The work culture and methods of organizational behavior

Organizational behavior is the study of how an individual or group of people within an organization behave. According to Vecchio (2006), organizational behavior draws heavily from behavioral and social sciences, most importantly from psychology. The reason to study organizational behavior is to get a better understanding of what characteristics would be needed in order to enhance the interaction amongst employees within a company. Organizational behavior involves understanding key factors as to why certain people are influenced to act the way they do. By understanding these key factors, it will help the organization work towards changing behaviors to allow for desired goals.

This document will analyze the organizational behavior by describing the type of culture, modes of communication in the organization, nature of authority, motivational techniques, areas of emotional intelligence embraced by the organization, and how the components of virtual organization are incorporated. Once concluded, there will be a better understanding of these categories and how they pertain to my current employer, The Nature’s Bounty Company.

Type of Culture

The type of culture within an organization greatly affects the type of organizational behavior that is exhibited within an organization. Per Baack (2012), organizational culture consists of a set of shared meanings and values held by a set of members in an organization and this distinguishes the organization from other organizations.

The Nature’s Bounty Company exhibits a dualism culture as the company exhibits two different types of cultures. The company is a fairly large company with 11, 000 employees and is also an older company as it was formed in 1971. In 2010, a venture capital company bought The Nature’s Bounty Company from the family who started the company in 1971. This size, age, and sale of the company has allowed for the dualism culture to exist within the organization.

Today, some departments are led by newly hired managers while some departments are still led by managers who originally worked for the company under the original owners. The departments who are led by the managers who worked under the original owners tend to promote a culture in their groups that allow older viewpoints on the company to thrive. There tends to be gossip and lower motivation among their employees. The managers who experienced the sale, along with layoffs, became insecure about their future with the company. This insecurity has trickled down from the managers to their employees. The departments who are led by the more recently hired managers tend to promote a culture in their groups that allow for new ideas, better camaraderie, and their employees portray a better sense of security with their jobs and their belief that they will grow with the company.

Executive management has not been successful to eliminate the dualism culture. The negative viewpoints of the managers who worked under the original owners has led their employees to exhibit the same negative viewpoints. This has caused friction, lack of motivation, and decreased productivity. Therefore, in this instance, the dualism culture has caused a negative effect on the organizational behavior of the company.

Modes of Communication

The modes of communication at The Nature’s Bounty Company differ between groups. New managers urge their employees to have more personal interactions, if possible, when conducting business. The groups under these managers do use email but they are more active in qualifying which type of communication they should use for the specific task at hand. The groups under the older management tend to be more email based with their communications. Their managers do not urge them to increase their personal interactions.

Per Holt (n. d.), effective communication in an organization increases productivity, decreases employee turnover, and improves office atmosphere. The newer management has been more effective in developing better working relationships by establishing a precedence that their groups become more effective communicators. These groups have formed stronger relationships within their groups and with other groups they work with due to more effective communication. Stronger relationships have led to decreased employee turnover in these groups. The employees in these groups exhibit a happier demeanor than the groups who were trained under the original management.

Newer management has also urged their employees to increase the use of feedback within their groups. This has allowed barriers to break down and less friction to exist. Allowing employees to provide feedback has helped management determine which behaviors and systems are working and which behaviors and systems are not working. Newer management has been open to making changes based on their employee’s feedback. The increase in feedback has boosted creativity, promoted trust, and has driven motivation. Newer management created monthly town halls where the executive team speak to the entire company. These sessions allow the employees to provide feedback and ask questions to the CEO or other executives. The response to the town halls has been very positive.

The newer management is slowly increasing their ratio to the older management. Through the use of better modes of communication, the newer management has increased employee performance and has improved the overall well-being of the company.

Nature of Authority

As stated by Baack (2012), an organizational structure establishes a chain of command. The mechanism to operate the chain of command begins with authority. The three types of authority are line authority, staff authority, and functional authority. The Nature’s Bounty Company operates with a line authority. An organizational chart has been developed to show which employees report under each manager. Line authority allows management the right to make decisions and give directions/instructions to their employees to complete tasks.

A manager alone is not able to complete all their tasks assigned to them, so they delegate certain tasks to their employees. The line of authority should be clearly defined within the organization. The Nature’s Bounty Company does a good job of defining this line of authority and designating who has certain responsibilities within the organization. Smaller companies tend to have employees “ wearing several hats” which can cause friction among some employees if they feel they are doing more work than they are supposed to be doing. The larger size and number of employees within The Nature’s Bounty Company allows more workers to complete more tasks. This alleviates the need for people to take on too much responsibility. This has both positive and negative outcomes. Positively, the employees aren’t being burnt out by being designated too many tasks. Negatively, some employees have expressed that they are bored because they do not have enough work to do.

Motivational Techniques

Motivating employees is a necessary factor in creating a successful organization. Employees who feel unmotivated will lack the drive to increase their performance, can become toxic around other employees, and will cause increased turnover. Building an organization that attracts, focuses, and keeps talented employees will lead the company to growth and success. Employee satisfaction will lead to employees to be more productive. Motivating employees can be done through compensation, inspiration and appreciation. A good manager will know how to properly motivate their employees.

During my tenure with The Nature’s Bounty Company, which has been about one year, my observation is that the majority of the organizational motivation has been formed extrinsically. New management has taken the needed steps to ensure they are motivating their employees with incentives to push their performance. This process has been well received by the employees. New management has increased merit increases, bonus incentives, and have focused on developing other employee incentives that would be helpful to the employees.

Employees used to be less motivated to increase their performance, mainly because of the sale to the venture capital company. Per Ingram, D (n. d.), extrinsic motivation can come in the form of financial incentives rather than through encouragement. The increase in merit and bonus payouts to the employees have led to an increase in the employee’s motivation, even with the employees working under the old management. This has also led to increased productivity throughout the company and has motivated certain employees to break personal performance records.

Areas of EQ Embraced by the Organization

According to Baack (2012), emotional intelligence is the mental skill to be able to rationalize emotions, rather than merely react to them. An example of someone with a higher emotional intelligence would be a manager who is presented with an issue by upset coworkers and is able to solve the problem while easing his employees concerns at the same time.

Per Marchant (2013), an organization exhibiting high emotional intelligence has employees who are motivated, productive, efficient, aligned with the business, and committed. The employees are also effective, confident, likeable, happy, and rewarded. The Nature’s Bounty Company has increased their emotional intelligence by recruiting new talent who have strived to meet the above mentioned characteristics. This new talent has also strived to ensure their employees meet these characteristics as well. Employees exhibiting these traits hold the emotional maturity to be able to manage their emotions better under stressful situations.

Our CEO, who was brought on when the company was sold to the venture capital company, invested a considerable amount of time and money to restructure our human resources department when he began working for The Nature’s Bounty Company. The new human resources group has placed an important emphasis on ensuring they hire new talent with higher emotional intelligence when they are job profiling, recruiting, interviewing, and undergoing job development. This focus has enabled our company to hire some very talented employees.

Virtual Elements

The Nature’s Bounty Company is not a virtual company, but in the past several years they have added many aspects to allow their employees to work virtually when needed. This has allowed the employees schedules to become more flexible. The organization is comprised of many employees with families. Allowing their schedules to be more flexible has created a more contented workplace. The organization is also comprised of several locations, both domestically and internationally. The employees are now enabled to collaborate to a greater degree than they had been able to in the past.

The company has invested into several different technologies to allow for the employees to work virtually. These technologies are cell phones, laptops, televisions in all conference rooms, and cisco audio and visual systems. This investment has saved the company money on travel and has allowed work to get done quicker. By allowing the employees to participate in meetings remotely, the need for travel and telecommuting has been greatly reduced throughout the company.

The main issue with adding virtual elements to a company is when you have the manager and employee in different locations. It’s great to be able to obtain good talent by offering them the option to work remotely so they do not have to move to a less desirable location, but it can cause some strain when the employee and manager are not in the same location. The Nature’s Bounty Company has extended this type of offer to obtain good talent, as it’s hard to get some people to want to move to Long Island, but sometimes issues have arose when communication breaks down between the manager and employee due to the distance.

Conclusion

As stated in the beginning, the reason to study organizational behavior is to get a better understanding of what characteristics would be needed in order to enhance the interaction amongst employees within a company. This document has analyzed the organizational behavior of The Nature’s Bounty Company by describing the type of culture, modes of communication in the organization, nature of authority, motivational techniques, areas on emotional intelligence embraced by the organization, and how the components of a virtual organization are incorporated.

Examining these key factors for The Nature’s Bounty Company has determined that more enhancements are needed in these categories in order to achieve the desired goals of the company. Changing the company culture to decrease the amount of employees who are causing friction, lack of motivation, and decreased productivity is needed. These groups are causing a breakdown in attaining effective communication within the organization. The size of the company is allowing for the company to achieve a good line of authority as it allows the workload to mainly be distributed evenly to avoid employee burnout. New management is bringing in better talent, but the pre-existing culture is hard to break. This is the reason to study organizational behavior. To determine how to make the working life better within an organization. Management that can understand this concept have a better change of obtaining a great organization and to control the behaviors that exist within that organization.