2. Organising and organisational culture - Prerequisites for effective organising
Effectiveness: The extent to which the organisation achieves its goals or goal.
Efficiency: Takes into account the amount of resources used to produce the desired output.
• Organisational effectiveness is the concept of how effective an organisation is in achieving the
outcomes the organisation intends to produce.
• The idea of organisational effectiveness is especially important for non-profit organisations as most
people who donate money to non-profit organisations and charities are interested in knowing
whether the organisation is effective in accomplishing its goals.
• Key elements of organisational effectiveness
People
What makes an organisation effective???
Impact
The answer to this question is proper organisation structure.
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Cultutre
3. Organising and organisational culture - Prerequisites for effective organising
• Effectiveness and Efficiency in Organisations
High
Efficiency
• Effectiveness Criteria
Effectiveness
Organising and organisational culture - MANGEMENT PROCESS 3
High
Low
Low
4. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding mistakes in organising by planning
• Establishment of objectives and orderly planning are necessary for good organisation as with the other
functions of managing.
• Lack of design in organisation is illogical, wasteful, and insufficient for success of an
organisation.
• It is illogical because good design, or planning, must come first whether one speaks of engineering or
social practice.
• The main sufferers from a lack of design in organisation are those individuals who work in an
undertaking.
• It is wasteful because unless jobs are clearly put together along lines of functional specialisation, it is
impossible to train new men (or women) to succeed to positions as the incumbents are promoted,
resign or retire.
• It is inefficient because if management is not based on principles, it will be based on personalities, with
the resultant rise of company politics.
• It is like a machine not running smoothly when fundamental engineering principles have been ignored in
construction.
Planning for the ideal:
• The search for an ideal organisation to reflect enterprise goals under given circumstances is the
impetus to planning.
• The search entails charting the main lines of organisation, considering the organisational philosophy of
the enterprise managers
– e.g. whether authority should be centralised as much as possible or whether the company should
divide its operations into semi independent product or territorial divisions, and sketching out
consequent authority relationships.
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5. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding mistakes in organising by planning
• The ultimate form established like all plans, seldom remains unchanged, and continuous remolding
of the ideal plan is normally necessary.
• Nevertheless, an ideal organisation plan constitutes a standard, and by comparing present
structure with it, enterprises leaders know what changes should be made when possible.
• An organiser must always be careful not to be blinded by popular notions in organising, because
what may work in one company may not work in another.
• Principles of organising have general application, but the background of each company’s operation
and needs must be considered in applying these principles.
• Organisation structure needs to be tailor made.
Modification for the human factor:
• If available personnel do not fit into the ideal structure and cannot or should not be pushed aside,
the only choice is to modify the structure to fit individual capabilities, attitudes, or limitations.
• Although this modification may seem like organising around people, in this case one is first
organising around the goals to be met and activities to be undertaken and only then making
modifications for the human factor.
• Thus, planning will reduce compromising the necessity for principle whenever changes occur in
personnel.
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6. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding organisational inflexibility
• There isn't just one definition of workplace flexibility, because it means different
things to different people.
• Basically, flexibility is about an employee and an employer making changes to when, where and
how a person will work to better meet individual and business needs.
• While the basic concept stays the same, it's the type of flexibility which makes the difference.
• Essentially, flexibility enables both individual and business needs to be met through making
changes to the time (when), location (where) and manner (how) in which an employee works.
• Flexibility should be mutually beneficial to both the employer and employee and result in superior
outcomes.
• Until now, flexibility has been seen as simply a highly desirable perk for employees.
• Employers gain benefit from providing flexibility in when and how work gets done -- from lower
costs and enhanced organisational performance, profitability and shareholder value.
• It establishes flexibility as essential element of a human capital strategy, a powerful business tool
and key component of successful management practice.
There are a range of creative and practical ways to change when, where and how work is organised:
When people work:
Flexible working hours - altering the start and finish times of a working day, but maintaining the same
number of hours worked per week (for example, 8am to 4pm instead of 9am to 5pm). It can
also mean condensing standard hours per week into fewer days (for example, four days per
week at ten hours per day)
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7. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding organisational inflexibility
Part-time work –
Generally speaking, working fewer than the standard weekly hours.
For example, two days per week, 10 days over four weeks or two days one week and three days
every second week
Variable year employment –
Changing work hours over the month or through the year, depending on the demands of the job
(for example working more hours during busy periods and taking time off in quiet times)
Part year employment –
Also called purchased leave, this means that an employee can take a longer period of leave (e.g. a
total of 8 weeks per year) by averaging their 48 week salary across 52 weeks. It's sometimes
called 48/52
Leave –
Varying from leave in single days or leave without pay, to special or extended leave. For example,
parental leave, family/carer's leave, study leave, cultural leave and career breaks.
Where people work:
Working from home –
Also called teleworking, this means working away from the main office (i.e. at home) either full or
part-time, and on a regular or intermittent basis. For most people, it's working from home either
occasionally or for an agreed number of days each week
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8. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding organisational inflexibility
Working remotely –
In some industries people may work at a different office, or in a client's workplace for some or all of
their working hours.
How people work:
Job-sharing –
Two people sharing one full-time job on an ongoing basis. For example, working two and a half
days each, a two/three day split or one week on and one week off
Phased retirement –
Reducing a full-time work commitment over a number of years (e.g. from 4 days to 3 days per
week) before moving into retirement. It can also mean becoming an "alumni", i.e. that a "retired"
employee returns to the workplace to cover peak work periods or to provide specialist knowledge
Annualised hours –
Working a set number of hours per year instead of a number of hours per week.
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9. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding conflict by clarification
• We define conflict as a disagreement through which the parties involved
perceive a threat to their needs, interests or concerns.
• Within this simple definition there are several important understandings that emerge:
• A conflict is more than a mere disagreement - it is a situation in which people perceive a threat
(physical, emotional, power, status, etc.) to their well-being.
• As such, it is a meaningful experience in people's lives, not to be shrugged off by a mere, "it will
pass…"
• Participants in conflicts tend to respond on the basis of their perceptions of the situation,
rather than an objective review of it.
• As such, people filter their perceptions (and reactions) through their values, culture, beliefs,
information, experience, gender, and other variables.
• Conflict responses are both filled with ideas and feelings that can be very strong and powerful
guides to our sense of possible solutions.
• As in any problem, conflicts contain substantive, procedural, and psychological dimensions
to be negotiated.
• In order to best understand the threat perceived by those engaged in a conflict, we need to
consider all of these dimensions.
• Conflicts are normal experiences within the work environment. They are also, to a large degree,
predictable and expectable situations that naturally arise as we go about managing complex
and stressful projects in which we are significantly invested.
• As such, if we develop procedures for identifying conflicts likely to arise, as well as systems
through which we can constructively manage conflicts, we may be able to discover new
opportunities to transform conflict into a productive learning experience.
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10. Organising and organisational culture - Avoiding conflict by clarification
Why do we tend to avoid dealing with conflict?
• Engaging in dialogue and negotiation around conflict is something we tend to approach with fear
and hesitation, afraid that the conversation will go worse than the conflict has gone thus far.
• All too often, we talk ourselves out of potential dialogue:
• "Why should I talk to her? She'll bite my head off and not listen to anything I have to say!"
• OR
• "I should talk to him about this problem, but maybe it will go away on its own. There's no sense
stirring up something that makes us both uncomfortable."
• OR
• "If I go to him, I'm making myself vulnerable. No, that's his responsibility - he should come to me
and ask me to talk!"
•
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11. Organising and organisational culture - Organisational culture
• Organisational culture is the behaviour of humans who are part of an
organisation and the meanings that the people attach to their actions.
• Culture includes the organisation values, visions, norms, working language,
systems, symbols, beliefs and habits.
• It is also the pattern of such collective behaviours and assumptions that are taught to new
organisational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling.
• Organisational culture affects the way people and groups interact with each other, with clients, and
with stakeholders.
• Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do."
• This view elevates repeated behaviour or habits as the core of culture and deemphasizes what
people feel, think or believe.
• It also focuses our attention on the forces that shape behaviour in organizations, and so highlights
an important question: are all those forces (including structure, processes, and incentives) "culture"
or is culture simply the behavioural outputs?
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12. Organising and organisational culture - Organisational culture
• The culture of the workplace controls the way employees behave amongst themselves as well as
with people outside the organization.
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13. Organising and organisational culture - Organisational culture
• Organizational socialization is defined as “the process by which a person learns the values,
norms, and required behaviors which permit him to participate as a member of the
organization.”
• One’s first year in a complex organization can be confusing.
• There is a constant swirl of new faces, strange jargon, conflicting expectations, and apparently
unrelated events.
• Some organizations treat new members in a rather haphazard, sink-or-swim manner.
• More typically, though, the socialization process is characterized by a sequence of identifiable
steps.
• Organizational behavior researcher Daniel Feldman has proposed a three-phase
• model of organizational socialization that promotes deeper understanding of this important
• process.
• The three phases are
(1) anticipatory socialization,
(2) encounter, and
(3) change and acquisition.
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14. Organising and organisational culture - Organisational culture
• A Model of Organizational Socialization
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