Organizational Behaviour
Assignment
4 tasks, 25% each.
Task 1
An employee has each of the following:
- an external locus of control, b) a high Mach score, c) low self-monitor
- What scores this employee may have on traits of Big Five model?
- What work-related predictions would you make about the employee?
Task 2
Case Motivation
Task 3
Assignment Leadership
Task 4
Assignment (Case) Organizational Structure
Organizational Behaviour.
ASSIGNMENT. TASK 2.
Read the following case study and give answers to questions (about 1000 words) :
Mary Martin, 30, received her baccalaureate degree in computer science from a state school in the Midwest, graduatins with the above average grades. Mary is currently working in the computer support department as a programmer. During the past year, Mary missed 10 days of work. She seems unmotivated and rarely has her assignment completed on time. Usually she is give harder programs to work on. Recently the company turned all hourly positions into salary positions. Some employees have complained that they made more money when they were hourly employees because they were paid for overtime. Mary’s pay structure was based on hourly wage and she would often work long hours and overtime.
Past record indicate that Mary completes programs classified as “routine” in about 45 hours on average, whereas her coworkers take on average 32 hours for such programs. She finishes programs considered ‘major problems on average in about 115 hours, compared with about 100 hours on average for coworkers.
The company has decided to create a more team based environment. Many of the programmers who once worked on projects alone are now being given projects to tackle as a team. When Mary has worked in programming teams, her peer performance reviews are generally average or negative. Her male peers say that she is difficult to work with.
Last year the company expanded its office and hired 250 new employees. The company moved its officers from a small to a larger building; some employees who worked for the company before the expansion expressed concern that there were not enough resources and tools to go around. Many of the tenured employees also complained to supervisors that new employees were not adequate ly trained and it was slowing down production.
Some of the tenured employees expressed concern when some if the newer employees were promoted to supervisory positions: according to email sent to supervisors, many felt that the criteria for promotion were not based on experience and performance within the company; instead they suspected the supervisors were playing favorites and promoting their friends to supervisory positions.
Along with new employees came new programming demands. However, employees reported to supervisors that they did not feel they had adequate time to learn how to use new software that would make designing new programs easier and more efficient.
The computer department recently sent a questionnaire to all users or its services to evaluate the usefulness and accuracy of data received. The results indicate many departments are not using computer outputs because they cannot understand the reports. It was also determined that users of output generated from Mary’s programs found the output chaotic and not useful for managerial decision making.
Questions:
- What are some Hygiene factors associated with Mary’s motivation? Describe
- How would you correct these Hygiene factors?
- As Mary’s manager, how can you use expectancy theory to motivate Mary? Explain the details.
- As Mary’s manager, what additional changed would you implement to increase the employees’ performance?
Adapted form R.Kreiner and A.Kinicki, Organizationak Behaviour, 5th ed.
Task 3
Case: Jack Hartnett at D. L. Rogers Corp.
D.L.Rogers Corp., based in Bedford, Texas, primarily owns 54 franchises of Sonic Corp., a chain of fast food drive-in restaurants. Jack Hartnett, Rogers’s president, leads by combining ingredients from both Stone Age and the New Age.
Hartnett prides himself on knowing everything about his employees – both at work and at home. If they have marital problems or credit card debt, he wants to know. And he thinks nothing of using that information if he thinks he can help.
Is Hartnett’s style intrusive? Yes, but he does not consider it a problem. “There are no secrets here,” he says. No subject is too delicate for his ear. And his defense? He’s merely doing what any good friend might do. Also, he believes that the more he knows about his workers, the more he can help them stay focused at work and happy at home.
Hartnett plays golf with his managers, send them personally signed birthday cards, and drops by their homes ti take them to diver. But if you think he’s “Mr. Nice Guy”, think again. He badmouths academic theories that propose that leaders need to persuade workers to “buy in” to the leader’s vision. Hartnett instructs his employees to “do it the way we tell you to do”. He’s perfectly comfortable using his authority in his position to make rules and dish out punishments. “I will only tell you something once”. Break one of his rules twice and he’ll fire you.
The managers who work for Hartnett are well compensated for meeting his demanding requirements. His unit managers and regional managers earn an average of $60,000 and $125,000 respectively. This compared with industry average of $30,000 and $52,700.
Does Hartnett seems inconsistent? Maybe. He believes in openness, integrity and honesty. But he expects as much as he gives. It’s not an option. So he’s “your best friend” and, at the same time, he’s rigid and autocratic. He admits to purposely keeping everybody slightly off balance ‘so they’ll work harder’.
Hartnett’s approach to leadership seems to be effective. His per-store revenues are nearly 18 percent higher than the chain’s average and profits are 25 percent above the norm. Moreover, people seem to like working for him. In an industry known for high turnover, Hartnett’s managers stay about nine years compared with in industry average of less than two.
Questions:
- Is Hartnett a transactional or a transformational leader? Explain your answer in detail.
- What situational variables do you think explain his success at Rogers?
- Would you want to work for Hartnett? Why or why not?
Organizational Behavior.
ASSIGNMENT. TASK 4.
Selecting the Proper Organization Design
Kitchen Staff is growing like crazy. And Anne Turrin isn’t sure how to control the monster she has created. Anne started Kitchen Stuff out of her three-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee in 1994. It was a mail-order business that carried everything people would need for their kitchens. She used her savings and a $10000 loan from her parents to fund her first catalogue. That catalogue contained only twenty pages and generated sales of $65,000. Today, the Kitchen Stuff catalogue is a click 170 pages and is expected to bring in revenues in excess of $10 million.
The Kitchen Stuff operations comprise essentially three functions: buyingordering, warehousing, and taking orders. Until 1997, Anne and her sister ran the whole business out of Anne’s apartment. Then she hires her first real employee to handle telephone orders. Recently Anne moved her business into a 6,000 square-foot warehouse in a suburb of Milwaukee. She and her sister do all the buying, although the task has become far too cumbersome for the two to handle by themselves. Anne plans to add at least two additional full-time buyers. Anne also recognizes that her staff of six telephone operators are overburdened. She plans to triple the size of this group over the next 6 months. But by doing so, she realized that she will not ba bale to directly oversee everything anymore. Her managerial demands are now pushed beyond her ability. Currently, one person is responsible for all shipping. He is assisted by four college students who work part-time.
In 1994, Kitchen Stuff had two employees. At the time this was written, it has nine full-time employees (including Anne and her sister) and four part-timers. Anne runs everything and makes all the decisions. Within 6 months, the company will very likely employ twenty-five to thirty people. Anne realizes that she will not be able to single-handedly manage the firm as it moves to this new level. Moreover, if Anne succeeds in reaching her 5-year plan, Kitchen Stuff will be doing more than $50 million a year and employing between sixty and eighty people.
If you were Anne, what organization design options would you consider viable? Which one would you choose? Why?