Venus Inc. Organizational Behavior Essay

Problem Identification

Venus Inc. is a company located in the United States that deals with medical supplies. Having operated in the United States for 12 years, it hopes to expand its operations across the world. The company has four major departments including sales, marketing, supplying and manufacturing all of which work together to enhance the performance of the organization.

The managing director, Kimberly Johnson, has been the manager of the company for the last seven years and has seen diminished growth of the company in terms of productivity and performance. Indeed, the company has recorded losses for the last three years. This has raised concerns for the stakeholders and Kimberly seeks to reverse the trend by enhancing a positive organizational behavior. Particularly, she has explored various reasons that could have led to the downtrend that the company experiences.

At the outset, she notes that the organization has four incoherent departments. The sales department head, Ryan Kiste has steered his department to growth notwithstanding the poor performance exhibited by other departments. Nonetheless, he has always been at loggerheads with other departmental heads owing to his ability to inspire performance within his department.

During management meeting with Kimberly, the differences among the managers remained apparent, as they have already created divisions among the employees. Kimberly realized that the problem is deep rooted in the organizational behavior of the company. She therefore seeks to see the solutions that the managers would present to respond to the diminishing performance.

It also comes to light that the employees’ motivation has decreased and Ryan pinpoints that lack of a remuneration strategy could have been the major cause of divisions among both employees and managers.

Organizational Level Analysis of Venus Inc

Organization Culture

Organizational culture of an organization refers to the prevalent practices are common within departments of a company (McKenna 2000, p. 56). It distinguishes the organization from other organizations and makes it unique. Normally, organizations use their culture as a competitive edge over their rivals. It fosters common beliefs and practices within an organization and cultivates a sense of the belongingness among the employees.

According to McKenna (2000, p. 58), organizational culture is instrumental in ensuring that the practices and beliefs of people remain in line with the organization’s needs and ensures that a company is able to achieve its goals of maximizing on profits and revenues. To that end, all organizational practices and beliefs are synchronized in such a way that they reflect the organizations core values and vision (Black 2003, p. 71).

For Venus Inc., the organizational culture seems to be a major problem. Every department seems to have differentiated practices that have led to a fragmented organization. The beliefs possessed by employees working in Ryan’s department seem to be different from those of other departments.

Therefore, Venus Inc. faces challenges in coming with a uniform organizational culture that guides the employees and ensures that the identity of the organization is upheld. Further, the employees seem to be following the respective departments’ practices and have no shared beliefs, norms and practices that guide their code of conduct. Indeed, it is reasonably hard for Ryan to influence and motivate employees belonging to other departments to achieve their goals.

Hofstede organizational culture demands that all organization’s employees have a shared mentality and assumptions to guide the identity of the organization. This culture entails the ability of the managers to have a mind changing training in which all members get to understand the importance of the organizational culture as a source of belongingness and shared values and beliefs.

It is also noteworthy that informal sub cultures have emerged within the organization. McKenna (2000, p. 83) points out that the managers ought to be wary that subcultures that groups form may be detrimental if they deviate from the goals of the organization.

Organizational structure

Jex & Britt (2008, p. 82) articulate that organization structure refers to the job and work design in which all members of the staff have clearly defined roles. Apparently, Venus Inc. follows bureaucratic structures typical of downwards communication since the designation of roles assumes a hierarchical structure.

Kimberly is answerable to the board of directors while the departmental heads reports to the managing director. Subsequently, the departmental heads ensure that the employees in their respective departments are effective and work in line with the envisaged objectives of increased productivity.

Not only should the departments work together to enhance the performance of the organization, they should also strive towards establishing common beliefs and attitudes through effective inter departmental communication and sharing (Jex & Britt, 2008, p. 91).

It is imperative to note that Venus Inc. has had structural problems that have challenged the ability of the managing director to point out potential areas that could be detrimental to the performance of an organization.

Apparently, Kimberly realizes a little too late that the ineffectiveness within the organization stems from lack of an organizational structure. Communication seems to be ineffective while the employees seem to have decreased motivation.

According to Handy (1993, p.12), an organizational structure should enhance the efficiency of all aspects of the organization including communication and performance. Venus Inc. lacks strategy that would see a regulative superior structure where all departments are able to highlight areas that they feel are not effective as expected and envisaged in the organizational culture.

Buchanan & Huczynski (2010, p. 45) highlight that horizontal differentiation seems to be the major cause of ineffectiveness within the company since every department performs different roles. Besides, the bureaucratic structure has led to diminished returns since some departments have not performed uniformly with the rest.

The conflict arising among the departmental heads are caused by lack of communication and shared vision on how some roles should be divided (Jex & Britt, 2008, p. 91). This has resulted to poor identification of problems leading to demoralized employees and divisions within the organization.

Group Level Analysis Of organization Behavior

In the context of Venus Inc, the there are numerous group dynamics that an individual can pin point being the challenge. At the outset, it is critical to analyze the work groups primarily composed by the employees as a major source of divisions in the company. Group level analysis in organization behavior dwells on the conflicts, satisfaction and motivation of the groups (Handy 1993, p.19).

All organizations have groups that allow them to achieve their goals and as such, group dynamics are present. The implication of inability to resolve group tensions and hostilities in Venus Inc seems to the major cause of the perceived divisions among employees.

As Ryan pointed out, the divisions within the company results from the reluctance of the managers to resolve issues surrounding the motivation and heightened by the constant disagreements by the organization’s departmental heads. Besides, lack of a clear strategy to remunerate the employees has resulted to innumerable challenges where employees fulfill their roles without enthusiasm.

Group dynamics require the comprehension of the fact that different members of the work groups belong to different stages of maturity. In Venus Inc, only the sales department workers seem to have achieved the maturity phase. Maturity phase demands that a group should be in a position to execute and perform their duties professionally without allowing emotions to dictate their course of action.

This is apparent in the company since the workers have been able to perform notwithstanding the reluctance shown by other work groups. Ryan’s department has been the major department that has not recorded decreased performance and as such, it has played a significant role of propelling the performance of the organization.

The rest of the groups seem to suffer from individualism and allow their feelings to overlook the importance of working together in the organization to achieve the goals of the organization (Handy 1993, p.20). To that end, the groups are yet to get to the maturity phase and development strategies should focus on the ability of the organization to have the maturity of the groups.

At this level of group analysis in organizational behavior, there should be clear-cut roles for every group to enhance the required cohesiveness within the organization. Teamwork and collectiveness should inspire the work groups of the organization with the aim inspiring improved performance.

Individual Level Analysis of the organization

Apparently, individual analysis of an organization refers to various aspects of an organization that are central to specific individual (Black 2003, p. 71) Such aspects as motivation, task performance, perception, ethical standpoints, learning as well as satisfaction are just a few aspects of individual level analysis of organization behavior. In this case, leadership style that an organization assumes is important and allows the employees to become motivated in their duties.

Venus Inc has an authoritative style of leadership that has severed the ability of the employees to learn during their task performance. In fact, authoritative leadership has diminished impacts in boosting the performance of any organization as the employees begin to feel alienated. Tooksoon & Mudor (2011, p. 47) say that authoritative leadership rarely takes into consideration that employees needs support as they fulfill their duties which leads to improved performance and ultimately, to increased customer and job satisfaction.

It is important for the managers to understand that authoritarian management style demoralizes the employees and has been a cause for decreased job productivity and performance. Ryan and Kimberly have proved to be authoritarian managers who expect performance due to their assertiveness and decisiveness. This has consequently resulted to poor performance due to decreased participation by employees in making important decisions regarding Venus Inc.

Further, it is critical to note that majority of the employees receive motivation from the leadership style as well as remuneration and appreciation of their performance (Tooksoon & Mudor 2011, p. 47).

To that end, Venus Inc has failed to come up with a strategy to remunerate their employees leading to decreased performance of the organization as their motivation has lowered substantially. This implies that an organization should be able to appreciate positive performance and show recognition of individuals with outstanding performance.

Recommendations

Upon the analysis of the organization behavior in Venus Inc, it is important for the management of the company to device and design a strategy that will lead to improved performance and enriched organization behavior. The strategy ought to guide the human interactions within the organizations and improve the organization’s tendency of decreased performance.

At the outset, the organization should be in a position to form a coherent organizational culture in which all employees will have shared values and beliefs. This will lead to a unique identity of the organization, which in turn will give the organization a competitive edge over its rivals (Buchanan & Huczynski 2010, p. 67). Besides, Venus Inc should enhance the cohesiveness of the organization by dealing with sub cultures that are apparent within the organization.

Second, it is important for Venus Inc. to change its organization structure to enhance superior performance of the company since it is clear that the current bureaucratic structure has led to top down communication, which makes employees to feel alienated.

To that end, the management team should assume a contingency or an instructional model that seem responsive to the participative needs of the employees. In fact, contingency approach to organizational structure requires that the management to resolve issues as they emerge rather than anticipating issues.

Further, the organization should be able to comprehend the group dynamics that are typical of conflicts and divisions among the work groups. Venus Inc should enhance its ability to address the sources of conflicts within the groups by changing their mentality to coincide with organizations needs and encouraging members to work in teams. This will remove the individualism witnessed in the organization.

It is also important to adopt appropriate leadership style in the organization to avoid the risk of demoralizing the employees, which in turn may lead to lowered enthusiasm and ultimately, the performance of the organization.

Transformational and supportive leadership styles assist employees to learn and are typical of support and encouragement (Black 2003, p. 91). Finally, Venus Inc ought to devise a strategy of remuneration of employees to avert the risk of dissatisfaction and decreased motivation. It should introduce bonuses for superior performance and appreciate individuals who post exceptional performance.

References

Black, R 2003, Organizational Culture: Creating the Influence Needed for Strategic Success, Oxford University Press, London UK.

Buchanan, D & Huczynski, A 2010, Organizational Behaviour, Prentice Hall, London.

Handy, C 1993, Understanding Organizations, Oxford University Press, London.

Jex, S & Britt, T 2008, Organizational Psychology, A Scientist-Practitioner Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Boston, Massachusetts.

McKenna, F 2000, Business Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Psychology Press, New York.

Tooksoon, P & Mudor, H 2011, “Conceptual Framework on the Relationship between Human Resource Management Practices, Job Satisfaction, and Turnover,” Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, vol. 2 no. 2, pp. 41-49.