Essay Instructions: ***Would like writer ~ Writergrrl101
A synopsis of chapters: Chapter 2- How High Performance Organizations; Chapter 3- Global Dimensions of Organizational Behavior; Chapter 12 - Strategic Competency and Organizational Design
Please provide three examples that correlate with the chapters. (Examples don't have to come directly from the chapters) Please, no word-from word submission of the chapters study guide
Chapter 2
How High Performance Organizations Operate ?The Case of Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines is an example of an organization that reflects many features of a high performance organization.45 Interestingly, the airline demonstrated a number of these features even before its first flight in 1971, before HPOs and their underlying characteristics enjoyed their vogue status of today. The founders and those following them emphasized these features as part of the culture and provided the base that has served and continues to serve Southwest so well. In effect, they established a greenfield site, although no one called it that. Herb Kelleher, the longtime and only recently retired board chair, is given much of the credit for this in the media. However, in keeping with HPO ideals, it was actually a team of several individuals who joined Kelleher in laying the groundwork and strongly reinforcing HPO tenets as part of Southwest's culture.
Let's briefly examine Southwest as an HPO by considering it within the earlier five-component HPO model summarized in Figure 3.We start with employee involvement, which, you will recall, reflects the amount of decision making delegated to an organization's people at all levels of the organization. From the beginning, Southwest?s organizational hierarchy was flat and lean, comprised of CEO,department heads,managers,supervisors,and employees. There was a heavy team emphasis throughout, starting with a senior management decision-making team, with the
board of directors reviewing all major policy areas. This lean-and-mean philosophy permeated the entire organization. Paperwork was minimized, rapid decision making was emphasized, and generally people were empowered to do ?whatever it takes ?to get the job done. These high-involvement notions were much easier to carry out when the organization started with only three airplanes, but the culture has insisted that they be continued even with the rapid growth that the airline has experienced.
Chapter 2 Study Guide- The high performance Organization
1. What is the high performance context of organizational behavior?
?Total quality management deals with meeting the customer's needs, making sure all tasks are done right the first time, and with continuous improvement.
?Customer-driven organizations can be seen as upside-down pyramids where workers operate in ways directly affecting customers, and managers directly support the workers.
?The diverse and changing workforce includes new pressures from ?Generation X workers? who want such things as job challenge, job flexibility, and empowerment.
?Organizations are embracing process reengineering, electronic commerce, and
free-agent employees with a mix of permanent, part-time, and transitory workers.
2. What is a high performance organization?
?A high performance organization is designed to bring out the best in people and achieve sustained high performance.
?HPOs tend to organize workflow around key business processes and follow human-resource policies designed to enhance employee flexibility, skills, knowledge, and motivation.
?The key components of HPOs include employee involvement, self-directing work teams, integrated production technologies, organizational learning, and total quality management.
3. What are the management challenges of high performance organizations?
?Environmental linkages challenge HPOs to be effective open systems whose inputs, transformation processes, and outputs support a clear and relevant vision.
?Internal integration challenges all HPO components to work successfully together in a dynamic and ever-improving fashion.
?Middle manager challenges involve implementing the HPO components, adapting to different managerial roles, and helping with design and implementation of employee training.
?High-level leadership challenges include determining how far to go toward becoming an HPO, training and development of middle managers, and maintaining overall positive momentum during times of great change.
4. How do high performance organizations operate?
?Southwest Airlines has operated, in effect, as an evolving high performance organization since it was founded.
?Its vision/direction-setting package focuses on the kinds of customer and employee mission, direction, and values that personify HPOs.
?Each of the key HPO components is emphasized in dealing with Southwest Airlines 'environment and operations.
?Southwest's outcomes in terms of production activity measures, financial measures, employee quality of life measures, and societal contributions have consistently tended to be superior for many years.
Chapter three:
Global Dimensions of Organizational Behavior
Culture and Competitive Advantage
The everyday facts about Wal-Mart are well known. The firm now accounts for almost 10 percent of spending by American consumers; it is the second largest company in the world by total sales (over $200 billion annually);it is also the world's largest private employer ?sending paychecks to over 1.2 million ?associates,? as its employees are proudly called.
The future for Wal-Mart may well be international. While still growing domestically, the limits of market size are pressuring the firm's phenomenal growth rate. Starting just over 10 years ago, Wal-Mart's first venture abroad was a Sam's Club in Mexico City. After a slow start followed by a learning curve, the firm is now Mexico's biggest retailer.
Finding success internationally has been a lesson in crossing cultures. Critics claim Wal-Mart was too quick to export its culture and America?s. The popular morning ?Wal-Mart cheer ?was a bust in Germany. Wal-Mart also had trouble understanding German trade unions, distribution systems and the preferences of German customers.
Wal-Mart executives learned from experience. A mainstay of the global strategy is to develop local human capital. The firm has reduced its reliance on expatriates, with overseas country teams largely run by locals who understand the culture. Wal-Mart's International Division now employs some 300,000 associates in other countries and accounts for close to 20 percent of the company's sales. Over 30 percent of profits are expected to come internationally within five years.1
This is the age of globalization when corporate success is increasingly linked to worldwide operations and a global staff.2 Wal-Mart's executive team learned first-hand one of the foremost lessons of doing business in international markets ?you've got to understand the local culture. All around the globe, people working in large and small businesses alike are facing the many challenges and opportunities associated with business competition in an increasingly complex and ?borderless?world.3 The ability to respect differences and value diversity is an important key to success in managing organizational behavior across cultures. Today's organizations need managers with global awareness and cultural sensitivity. This doesn't mean that they all must work in foreign lands. But it does mean that they must be aware of how international events may affect the well-being of organizations. They must know how to deal with people from other countries and cultures. Especially for those who cross cultural and national
boundaries understanding these differences is critical for success working in an interconnected world.
Today, managers must be inquisitive and willing to learn quickly from management practices around the globe. Insights into effective management and high performance organizations are not restricted to any one location or culture. Contributions to our understanding about people and organizations can be found from Africa to Asia and from Europe to North and South America.
Although the Japanese economy and many of its firms have had problems of their own recently, management scholars and consultants recognize that many lessons can still be learned from their practices. However, we also recognize that cultural differences must be considered in the process. Specifically, what works in Japan may not work as well elsewhere, at least not without some modifications. Japan?s highly collectivist society, for example, contrasts markedly with the highly individualistic cultures of the United States and other Western nations. It is only reasonable to expect differences in their management and organizational practices.
Chapter 3 Study Guide- Global Dimensions of Organizational Behavior
1. Why is globalization significant to organizational behavior?
?Globalization, with its complex worldwide economic networks of business competition, resource supplies, and product markets, is having a major impact on businesses, employers, and workforces around the world.
?Nations in Europe, North America, and Asia are forming regional trade agreements, such as the EU,NAFTA ,and APEC ,to gain economic strength in the highly competitive global economy.
?More and more organizations, large and small, do an increasing amount of business abroad; more and more local employers are ?foreign?owned, in whole or in part; the domestic workforce is becoming multicultural and more diverse.
?All organizations need global managers with the special interests and talents needed to excel in international work and cross-cultural relationships.
2. What is culture?
?Culture is the learned and shared way of doing things in a society; it represents deeply ingrained influences on the way people from different societies think, behave, and solve problems.
?Popular dimensions of culture include observable differences in language, time orientation, use of space, and religion.
?Hofstede's five national culture dimensions are power distance, individualism ?collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity ?femininity, and long/short-term orientation.
?Trompenaars's framework for understanding cultural differences focuses on relationships among people, attitudes toward time, and attitudes toward the environment.
?Cross-cultural awareness requires a clear understanding of one's own culture and the ability to overcome the limits of parochialism and ethnocentrism.
3. How does globalization affect people at work?
?Multinational corporations (MNCs) are global businesses that operate with a worldwide scope; they are powerful forces in the global economy.
?Multiculturalism in the domestic workforce requires everyone to work well with people of different cultural backgrounds.
?Expatriate employees who work abroad for extended periods of time face special challenges, including possible adjustment problems abroad and reentry problems upon returning home.
?Ethical behavior across cultures is examined from the perspectives of cultural relativism and universalism.
4. What is a global view on organizational learning?
?A global view on learning about OB seeks to understand the best practices from around the world, with due sensitivity to cultural differences.
?Management concepts and theories must always be considered relative to the cultures in which they are developed and applied.
?Interest in Japanese management practices continues, with the traditional focus
on long-term employment, emphasis on teams, quality commitment, careful career development, and consensus decision making.
?Global learning will increasingly move beyond North America, Europe, and Japan, to include best practices anywhere in the world.
Chapter 12
Strategic Competency and Organizational Design
Competency Must Support Strategy
www.ibm.com
IBM is a huge, complex technological power-house. In the late 1990s they bet its future on e-business. By 2001 their stock price was down, reflecting the demise of so many dot-coms .In addition, IBM faced a recession and the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, economic problems in Asia, and a weak European market. Yet, we think their longer-term outlook is bright because the information revolution is here to stay and IBM continues to back their commitment to this technology by building competencies. Those who thought that the weak stock performance in 2001 was a signal for IBM to rethink its dedication to e-business were not listening to Louis V.Gerstner, chairman of the board and chief executive officer at IBM. We ?strive to lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics.?the NET has emerged as a powerful means for parties of every type to conduct transactions of every type ?a place where real work
gets done, real competitive advantage is gained and real growth is generated.?e-business is a term we coined.?At the new IBM we've always believed that our ability to execute is as important as the strength of the strategies.?
IBM backs up their intention to be an integrated innovator with a stream of decisions to continue to build capability to execute. They continue to invest in research capability, in their people, and in the systems needed to deliver, world-class products and services for e-business. There are obvious signs. For instance, on October 2,2001 IBM announced that Stuart S.P.Parkin had been named ?Innovator of the Year ?by R&D magazine. This example is but one indication of IBM's emphasis on technology development and support of key individuals to back its strategic intent with competency.1 the larger the organization, the more inertia it often has. A second is hubris .Too few senior executives are willing to challenge their own actions or those of their firms because they see a history of success. They fail to recognize that yesterday's successful innovations are today's outmoded practices. A third is the issue of detachment .Executives often believe they can manage far-flung, diverse operations through analysis of reports and financial records. They lose touch and fail to make the needed unique and special adaptations required of all firms. One consultant has made millions advising executives to focus on improvement and to practice management by walking around the office to avoid detachment.
Chapter 12 Study Guide - Strategic Competency and Organizational Design
1. What is the co-evolution view of strategy and what is its linkage to organizational
design?
?Firms need to adjust to their environments and contexts as well as to influence them.
?The capabilities of organizational members are critical in both reacting to and molding the firm's environment, size and technology.
?Strategy and organizational design are interrelated. The organization's design must support the strategy if the firm is to be successful.
2. What is organizational design, and how do the designs of small and large firms differ?
?Organizational design is the process of choosing and implementing a structural configuration for an organization.
?Smaller firms often adopt a simple structure, whereas larger firms often adopt a bureaucratic form.
3. How does the operations and information technology of the firm influence its organizational design?
?Operations technology and organizational design are interrelated.
?In highly intensive and small-batch technologies, organizational designs may tend toward the adhocracy, a very decentralized form of operation.
?Information technology and organizational design can be interrelated.
?IT provides an opportunity to change the design by substitution for learning, and to capture strategic advantages.
4. What is the relationship between environmental conditions and organizational design?
?Environmental and organizational design are interrelated.
?In analyzing environments, both the general (background conditions) and specific (key actors and organizations) environments are important.
?The more complex the environment, the greater the demands on the organization, and firms should respond with more complex designs ,such as the use of interfirm alliances.
5. What is organizational learning?
?Organizational learning is the process of knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory used to adapt successfully to changing circumstances.
6. How are organizational learning cycles helpful in understanding organizational
behavior?
?Organizational learning cycles help us understand how some organizations continually decline while others appear to be rising stars.