Further, coercive and reward power are often highly distributed through the more agile organizations and as a result must be applied immediately to behavior to be effective.
In the context of Dr. Edgar Schein's (1983) analysis and presentation of results in his working papers referenced in this document, an industry's growth and culture is well defined in the following quote. In the working papers, Schein (1983) writes:
For an organizational culture to exist, there must be a definable organization in the sense of a number of people interacting with each other for the purpose of accomplishing some goal in their defined environment. The founder of an organization simultaneously creates such a group and, by force of his or her personality, begins to shape the culture of that group. But the culture of that new group is not there until the group has had its own history of overcoming various crises of growth and survival, and has worked out solutions for how to cope with its external problems of adaptation and its internal problems of creating a workable set of relationship rules.
Power topologies and their continued use are influenced by organizations; culture and the definition of cultural distance (Hofstede, 2006). These three factors contribute to the organizations' willingness to change over time. This is particularly true in globally-based organizations where cultural differences will vary significantly across each geographic region an organization operates in. From research cited on cultural distances (Geert Hofstede, 2006) and more specifically to the application of power distance as a variable in explaining the performance of organizations in rapidly changing industries, the implications of Power Distance as defined by Hofstede set the foundation for an organization looking to ensure agility and responsiveness to both customers and outside forces over time. In his working papers and books, Hofstede defines Power Distance as follows:
Power distance, that is the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more vs. less), but defined from below, not from above. It suggests that a society's level of inequality is endorsed by the followers as much as by the leaders. Power and inequality, of course, are extremely fundamental facts of any society and anybody with some international experience will be aware that 'all societies are unequal, but some are more unequal than others"
Power Distance is defined by intellectual ability to quickly solve problems and turn the non-standard into the standard, to take deviating customer requirements and deliver them in the context of a shrink-wrapped package. This is the essence of growing an agile organization at the employee level. Working to productize non-forming customer requirements and looking to capitalize on them is a major strength industry leaders in manufacturing industries for example are attempting, redefining the concept of the agile organization in the process. This is juxtaposed to hierarchical organizations less willing to change despite obvious messages from the external environment.
Sustaining and Solidifying Trust
The one factor that has been researched in the context of both its theoretical and practical applicability to organization theory is trust. The lack of trust exacerbated by the growth of offshoring, outsourcing and the concentration on transparency and compliance. Often in responding to these factors organizations leave their employees sensing a lack of relative status, uncertainty about their futures, and a tendency to become negative about the changes as the subordinate is not involved in the decision process. Yet just as important as creating an agile organizational structure is the need for anchoring managerial change strategies in trust. The many facets of trust as they relate to manager- subordinate relationships hinges on consistency, transparency, and authenticity of interactions over time leading researchers to draw the conclusion that the catalyst of trust is transparency (Ergeneli, Sag, Ari, Metin, 2006; p. 60) and greatly increases the speed and accuracy of interactions across entire organizations. The ability of managers to create these levels of consistency, transparency, authenticity and genuineness has a direct implication in the ability to effectively lead associates through change. While the concept of change management is often discussed in the context of major strategic shifts internally, change management in essence happens with each new departmental goal or objective is introduced...
Even more, strong theory should approach micro processes, if necessary. In certain situations, strong theory leads to directions that cannot be observed without the help of theory. Regarding organizational theory, contributors to building the basis of strong theory in this field include: Frederick Winslow Taylor (who studied human behavior at work using a systematic approach), Elton Mayo (who focused on the emotional side of employees and how it affects their
The theory sees human organizational behaviors and conceptions culturally bound, rather than natural, unlike advocates of systems theory. Systems theory has been more influenced by sociology and linguistics than the natural sciences. Analyzing symbolic interpretations may be more useful in organizations serving diverse populations: if a public health organization wants to alleviate the prevalence of diabetes in an area, it is not enough to more effectively disseminate information through the
At the same time, this already discovered knowledge can be shared with the existing employees on a common forum and then implemented by each in part under the form of imitation. As we can see, with positive impacts, innovation and imitation can be successfully implemented internally, within the organization, and can help in maximizing the organization's activity. As we can see, organizational behavior helps, to some degree, shape the organization's
Rigidity rather than responsiveness has increasingly become the norm. In a McDonalds-style approach to education, efficiency and speed when serving the customer and demonstrating that the customer is being served through quick and demonstrable statistical results, is most important. A McDonalds-style institution must meet uniform standards, rather than create a shared 'meal' or experience -- this is the goal of the McDonald's enterprise, and sadly, far too many schools and
We were continuously advancing on the market with our very affordable price, giving customers greater marginal contribution or profit. When the fruitful effort resulted to increase market share and improve operational procedure, the Company was able to slowly recover lost resources and market share was gradually growing. This gave chance for the Company to return back to its employees the hard work earned. The first bonus was given after three
This theory therefore supports the idea of "… education as a force to enhance personal grow and development & #8230; stress self-actualization; freedom and responsibility & #8230;" ( Popovic) On the other hand, the critical/emancipatory approach as found in the writings of Paulo Freire and Ira Shor, while similar to the above, has the important difference of emphasizing the social, political and cultural context. From this point-of-view the emphasis is
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