BUS102 Management- Organisational Culture and Decision Making

The assessment does not require an introduction, conclusion or table of contents. Please refer to the marking criteria to assist as a guideline to help you complete the tasks.

You are to research and analyse all of the following 3 questions:

1: Discuss how managers can make effective decisions in today’s world. 
2:What is organisational culture and how does it influence employee behaviour in an organisation.
3: Will planning become more or less important to managers in the future? Why?

Answers

Organisational Culture and Decision Making

1: Decision making process needs deep insight about a matter one deals with. In an organisation, decision making is shouldered upon the managers. As the leader of hundreds of employees, the manager of an organisation utilises his or her leadership qualities thus ensuring the basic understanding of the problems or decisive characteristics. While making decision, the managers are supposed to conceive certain qualities of leadership.  He or she needs to develop certain reasons such as analysis of the paralysis, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of ridicule and others.  The basic difference between the decision making process of the managers and that of leaders is the presence and prevalence of the fear factors. The leaders are well experienced and they are excessively fearless while making decision for the organisation. On the other hand decision making by the managers needs to detailed analysis of the situation as the managers are liable to answer the counter attack by the senior leaders in case of failure (Ford and Richardson 2013).

Decision making is not the selection of course action. While making effective decision, the managers are to follow two basic theories. These are:

Decision making process is based on either of the two models. It may follow both the models as well, in need. Since the organisations follow some certain rules and systems, decisions are made according to the systematic workflow of the respective organisations. This certain procedure is called the Standard Operation Procedure (SOP). The managers while making decisions cannot go beyond the SOP model set by the organisation. On the other hand, rationality in decision making is done through the four step management of the managers. These are:

i) retrieval of relevant information

ii) analysis of the those information

iii) evaluation of the information

iv) choice making ()Pettigrew 2014)

2: Definition of Organisational Culture

According to John Minner (2015), organisational culture is a disciplinary aspect of social science that is similar to other studies. It utilises the scientific method in order to establish the truth and validate the theories related to it.  However, the concept of organisational culture is closely associated with the business organisations where the employees and the senior managers are linked together in order to follow certain operational rules and ethical disciplines. Though there is no exact boundary of the concept, the understanding of organisational behaviour is generally encompassed by the employee behaviour in a business organisation. this is not at all different from the social culture. Organisational culture is a set of rules or behavioural standards that are followed in order maintain distinctive criteria (Zsambok and Klein 2014).  

This is a shared concept of working rules, methods, personality and techniques that pulls every working individual of an organisation under the same roof so as to ensure employee engagement with the company. The culture of an organisation has distinctive characteristic traits from the other. It helps the employee mould according to the thought process the organisation is set to go forward with. There are certain key elements of organisational culture. These are;

i) Organisational communication

ii) Shared meaning and work evidences

iii) Bridging among the organisational members

Organisational Culture helps develop organisational behaviour through the following ways:

i) It unites the organisational members thus developing a sense of shared responsibility

ii) It enables a sense of differentiation of skills.

iii) It further facilitates the employees to develop self competency through betterment of work according to the organisational expectations. Most of the organisations set a a particular cultural rule that helps the employees understand the engagement with the organisations in a positive way.

Anitha and begum have found that the organisations has been devising the positive approach of the organisational culture in order to ensure employee retention.  Behavioural pattern of the employees is highly influenced by the organisational culture. For instance, the military personnel in SWAT or the working professionals in Microsoft have different behavioural pattern as they are influenced by the cultural environment of their respective organisations.

3: Managerial work constitutes planning, controlling and decision making process. the management process is defined more by the decisions taken by the managers in an organisation. The attachment to manage the business through the enablement of the employees is a core constituent of managerial duty. Planning is one of the strategic actions of a manger in ensuring the operational works as well as the employee engagement.  

Before judging the planning of the activities of the managers, one needs to understand what planning stands for. Planning is a comprehensive formulation of actions to accomplish unambiguous goals. Planning requires clear idea of the goals as well as the strategic framework to fulfil the achievement of the goals. Whether planning is relevant to managerial work or not is a debatable question. According to the Zsakmbok and Klein, managerial work in near future does not planning effort. It needs more effective understanding of instant judgment. There are various complexities of planning method. it does not consider the change of circumstance as it lacks comprehension of changing time and manner. Planning has certain limitations.

The leaders or the managers of an organisation do not follow the planning model as it has the possibility to vary at times. According to Haiss (2013), planning method in a business model has now become obsolete as the quality of instant decision making process is prioritised by the leaders. It can thus be said the planning method is going to be rejected by the managers in near futures while making decision or while proceeding with the operational methods.

Reference:

Ford, R.C. and Richardson, W.D., 2013. Ethical decision making: A review of the empirical literature. In Citation classics from the Journal of Business Ethics (pp. 19-44). Springer Netherlands.

Haiss, P., 2013. Cultural influences on strategic planning: empirical findings in the banking industry. Springer Science & Business Media.

Miner, J.B., 2013. The role motivation theories of organizational leadership. In Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary Edition (pp. 365-394). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Miner, J.B., 2015. Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge.

Pettigrew, A.M., 2014. The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.

Zsambok, C.E. and Klein, G., 2014. Naturalistic decision making. Psychology Press.