Policies employed by the company to improve job performance include:
- Effective discipline and punishment
- Positive reinforcement
- Basing rewards on performance
- Treating people fairly
- Restructuring jobs
- Satisfying employees needs
- Setting work-related goals
With the policy of effective discipline and punishment, this is attributed to the Traditional theory ‘X’ which is best ascribed to Sigmund Freud who was not optimistic about man’s attitude to work. This theory assumes that people are lazy, hate work to the extent of avoiding it, and have no ambition. It also states that they take no initiative and avoid taking any responsibility; what they are interested in is security. In order to get them to do any work, they have to be rewarded, coerced intimidated, and punished. This is famously referred to as the philosophy of management. With this theory, Brewmaster limited had to police their staff whom they could no trust and who refused to cooperate. This presented an oppressive and frustrating atmosphere for the management and the employees, therefore, making it impossible for neither any achievements nor any creative work.
The application of the policy of positive reinforcement also failed to give the intended results This theory is supported by Douglas McGregor’s theory who believed that people want to learn and that work is their natural activity to the extent that they develop self-discipline and self-development. According to him, they see the reward not so much in cash payments as in the freedom to do difficult and challenging work by them. The manager’s job is to provide the environment in which the human wish for self-development is integrated into the organization’s need for maximum production efficiency. The basic objectives of both are therefore met and with imagination and sincerity, the enormous potential can be tapped.
However, the failure to carefully select the persons to form a homogenous group rendered the application of the policy not achieving the intended objective. The group leaders’ intention to hold power prevented people from developing freely hence the failure to enjoy watching the development and self-actualization of people. This prevented everyone and the organization as a whole from gaining as a result.
Brewmaster Limited also employed the policy of restructuring jobs. Although the intention was to streamline the jobs in such a manner that there is harmony within the job descriptions and the nature of work being done, it rendered unproductive since it failed to meet the worker’s objective of doing the challenging work by them as they would have wished. By restructuring the jobs, some felt that the organization was not providing the necessary environment for them to develop but instead denying them the opportunity to explore and exploit their capabilities without placing any boundaries on what they should and should not perform as laid down in the new structures. Some also felt that what they used to enjoy performing before the job restructuring were taken away to other job b group they could no longer perform these activities despite the experience they already had. This demoralized them and thus affecting their job performance. This, therefore, rendered Brewmaster limited not accomplishing its objectives.
By employing the policy of positive reinforcement in which the Brewmaster limited management placed high expectations on its staff, the intention was good in that it was aimed at increasing the worker’s productivity by aiming high by enforcing that attitude of ‘I can do’. This however rendered some staff setting high standards of achievement which ended up not being achieved. The pressure to achieve the targets and the failure to do so demoralized them to an extent that some could produce goods that are not up to standards in desperation to meet the target datelines. This ended up jeopardizing the integrity in terms of the quality of its products thus putting it at risk of losing its market.
According to Frederick Hertzberg, he divided human contributors into two; Factor Hygiene and Motivation Theory. The hygiene factors include the organization, its policies, and its administration, the kind of supervision, working conditions, interpersonal relations, salary, status, and job security. These do not lead to higher levels of motivation but without them there is dissatisfaction.
The second component in Herzberg’s theory is what people actually do on the job and should be engineered into the jobs the workers do in order to develop intrinsic motivation with the workforce. They are achievement, recognition, interest in the task, responsibility for the enlarged task, growth, and advancement to higher-level tasks. The group of motivation has to be present in the organization. The company’s focus on only the hygiene factors and ignoring motivators led to the company’s failure to achieve the targeted intentions. The other strategy employed by Brewmaster Limited was basing rewards on performance. This strategy agrees with David McClelland’s theory o9f Achievement Motivation. He had observed that some people have an intense need to achieve. Others do not seem to be concerned about achievement. His research led him to believe that the need for achievement is a distinct human motive that can be distinguished from other needs. Most important, achievement can be isolated and assessed in any group. One of the characteristics of achievement-motivated people is that they tend to be more concerned with personal achievements than rewards for success. However, they do not deject rewards but they do not consider it as essential as the accomplishment itself.
According to achievement-motivated people, money is valuable primarily as a measurement of their performance. It provides a means of assessing progress and comparing the achievements with those of other people. They do not seek money for economic security or status.
To these people, the nature of the feedback on top of concrete feedback is important to achievement motivated people. Their response is favorable to information about their work.
The presence of the achievement motivated people in the management of Brewmaster Limited did not make good managers since they lacked human skills. This is because of the fact that being a good producer is not sufficient to make an effective manager.
McClelland’s concept of achievement motivation has got relations with Hertzberg’s theory of motivation-hygiene. Individuals with high achievement motivation tend to be interested in the motivators (the job itself).
Achievement-motivated individuals want feedback as they want to know how well they are doing on their job. The Brewmaster’s strategy of only rewarding the workers and failing to give them concrete feedback led to the dissatisfaction of achievement-motivated individuals hence not providing them with the necessary environment to perform their best. This was the case in that the organization failed to provide the environment in which these individuals could: use their capacity to set high personal but obtainable goals, concern for personal achievement rather than the rewards of success, and satisfy the desire for job-relevant feedback rather than for attitudinal feedback.
The Brewmaster policy of treating people fairly was with good intention in that it aimed at not undermining or discriminating against anyone. This became subject to abuse in that some workers took advantage and could look for excuses and use them to try and convince the management why they were not able to carry out or complete certain tasks in time. This became apparent to an extent that it turned out to be a widespread worker apathy and lack of effort in the organization. This subsequently led to a lack of maturing of the staff due to the practices utilized in the organization. This consequently affected the performance of the staff and therefore poor results thus deteriorating the quality of the organization’s products. This is because workers were given minimal control over their environment and encouraged to be passive, dependent, and subordinate; therefore behaving immaturely. This was out of the expectation of workers to act in immature ways rather than maturely.
The design of the formal organization also was a contributing factor to the abuse of the company’s product on the job. This is because of the underlying fact that organizations are usually created to achieve goals or objectives that can best be met collectively therefore the formal organization became an architect’s conception of how the objectives may be achieved. Thus the job design came first and the individuals thereafter fitted to the job.
The design was basically based on task specialization, a chain of command, unity of direction, and span of control. In the process, management tried to increase and enhance organizational and administrative efficiency and productivity by making workers “interchangeable parts”. This proved unhealthy to the worker’s performance and thus undermined the results.
Brewmaster Limited employed leadership style and management control in which power and authority rested in the hands of a few at the top of the organization, and thus those at the junior-most level of the chain of command were strictly controlled by their superiors or by the system itself.
Specialization of tasks resulted in the oversimplification of the job thus rendering it repetitive, routine, and unchallenging.
The directive, task-oriented leadership where discussions about the work were made by the superior, with the workers only carrying out those decisions was the case with Brewmaster Limited. This type of leadership evoked managerial controls such as budgets, some incentive systems, time and motion studies, and standard operating procedures which restricted the initiative and creativity of workers.
References
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Phares, J. E. (1991). Introduction to Personality (3rd ed.). New York: Harper Collins.