Impact Of The Events On Attitudes And Perceptions

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Task I

Scenario

I refer to a time in my work background when I was a witness of events happened in our company that led to loss of the company’s market share. These incidents and events took place in "Komplex Alfa", where I was employed as a marketing specialist.

The company is located in Moscow, Russia and manufactures serial furniture, serving almost 50,000 customers. Employees exceeded 200 people working at two factories in Moscow and Novosibirsk. Competition in furniture market was rising very sharply during past two decades and major shares of the total industry market are taken by privatized in 90-s soviet-state manufacturers. However, since building of the privately-owned factory in 1996, Komplex Alfa was doing pretty well, with high sales even in a period of recent economic recession.

In June 2010 there have happened several noteworthy changes and readjustments among key top management positions inside of the enterprise. The CEO was fired by the board of the directors, Moscow Regional Manger took place of the CEO, a new Sales Director was allocated and the Chief of Internal Affairs was hired as Manager of R&D Department. Also, several other top managers were fired.

Without postponement, changes in company’s culture and strategy followed. Relations amongst different administration levels went through critical conversions, which, in turn, unfavorably affected attitudes and perceptions of employees. The effect on Komplex Alfa organizational behavior due to management changes had very significant sequences.

By the end of September 2010 Komplex Alfa lost several key middle managers, who left the company under the force, particularly: Marketing Manager, Operational Manger, and HR Manager. Salesmen turnover rose up to 20%. Employee turnover in other departments grew by 8-10%. Sales & profits fell down dramatically.

Problems of misapprehension between organizational levels, and refusal of directors to recognize failure of new strategies were obvious. Employees did not feel protected any longer. Communication between departments harshly decreased; distrust of management affected employees’ routine, thus, decreased job performance and reduced manufacturing efficiency.

Management should immediately throw considerable energies to correct current situation. If Komplex Alfa wants to restore its market position, to restrain skilled staff and to settle the administrations errors, fundamental activities had to be undertaken immediately.

Task II

Impact of the Events on Attitudes and Perceptions

Perceptions and attitudes of employees and middle management were enormously affected by uncertain behavior of the top management, and by the miscommunication amongst different organizational departments. Job performance fell radically, because individual behavior equation was broken (Wood, Zeffane, Fromholtz, & Fitzgerald 2006). Capacities to perform were at the same level, while willingness to perform decreased a long with the organizational support.

Work effort was influenced because employees were not feeling secured any longer. A lot of high-skilled professionals were fired, so people lost confidence in the future and stopped putting efforts into the performance. On the other hand, management wasn’t ready to realize the situation, because they were busy in dividing company’s authorities, which, in turn, weakened organizational support of the employees (Hackman & Oldham 1976).

The psychological stability of the people was disrupted when they understood that the new Sales Director appeared to be a Machiavellian that did not care about the staff. The new work environment and the leadership style of the manager impaired values of the salesmen team. For instance: recognition of competences, respect & dignity, and involvement at work had been reduced (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson 2000).

Therefore affective & behavior parts of employees attitude were destructively affected (Wood et al. 2006). Work environment were contrasting with their values, thus commensurate attitude and behavior followed. Production capabilities of the company were blasted: organizational commitment didn’t bring work satisfaction, and dissatisfaction at work, in turn, created barriers for progressive organizational commitment (Hackman & Oldham 1976). And, as the result, an increase in employees’ turnover happened.

Work perception of the staff is formed by attitudes they originally had, plus obtained from comparative experience (Hofstede 1980), and this is proved in the case.

Nonetheless, management considered the behavior of the employees erroneously (bias of misapprehension) and applied a taut firing policy that frightened employees and further spoiled their work incentives.

In order to get back trust of the employees, managers have to undertake specific actions and reinforcement strategies. Recommendations for managing employees’ perceptions and attitudes at Komplex Alfa Company are provided in Task III.

Two Motivation Theories and the Influence of the Events on Employees’ Motivation

Motivation theories described below are relevant to the concerned scenario case and clarify the impact on employees’ attitudes and perceptions:

ERG Theory of Clayton Alderfer

Komplex Alfa employees were demotivated because of the impetuous and indifferent behavior of the management. Dissatisfaction and dismay of work environment lessened job performance, which is understandable from the point of view of Content Alderfer’s ERG Theory (Wood et al. 2006).

Being just an adaptation of Maslow’s Needs’ Hierarchy Theory, ERG gives us a prospect to disclose and examine the all aspects of the case, because it presumes that more than one need is operating at the same time (Hofstede 1980).

Hindrance of any of three basic needs leads to work demotivation:

Existence needs refer to ambition to satisfy physical and emotional needs;

Relatedness needs designate a desire for interpersonal communication; and

Growth needs are about self-development and evolution of the personality (Hersey et al. 2000).

In the considered case two of these needs were destructively affected: Relatedness and Growth needs.

Working previously in this company employees knew that certain task implementation and job performance will lead to promotion or recognition. Now they saw that other less lucky coworkers, who showed high performance, were fired because of disagreement with management policy. Thus, high performance didn’t guarantee promotion or acknowledgment any longer. Opportunity for personal growth and development was fading away on a daily basis. That’s how the Growth needs of the employees were dazed.

Instantaneously, the feeling of being vital to the company, an ability to be equal with the management and the capability to communicate with people from higher company’s layers decreased. Needs for Relatedness was discontented.

Deterioration of these needs tend to create fear for Existence needs (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Waters-Marsh 2008). This refers to the "frustration-regression" principle of the ERG Theory: already satisfied lower-needs (Existence needs) can become mobilized when it seems to be unmanageable to satisfy higher-level needs (Relatedness and Growth needs) (Wood et al. 2006).

Expectancy Theory of Victor Vroom

Vroom’s Theory refers to determination of factors that affect the willingness of an employee to strain individual efforts to reach job performance and organizational goals (Van Deveer & Menefee 2010). It also assumes that motivation of staff depends on their beliefs that work outcomes can be achieved through different levels of job performance (Wood et al., 2006). I.e. employees will exert individual efforts only if they are sure that hardworking will lead to valuable results, such as recognition, promotion, etc.

Vroom’s Theory has a main operational equation that defines how multiplier effect can result in multiple consequences (Wood et al., 2006). Hence,

Motivation = Expectancy x Instrumentality x Valence

This denotes that change in any variable will influence whole equation. Basically, Expectancy Theory examines three major interrelated questions (Van Deveer & Menefee 2010):

Will the effort result in job performance?

In Komplex Alfa the answer was positive.

All work procedures were designed in the most effective way that could bring desirable results. Any worker could complete given assignments or objectives following proper directions. Thus, all job objectives were SMART-designed (i.e. specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-limited), and there were no problems to implement apposite job performance at the Komplex Alfa.

Will the performance result in reward?

With this aspect Komplex Alfa staff faced vagueness. From the one hand, none manager canceled career-promo strategy and reward system. On the other hand, ascertainment of relationships amongst senior managers, their yearning to promote "own" people and penalty for dissenting staff did not provide any guarantees that an employee would get deserved feedback or would not fall a victim of the management combats.

Will the reward result in achievement of personal goals?

The answer to this question tightly connected with the previous one. Achievement of personal goals was no longer an employees’ priority. Indistinctness of merit-reward system did not allow workers to rely on their own work exerts. Subsequently, motivation equation of the Expectation Theory was broken.

Group Dynamics

Group structure at the Komplex Alfa Company was pretty simplistic. Employees were divided by business departments that formed permanent official work groups. They were formally established to perform specified routine procedures on a steady foundation (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn 1997).

Decision-making capability of groups varied from department to department. For instance, in Finance or R&D departments, decisions were limited to a manger, and employees had to followed directions without any objections. While in more liberal departments, such as Marketing or Sales departments, employees had every week meetings, where they could express personal opinions and discuss current work issues.

After the occurred changes, employees lessened their willingness to participate in active debate and tended to undeniably succeed the manager, because expression of dissimilar views became too risky. A covenant of "no opposition" was silently agreed amongst staff. Consequently, groupthink syndromes became outward.

However, managers were lured by their own self-affirmation into the new organizational environment, whereas common employees, being voided of decision-making and suffrage, were browbeaten. Isolation from criticism, preservation of self-censorship, and roaming in illusion of unanimity disable management to objectively see its own shortcomings and critically analyze current situation (Locke & Latham 1990).

As it was mentioned, formal teams and special-purpose teams were usual practice within Company. Principally, they involved participation of employees from same horizontal perspective; which, indeed, in special cases could be transformed to the vertical one. The essence of any team is a shared commitment and collective performance (Wood et al. 2006).

Komplex Alfa has great experience in team-building and never underwent insufficiency of teamwork. This always made team members feel pride to work in such comfortable organization, pride to implement the job, tend to perform with higher productivity, and stick to high ethical values. Display of such behavior results in efficient teamwork performance, which has favorable impact on overall business operating. That verifies the proclamation of Rogers, EM and Agarwala-Rogers, R (1976) that effective teamwork is a generator of a company’s well-being.

However, several organizational obstacles appeared and stifled effective team performance, and ensued from two major issues:

Deficit of managerial commitment

Ambiguous alignment of the Komplex Alfa

That caused the appearance of another stoppage: unequal reward distribution for the team performance. All mentioned arguments ended up in abolishing highly efficient teams.

In addition, a fright of expression of something excessive forced all members to freeze bringing in constructive ideals, and expurgated communication among them. Apparent necessity to screen and censor routine interaction with collaborators aroused, and, led to the communicational cessation. In such case the essential elements of trust (such as loyalty, consistency, openness, and integrity) suffer pessimistic wreckage (Esser & Richardson 2001).

Task III

List of Recommendations

Concluding in the discussion it’s possible to draw several recommendations from the conducted analysis and highlight possible actions that should be taken to fix the situation:

the attitudes and perceptions of employees,

the correction of staff motivation, and

the improvement of teamwork effectiveness.

Recommendations

1

Management of attitudes and perceptions

Explanation

i

Repair Individual Behavior Equation

Main issue of the Komplex Alfa is the poor job performance triggered by decreased work efforts. To resolve this problem management has to recognize that staff efforts depend on organizational support (Wood et al. 2006).

Management has to stop firing people because of their opinion expression. Employees not really interested who has more weight in the company, they will follow that manager who will able to guarantee protection (Stanleigh 2008).

If employees feel that job performance results in proportionate rewards, positive feedback, appropriate work efforts, and satisfactory performance will follow (Esser & Richardson 2001).

ii

Recompense of Emotional Stability

Unfavorable employees’ behavior is grown from their attitudes (Gollwitzer 1999). Behavior and affective components of staff attitudes were deleteriously influenced by new Sales Director. Thus, if he starts appreciate employees’ competences, respect and honor employees and try to improve their participation in the work, the momentous increase of values of the sales team will appear straightaway.

Equivalence between values of the employees and work environment is one of the main features accountable for job satisfaction based on the constructive organizational commitment (Gollwitzer 1999).

2

Activities to improve motivation

Explanation

i

Confluence of Process and Content Theories of Motivation

Aforementioned Process and Content and Theories should be applied as an accumulated collaboration in the organization. Using ERG Theory managers have to highlight direct connection between task implementation and acknowledgment, in order to prove for employees that work performance is highly valuated and mean a lot (Reiss 2004).

In this way Relatedness and Growth needs of the staff, which were shattered, will be satisfied. Simultaneously, key aspect of the Vroom’s theory (Instrumentality) has to be restored.

Staff should be sure that likelihood of assignation to certain level of accomplished task performance lead to corresponding outcome, besides, it results in progressive exert of work efforts (Wood et al. 2006). Thus, Expectance factor should be augmented.

ii

Apply Work Enrichment

Komplex Alfa management might try to integrate job rotation with vertical loading.

Firstly, this is an extra prospect for adding motivation factors into the job content (Rode 2004).

Furthermore, such practice allows returning back shattered trust of the staff (Rogers et al. 1976).

Though, this action considers number of consistent biases that come along with Job Enrichment. For example: it might be unsuccessful, if poor diagnosis of data will be conducted; it might be very expensive, if too many traits of the job need to be reshaped; eventually, only small amount of failures are usually reported, etc. (Wood et al. 2006).

iii

Overpass barriers to effective communication

Current interaction amongst management and staff faces several barriers. Development of communication will lead to higher mutual understanding.

People tend to perform more productively when they easily can understand the task essence; also, employees are motivated to implement job with higher quality when they sure that management are listening and considering the outcomes (Rotundo & Sackett 2002).

Current communication breakdowns consist of the following aspects: communication filtering, discriminatory perception of management, and reactions on negative work environment.

3

Actions to increase teamwork effectiveness

Explanation

i

Conduct Effective Team Leadership

Due to unfavorable impact on the teamwork some actions should to be undertaken to reinstate it.

Firstly, staff anxiety should not affect team behavior (Locke & Latham 1990), and might be traversed by means of motivation techniques mentioned above.

Secondly, info has to be shared equally within the teams, so that each member could understand its own responsibility (Reiss 2004). In this case employees will tend to maintain trust and consolidate the cohesiveness; and, communicate high performance standards (Wood et al. 2006).

Moreover, managers should not allow personal interests to dominate over the team interests; otherwise umbrages and despondency might be developed (Rotundo & Sackett 2002). Formation of positive surrounding for team environment is an actual indicator of effectual achievement of the corporate goals (Rode 2004).

ii

Develop Communication Channels

Alongside with the formal channel, which act in accordance with the organizational command chain, and informal, which appear in daily routine (Stanleigh 2008), Komplex Alfa has tried once to envelop quasi-formal channel in form of same-time messaging inside of the corporate intranet. However, due to the changes in management structure, R&D on this topic was stopped.

Taking into consideration last events, management should restart R&D, since such communication channel will provide positive effect on general employees’ attitudes, giving them a chance to communicate among each other without off-site interruption. Also, this might act as an additional motivation to work as one consolidated team.

Organization is an organism of codependent capacities that perform different but harmonized operations, and effective management can be reached through the integration of Informational Systems (Wood et al. 2006).

Task IV

Personal Reflection

Changes in management structure usually appear to be challengeable issue for the organization. In this paper there was illustrated unsuccessful example of such event. An inner company’s environment is not the best place to play warfare. Both poor supervision and ambiguous position of the management entailed in negative outcomes among staff.

Optimistic employees’ motivation is one of the key tools in the present-day corporate ecosystem and critical approach to reach effective production. Personal attitudes and perceptions, work satisfaction, organizational behavior, satisfaction of psychological needs, work environment, and communication channels – all these aspects of business relationships are decisively interlocked and are inter-reliant on each another. Impact on one part of the organizational management evolves reaction in completely different components. Inaccurate handling of employees or scanty management can incite an avalanche of irrepressible sequences.

If Komplex Alfa’s management wants to restore its market share, preserve skilled employees, then all levels of organizational structure should be fortified, from very low operational level up to the top management, rather than on amalgamation of own egoistic interests.