Book: Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2018). Organizational Behavior (18th Edition). Pearson Education (US). https://purdueuniversityglobal.vitalsource.com/books/9780134729749
Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2019). Organizational behavior (18th ed.). Pearson.
Read Chapter 5 pages 163–165 regarding Hofstede’s cultural values.
Read Chapter 15: “Foundations of Organization Structure.” This chapter examines the different types of organization structures and the purposes of each.
Read Chapter 16: “Organizational Culture,” which includes the characteristics of an organization’s culture and how culture affects behavior in the organization.
Read Chapter 17, pages 593–595: “Human Resource Policies and Practices,” on ethics and training. These few pages discuss ethics training as well as other different types, evaluation methods, and effectiveness of training.
Also, review ethical perspectives and the competing values framework activities under the learning activity.
An organization’s culture tends to reflect the values of the majority of those working in it, who derive their values from the society in which they live. These values are reflected in the core values of the organization, which constitute the dominant culture of the organization. Organizational culture also has diverse internal components and influences, such as the organization’s stories, processes, style, expectations, artifacts, work ethic, and assumptions that make up the company culture. Through a process of socialization, new employees become acclimated to an organization’s culture as they move through three stages of adaptation, according to Robbins & Judge (2019): a pre-entry stage (i.e., before they actually join the organization), a transition phase in which they realize the discrepancies between expectations and reality, and finally the adaptation phase, when they begin to adjust to the new culture (p. 558).
How does organizational structure impact you on the job?
As the business environment becomes more competitive, companies are looking to maximize efficiency while maintaining as much flexibility as possible (especially in specific industries like technology). The more bureaucratic the organization, the less flexibility the organization has to adapt to changing circumstances. Suppose a competitor comes to market with a new product that seems to elicit great consumer demand. In that case, the organization must adapt quickly to either get their version of this new type of product on the market or come out with an equally exciting product to stay competitive.
If you are a manager and are tasked with coming up with this new product, if the personnel is empowered to make decisions in a flexible organizational structure, you can respond more quickly to the challenge. You can quickly form task-oriented teams that can act in an entrepreneurial manner to develop a solution and innovative response. If, however, your employees are not used to working in ad hoc teams and are not used to sharing ideas and making decisions without lots of layers of upper management involvement, the organization may not respond on a timely basis.
Why is understanding organizational culture important?
When you understand an organization’s culture, you can better determine if you will fit in as an employee. If you are interviewing a potential candidate for your organization, you will be better prepared to ask appropriate questions to determine if the candidate will fit your organizational environment.
Globalizing for Growth
Scenario (fictional): SilverWire software company with 75 employees is located in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. Up until now, the culture has experienced some employee bad behavior and a laissez-faire culture. The company hires mostly locals, and everyone seems to make important decisions. The company has had an informal code of ethics, and it has not been enforced. As a result, there have been increasing incidents of personnel doing consulting work for other companies outside of work hours. The CEO is concerned that their software company could be compromised. Lately, as educators worldwide have increasingly sought out the company’s software, the CEO realizes it is time to reimagine a more diverse, inclusive, and global company while adhering to an ethical code of conduct with uniform responses to infringement.
The CEO knows they will soon need to hire at least another 20 sales staff and additional software engineers to address this increasing global demand. The CEO wants to restructure the company while keeping company costs down as much as possible.
Help SilverWire address the problems by completing the checklist items.
View the company’s current organizational structure.
Address the following items in your submission:
Checklist:
(1) Identify the characteristics needed to implement a shared ethical culture and explain how this will help the organization’s current organizational structure.
(2) Explain how the ethical culture will be affected by the global context. Describe some of the global implications. Use the competing values framework in analyzing the situation.
(3) Analyze the current organizational structure and identify the key questions the executives need to answer to create the most effective and suitable organizational structure and culture.
(4) Explain the importance of ethical leadership in implementing a new organizational structure and suggesting a possible new structure based on the learning activity.
Submit your 3- to 4-page paper with additional title and reference pages in APA format and citation style to the competency assessment Dropbox.
Minimum Submission Requirements
- 3- to 4-page Microsoft® Word® (minimum 250 words per page) document, in addition to the title and reference pages.
- Your submission should provide a clearly established and sustained viewpoint and purpose.
- Your writing should be well ordered, logical, and unified, as well as original and insightful.
- Your submission must be written in Standard English and demonstrate exceptional content, organization, style, grammar, and mechanics.
- A separate page at the end of your submission should contain a list of references in the current APA format. Use your textbook, the Library, and the Internet for research as appropriate.
- Be sure to include references for all sources and to cite them using in-text citations where appropriate. Your sources and content should follow the current APA citation style. Review the writing resources for APA formatting and citation in the Learning Resources area of this module. Access additional writing resources within the Academic Success Center.
- Your submission should:
- include a title page;
- be double-spaced;
- be typed in Times New Roman, 12-point font; and
- be free of spelling or punctuation errors.
