First Part
Promotion
Many organizations have a way in which their employees behave, interact and do things. These things include promotion and the need to climb the corporate ladder. It is the desire of every employee to climb the corporate ladder. This has become competitive with the advent of youthful employees, who have all that it takes to climb the corporate ladder.
On the other hand, it is an almost universal culture in organizations to promote older employees. This has brought some form of collision in the work place. Generation Y, which refers to these youthful employees, want to climb the corporate ladder fast. This ambition, justified from their point of view by the fact that they have all it takes, is real.
This is especially true in the ICT departments of many companies. However, most companies have a culture where employees who have experience get promoted to high-managerial positions. Managers and company owners alike are in constant balancing of the two. This is presenting the current company structure with a perplexing situation (Grusky, 2003).
Academic Link
The issue of promotion in companies is quite crucial to ensure continued production and the need for growth. Promotion, however, has become a vitally challenging topic in current organizations. These organizations have to grapple with the need for younger people to be factored. These young people, fresh from college, have so much knowledge that can be applied organizations to enhance growth.
Having trained in many fields and technologically savvy, they want to climb the corporate ladder fast enough and retire early. Managers need these young people if they are to survive the current world of business.
However, on many occasions, the managers grapple with a culture that has continually manifested itself in the majority of the organizations world wide. This culture requires that those employees who have worked for a company in along time deserve promotion and not those that managers deem to have all the qualifications (Haveman, 1993).
Example as a Manager
Faced by such a situation, as a manager I would look at many factors before suggesting someone for promotion. I would not choose age as a factor; rather, I would choose the input that a certain individual has compared to another in that particular organization and managerial set up.
For example, if I am faced by need to have a new supply chain manager, I would mostly consider the holders ability to understand the whole process. Two factors would qualify candidates: experience and training. Experience can only win if the candidate in question demonstrates insurmountable levels of knowledge in that field.
However, if the company wants to overhaul its supply chain and employ automated processes, it follows that a young person, who has fresh knowledge, will conquer. Therefore, culture should not be a factor in this case. It will automatically take a backseat and other vital factors put into consideration like company growth (Phillips, 2001).
Example as an Employee
As an employee in a department where a void, maybe technical assistant, is to be filled by way of promotion I would recommend class knowledge rather than experience. This culture of experience is good as it promotes other equally crucial aspects of an organization in the long term. However, short term goals are lost in the process.
According to me short term goals determine how well a company will achieve log term ones. In filing the technical assistant position, young people will be likely candidates as they work quite well with that nature of work. These people want a situation where they do not have to stay hooked at a position for the rest of the day.
They are only summoned when they are needed and that gives them time and space to work on contractual basis. Studies have shown that this greatly improves their workability and motivates them. This job environment is suitable for such young people. In an organization where promotions are pegged on a culture of experience these young people lose out on these opportunities, and so does the company on revenue (Phillips, 2001).
Second Part
Training
Training is a crucial are in any organization. It determines what employees the company has and hence its out put. However, there is a constant indecision in company circles as to its importance. Is it more economical to train than hire an experienced employee? What are the benefits of training and what is the down side. How much does culture affect a company’s decision in this front?
If a company has a culture of training its employees, is it mandatory for a departmental manager to also go the same route? I will put this question into perspective in the next few paragraphs with regard to culture in general. However, training will be the topic in question in comparison to experience (Rowe, 1990).
Academic Link
Training, many scholars agree, is quite crucial for the growth and goal realization of any company. It however is influenced by many factors. One of them is the question whether it is economical or the experience hiring route is more beneficial. Both achieve the goals of an organization but training is more beneficial. By training, it is even more profitable and clever to engage young employees.
These youthful people fresh from college are better molded than employees snatched from another company. Otherwise, the whole essence of training is lost. Experience is what a company wants in the long run and loyal employees. Studies have shown that trained employees find it more sensible to stay in a certain organization. This is because of the acclimatization process that individuals fear.
Therefore, going to a new organization means subjecting oneself to a whole new environment which is not the desire of many individuals. The studies further suggests that employees who shift camp from one organization to another are mostly motivated by better salaries and not the desire to impact in an organization.
All these factors enhance the importance of training. However, some organizational cultures require managers to hire experienced employees so as to evade this process of training. It follows that these companies lose out on genuine employees in an attempt to escape training fees. This in the long-term denies them more revenue and profitability.
Example as a Manager
Accounting and finance are two vitally critical departments in an organization. Employees in those departments needed to maintain high level secrets. A company that employs retrogressive hiring based on a culture of ‘experience hiring’ is doomed to fall victim of fraud. These new employees, who replace fired or retired employees, should be trained from scratch.
An accountant who is trained has lesser ground to commit acts of fraud because the bonds created with bosses. This bond restricts them from committing acts of fraud. As also mentioned earlier, there is a high likelihood that the employee will serve in that position longer. This is in comparison with an experienced employee who is taken from another company.
This experienced employee may be after something other than quality service. I would, therefore, train my employees. I would occasionally hire experienced employees from other companies.
This is especially true for such departments like accounting that are very vital to company survival. I will work with the belief that trained employees understand a company’s other objectives better than an experienced employee from another company (Scully and Segal, 2002).
Example as an Employee
Taking a janitor as an example, I will critically analyze the importance of training. Janitors are responsible for cleaning and sometimes security in an organization. In as much as their contribution to the company revenue may not be significant, they play an important role in enhancing security. Simply put they are aware of the security apparatus of a company.
This is because they have access to many offices and entrances to the whole compound of the company. This unrestricted access means that they can easily collude with fraudsters to defraud a company of its property. Training will ensure that the possible misdemeanor of these employees is monitored.
This monitoring emanates from them not from the company as they have developed a psychological set up that and bond that links them to the company. However, an employee who is hired and entrusted with such responsibility purely from the fact that they have experience, is a dangerous move as it may compromise security (Scully and Segal, 2002).
Third Part
Leadership Question
Culture is diverse and manifests itself in many facets of a company. The dimensions that it takes have partly been discussed above. Firstly, we have discussed promotions. This aspect of an organization, as noted earlier, is quite paramount to the success that is desired in any company.
However, it is bogged down by a problem of culture. Many retrogressive mangers continue to believe that the only way a person attains credibility as merit-deserving promotion wise is by gaining experience.
This is not true and it continues to be vetoed by a generation of youthful people that has come up. This generation, known as generation y is challenging this aspect on many angles. They have gained insurmountable knowledge while at school. This knowledge is both in the field of the managers they find in those organizations and in new fields like technology as noted by Gronn (2002).
Technology is a paramount branch of a company. To survive in the new competitive field, a company must have technologically savvy ICT department. This is in advent of a virtual global world. In this world, everything, including market domination, is shifting to the internet. Therefore, it has become increasingly important for a company to engage the services of generation y.
However, this youthful generation has come with many demands. This has left nothing to chance and managers are grappling with nothing less than the need to rethink their institutional cultures. This rethink should be accommodative of that generation. This is even more emphasized regarding the fact that they will form the next bloc from which companies will be expected to get their employees (Gronn, 2002).
Culture has also brought another aspect to the fore of the current mangers. This aspect entails training. Is it an organizational responsibility to train employees? Is it also financially sound to train employees? What is better: training or hiring experienced employees? Many mangers are bogged down by organizational bureaucracy that dictates the terms when it comes to hiring.
The two above-mentioned cases present a leadership twist in the current organizational set up. The current set up has a lot of mistrust and cut throat competitions within and between companies. Within companies, there is the constant jockeying for position. Outside the company, there is cut throat competition for market leadership and profit.
The growth of revenue continues to dictate the nature of each step taken for company leadership. The balancing act is mostly challenging. Leaders of the various departments continue to grapple with challenges that are presented their way by this evolving way of things (Scully and Segal, 2002).
My Thought
Based on the research I have conducted, it is quite evident that leadership positions nowadays need an overhaul. Leaders in corporate organizations need to rethink and format their initial mental set up. The demagogue that is culture, which restricts many organizational endeavors also need to be overhauled.
This is crucial to accommodate the dynamism that is been witnessed in this sector. It has continued to grow in a phenomenal way. Leaders and managers can only grow with it if they are to remain in business.
Trends in the market is shifting and the ground for market war is no longer physical, it is digital. All these are pointers that the earlier group of managers cannot apply in the current world. New strategies and goals that put into consideration these changes must be adopted.
There is no better way to do that than to adopt the same change makers in the companies. These calls for a rethink of two aspects of corporate cultures: training and promotion. As discussed and supported by academic evidence, these two are quite important.
Reference List
Gronn, P. (2002) Distributed Leadership as a Unit of Analysis. The Leadership Quarterly, 13(4), Pp 423-451.
Grusky, O. (2003) Managerial Succession and Organizational Effectiveness. American Journal of Sociology, 69, (1), Pp 21-31.
Haveman, H. A. (1993) Ghosts of Managers Past: Managerial Succession and Organizational Mortality. Academy of Management Journal, 36 (4), Pp 864-881.
Phillips, D. J. (2001) the Promotion Paradox. American Journal of Sociology, 106 (4), Pp 1058-1098.
Rowe, M. (1990) Barriers to Equality: The Power of Subtle Discrimination to Maintain Unequal Opportunity. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 3(2), Pp 153-163.
Scully, M. & Segal, A. (2002) Passion with an Umbrella: Grassroots Activists in the Workplace. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 19 (1), Pp 125–168.