In the contemporary business environment, building a sustainable competitive advantage requires a detailed analysis of the organizational behavior (OB) in the corporate setting. Seeing that the quality of interactions in the workplace defines the level of the employees’ performance and, therefore, the organization’s efficiency in the target market, focusing on OB is crucial to create the premises for a company to succeed in the designated environment. By using the concept of tolerance for success as the foundation for its OB framework and the tool for increasing its KPIs, the company has managed to not only succeed but also thrive in the excruciatingly competitive environment of the global economy.
The issue of multiculturalism is, perhaps, the essential point of company’s assessment. Indeed, in the environment of the global economy, there is a consistent need in communicating on a multicultural level. Consequently, it is crucial that an organization should develop a flexible corporate strategy that would reflect corporate values by acknowledging the employees’ unique cultural background. At BSH, the Mixing Blow framework is clearly viewed as the means of managing the cross-cultural relationships among its members. By definition, the identified strategy implies that the leaders of an organization should not only acknowledge the unique cultural characteristics of the employees but also create a sustainable environment in which they could feel valued as individuals and accepted as such (Prescott, 2016). BSH, in its turn, promotes the active integration of cultures in the context of the organization, thus, making successful communication a possibility: “BSH is today successful, and intends to remain so in the future. To achieve this it needs clear orientation – to guide its external dealings towards customers and partners and for internal activities involving its workforce” (“What we stand for,” 2017). As a result, the organization can explore the opportunity of meeting the needs of employees from any cultural, social, or ethnic background. Furthermore, the chances of creating the environment in which the staff members are motivated and enthusiastic are quite high at BSH.
However, developing an understanding of the employees’ needs is only the first step toward improving their performance and building prerequisites for enhancing their loyalty. Apart from a detailed analysis of the factors that contribute to the design of a comfortable workplace environment for the target team, the BSH Human Resource Management (HRM) team has been exploring the chances of improving the quality of communication in the company, particularly, as far as the collection of feedback from the personnel and its further processing is concerned. Indeed, communication specifics must not only inform but also define the tools used by the company to enhance the performance of the employees. A lot of attention is paid to the communication process and the tools used to enhance it in the BSH environment. For instance, instead of using a single form thereof, the managers of the company use a clever combination of verbal and nonverbal elements, therefore, making the message more palatable.
In BSH, interpersonal communication is used to address the issues related to the quality of the staff’s performance, as well as the efficacy of the company’s processes, in general (including the stages of production, logistics-related concerns, etc.). As a result, appropriate roles and responsibilities are assigned to the staff members. A combination of verbal and nonverbal communication elements is utilized to convey the message and help the employees connect emotionally to the problem. As a result, the levels of engagement are increased substantially, and the personnel remains invested in the success of the company’s operations. Finally, written communication serves primarily as the means of monitoring quality (i.e., submitting reports about the successes and failures of specific operations), as well as the tool for analyzing the efficacy of the organization (i.e., corporate statistics, charts, graphs, facts, figures, etc.). A balanced approach toward information management combined with the usage of the latest technological innovations, including network tools, serves as the foundation for building an impressive competitive advantage. Indeed, the speed of data processing for which BSH’s framework allows makes the organization outstandingly efficient in the target market even by the global standards (Niehaus & Price, 2013).
Rigid hierarchy is another component that makes the bulk of the organization’s success in the global environment. Even though it cannot be called the traditional one, it still falls under the category of the ones that are slightly flatter than the established standard. As a result, interactions occur in a free and uninhibited manner at the execution level, i.e., among the staff members, and allow for somewhat flexible management of the corporate processes at a managerial level. However, the company still clings to the systemic concept of building relationships, which prevents the company from becoming completely flat. It could be argued that the identified approach limits the opportunities to engage in direct communication. Indeed, the specified approach of managing the corporate hierarchy has its problems, the information management framework being the key issue.
By its design, the identified approach implies that data should flow from the top to the bottom of the company, i.e., from the leaders to the executives. As a result, premises for misunderstandings and misconceptions are created. Nevertheless, the strategy in question has proven to be quite viable and even efficient once it is supported with the help of the latest technological tools. Because of the application of the latest IT devices as the means of communicating essential information at BSH, the strategy works impeccably in the organizational design in question. While the traditions, values, and corporate standards are retained, the data flows in an uninhibited manner in the context of the enterprise, thus, contributing extensively to the increase in the staff’s productivity. The flatter structure does not reinvent the company’s hierarchy completely, which helps maintain the company’s integrity and at the same time keep it updated according to the latest management and leadership innovations (Sisney, 2013).
In addition to an improved and enhanced communication framework, BSH also employs a set of motivation techniques that are aimed to encourage the employees to excel in their performance. A combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivational techniques is the secret to BSHs’ success in the identified area. Indeed, most companies operating in the realm of the global economy agree that employees need to be offered both financial benefits and the opportunity to experience emotional satisfaction when performing in the workplace setting (Saeed, 2016). Studies point to the fact that it is crucial to have people invested in the company’s progress and excited about their contribution to the evolution of the firm (Sisney, 2013).
It should be noted, though, that, unlike extrinsic motivational strategies, which typically revolve around financial incentives and other opportunities, such as training programs and options for competency improvement, intrinsic one must come from the employee and, therefore, needs to be based on their loyalty to the firm. Seeing how HSB puts a very heavy emphasis on meeting the unique needs of the staff members, it is only reasonable to assume that the intrinsic motivation rates are very high among the staff members. Indeed, the current approach based on the enhancement of the significance of corporate values and the business ethics as the foundation for the decision-making processes in the organization serves as the tool for implanting the idea of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into the employees’ minds. As a result, they develop a strong sense of belonging, which is supported extensively by the career options and benefits that BSH has to offer. In other words, the extrinsic and intrinsic tools deployed by the company serve as the building blocks for fostering corporate loyalty in the staff members. As a result, BSH’s personnel remains devoted and engaged.
Being tightly connected to the realm of emotions, the concept of corporate loyalty fostered by the organization in its staff members is also supported extensively by the use of the Emotional Quotient (EQ), or Emotional Intelligence (EI), techniques (Husain, 2014). To its employees, BSH suggests considering the development of EI techniques as the tools for performing a better analysis and identifying the available decisions at the very first stages of the problem identification. In other words, EI is viewed as a part of the decision-making process in BSH, yet the organization also extends the concept to the area of enhancing the quality management process, especially as far as the improvement of the staff members’ skills is concerned.
For instance, the strategies that BSH uses serve as the foil for building self-awareness and, therefore, considering self-regulation as the means of preventing rash decisions deserve to be mentioned among the crucial parts of the EI management framework. In fact, seeing that the enhancement of self-regulation causes the employees to reconsider the nature of their choices and develop conscientiousness, the identified strategy can be deemed as a perfect method of encouraging the employees to develop CSR and the related qualities. As a result, BSH’s approach becomes the foundation for making the staff feel that they are a part of the company and, thus, develop loyalty toward it. The trustworthiness that the identified strategy helps develop should also be viewed as an essential addition to the array of qualities that the BSH staff members deploy on a regular basis to improve their performance and attain even greater success. Thus, the feedback process becomes reciprocal, and the relationships based on loyalty and trust are built at BSH.
Naturally, in the realm of the 21st-century market, it would be impossible not to consider the opportunities for enhancing the technological aspects of the company’s operations. Much to their credit, BSH leaders have explored a plethora of chances to improve the process of data acquisition, processing, and transfer with the help of the latest IT tools. The introduction of virtual elements, while implying that the control over some of the processes was going to be not as tight as it had been previously, was, therefore, carried out successfully. In fact, in 2007, BSH designed a unique training model that helped its staff members integrate into the workplace community to an even greater extent and form an even stronger bond with the organization.
Furthermore, the introduction of the latest tools for quality management, such as the ERGO-CHECK system, created the environment for an increase in productivity rates. As a result, BSH continued to control the essential corporate processes, at the same time giving more room for the employees to make company-related decisions and suggest innovative approaches to solving the emerging issues. Seeing that the motivation techniques designed by BSH did their job at enhancing the promotion of the CSR principles and a rise in the trustworthiness levels among the staff, it was quite safe to give the employees more independence. As a result, BSH is nowadays one of the leading firms in the area of Engineering and Electronics (“BSH once again one of the best employers in Europe,” 2014).
Despite the fact that the global economy area poses an array of challenges to any organization, and especially the one that produces technology, BSH has been quite prolific in the designated realm, mostly due to the use of the tolerance model when considering its OB issues. By stressing the significance of a deep understanding of what motivates the staff members and how to achieve high engagement rates, BSH has attained stunning success in the global market. The organization sets achievable goals based on the results of the staff members’ evaluation; consequently, the outcomes of the OB process inform the choice of the strategy made by the corporate leaders but do not define it. Thus, the opportunities for carrying out a flexible corporate policy that allows for meeting the needs of all stakeholders in question becomes a possibility.
References
BSH once again one of the best employers in Europe. (2014). Web.
Husain, S. (2014). Emotional intelligence for emerging leaders and entrepreneurs – Illustrating the fortune giants. New Delhi: Partridge.
Niehaus, R. J., & Price, K. F. (2013). Bottom line results from strategic human resource planning. New York, NY: Springer.
Prescott, J. (2016). Handbook of research on race, gender, and the fight for equality. New York, NY: IGI Global.
Saeed, M. (2016). Critical assessment of intrinsic and extrinsic employee motivational factors in the Libyan oil and gas sector. New York, NY: GRIN Verlag.
Sisney, L. (2013). Organizational physics – The science of growing a business. Santa Barbara, CA: Lulu.com.
What we stand for. (2017). Web.