OrgB4 - Final (ch. 13-18) - Terms

13 - Describe the factors that influence conflict between individuals in organizations.

Intrapersonal conflict occurs within an individual. Tips for managing intrapersonal conflict are to analyze and match your values with the organization's, understand expectations, and develop political skills. Conflict between two or more people, or interpersonal conflict, can arise from individual differences. To manage interpersonal conflict, it is helpful to understand power networks in organizations, defense mechanisms exhibited by individuals, and ways to cope with difficult people.

14 - Differentiate between job and work.

A job is an employee's specific work and task activities in an organization. Work is effortful, productive activity resulting in a product or a service. A job is composed of a set of specific tasks, each of which is an assigned piece of work to be done in a specific time period. Work is an especially important human endeavor because it has a powerful effect in binding a person to reality.

16 - Explain the relationship between organizational culture and performance.

A strong-culture organization acts with a consensus on the values that drive the company and with an intensity that is recognizable even to outsiders. The "fit" perspective (fit culture) argues that a culture is good only if it fits the industry or the firm's strategy. Three particular industry characteristics may affect culture: the competitive environment, customer requirements, and societal expectations. An adaptive culture is a culture that encourages confidence and risk taking among employees, has leadership that produces change, and focuses on the changing needs of customers.

16 - Identify the challenges organizations face developing positive, cohesive, cultures.

Achieving a positive, cohesive corporate culture may be difficult in mergers, acquisitions, and globalization due to possible conflicts between organizations and cultural diversity on a geographic level. Developing an ethical culture requires management modeling, promoting ethical norms, and trust. Developing a culture of empowerment and quality involves including employees in decision making, removing obstacles to their performance, and reinforcing the value of product and service.

15 - Discuss the basic design dimensions managers must consider in structuring an organization.

Basic design dimensions combine to yield various structural configurations. Structural dimensions include the following: formalization, centralization, specialization, standardization, complexity, and hierarchy of authority. Levels of structural dimensions determine bureaucratic (high) or flexible and loose (low) organizations. Henry Mintzberg's alternative approach is to describe what is and is not important to the success of the organization and design structures that fit each organization's unique set of circumstances.

16 - Discuss how managers assess their organization's culture.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used to assess organizational culture. The Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) and the Kilmann-Saxton Culture-Gap Survey are quantitative tools. In the hopes of generating a more accurate assessment of organizational culture, managers combine multiple instruments, a practice called triangulation.

18 - Describe how different types of change vary in scope.

Change can be of a relatively small scope, such as a modification in a work procedure (an incremental change) or of a larger scale, such as the restructuring of an organization (a strategic change). The most massive scope of change is transformational change, in which the organization moves to a radically different, and sometimes unknown, future state. One of the toughest decisions faced by leaders is the "pace" of change. Researchers agree that pace is important; however, they can't agree on which pace of change is most beneficial.

13 - Explain the role structural and personal factors play in causing conflict in organizations.

Conflict can be classified into categories: structural factors and personal factors. Structural factors include specialization, interdependence, common resources, goal differences, authority relationships, status inconsistencies, and jurisdictional ambiguities. The causes of conflict that arise from individual differences include skills and abilities, personalities, perceptions, values and ethics, emotions, communication barriers, and cultural differences.

13 - Describe the nature of conflicts in organizations.

Conflict is defined as any situation in which incompatible goals, attitudes, emotions, or behaviors lead to disagreement or opposition between two or more parties. Functional conflict is a healthy, constructive disagreement between two or more people. Dysfunctional conflict is an unhealthy, destructive disagreement between two or more people.

14 - Identify and describe contemporary issues facing organizations in the design of work.

Contemporary job design issues include telecommuting, alternative work patterns, technostress, and skill development. Work is relationally designed to provide opportunities and increase flexibility for employees. Companies use these and other approaches to the design of work as ways to manage a growing business while contributing to a better balance of work and family life for employees.

15 - Define differentiation and integration as organizational design processes.

Differentiation is the design process of breaking the organizational goals into tasks. Three different forms of differentiation are horizontal, vertical, and spatial. Integration is the design process of linking the tasks together to form a structure that supports goal accomplishment. Vertical linkage devices include hierarchical referral, rules and procedures, plans and schedules, added positions, and management information systems. The horizontal linkages are liaison roles, task forces, integrator positions, and teams.

13 - Describe effective and ineffective techniques for managing conflict.

Effective conflict management techniques include appealing to superordinate goals, expanding resources, changing personnel, changing structure, and confronting and negotiating. Ineffective techniques include nonaction, secrecy, administrative orbiting, due process nonaction, and character assassination.

15 - Identify factors that can adversely affect organizational structure.

If organizational structure is out of alignment with its contextual variables, one or more of the following symptoms appears: delayed decision making, low-quality decision making, non-response to changing environment, and interdepartmental conflict. Also, managers' personal cognitive biases and political ideologies affect their good judgment and decision-making abilities and may adversely affect the structure of the organization.

15 - Describe four contextual variables that influence organizational structure.

Four variables influence the success of an organization's design: size, technology, environment, and strategy and goals. These variables provide a manager with key considerations for the right organizational design. The amount of change in the contextual variables throughout the life of the organization influences the amount of change needed in the basic dimensions of the organization's structure.

14 - Discuss the traditional approaches to job design.

Good job design differentiates and integrates tasks, improves productivity, and enhances employee well-being. Approaches to job design that were developed during the twentieth century are job enlargement/job rotation, job enrichment, and the job characteristics theory. Each approach offers unique benefits to the organization, the employee, or both, but each also has limitations and drawbacks.

15 - Describe five structural configurations for organizations.

Henry Mintzberg proposed five structural configurations: the simple structure, the machine bureaucracy, the professional bureaucracy, the divisionalized form, and the adhocracy. The five basic parts of the organization, for Mintzberg, are the upper echelon, and/or strategic apex; the middle level, or middle line; the operating core; the technical staff, or technostructure; and the support staff. The organization's goals and levels of differentiation, integration, and formalization determine the structural configuration.

13 - Discuss the nature of group conflict in organizations.

Interorganizational conflict occurs between two or more organizations. Conflict occurring between groups or teams is known as intergroup conflict. Possible positive effects include increased group cohesiveness, task focus, and group loyalty. Possible negative consequences include extreme competition, hostility, and decreased communication between groups. Intragroup conflict is within groups or teams and can serve to avoid groupthink.

16 - Describe five ways leaders reinforce organizational culture.

Leaders play a critical role in shaping and reinforcing organizational culture. Managers need to create a positive culture through what they pay attention to how they react to crises, how they behave, how they allocate rewards, and how they hire and fire employees. Transformational leaders create a more adaptive culture, which in turn increases business unit performance.

18 - Explain Lewin's organizational change model.

Lewin's model, the idea of force field analysis, contends that a person's behavior is the product of two opposing forces; one force pushes toward preserving the status quo and the other force pushes for change. Lewin's change model is a three-step process: unfreezing—encouraging individuals to discard old behaviors,moving—new attitudes, values, and behaviors are substituted for old ones, and refreezing—new attitudes, values, and behaviors are established as the new status quo.

16 - Explain actions managers can take to change organizational culture.

Managers can use two approaches to change organizational culture: help current members buy into a new set of values, or add newcomers and socialize them into the organization and remove current members appropriately. Managers must send consistent messages about the new values and beliefs, provide credible communication, and live the new values. Cultural change can be assumed to be successful if new behavior is intrinsically motivated.

18 - Discuss the major individual-focused techniques for organization development intervention.

Managers have a host of organization development techniques to facilitate organizational change. Development efforts include skills training, leadership training and development, executive coaching, role negotiation, job redesign, health promotion programs, and career planning. Success depends on techniques used, competence of the change agent, the organization's readiness for change, and top management commitment. Programs do not drive change; business needs do.

13 - Identify five styles of conflict management.

Managers have at their disposal a variety of conflict management styles: avoiding, accommodating, competing, compromising, and collaborating. One way of classifying styles of conflict management is to examine the styles' assertiveness (the extent to which you want your goals met) and cooperativeness (the extent to which you want to see the other party's concerns met).

15 - Identify and describe emerging organizational structures.

Network organizations are weblike structures that contract some or all of their operating functions to other organizations and then coordinate their activities through managers and other employees at their headquarters. Virtual organizations are temporary network organizations consisting of independent enterprises. The circle organization, crafted by Harley-Davidson in its drive to achieve teamwork without teams, is a more open system and an organic structure for customer responsiveness.

16 - Describe the three stages of organizational socialization and the ways culture is communicated in each step.

Newcomers are transformed from outsiders to participating, effective members of the organization throughorganizational socialization. Three stages in the socialization process are anticipatory socialization, encounter,and change and acquisition. Through positive effective socialization, newcomers understand and adopt values and norms ensuring the company's culture and central values survive. Results can be good performance, high job satisfaction, and the intention to stay with the organization.

18 - Explain how companies determine the need to conduct an organization development intervention.

Organization development (OD) is a systematic approach to organizational improvement. The first step, the diagnosis, should pinpoint specific problems and areas in need of improvement. Six areas to examine carefully are the organization's purpose, structure, reward system, support systems, relationships, and leadership. A needs analysis then determines the skills and competencies that employees must have to achieve the goals of the change.

16 - Identify the three levels of organizational culture and evaluate the roles they play in an organization.

Organizational culture is a pattern of basic assumptions considered valid and taught to new members as the way to perceive, think, and feel in the organization. Artifacts are cultural symbols in the physical and social work environments, such as personal enactment, ceremonies and rites, stories, rituals, and symbols. Deeper level values reflect inherent beliefs, and assumptions guide behavior and tell members of an organization how to perceive situations and people.

16 - Evaluate the four functions of organizational culture within an organization.

Organizational culture serves four basic functions. First, culture provides a sense of identity to members and increases commitment to the organization. Second, culture provides a way for employees to interpret the meaning of organizational events. Third, culture reinforces the values in the organization. Finally, culture serves as a control mechanism for shaping behavior.

14 - Identify and describe alternative approaches to job design.

Several alternative approaches to job design have emerged over the past couple of decades: the social information-processing model; ergonomics and the interdisciplinary framework of Michael Campion and Paul Thayer; the international perspectives of the Japanese, Germans, and Scandinavians; and the health and well-being aspects of work design. Healthy work enables individuals to adapt, function well, and balance work with private life activities.

15 - Explain the forces reshaping organizations.

Several forces reshaping organizations are causing managers to go beyond the traditional frameworks and to examine ways to make organizations more responsive to customer needs. Some of these forces include shorter organizational life cycles, globalization, and rapid changes in information technology. These forces together increase the demands on process capabilities within the organization and emerging organizational structures. To successfully retain their health and vitality, organizations must function as open systems that are responsive to their task environment.

18 - Discuss the major group-focused techniques for organization development intervention.

Some OD intervention methods emphasize changing the organization itself or changing the work groups within the organization. Intervention methods in this category include survey feedback, management by objectives, product and service quality programs, team building, and process consultation. All the preceding OD methods focus on changing the organization or the work group.

18 - Discuss methods organizations can use to manage resistance to change.

The contemporary view holds that resistance is simply a form of feedback and that this feedback can be used very productively to manage the change process. Three key strategies for managing resistance to change are communication, participation, and empathy and support.

18 - Identify the major external and internal forces for change in organizations.

When organizations are in a state of turmoil and transition, all members are affected. External forces that demand change are globalization, workforce diversity, technological change, and managing ethical behavior.Internal pressures for change are generally recognizable: declining effectiveness, crisis, changes in employee expectations, and a changed work climate. Adaptiveness, flexibility, and responsiveness are characteristics of the organizations that will succeed in meeting the challenges of change.