Discuss how organizational architecture and corporate culture are related. Use an
example of a real-life firm and discuss how its corporate culture blends with its
organizational architecture.
Organization architecture provides the framework that the firm utilizes to achieve its core
qualities. It’s basically the infrastructure that the company hinges its business processes that
ensures its operations are in line with its goals. For instance the corporate vision statement of
the most forces in the world is forward ever, backward never. Their organizational structure is
the military style where the orders are received from the top only and never from below. Their
organizational culture also blends in the same system where social activities are approached in
the same way.
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- Billy Riggan is in charge of all technical developments at Always Round Tire. He
makes all the choices concerning product innovations in the company. He finds that he
is overworked and that several of his research scientists seem to be spending work
hours playing tennis. What is going on?
Always Round Tire seems to have adopted the teamwork approach of rewarding employees.
The input of Billy Riggan seems to be rewarding all the team members that He is supposed to
work with. The other research scientist seems to be free riding on Billy Riggan’s hard work. Free
riding is a problem where one member of a group or several members don’t perform part or all
their duties and instead wait for the rest of the team members to finish the task and reap the same
benefits of their accomplishment as they are also part of the group. (Morris and Hayes, 1997,
p.3) - Always Round Tire tries to base its promotions on seniority (where education and
training requirements are not necessary). The company finds that this system seems to
work most of the time with shop floor supervisors and team managers. But the system
breaks down for higher-level positions. Why?
The shop floor supervisors don’t require a lot of skills to accomplish their chores and other
related duties while team managers can always learn the skills required from the other team
members or even be free riders in their groups as the critical tasks will be done by the best team
member and all the credit will certainly go to the team leader or team manager. Higher- level
positions require skilled staffs who are professional trained. Free riding is not possible and team
work can’t apply in such positions as the tasks involve making technical decisions, evaluating
and analyzing different scenarios making the right choices. The lack of adequately trained staff
or the inclusion of team work in higher positions will always lead to the system failures.
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- Economists believe the free rider problem is very important in complex business
organizational structures. Still, businesses continue to build teams to solve problems or
to deliver products to consumers. Often special rewards or bonuses are provided to the
team rather than to the individuals on the team. Write a brief essay that either defends
the economists’ concern or explain why economists are wrong
on this issue.
Free riding in teams discourages the hard working employees from working hard and achieving
the overall objective of the company. This problem if it’s not addressed affects the performance
of the group and ultimately the whole company is affected. (Jones, 1984, p.684-695) Team work
should be encouraged but proper mechanism should be put in place to counter free riding. The
problem of free riding develops where there is no direct individual responsibility on the team
performance. (Harkins, 1987, p. 1-118) Individual responsibility should be encouraged and each
team member should also be individual responsible and proper methods should be put in place to
evaluate each member. These issues can be resolved if the management of such companies are
determined to make the teams succeed. Teams are vital components in any organization their
failure eventually leads to the failure of the company. - Many firms today use 360-degree performance evaluations. Make a case for this type
of evaluation based on the in formativeness principle. What problems may be
encountered from implementation of such a system?
360-degree performance evaluation is a process where an employee or individual continues to
receive feedback from a number of sources or rating officials who interact with the learner. The
main aim of the evaluation is to provide a comprehensive feedback on the outcome of the
process to the learner outlining his potential, behavior, and weaknesses while establishing the
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learner’s development targets. It’s mostly used and applied as an assessment measure for
personal assessment and development exercise only. 360-degree evaluation of performance is
relatively accurate than other evaluation methods as it’s inclusive and involves more examiners
and evaluators. The problems of the 360-degree performance are that it entails a lot of
documentation that makes it difficult to analyze all the information. It’s also very difficult to
reconcile the personal ratings from the other ratings and the evaluators’ treatment of
contradicting information is not always uniform. (Church & Braken, 1997)
- Discuss the relevance of Responsible Stewardship in the context of economic analysis
and organizational architecture.
Responsible stewardship incurs responsibilities to a number of stakeholders. In traditional
approach, the major objective of the firm is profit maximization and the overall responsibility and
accountability is primarily owed to the financial shareholders. In neo-classical economics
approach, the firms only follow the law and they are not responsible for pollution, waste
management or exploitative labor. In contemporary approach, strict profit maximization has no
place in the society. Responsible stewardship entails embracing Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) and also applying concepts of holistic conception in integrating an inclusive form of
management which creates economic and more societal progress locally and internationally
that’s responsible and also sustainable that also encourages responsible ways of operating
businesses in all its structures.
References
Morris, R. & Hayes, C. (1997) Small group work: are group assignments a legitimate
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form of assessment? In: Pospisil, R. and L. Willcoxson (Eds.), Learning Through
Teaching, pp. 229-233. Proceedings of the 6th Annual Teaching Learning Forum,
Perth (Australia), Murdoch University.
Jones, G.R. (1984).Task visibility, free riding, and shirking: Explaining the effect of
structure and technology on employee behavior. Academy of Management
Review, Vol. 9, pp. 684-695.
Harkins, S.G. (1987) Social Loafing and social facilitation. Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology, 23, pp. 1-18.
Church, A.H. & Braken, D. W. (1997). Advancing the state of art of 360-degree feedback.
Groups and Organization Management. Pgs. 22,149-161.
