Free Custom «Organizational Culture» Essay Paper

Organizational culture according to Schein’s is anything that a group of people have become accustomed to as they struggled to solve their problem of external adaptation and external integration Schein’s (1992).

The nuclear assembly room produced almost all the electrical appliances for the company. The production process varied for every tube being produced as every tube had a different requirement. The major part of this production was that at this time it was done by women to be precise eight women. Each of them performed a series of operations although each of them was specialized in a particular area or two. These specializations had developed over time and it was not uncommon to find the workers had all taken liking to the same field. Thus not even the special jobs were exclusive. In case of emergencies one worker would take over for the other. The tube room was augmented by other two men. Bill Yoost and Tom Montag Bill was the security officer and Tom helped out there when his job in another room allowed him too (exhibit 4). Organizational culture can be identified under three categories. The first is artifacts which are the visible factors. The second are the espoused values which are the goals and philosophies and lastly are the underlying assumptions which are the taken for granted things within the organization structure.

 

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The employee remuneration was on an hourly basis. The payment rats for employees was decided by the industrial relations department this was done in accordance with, an evaluation of skill and knowledge required to undertake a certain task. Within this pay grades there was an established range within which the payment could move. The movement of this pay was determined by a particular system of merits earned by the worker. This merit reviews were done periodically. The period set was in a span of four months where each employee was required to fill in a form to identify his weaknesses and strengths. The forms would then be forwarded to the relevant authorities to further determine who among the workers deserved a pay raise. When a person was granted this pay raise his/her form was returned to the general foreman who in turn discussed the matter with the employee. These workers were not unionized even though several other faculties under the same company were unionized.

In an approximate 95% of all the work the tube workers did was scheduled into ordinary work hours by the company’s industrial engineers. The hours were used to figure out the costs for the labour by the accounting department. The production of the tubes was calculated at the end of every week by an audit of all finished or in progress tubes. This means that the workers lost labour units for all the defective tubes that were as a result of the production process. The monthly add ups of the weekly figures were taken to higher management for approval (Exhibit 3). All studies were subject to revised standards set up 3 months prior to the taking of accounts. The standards for this became irrelevant when compared to the current output of the tubes. The hourly rates were revised to an average of 34% from a previous 24% downwards to 59% upward. This change was made by a new supervisor whose name was Langley. When he took over the office of supervisor the room had a work force of 14 people. When he took over there was an increase in production and this called for layoffs since due to the management the firm was now expending less for production of more. In an effort to further cut production costs to maximize on profits the work force was reduced to 8 people. This improvement in group productions was attributed in general to the management’s improvement of every aspect of production.

The workers received their work instructions from sally ivers every morning and would constantly check with her if it was okay to do one thing or another throughout the work day. If the information the worker wanted on their next job was of a detailed nature then her and sally would go to the work station and discuss it. Most of the time however the works did not need ratification by any person since they were of an obvious nature and almost all of the girls could do one thing or the other. They often changed work positions without talking to sally about it. One of the most outstanding things about the organization was the monthly shift prescriptions. Langley comments about this and how sally used it to come up with a workable timetable. He says that they would second guess the company and what it was doing by comparing data from all the faculties. He continues to sat that the proximity to the consumer though not his role was a major boost to how he worked since he could get a feel on what was supposed to happen according to the consumers perception and also could get a feel of the market. One of the workers comments and compliments the freedom awarded to them as far as they met their monthly quota.

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The workers had a very good community spirit they even had their own support systems that helped support each other when the going was tough. It was such as the pool and the poor pool. These contributions were made to finance certain aspects of the workers like if a person was sick they would help with the money or if one of them was leaving they would buy them a going away present. The employees show a high degree of worry and uncertainty they look to their management and are not sure of some of the processes. They are hourly and are accustomed to more routine less variable operations. They are older than the usual age and seek satisfaction from a well ordered form of work. The operations is still in its original stages there are still technical units that need to be resolved before and process can begin and this seems to be frustrating the workers. The employees are not motivated by the factor of tube results. A high rate of rejection is not the best motivation and they hardly have any job satisfaction. They need to understand the reasons why the constant rejection keeps happening. Also, the employees feel confused by the amount of things they have to handle at one particular time. They want a more designated form of work rather than where anyone can do anything. This workers are groups and parker establishes three main ways of group formation firstly, by the gender of the people secondly, by the age of the people and lastly, by how long the people have been in the company together (parker 2000) (Alveson and berg 1992) the managerial situation in this view is short of standard since it is seen here that instead of creating a culture where workers are striving t work for themselves on their own we see a situation where the manager is ever present. This fact implies that the workers cannot see the need to work without supervision.

Managers are an essential part of organization structure they play a key role in the conveyance of the underlying assumptions. However if this is taken onto too much action and the manager tries to lead the culture then the results of the importance of a manager are completely in opposite sense. The likes of kunda write about a case where a manager tried to lead such a culture and the subordinates to this manager criticized his decision. They said they did not want to pass on such thought to their subordinates because they could reason better in their minds ( kunda 1992 p. 180). In this case we see the manager Langley trying to be too much a part of the culture that in the end he only harms it. The approach that should be taken is the sally approach at the work incident where she pretends that it is as if nothing had happened and lets the girls clean up the mess without getting in the way.

Another way of realizing actual organizational culture is by the definition of responsibility. When responsibilities are defined then every last person has a designated duty. This leads to better productivity and the implementation of cause effect principles where a person can only be punished or awarded alone on their own short comings or accomplishments. And even with this there must be a restriction on the amount of workload taken by the people who are working for safety purposes. (IAEA 1991, 1996). In this case there isn’t a form of job designation. The girls are all tied up in one room doing the same things as other girls who are doing the same thing as them.

In this organization they must learn to harmonize and co exist as different departments but there the same. They must employ the recognized methods of establishing cultural organization. First and foremost they must establish the organizational values. The purpose of this is to come up with a comprehensive set of ideas so as to have a common ground that depicts both the workers and the organization (Ouchi 1981). This final way of things must be easy to understand since it is the meeting point of the organization and its people. The second step is assessing the characteristics of the firms. It is apparent that important things are shared in the way we view our society. It is true that important things are shared in our norms and practices. Also we find even more important aspects in our expectations from people and what people expect from us. For example, it is the expectation of people that a firm will not infringe their right to a clean and decent environment. If this is put in the firm’s own manifestations then the firm will meet the expectations of the people.

Step three is assessing individual preferences. These are the opinions of the individuals within the organization. They are important because the organization cannot exist without its components and thus it must take the needs of its components quite seriously. Lastly is the assessment of the individual fit score. This is important in order to know how the individual affects and is affected by the institution.

In finality the findings of the study were more or less disturbing. The quality of the product was found to be wanting. The end product come from the ram material and the machinery for making the tubes are subject to breaking down. The workers who do the same job are poorly motivated and have a bad attitude toward their work and close to no job satisfaction at all. The standards that the workers are working in are wanting. It is reasonable to get good returns only when one gives good consideration absent that then only shabby results can come up. The company needs to show action in trying to unite its different faculties.

The team is a good team but their emotion and motivation to work with each other is on the low. The management has given this people a step child treatment. The supervision is on a high horse and thinks that it has improved the situation from the time it got there. The work force is low on motivation and might not even respect the supervision. The supervision has caused job cuts to happen and thus has created a wall between it and the work force. The security is out of place it is not in a place where it can relate to anyone else.

In cultural organization there must be a meeting of the minds otherwise one would end up organizing a group that does not share the same ideals and that would lead to an outright downfall of the whole idea of hierarchy. The term itself dictates that one must have support to make this kind of organization possible since it is organization by culture.