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Organizational culture is artifacts and shared values and assumptions. Artifacts may be observable before you become a part of the organization but the shared organizational values and assumptions are the intangibles and difficult to decipher before you become a part of it. It is important to align with the organizational culture because it represents the way things work in the organization. Organizational culture acts as the control system, the social glue and sense making. Any violation of what is shared by members of an organization is likely to create alienation for a new member.

This discussion question should raise some interesting ideas about the college’s environment. Students should carefully consider the four environmental elements, then assess whether the environment calls for more of a mechanistic or organic structure. Mechanistic structure has narrow span of control, high centralization and high formalization. Organic structure has wide span of control, decentralized decision making and low formalization. Many people discover that different parts of an organization face different environments. For example, an online learning centre would face a dynamic and hostile environment because of the rapid pace of technology and number of competitors. Here are some details about the four environments. Dynamic environments have a high rate of change, leading to novel situations, so organic structures tend to be best because employees are more flexible. For example, network and cluster structures seem to be most effective in dynamic environments. In contra...

There are at least two reasons why many organizations are moving toward flatter organizational structures with a wider span of control. First, flatter structures require less overhead -- there are fewer middle managers and more people directly involved in the production of goods and/or services. Second, flatter structures are consistent with the trend toward greater autonomy and employee involvement. Managers necessarily have a wide span of control in flatter structures, and they are unable to engage in close supervision. Instead, employees (and work teams) are given more freedom to make decisions without management review. A narrow span or control would be most appropriate with a workforce that is low skilled and made up of workers with a high power distance. In such cases, the close supervision and control would be less likely to be viewed as a lack of trust among workers.

This is an open-ended question that will encourage students to question their notions of leadership. Some leadership models say charismatic leadership is essential for transformational leadership and even suggesting that charismatic leadership is the highest degree of transformational leadership. However, the emerging view is that charisma is distinct from transformational leadership. Charisma is a personal trait that provides referent power (capacity to influence others through identification with and respect for the power holder-occurs when others identify with them, like them, or otherwise respect them) over followers but doesn’t necessarily change the organization (may even result in greater focus on self-interest). Transformational leadership is a set of behaviors that engage followers to bring about change. Based on these definitions, it is clear that charismatic leaders may not be transformational, and transformational leaders are not necessarily charismatic. Is a leader who...

Shared leadership is the view that leadership is a role, not a position assigned to one person, such that people within the team and organization lead each other. Emerging views of leadership support the idea that leadership needs to be developed at all levels of an organization. In a recent study, only 8 percent of executives in large firms indicated their organizations had enough leadership. Effective leaders are responsible and their success may be determined, by their ability to teach and empower employees to take leadership roles. In increasingly dynamic, team-based organizations, an organization’s competitive success may be determined by employees’ ability to understand the business environment and take action consistent with organizational goals. Characteristics associated with leadership such as self-confidence, emotional intelligence, integrity are increasingly being used by organizations to select employees for positions at all levels within an organization (not just manageme...

This is purely a discussion question, but students should be able to bring out logical foundations for their arguments. The textbook points out that e-mail and other information technologies have changed the nature of grapevine communication such that social networks have expanded as employees communicate with each other around the globe, not just around the next cubicle. Public web sites have become virtual water coolers by posting anonymous comments about specific companies for all to view. This technology extends gossip to anyone, not just employees connected to social networks.  These changes do not directly mean that the amount of information flowing through the corporate grapevine has increased. However, a couple of arguments suggest that grapevine communication has increased. First, information technologies make it easier to communicate, as well as easier to communicate with more people at a larger distance. Logically, this suggests that there is less of an investment ba...

Although women also engage in report talk, they tend to communicate to build or maintain social bonds (Rapport talk). For this reason, they are less likely to give advice, will use indirect questions. Women are more willing than men to apologize. Finally, women are more sensitive than men to nonverbal cues in face-to-face meetings. The result is that women get frustrated with men because they receive impersonal and status-based advice from men when they are trying to form rapport. Men get frustrated because they can’t understand why women don’t appreciate their advice.

The answer to this question relates to the topic of media richness, because persuasion depends on higher media rich communication media. The textbook notes that spoken communication, particularly face-to-face interaction, is more persuasive than e-mails, web sites, and other forms of written communication. If people cannot interact in person, they should attempt face-to-face through video conferencing. Audio conferences have somewhat lower media richness again, but may be persuasive to the extent that voice intonation communication emotionality and more complex information. Students might note that logical explanations assist persuasion, so an online video conference might be followed by written communication.

This is an excellent thinking question because the discussion can go in a variety of directions. With respect to the first part of the question, expect students to connect the communication medium with ethical values and sensitivity to saving face. Students might also mention situations where many people are being laid off, whereby e-mail is more efficient. But of course this raises the concern that the efficiency of e-mail represents its callousness for such personal and sensitive matters. Students should also recall the problems with e-mail described in this chapter. E-mail is subject to flaming – the receiver may reply harshly via e-mail to the lay off notice whereas a face-to-face meeting may be more civil. E-mail lacks emotion, so it is difficult for the sender to convey his or her sadness at having to announce the layoff. E-mail is asynchronous, so the sender does not receive instant feedback from the person being laid off. This can be a problem because the sender cannot chang...

E-mail communication has benefits because messages can be quickly written, edited and transmitted to teams of any size. However, team members may not capture the emotional tone of the message in absence of being able to read the facial expressions and other non-verbal cues. For ambiguous, complex and novel situations, emails can provide an opportunity to write things people would find difficult to communicate in face-to-face conversations. It may allow time to team members to think over issues and then react. For new teams, email conversation may create misunderstandings but as teams get mature, email conversations may actually help in avoiding conflicts, clarifying situations in and resolving them.

The textbook describes four ways to improve communication through coding-decoding. Students can identify various practices to improve communication for each of these general categories: Ensure that both parties have similar “ codebooks ” -- In this scenario, this might occur by having marketing and engineering staff learn basic concepts commonly used by the other profession. Staff in each unit might include people who have double degrees or have spent part of their careers in the other profession, so have acquired the language and meaning of words used by both groups. Ensure the sender has experience encoding (sending) the message topic -- This strategy specifically refers to experience with communicating on the topic rather than just experience with the work context. The main recommendation, therefore, is that the sender has practiced communicating the message. This might occur by having one person speak to many others about important matters (e.g. executive “A” communicates ne...

Four strategies to improve decision evaluation: Separate chooser from implementers . The most effective strategy is to separate decision choosers from decision implementers . This minimizes the problem of saving face because the person responsible for implementation and evaluation would not be concerned about saving face if the project is cancelled. Establish a stop-loss decision rule. Another way to minimize escalation of commitment establish a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated. The problem with this solution is that conditions are often so complex that it is difficult to identify an appropriate point to abandon a project. However, this approach may work if a stopping point can be determined and it is established by someone other than the decision maker.  Find systematic and clear feedback. The clearer the feedback, the more difficult it is to deny that the project has problems. Unfortunately, this solution is rarely available because many decision...

The answer is probably “No”. The textbook states that there is a dilemma regarding experience. On the one hand, people need plenty of experience to be familiar with the issues. The literature on creativity suggests that it may take several years of experience before a person has reached creative potential. The dilemma is that the longer a person is in one field of study, the more he/she develops a mental model that stifles creativity. Some companies prefer people with no experience in an industry so they are more creative. These two points are not exactly contradictory – a person may be new to an industry bu t has many years of experience in a particular skill or trade. However, the issue does suggest that there is an optimal level of experience before mental models undermine creative potential. It is less certain whether creativity continues to increase with need for achievement. The textbook explains that need for achievement makes creative people more persistent, which is ne...

Intuition is "knowing" something without being able to explain how we came to that conclusion rationally. It's that mysterious "gut feeling" or "instinct" that often turns out to be right, in retrospect. Some of the factors that causes them:- 1) Trust your instincts : - It can be difficult to depend on something that you don't understand, and you probably shouldn't base every one of your decisions on intuition. For example, if you're hiring someone, you should look at qualifications first or else you might accidentally discriminate. 2) Ask yourself questions and listen to the first answer that pops into your mind:- 3) Meditate : - Clearing your mind of repetitive thoughts and worries will make it easier to list e n to your intuition. Find a meditative technique you are comfortable using and practice. like Yoga.. 4) Listen to your gut:-There's a reason it's called a "gut feeling". Many times, a decision that you ...

The union official is only partially correct, in that poor management undoubtedly contributes to the stress level of employees. However, poor management is not the only cause, nor is stress always work- related. Sometimes, the stress involves time-based, strain-based, or role-base conflicts. Also, two individuals faced with the same stressors may not react in the same way, or experience the same level of stress. This is because individual differences in coping strategies, resiliency, and social support networks are important determining factors. Educating employees about stress management techniques also helps them cope with stress from many other sources, and not just those created by poor managers. The union official’s suggestion that management should try to reduce stress has merit. For example, instituting work-life balance initiatives, reducing harassment, and offering employee assistance programs have been shown to reduce stress levels for employees....

This incident describes two journalists with similar stressors experiencing different levels of stress and stress consequences. This illustrates the distinction between stressors and stress. It may also highlight the importance of individual differences in stress. One possible reason why these two journalists are experiencing different stress levels is that they might perceive the situation differently. The low stress journalist might have higher self-esteem and confidence that he/she can complete the work. A second explanation might be that the journalists have different threshold levels of resistance to a stressor . Both are recent graduates and we don’t know if they are a similar age. However, the high stress journalist might have less resistance because he/she has recently experienced other stressors , such as death of a family member. Finally, the different stress levels might be explained by the different strategies used to manage the stress. The ...

The impact of non-work-related stresses are significant. We believe organizations now engage in more “wellness-related” programs to deal with such stressors on a daily basis. For example, the care giving to an infant or a senior parent is now part and parcel of wellness programs across the globe. We know that care giving takes its toll on care givers , in terms of diseases, psychological consequences, accidents, aggressive behaviors and job burnout. The second author on the book noticed that in her consulting work with GE, that one of the business units had a “bet on” to see who would “ stroke out first” due to the stress of the job. That was not a joke, indeed it was due to work overload.