The role of workers - Migrant workers - expatriate assignments

Germany is a country with a particular way of doing things when it comes to the relation between managers and the work force along the organizational structure. On the one hand, the German model is characterized by a common usage of authority as a mean of managing employees, buy on the other hand the work force seems to be well represented in front of the law and even it gets involved very often on the management of the corporations. The power of unions is such important that in many cases they have almost the same power the senior decision makers have, since unions in Germany work jointly at a national level. All these elements make up the concept of co-determination.  By means of co-determination law a representative of the workers should be made member for the board of directors in order to represent workers and make decisions in favor of the organization.

Co-determination is vital in terms of the rights and the possibilities that workers have compared to those working in other countries where unions work separately and where conflicts take place not only in an scenario in which they negotiate with managers but also within the union itself. As a result, the search for satisfying personal interest is even more and more popular and that division of unions makes their rights less recognized. Under co-determination model, workers feel they have a main role beyond that one limited just to accomplish basic functions, namely, they can make decisions and feel they can lead the future of the organization.

Migrant workers are those individuals who move from one country to another one in a voluntary way with no intervention coming from external agents. This concept is different to that one of immigrants (who look for permanent residence or stay abroad), migrants own a temporary residence and they’re free to move whenever they consider the need.  Obviously, this doesn’t mean there are no pressures motivating that decision, social and economic causes in the home country can be associated to that result, but the final decision is made personally and independently.

Based on the required reading and the class presentation about this topic, please answer the following question:

Analyze the potential implications of the Co-determination principles over the organization’s decision making process from the perspectives of the managers and the employees.

From the managers perspective, the first implication clearly has to do with the decision making itself, because once workers and unions take a place in the decision making of companies, it will be more tricky to reach a final agreement. We have to add the fact that unions are mostly composed by people who do not have a strict education which will probably entail several misunderstandings when discussing key points in negotiations. They might assume a stubborn behavior without considering the real knowledge about certain topics such as finance, accounting and so on. Ignorance about these topics can cause unions to ask for unachievable benefits and conditions which, in the case of being taken into account, might origin troubles within the company.

Finally, from employees’ perspective, we might say that given their important role inside the organizations their opinions and considerations are heard sooner or later, so it means a great chance to motivate good ideas and promote a real change inside the company. Why do they have the potential to carry out these ideas? Basically, because they are the first ones who perceive the real environment inside the organizations, they know the inner company as probably seniors managers don’t and have a complete knowledge about every process. Even, if they disagree with the union, they are not forced to resign or change their mind, they are free to decide either they strike or keep working

Source: Piette, Jean-Jacques. 2004. “Understanding Management German style”. Les Amis de L’ecole de Paris.

Merging OC

Given the globalized world, companies have found themselves in a situation in which they must look for new options in order to keep their competitiveness and keep offering value to potential customers. “Mergers and acquisitions have a unique potential to transform firms, and to contribute to corporate renewal” as well as companies come up with new alternatives to improve their market position.

This process is not easy to be carried out since it entails the transfer of skills and capabilities from one company’s members to another organization, that is to say, managers of both sides must feel encouraged and be committed to work jointly by sharing a common vision and a complementary knowledge. Depending on how well this task is made the value creation of the company will be successfully accomplished.

Also, challenges will be present throughout all the process, especially regarding to cultural issues when the ‘actors’ belong to different cultural backgrounds or even when there is cultural diversity within the companies themselves. It’d seem to be tricky and tough to do, and maybe it is indeed, however “in bringing together firms with different skills and knowledge bases, acquisitions create unique learning opportunities for the partner firms”.

So, what is and effective integration? It might be defined as the combination of firms into a single unity, generating shared efforts to fulfill the goals of the new association.

 

Based on the required reading for this module, list and explain - using evidence from the cases presented in the reading - the main challenges and opportunities arising in processes of mergers and acquisitions from an organizational culture perspective.

Include at least 3 challenges and 3 opportunities.

§  Challenges

-Integration process: As Nick Starrit defined it, integration is like a marriage. Companies have to make some tough decision that might compromise organizational culture in both sides since they have to decide their common physical and non-physical assets and how a desirable future situation will be accomplished. It means that at any step along the integration plan might be a clash of organizational cultures when trying to state that common point.

- Identity: As we read in the case of integration between Deutsche Bank and Bankers Trust, employees’ identity can be a very sensitive topic if it is not managed in the right way. That is exactly what had happened before when BT acquired Alex Brown, not taking into account some issues that made Alex Brown’s employees feel ignored regarding to their identity they’ve already had before the integration. Deutsche Bank had the vision to note it and made the good choices, not only giving back the identity to these people but also including the brand Alex Brown in the name of the new company.

- Another important challenge is how to find the way of not making redundant those employees who, in the first instance, might not be considered to be into the new plan for the company. Even though sometimes it is inevitable, organizations taking part in the process should concern about linking all individuals to the construction of the new corporate culture since it will add diversification and opportunities. Sometimes it is good that organizational culture adapt the employees, not the opposite.

 

§  Advantages

-Cultural assessment: It allows the organizations to reduce potential cultural conflicts by uncovering the perceptions each group has about the counterpart. This exercise permits companies to prevent future problems related to communication, the key element to finish a successful agreement.

-Integration processes force companies to show their best qualities and capabilities in order to integrate. It means they have to uncover the best practices within their organizations. A good example for this approach was the case of BP and Amoco, since “BP performance management process was considered the best practice in terms of generating strong performance. However, when it came to allocating capital, they adopted the Amoco model.”

- Acquisitions can enhance the building of a new corporate culture for the new organization. This entails a break down regarding to the previous barriers that might exist between the participant groups. “Several meetings with the top 500 managers were held in order to explain BP’s operating philosophy. It also encouraged them to socialize and mix with their counterparts from the Amoco organization”.

Source: Alzira Salama, Wayne Holland, Gerald Vinten, (2003) "Challenges and Opportunities in Mergers and Acquisitions: Three International Case Studies – Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; British Petroleum-Amoco; Ford-Volvo", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 27 Iss: 6, pp.313 – 321.

East Asia

Asian countries have had an important influence on managing studies throughout the last decades, especially the Japanese model which is characterized by the way they:

• Give priority to the market share.

• Always pursue objectives beyond the optimization of the stock value.

• Pay special attention to their relationships with suppliers with whom they always look for long- term associations.

• Consider that blue-collar employees and middle managers have important roles and have the capabilities to provide good feedback to keep improving the processes.

• See consensus and loyalty as means to succeed as an organization.

In turn, Korean management style was shaped from the Japanese one since Korea was a colony since 1910 up to 1945, enough time to receive all the influence of Japan which helped to shape the modern structure of Korean organizations, a structure that has made these companies so competitive and determinant in the current globalized economy.

• Korean government gives financial support to the private companies facilitating access to credits to improve the possibilities of greater investments.

• For employees, lifetime inside organizations is more flexible than under de Japanese management style model.

• The top managers are more authoritarians and strict than in Japan where the decision making is made according to a very flat organizational structure.

• The most important companies in Korea are owned by members of those families that set them up.

In Korea, as well as it happened in Japan with the Zaibatsu, a group of companies merged as something called Chaebol, having several ties with the government in order to promote their growth.

Explain the phenomenon of convergence in terms of management styles. What are the forces or factors pushing for convergence?

Convergence happens when a country’s management model is so effective and show so good results, that this is immediately implemented by other countries. This fact will make that many of them feel some pressure about implementing the model or the style since the standard conditions of the market requires of updated companies if these ones want to survive to those changing conditions.

Explain the phenomenon of differentiation in terms of management styles. What are the forces of factors pushing for differentiation?

Differentiation is a strategy by which companies make a segmentation of the market in order to reach more alternatives and give the organization the chance of not relying only on one or few products but also on several choices that permit to respond and resist to the market dynamics and changes.

Communication & Virtual teams

Communication could be defined as the way how information is transmitted from one individual to another and the means used for this purpose. The most common and recognized is the interpersonal communication which is the basis for making and maintaining personal relations and it is so unique that cannot even be replaced by technology. This kind of communication has 4 key elements: The communicator, the receiver, the perceptual screens and the message. In order to reach a successful communication, the listening must be reflective; it means that one must listen carefully the counterpart, repeat back the message and make corrections about possible mistakes. Why should it be reflective? Because in reduces the chances for distortions in perceptions, assures that the right message is given and because it considers emotions as vital for an effective message. Responses to reflective listening go from affirming contact, paraphrasing and clarification of the implicit; to the silence and the eye contact.

However, communication varies depending on who gives the message since every manager has a different way to give a message:

• Expressive speakers: they express ideas, thoughts, and opinions and so on in a very open way so the employees can know where they really stand.
• Empathetic listeners: their main characteristic is their patience and concerning about others, and their willingness to listen.
• Persuasive leaders: they prefer to motivate and encourage employees instead of just giving orders.
• Sensitive to feelings: they look for enhancing employee’s self-esteem by giving feedback and adopting a critical perspective.
• Informative managers: provide the necessary information to employees in order to avoid information distortion and overload.

Also, some barriers are always present in every cross-cultural communication. Some of them are:

• Language barriers: different dialects, oral expressions and writing; semantic barriers, poor grammar and punctuation
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• Physical barriers: such as noise, time, distance, age and gender.
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• Social psychological barriers: status, attitudes, values, perceptions, inference, abstraction, etc.

It is important to take into account that communication is not limited only to the verbal one, but that there is also a non-verbal language carried out by facial and eye expressions, voice tone and paralanguage.

Virtual teams

According to Zenun et al (2007) a team should fulfill the following conditions: a small number of members, skills that can be complemented, to have a common objective or purpose, be committed to the team and show accountable results. Virtual teams are those whose members are located in different places and even in different time zones, which communicate each other by means of modern technology of communication so they must have a big coordination by the manager or leader.

On the one hand, the benefits of virtual teams are the following ones, among others:

• Low costs.
• Easiness to take advantage of market opportunities.
• Allow its member to be geographically dispersed.
• Quick response to changes.

On the other hands, there are also some difficulties when managing and dealing with virtual teams:

• Lack of face-to-face contact.
• Difficult for the leader to check the performance of every member.
• Possibility of mistrust, misunderstandings and conflicts.
• Different languages.
• Cultural differences.

That is why managers must have a balance and find ways to avoid the disadvantages so the virtual team can work as a real team, not as a group of individuals that work independently.

Communication is a process that allows organizations to send/receive messages within their own boundaries but also to interact with outside entities (customers, suppliers, the media, etc.). Messages are send/received not only through oral and written statements, there are many channels and ways that need to be considered when discussing effective organizational communication. In that sense, the use of sounds has become increasingly important.

Based on the article “If Intercontinental were a sound…what would it be?”*, Please discuss the implications (potential advantages, disadvantages, challenges, etc.) of using sounds to send strategic messages. You need to integrate the use of key concepts relating to the topic of communication to support your answer.

The usage of jingles and sounds is a very useful tool when looking for giving the desired message to a specific public. Normally, sounds are simple and so easy to remember since they are acquired by means of the echoic memory by which humans remember a sound, which is easier to memorize than an image. That is the reason why it is not strange that we remember dozens of sounds right now, and even more throughout our lives.

The problem is that given the nature of the message, jingles are not easy to design since a very well designed sound does not necessary mean that the communication will be given successfully. For that reason is why InterContinental study intended to create a musical version of the company’s profile, was a very interesting exercise because it allowed the organization to see beyond a simple sound and wonder about whether they understood or not their business.

Generally, we do not think about this, but the sensorial environment has a remarkable impact and influence by stimulating and creating stories that customers will remember after leaving the venue. The importance of this approach relies on the fact that this is a magnificent tool to take advantage of when trying to communicate the desired message. By means of this study, those involved on it, found out that they still had a lot to learn about the organization and stop for a while and redefine its values in order to show and assure the right message.

Motivation

Motivation is the process by which individuals keep their behavior oriented to reach a specific goal. Someone is motivated when feels like doing something motivated by different elements of emotional and social nature. Based on motivation, several theories have been developed to explain how it explains, predicts and influences individual’s behavior.

On the one hand one approach about motivation suggests that it is explained first, by internal needs. Max Weber said that salvation could be reached only by working hard, a very protestant vision; and Sigmund Freud designed his own theory about the unconscious nature implicit in human’s behavior. On the other hand, we find the external incentives, those which come from external factors such as self-interest and economic gain and the self-interest vs. the enlightened interest.

Some of the main theories about motivation are the following ones:

1. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Maslow suggested that individual’s needs can be divided into 5 kinds: physiological needs, needs of security and safety, social needs, needs of self-esteem and needs of self-actualization. According to this theory, a level becomes dominant once the previous rank has been satisfied.

2. Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factors Theory: For Herzberg, satisfaction and dissatisfaction are defined by motivational factors like professional acknowledgement and achievements, and by hygiene factors such as salary and work conditions.

3. Douglas McGregor: His theory is one of the most popular, Theory X and Theory Y. Individuals under the X Theory do not have ambition, do not enjoy their work and their priority is the money. On the contrary, those under the Y Theory consider the effort as important at work; they do not care about responsibilities and are concerned about learning and being motivated.

4. McClelland’s need theory: States that an employee has 3 main needs: achievement whose motivation is the challenge and the feedback; the affiliation which is motivated by the cooperative and harmonious environment; and finally, the power, whose main motivation is the possibility to manage others.

Sources: http://psychology.about.com/od/mindex/g/motivation-definition.htm and Organizations and Culture slides.

What are the Hawthorne Studies? Explain its importance for studying motivation at the workplace and its influence over diverse motivation theories. (Include key findings and limitations) (max. 500 words)

Hawthorne Studies were researches carried out by researchers from Western Electric and Harvard University in order to examine the influence of the environment and its changes on workers performance in production. Researchers found that little changes in the environment did not affect dramatically the way how employees performed their work, nonetheless they tried to see what would happen giving some incentives expecting to discover a dramatic change, but they found that instead of working harder individually, workers started to focus more on the teamwork and the group.

These studies were important as they gave a new approach different to the previous ones about management since they go beyond tradition theories about motivation and shift from individual analysis to see motivation from the group dynamics and personal relations point of view. From that point on, managers are also part of those dynamics and they must be involved into their groups so they will know the best way to motivate, lead and communicate inside them.

Also, they contributed to the other motivation theories taken the substance of the topic to a most practical and realistic level.

Based on the class activity about "Flight 001: Motivating Employees", please answer the following question:

¿Which motivation theory do you think has the most relevance for understanding the behavior of Amanda Shank and fostering her motivation at work? (Max. 500 words)

The theory that better explains Amanda Shank’s behavior is maybe the X & Y Theory because she experienced both perspectives. On her first job, she lacked of motivation and desire to make a minimum effort to do her job, and the reason is very obvious, if you are told that all employees are just numbers and that nobody is essential for the organization, it is normal that you feel disappointed as it means you and your effort do not have any value, you’re just a tool for the company just to make money, so any employee under those conditions will perform without motivation, just doing the duties looking for the money and without feeling indentified with the organization. In Flight 001 her situation is totally opposed, she is motivated and her suggestions are heard and taken into account for improving processes inside the company. Even, the fact of having regular contact with the co-founder gives and impression that the effort is really worth and that continuous challenges are means to grow personally. To sum up, it means that she is now under the Y Theory.

Also, it might be said that under Maslow’s Theory, she had achieved the first three levels (her physiological, safety and social needs) so she automatically tried to move to the next level (self-esteem needs), a level that was impossible to satisfy in the other company and which right now has been achieved so Amanda will probably stay in the Self-Actualization level, learning constantly and feeling more and more challenged.

Sources:

· http://www.mgmtguru.com/mgt301/301_Lecture1Page10.htm

· http://www.beechmontcrest.com/hawthorne_studies.htm