception. In some markets, several competitors will see themselves as being differentiated and therefore positioned in the system’ box. If these individual forms of perceived differentiation are not valued highly by the customer no real competitive advantage has been attained (Paley, 2006).
Organizational Structure
The centralized, highly integrated organizational structure of corporate communications is the best one for a large professional organization. This structure allows management to provide integration and coordination across a number of diverse functional areas and between several organizational levels. Internal communications with employees are closely coordinated with external interaction with the financial community (Robbins, 2002). Centralization is defined as “a process by which the activities of an organization, usually concerning decision-making, become concentrated within a particular group” (senior 2001, p. 104). Divisional management’s contributions have to be integrated with headquarters staff and senior management. An absence of coordination/integration produces disarray and a lack of discipline and focus in corporate communications. Organizational arrangements are directed by manufacturer-distributor-retailer relationships. Where a large manufacturer is linked to numerous small distributors, the manufacturer emphasizes marketing leadership. Where a large distributor such as a wholesaler deals with a large number of manufacturers, retailers, or both, he furnishes the leadership. Organizations are patterns or arrangements designed to achieve goals.
They transform a group of unrelated marketing activities into a cohesive system. As systems, they focus on actual authority structures, communications networks, interrelationships of elements, and the functioning of an organization and its process, rather than on the structure portrayed by static organization charts and the organization attributes capable of achieving goals. The organization should introduce formal communication based on centralized decision-making (Robbins, 2002). Implementation of the marketing-management concept has resulted in more operationally structured organizations. In centralized organizations, strategies are chosen and standards are set by various managers to achieve what they feel is important and to evaluate effectiveness. Situations are highly organized and formalized but still result in conflict and confusion (Schien, 1996). For example, conflicting directives may be given from one source to increase sales, from another to reduce advertising, and from a third to limit style changes. Plans and procedures will help the company to avoid mistakes and indecision (Robbins, 2002).
At the large professional organization, systems emphasize the integration and coordination of functions and facilities, the adaptation of organizations to their internal and external environments, the impact of changes in one part of the organization on others, the resources necessary to support the organization system itself, the resources necessary to achieve goals, and the ends mean relationship. Systems stress the interrelationships or connectedness of organizations. Although the structure, or formal part, of an organization, can be easily portrayed, the informal organization, the part that greatly affects behavior and performance, cannot. Task delegation will be introduced at all management levels (Schien, 1996). A business is a social system whose efficiency is influenced greatly by interpersonal relationships. Thus, to understand a marketing organization is to understand more than its formal structure. No one organizational scheme can be developed, or a set of principles established, that can specify the best organization for a company. But knowledge of factors influencing organizational behavior, of the impact of market forces, of organization concepts, and of alternative tools for coordinating and integrating human effort, can furnish a basis for approaching the problems of marketing organization (Senior, 2001).
The rationale for this structure is that a large part of the marketing manager’s responsibility is the change in the structure of his organization. He must challenge accepted methods of organizing activities, for, in marketing, correct and permanent organizational arrangements do not exist. Self-image building can come in various forms but may involve something relatively simple like getting workers to improve their physical appearance through better dress and grooming. One of the overriding conclusions of the effort-net return model of motivation is that you do not just simply provide the employee with valued rewards-rewards matched to his or her needs–to motivate. You must be sure those rewards are experienced contingent on performance. If rewards are contingent on performance, employees have to know it in order for the rewards to be motivational (Senior, 2001). Casual awareness is not enough. They should be acutely sensitive to the fact. To build this sensitivity, managers can frequently and enthusiastically talk about how performance is the only means for employees to realize successes and enjoy satisfaction. Managers must emphasize that the only way you get ahead in the company is to produce; the only way you get your income up is to produce; the only way you gain real job security is to produce (Armstrong, 2001).
Conclusion
The analysis of scenario two shows that organizational growth depends on effective operations and performance, employees’ commitment, and organizational structure. This scenario has been chosen because it meets and reflects my career goals and life expectations, personal needs, and values so important for every employee. Marketing organization and leadership are concerned with both internal organization and the development of systems. This organization is able to meet external and internal needs and innovate. Without it, there is nothing. Frequent discussions informally, in meetings, and in written communiquĂ©s will sensitize employees to the fact that performance counts for something. Managers would do well to emphasize the dependency of specific rewards on performance.
Bibliography
Armstrong, M. 2001, Human Resource Management. 8th edn. Kogan Page.
Campbell, D.J. 1997, Organizations and the Business Environment. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Doyle, P. Stern, Ph. 2006, Marketing Management and Strategy. Financial Times/ Prentice Hall; 4 edition.
Paley, N. 2006, The Manager’s Guide to Competitive Marketing Strategies. Thorogood.
Robbins, S. 2002, Organizational Behavior. Pearson Higher.
Schien, E. H. 1996, Organizational Culture and Leadership. Jossey-Bass
Senior, Barbara. 2001, Organizational Change, Capstone Publishing.