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CONTENTS

Introduction1. Performance Management: An Overview

2. Motivation and Satisfaction

3. Training and Development

4. Recruitment and Induction

5. Employee Evaluation

6. The Problem:- Objective of the study

7. Scope of the study

8. What is a high performance culture?

9. Characteristics of a high performance culture

10.Empathy

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11.Emotional quotient

12.Exogenous variables

Competency and performance management: A review of research literature

1. Introduction

2. Why should individual employee map their competencies

3. War for talent

4. Good people are great for business

5. The cost of a bad boss

Methods of competency performance

1. Personal credibility2. Interpersonal effectiveness3. Personal management4. Relationship Orientation5. Continuous learning6. Tolerance for stress/change/ambiguity7. Creative/Analytical/Problem solving approaches rive

8. Adaptability

Competency management and

organizational effective

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1. What is organizational effectiveness?2. Different models of organizational effectiveness3. Organizational life cycle4. Organizational structure5. Measures of structure

Conclusion

A STUDY ON EMPLOYEE COMPETENCY AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

CHAPTER 1

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(1) INTRODUCTION

Competency management is a process through which one assesses and

determines one’s strengths as an individual worker and in some cases, as part

of an organization. It generally examines two areas: emotional intelligence or

emotional quotient (EQ), and strengths of the individual in areas like team

structure, leadership, and decision-making. Large organizations frequently

employ some form of competency performance to understand how to most

effectively employ the competencies of strengths of workers. They may also

use competency performance to analyze the combination of strengths in

different workers to produce the most effective teams and the highest quality

work.

Competency management can also be done for contract or freelance

workers, or for those seeking employment to emphasize the specific skills

which would make them valuable to a potential employer. These kinds of skills

can be determined, when one is ready to do the work, by using numerous

books on the subject. One of the most popular ones is “Now, Discover Your

Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton, initially published in

2001.

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Competency management also requires some thought, time, and

analysis, and some people simply may not want to do the work involved to

sufficiently map competencies. Thus a book like the above is often used with a

human resources team, or with a job coach or talented headhunter.

Competency performance alone may not produce accurate results unless one

is able to detach from the results in analyzing past successes and failures.

Many studies find that people often overestimate their abilities, making self-

competency management results dubious.

Usually, a person will find himself with strengths in about five to six

areas. Some- times an area where strengths are not present is worth

developing. In other cases, competency management can indicate finding work

that is suited to one’s strengths, or finding a department at one’s current work

where one's strengths or needs as a worker can be exercised.

Performance Management: An Overview

Perhaps the most significant benefit of appraisal is that, in the rush and

bustle of daily working life, it offers a rare chance for a supervisor and

subordinate to have "time out" for a one-on-one discussion of important work

issues that might not otherwise be addressed. Almost universally, where

performance appraisal is conducted properly, both supervisors and

subordinates have reported the experience as beneficial and positive.

Appraisal offers a valuable opportunity to focus on work activities and

goals, to identify and correct existing problems, and to encourage better future

performance. Thus the performance of the whole organization is enhanced.

For many employees, an "official" appraisal interview may be the only

time they get to have exclusive, uninterrupted access to their supervisor. Said

one employee of a large organization after his first formal performance

appraisal, "In twenty years of work, that's the first time anyone has ever

bothered to sit down and tell me how I'm doing." The value of this intense and

purposeful interaction between a supervisors and subordinate should not be

underestimated.

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 Motivation and Satisfaction

Performance appraisal can have a profound effect on levels of employee

motivation and satisfaction - for better as well as for worse.

Performance appraisal provides employees with recognition for their work

efforts. The power of social recognition as an incentive has been long noted. In

fact, there is evidence that human beings will even prefer negative recognition

in preference to no recognition at all.

If nothing else, the existence of an appraisal program indicates to an

employee that the organization is genuinely interested in their individual

performance and development. This alone can have a positive influence on the

individual's sense of worth, commitment and belonging.

The strength and prevalence of this natural human desire for individual

recognition should not be overlooked. Absenteeism and turnover rates in some

organizations might be greatly reduced if more attention were paid to it. Regular

performance appraisal, at least, is a good start.

 Training and Development

Performance appraisal offers an excellent opportunity - perhaps the best

that will ever occur - for a supervisor and subordinate to recognize and agree

upon individual training and development needs. During the discussion of an

employee's work performance, the presence or absence of work skills can

become very obvious - even to those who habitually reject the idea of training

for them!

Performance appraisal can make the need for training more pressing

and relevant by linking it clearly to performance outcomes and future career

aspirations. From the point of view of the organization as a whole, consolidated

appraisal data can form a picture of the overall demand for training. This data

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may be analyzed by variables such as sex, department, etc. In this respect,

performance appraisal can provide a regular and efficient training needs audit

for the entire organization.

 Recruitment and Induction

Appraisal data can be used to monitor the success of the organization's

recruitment and induction practices. For example, how well are the employees

performing who were hired in the past two years?

Appraisal data can also be used to monitor the effectiveness of changes in

recruitment strategies. By following the yearly data related to new hires (and

given sufficient numbers on which to base the analysis) it is possible to assess

whether the general quality of the workforce is improving, staying steady, or

declining.

 Employee Evaluation

Though often understated or even denied, evaluation is a legitimate and

major objective of performance appraisal. But the need to evaluate (i.e., to

judge) is also an ongoing source of tension, since evaluative and

developmental priorities appear to frequently clash. Yet at its most basic level,

performance appraisal is the process of examining and evaluating the

performance of an individual.

Though organizations have a clear right - some would say a duty - to conduct

such evaluations of performance, many still recoil from the idea. To them, the

explicit process of judgment can be dehumanizing and demoralizing and a

source of anxiety and distress to employees. It is been said by some that

appraisal cannot serve the needs of evaluation and development at the same

time; it must be one or the other.

But there may be an acceptable middle ground, where the need to

evaluate employees objectively, and the need to encourage and develop them,

can be balanced.

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THE PROBLEM:-OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Competency performance is a process through which one assesses and

determines one’s strengths as an individual worker and in some cases, as part

of an organization. It generally examines two areas: emotional intelligence or

emotional quotient (EQ), and strengths of the individual in areas like team

structure, leadership, and decision-making. Large organizations frequently

employ some form of competency performance to understand how to most

effectively employ the competencies of strengths of workers. They may also

use competency performance to analyze the combination of strengths in

different workers to produce the most effective teams and the highest quality

work.

Competency performance also requires some thought, time, and

analysis, and some people simply may not want to do the work involved to

sufficiently map competencies. Thus a book like the above is often used with a

human resources team, or with a job coach or talented headhunter.

Competency performance alone may not produce accurate results unless one

is able to detach from the results in analyzing past successes and failures.

Many studies find that people often overestimate their abilities, making self-

competency performance results dubious.

However, competency performance can ultimately serve the individual

who decides to seek employment in an environment where he or she perhaps

can learn new things and be more intellectually challenged. Being able to list

competencies on resumes and address this area with potential employers may

help secure more satisfying work. This may not resolve issues for the company

that initially employed competency performance, without making suggested

changes. It may find competency performance has produced dissatisfied

workers or led to a high worker turnover rate.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY:

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It is often said an organization's long-term success depends on the

ability of that organization to sustain the delivery of quality products and

services. However, if this ability to sustain high performance is a learnable

competence, then why do many organizations fail to do so?

The answer to this pertinent question often lies in the following three

major deterrents to sustaining high performance.

• The senior management of an organization could have an inaccurate

understanding of the marketplace in which the organization is to compete.

Should this be the case, undoubtedly, the vision, mission, and strategies of the

organization are also inappropriate.

• The behavior required to successfully implement the business strategy could

be misaligned with the customer and marketplace requirements. This is usually

true for leadership or employee behavior.

• Organizational systems and processes often fail to support the organizational

vision and strategy. As a result thereof, the focus of organizations is incorrect in

that the wrong things are being focused on and measured.

It is this very responsiveness to the marketplace, leadership and

employee behavior, and systems and infrastructure design and deployment that

creates an organizations' culture. It is also the set of shared beliefs and

experiences that essentially define the identity of an organization and ultimately

guides its behavior.

Culture, inevitably changes over time, but also guides the notions of

value, opportunity, and reality. Usually rewards and punishments that have

become normative in an organization are preceded by these very beliefs being

expressed.

One such belief is that quantitative measures are more than adequate to

measure the performance of an organization. However, this belief is contrary to

a sustainable high performance culture, as the softer issues of culture are what

in reality enable the quantitative measures to grow positively.

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Also consider the findings of a study done by Healy, Krishna, and

Ruback. That study finding was that, “55 to 77 percent of such deals (mergers

and acquisitions) failed to deliver the organizational and/or financial results that

were intended, and more than 50 percent of those failures are attributable to

serious cultural incompatibility.”

What is a High Performance Culture?

This is a question often asked, “What is organizational culture?” The following is

one definition provided by E.J. Schein.

“A pattern of shared, basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved

problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well

enough to be considered valid, and, therefore, to be taught to new members as

the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.”

Simply stated, an organizational culture is, “The way we do things

around here” These definitions will become inherently clearer as one looks at

the characteristics of a high performing culture. In a true business setting or

environment, the organization culture is often also referred to as the corporate

culture. It is often said that the cultural differences can have a major effect on

the performance of organizations and the quality of work life experienced by its

members.

Characteristics of a High Performance Culture

The culture of an organization is created when the founders of the

organizations, make decisions and take action based on their personal views of

the world. Depending on the success of these actions, and the continuation of

success applying these actions, a culture embodying these predictable patterns

is formed over time. This is said to be the organizational culture.

Over time, as successes continue, the culture is said to be highly

ingrained to the point of being invisible to the members of that organization.

However, very often an organization will also have subcultures and

countercultures.

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Subcultures are unique patterns of values and philosophies within a

group that are consistent with the dominant culture of the larger organization.

Strong subcultures will generally be found in high performance task forces,

teams, and special project groups within an organization.

It is this subculture that binds the individuals to working in a certain

manner in order to get a task or activity accomplished. Individuals working

within a strong subculture often share in the dominant values associated with

working with the organization.

Countercultures, on the other hand, are the patterns of values and philosophies

that outwardly reject those of the larger organization. Within an organizational

setting, countercultures may be produced with mergers and acquisitions.

Employers and managers of an acquired company may hold certain

values and assumptions that are quite inconsistent with those of the acquiring

company. An organization with a strong high performing culture does share

common elements across the entire organization.

This has the positive side that there generally is no need to debate

certain issues as everyone knows of the correct ways of getting things done. By

default, a developed culture will strive to preserve the tried and tested. If the

organizational culture aligns itself with an appropriately developed strategy, the

net result is a stronger culture, and ultimately, a high-performing organization.

This scenario calls for the leader's role to reinforce the existing culture by way

of modeling, encouraging, and rewarding behavior. According to Edgar Schein,

“Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin. Leaders create and

change cultures, while managers live within them.”

Two approaches to high performance include a humanistic framework

and a rational process framework. In the former, high performance will be

attributed to organizations which value trust, and empower their people, work

collaboratively, and connect effectively with the wider community through, for

example, the involvement of stakeholders external to the organization.

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In the latter framework, high performance will be attributed to

organizations which exhibit characteristics such as the ability to interpret the

business environment, the ability to foresee and act upon new business

opportunities and the flexibility necessary to maintain core values while still

being able to adjust its output to meet new market demands or conditions.

Furthermore, the willingness to implement employee remuneration

strategies such as stock ownership schemes which increase productivity and

financial returns to the organizations are prevalent.

Elements of a strong organizational or corporate culture include the widely

shared real understanding of what the organization stands for. There is also a

concern for individuals over rules, policies, procedures, and adherence to job

duties.

Organizations with a strong corporate culture also have a recognition for

heroes whose actions illustrate the company's shared philosophy and concerns.

These organizations believe in building a common identity where there is a well

understood sense of the informal rules and expectations, thus enabling the

members of the organization to understand what is expected of them. There is

also a belief that what employees and managers do is important and that it is

equally important to share information and ideas.

The important aspects of an organization's culture will emerge from the

collective experience of its members. These emergent aspects of the culture

help make it unique and may well provide a competitive advantage for the

organization. Some of these aspects may be directly observed in its day-to-day

operations and workings, while others may be discovered, for example, by

asking its members to tell of important incidents in the history of the

organization.

By observing specific employee actions, listening to experiences, and

asking members to interpret what is going on, enables one to better understand

an organization's culture.

Literature generally acknowledges the inadequacy of intelligence as a

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predictor of leadership effectiveness. Sternberg (2002) suggests that "the

predictive value of intelligence may have been flagged in various studies

because these studies examined and measured aspects of intelligence that,

however effective they may be in predicting academic and certain other kinds

of performance are not effective predictors of leadership performance".

Traditional conceptualization of intelligence is generally concerned with

the analytical or academic aspect of intelligence, but an adequate

conceptualization of this construct comprises other aspects as well. Studies on

intelligence over many years focused mainly on the adaptive use of cognition,

but in recent years theorists such as Gardner (1983, 1999) and Sternberg

(1985, 2002) have suggested more encompassing approaches to

conceptualizing intelligence.

Sternberg suggests that there are other dimensions of intelligence:

social intelligence, emotional intelligence, or practical intelligence or what

scholars refer to as "street smarts”. which indicates that an individual is not

limited simply because he or she has a below average academic intelligence or

IQ. Although Gardner did not use the term emotional intelligence (EQ), his

concepts of intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences provided the basis for

the conceptualization of EQ. whereas intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to

understand one's own emotions; interpersonal intelligence is one's ability to

understand the emotions of others.

In his role as a consultant in organizations, Goleman found that

emotional intelligence (EQ) is twice more important than technical skills and IQ

for jobs at all levels. He also reported that emotional intelligence plays an

increasingly important role at the highest levels of a company. When he

compared "Star performers with average ones in senior leadership positions,

nearly 90% of the difference in their profiles was attributable to emotional

intelligence factors rather than cognitive abilities".

Starting with the Hawthorne Experiments at General Electric,

management started to disentangle the assumptions on that Taylor’s ideas

were built. The Hawthorne studies – well known and discussed at length in

nearly every Organizational Behavior textbook – set off a process that helped

management to look closer to the question how workers feel and how social

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relations at the shop floor influenced the productivity. In that period the agenda

emerged to what extent social needs of the workers dominated the productivity

but in these early years there was no explicit focus on the impact of emotions

and feelings.

With Maslow, motivation theory started to look at the needs like self-

esteem that he thought were major drivers that push our motives forward.

Although not entitled as feeling or emotion by Maslow, it makes sense to

identify self-esteem as one out of five important needs that drive on our

personal motivation, as a basic emotion, especially if we consider the fact that

much of our life is spend at work, then the question how much self-esteem

derives form our work relations, how much self-esteem we obtain from our

relationship with our co-workers, direct superior and friends and foes at work

seems significant.

Followed by McGregor’s management practicing tried to follow a more

fine-tuned “idea of men” that later merged into various personal traits theories

and models and personal assessment tests that tried to select people that fitted

most perfect into distinct organizations. But the major focus remained always

on the question how to motivate the potentially unmotivated work force. Later

McGregor told that “management is responsible for organizing the elements of

productive enterprise” including such elements like money, materials,

equipment, and last but not least people. Not very much was said – at this time

– how much personal feelings and emotions fuel, guide and inform the complex

structure of motivation in human beings.

Although it is argued that McGregor was very closely to consider

“feelings” and “emotions” as the very important factors that contribute to the

failure or success of work. McGregor always referred to “atmosphere” to

denominate a positive and supporting work environment. He denoted that a

positive atmosphere supports people to express their feelings: as well as their

ideas both on the problem and on the group’s operation.” McGregor

convincingly argued that “atmosphere” is affecting the “functioning of groups”

and in developing his argument he constantly used rather strong emotional

words like “to be afraid being foolish”, “tyranny of the minority”, “to express

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hostility”, “permitting to block its efforts” and it was articulate noting: “”we have

to learn how to operate successfully in our individual relationships with

subordinates”. However it did not explicitly associate success or failure with

“strong emotions” rather it identified situations that instigate or generate strong

emotions (i.e. “to be afraid being foolish”, “block efforts”, “tyranny”, “express

hostility”).

In the 70s McClelland started to look closer to the question what exactly

motivates managers? He strongly believed that the “need” for power is

probably the most important motivational driving force for the management. it

articulately noted: “a good manager is one who, among other things, helps

subordinates feel strong and responsible, rewards them properly for good

performance, and sees that things are organized so that subordinates feel they

know what they should be doing. Above all, managers should foster among

subordinates a strong sense of team-spirit, of pride in working as part of a

team.” This single quote illustrates that from now on worker are invited to “feel

responsible”, feel strong, or simply posses a strong feeling of being part of a

team, we share a spirit, something you can feel, workers will be pride”.

McClelland refers here to a set of emotions and feelings that make

management more productive.

Today we call this HRM policy using Fireman’s phrase “putting feelings to

work” but as it tried to show – “feelings” did play a major role in the HRM

conception in the 50s and 60s, albeit the major texts used not exactly the

expression “feeling” and “emotion” it very well recognized situations and social

environments that produced strong feelings and consequently focussed on the

question how these “atmosphere” influenced the productivity of groups and the

success of managing people.

A few years later Hackman and Oldham initiate the discussion how much

job related factors influenced the motivation of workers. The basic assumption

Hackman and Oldham put forward was simply that working hard and better

performance happens when work is satisfying and rewarding. it argued that

work has to be “meaningful”, that people must feel “responsible” and that they

depend on feedback in order to “feel” good about their job. Beyond factors such

as “skill variety”, “task identity” and “task significance” this human resource

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model encouraged managers to make workers “feel” significant, “identify” and

“perceive” work as something “meaningful”.

Hackman and Oldham focused on “on ready available” aspects such

being responsibility for doing something significant; possessing enough

“autonomy” to catch the feeling of being part of a somewhat important task that

has to be done; and having freedom and discretion how to do the job that has

to be done is all in all encouraging motivating because the worker “feels”

responsible, significant, and autonomously. While Hackman and Oldham put

forward the brilliant idea that people not only needed to identify themselves with

the job to which somebody else had assigned them, they perform better when

they get the feeling and get a sense of being responsible and or doing

something significant that is good for their identity.

All in all, Weber, Taylor, Maslow, McGregor, McClelland, Hackman and

Oldham have in common – although their differences could not be greater - that

they focus on “personal and individual needs” in order to find an answer how to

motivate people and they all refer – although from a totally different angle – to

some helpful “atmosphere” that encourage communication, relations and/or

group work or job performance and finally they all seem to be very closely to

argue – although not yet explicitly – that emotions and feelings play a major

role in organizing people.

While Max Weber and F.W. Taylor strongly believed that “feelings”

negatively interfere with their rationally planned conceptions how to do work,

most – if not all – early text that influenced HRM practices believed that social

environment and personal traits do have a positive impact of performance,

albeit job environment and work atmosphere were fully charged with strong

emotions they still did not yet fit the overall rationally designed concept about

organizing work. Max Weber’s belief in the possibility of rationality, exemplified

in his conception of the rational bureaucracy banished unneeded and inapt

emotions such as love, hatred, and he regarded personal ambitions and

interests as totally inappropriate for a rational organization. Chris Argyris and

Rensis Likert may mark the beginning of a rethinking in organization studies.

No surprise, studies using the concept of emotions and feelings to study

work relationships have increased in recent years. Parallel to the literature that

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used emotional labor as a focus to study the positive and negative effects of

emotions there is a tremendous growth of popular books that used to ask how

professionally human being deals with emotion. In addition, since the work of

Goleman, or as it is now called how much “emotional intelligence” do people

need mastering their job; the concept of emotional intelligence is used to tell the

audience of management best selling books how instrumental “emotions” are

as a new form of competence in order to succeed in today’s work and/or social

relationships. But it was Hochschild, who initially took a new look on the topic of

emotions. Since then, what the use of emotions and the application of feelings

rules are called emotional labor.

EMPATHY

The origin of the word empathy dates back to the 1880s, when German

psychologist Theodore Lipps coined the term "einfuhlung" (literally, "in-feeling")

to describe the emotional appreciation of another's feelings. Empathy has

further been described as the process of understanding a person's subjective

experience by vicariously sharing that experience while maintaining an

observant stance.9 Empathy is a balanced curiosity leading to a deeper

understanding of another human being; stated another way, empathy is the

capacity to understand another person's experience from within that person's

frame of reference.

Can Empathy Be Taught? Unfortunately, many physicians were trained in the world of "Find it and

Fix it" medicine, a world where empathetic communication was only an

afterthought--if this behavior was considered at all. Empathy was known as

"bedside manner," a quality considered innate and impossible to acquire--either

you were born with it or you weren't. More recently, greater emphasis has been

placed on empathy as a communication tool of substantial importance in the

medical interview, and many experts now agree that empathy and empathetic

communication are teachable, learnable skills. As we might therefore expect,

empathy is the cornerstone of several communication models, including "The

Four Habits" model (Invest in the Beginning, Elicit the Patient's Perspective,

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Demonstrate Empathy, Invest in the End) developed by The Permanente

Medical Group's Terry Stein with Richard Frankel.

"The 4 E's" (Engage, Empathize, Educate, and Enlist) model used by the

Bayer Institute for Health Care Communication.

The "PEARLS" (Partnership, Empathy, Apology, Respect, Legitimization,

Support) framework adopted by the American Academy on Physician and

Patient, and other models.

Barriers to Giving Empathy

Because empathy is such a powerful communication skill, we might

suppose that clinicians would scramble to learn about and use it at every

available opportunity. However, this is not necessarily the case. Clinicians have

many reasons for not offering empathy to patients. An informal survey of

practicing clinicians participating in a recent clinician-patient communication

course revealed misgivings (and misconceptions) about empathetic

communication. Concerns mentioned included:

"There is not enough time during the visit to give empathy."

"It is not relevant, and I'm too busy focusing on the acute medical problem."

"Giving empathy is emotionally exhausting for me."

"I don't want to open that Pandora's box."

"I haven't had enough training in empathetic communication."

"I'm concerned that if I use up all my empathy at work I won't have anything left

for my family."

Empathy is a powerful, efficient communication tool when used

appropriately during a medical interview. Empathy extends understanding of

the patient beyond the history and symptoms to include values, ideas, and

feelings. Benefits of improved empathetic communication are tangible for both

physician and patient.

 

Empathy versus Sympathy (and Versus Pity)

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Despite some divergent opinion on the matter, it may propose a subtle but

important distinction between empathy and sympathy.

Whereas empathy is used by skilled clinicians to enhance communication and

delivery of care, sympathy can be burdensome and emotionally exhausting and

can lead to burnout. Sympathy implies feeling shared with the sufferer as if the

pain belonged to both persons: it sympathizes with other human beings when it

share and suffer with it. It would stand to reason, therefore, that completely

shared suffering can never exist between physician and patient; otherwise, the

physician would share the patient's plight and would therefore be unable to

help.

Harry Wilmer summarizes these three emotions--Empathy, Sympathy, and

Pity--as follows:

Pity describes a relationship which separates physician and patient. Pity is

often condescending and may entail feelings of contempt and rejection.

Sympathy is when the physician experiences feelings as if he or she were the

sufferer. Sympathy is thus shared suffering.

Empathy is the feeling relationship in which the physician understands the

patient's plight as if the physician were the patient. The physician identifies with

the patient and at the same time maintains a distance. Empathetic

communication enhances the therapeutic effectiveness of the clinician-patient

relationship.

  The buzzword one hears ever so often today is ‘empathy '. While

we have all heard of ‘sympathy ‘, which is synonymous with compassion, pity

and understanding, not many of us are aware of the importance of empathy,

which is even beyond any expression of sympathy. So, what then is ‘empathy'

and why has it become so important today? According to a famous psychiatrist,

empathy is “to see with the eyes of another, to hear with the ears of another

and to feel with the heart of another”. This explanation will show you the exact

difference between ‘sympathy' and ‘empathy'. When you show sympathy, you

are an outsider who views the situation from a distance and feel for the person

experiencing the situation. But ‘empathy' involves the observer totally at any

given level. There is a complete identification with the experience’s perspective

and there is a total emotional connect. To the extent that one may even go

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through sensations that identify one with the other person. It is, in short, a

holistic involvement.

Empathy: Key to Individual Success

Empathy is the ability to sense the reactions of another person. It is the

ability to pick up the subtle clues and cues provided by another in order to

accurately assess what they are thinking and feeling?

What is very important to keep in mind is that empathy does not necessarily

involve agreeing with the other person's feelings. Rather, it does involve

knowing what their feelings or ideas are.

Empathy is not sympathy. Objectivity is lost in sympathy. Someone once

said that "empathy is placing oneself in the other person's shoes, but sympathy

is putting them on and feeling the pinch.

Sympathy involves a feeling of loyalty to another person and, thus, the

loss of objectivity. On the other hand, if you identify with and feel the emotions

of another, you cannot view them in a dispassionate, objective and helpful

manner.  How do the differences between sympathy and empathy play out in

the work place? Let's take a look at the two qualities, and how a salesperson,

for example, might be helped or hindered by sympathy or empathy.

Emotional Quotient (E.Q.)

Goleman suggests that EQ at work is a multidimensional construct

consisting of five components, such as self-awareness, self-regulation,

motivation, empathy, and social skills. Unfortunately, Goleman uses the term

EQ to include almost everything but IQ: emotional awareness, accurate self-

assessment, self-confidence, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability,

innovation, achievement drive, commitment, initiative, optimism, leveraging

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diversity, political awareness, influence, communication, conflict management,

change catalyst, building bonds, collaboration and cooperation, and team

capabilities.

Bar-On (1997) and Bar-On and Parker's (2000) definition of EQ also falls

into this category. This framework stretches the conceptualization of

intelligence way beyond acceptable limits. As suggested by Salovey and

Mayer (1994) and Mayer, Caruso, and Salovey (2000) there should be a more

restrictive model of EQ based on ability and distinguished from personality.

We do this for the present study by redefining the following Goleman

dimensions of EQ:

Exogenous variables: Five Dimensions of EQ

1. Self-Awareness is associated with the ability to be aware of which

emotions, moods, and impulses one is experiencing and why. This also

includes one's awareness of the effects of his or her feelings on others.

2. Self-Regulation refers to the ability to keep one's own emotions and

impulses in check, to remain calm in potentially volatile situations, and to

maintain composure irrespective of one's emotions.

3. Motivation represents the ability to remain focused on goals despite

setbacks, to operate from hope of success rather than fear of failure, delaying

gratification, and to accept change to attain goals.

4. Empathy refers to one's ability to understand the feelings transmitted

through verbal and nonverbal messages, to provide emotional support to

people when needed, and to understand the links between others' emotions

and behavior.

The 5 components of Emotional Quotient (EQ)

1 Showing empathy towards others.2 Understanding and expressing your own emotions.3 Controlling your emotional impulses.4 Taking feelings into account when making

23

decisions.5 Motivating yourself and others

Showing empathy towards others: Being EQ smart does not mean

becoming a psychologist, but it means being alert to how what you do and say

have an impact on others. A good way to improve in this area of Emotional

Quotient is to raise your self-awareness by completing an EQ assessment. If it

shows negative differences between how you and other people rate you’re EQ,

then be aware that the Centre for Creative Leadership Studies in the United

States has found that over 75% of the reasons for career derailment among

leaders are related to emotional competencies.

Understanding and expressing your own emotions:

In former United States President Bill Clinton, the world sees a leader

who more readily engages with people because he communicates more than

just information. His communication shows how he feels about an issue in a

sincere and human manner. This is also why he is considered one of the

leading Democrat Politicians of all time in the United States. This has direct

relevance for business leaders, who all face the challenge to engage and

inspire others to be a part of the company vision and values. Executives have

to recognize and appropriately express their emotions. This is applicable

throughout the spectrum of activities: from the tone of conducting meetings and

presentations in formal board sessions with the top brass, to lively, inspiring

events designed for line staff.

Taking feelings into account when making decisions:Many business situations demand analytical decision making, but the

high performance leader also knows that creativity and flexibility are not just

about the numbers game. Though sometimes it seem a good decision to

restructure based purely on the figures available. If the management team had

also considered how the decision might affect some of their top performers at

an emotional level, then (for example) the restructure may not seem so

sensible. Optional retrenchment could be brought up instead, with the top

24

executive’s explaining their rational and guiding people through the transition

phase.

Motivating yourself and others: Business is often a roller coaster of highs and lows. Therefore it is to be

expected that high performance leaders are more skilled at motivating

themselves and others in challenging situations. Smart leadedrs are alert to

shifts of their own and others’ moods and the need to take actions to repair and

reinvigorate them changes are that the differences are less to do with technical

capability or IQ and more with now smart they are in handling their emotions

and the feelings of others. In fact, research has shown that over 70% of the

differences between an average leader and a high performance leader is due

to the emotional intelligence.

25

CHAPTER 2

COMPETENCY AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: A REVIEW OF RESEARCH LITERATURE

26

Introduction:

Many organizations today are using the process of 360 degree

feedback to compare an individual’s self assessment of his/her own

performance against key position and organization competencies to the

assessment of key “stakeholders” that the individual interacts regularly with.

The 360 feedback received is then used as input to the Individual Development

plan. David McClelland takes the position that “definitions for various

competencies, which contain real-life examples of more competent behavior,

provide specific guideposts as to how to develop the competency. The

feedback information also provides a basis for career counseling or explaining

why a person should or should not be promoted.”

First and foremost, individuals must demonstrate competencies. Perhaps the

most common place where they are demonstrated is within the scope of a

particular job or project involvement. However, competencies are also

developed and demonstrated by individuals in the following settings: volunteer

roles in the community, professional associations, school projects, sports

participation settings, and even within one’s own home life.

Up to this point, it is implied that the main need for identifying and

performance competencies is for individuals who may be pursuing full-time

employment with an organization. However, the need for performance of

competencies also extends to independent contractors seeking project work

with those organizations that broker their services.

Take the example of The Fulcrum Network, an organizational

development consulting brokerage organization. Fulcrum recently released a

27

manual entitled “How to Hire the Right Consultant,” in which it identified 18

factors that can be used to evaluate consultants. (Fulcrum Network, 2002, pg.

10) Most of the 18 factors would be considered competencies, according to the

definition included earlier in this article. (Note that the process for performance

competencies will not differ significantly for self-employed individuals from the

process explained in a later section of this article.)

Why Should Individual Employees Map Their Competencies?

A list of compelling reasons includes, at a minimum, the following. An

individual:

• Gains a clearer sense of true marketability in today’s job market; once the

individual knows how his/her competencies compare to those that are asked for

by the job market in key positions of interest.

• Projects an appearance as a “cutting-edge” and well-prepared candidate, who

has taken the time to learn about competencies, investigate those in demand,

and map his/her, own competencies prior to interviewing.

• Secures essential input to resume development - a set of important terms to

use in describing expertise derived from prior career experience.

• Gains advanced preparation for interviews, many of which may be delivered

using a competency-based approach called “structured behavioral interviewing”

or “behavioral event interviewing.”

• Develops the capability to compare one’s actual competencies to an

organization or position’s required/preferred competencies, in order to create

an Individual Development Plan.

War for talent

An update of McKinsey’s 1997 survey on the war for talent found that it

is escalating—despite the current economic slowdown and the end of the dot-

com boom.

The war for management talent is intensifying dramatically. McKinsey

updated a 1997 study in which researchers surveyed 6,900 managers

28

(including 4,500 senior managers and corporate officers) at 56 large and

midsize US companies. The update found that 89 percent of those surveyed

thought it is more difficult to attract talented people now than it was three years

ago, and 90 percent thought it is now more difficult to retain them. Just 7

percent of the survey’s respondents strongly agreed that their companies had

enough talented managers to pursue all or most promising business

opportunities. Demographic and social changes have played a growing role in

this trend. In the United States and most other developed nations, the supply of

35- to 44-year-olds is shrinking. And many of the best-trained people entering

the workforce are not bound for large traditional companies: last year, a full 30

percent of MBAs in the United States preferred to work for a start-up or a small

business. And the proportion of computer science and electrical engineering

graduates who went to smaller companies rather than more established ones

has risen to 37 percent, from 22 percent in the 1980s. The update also found

that the companies doing the best job of managing their talent deliver far better

results for shareholders. Companies scoring in the top quintile of talent-

management practices outperform their industry’s mean return to shareholders

by a remarkable 22 percentage points. Talent management isn’t the only driver

of such performance, but it is clearly a powerful one senior manager’s report

that “A players”—the best 20 percent or so of managers—raise operational

productivity, profit, and sales revenue much more than average performers do.

In one manufacturing company, the best plant managers increased profits by

130 percent; in an industrial-services firm, the best operations managers

achieved increases of 80 percent. (The worst managers in both companies

brought The Universe Graduate Survey 2000—American MBA Edition,

Stockholm: Universe. McKinsey career progression surveys no improvement.)

The senior executives in the year 2000 survey thought top performers deserve

pay 42 percent higher than that of average performers—a far greater spread

than most companies have but a solid investment nonetheless The researchers

found that paying an additional 40 percent to hire an A player could yield an

overall return of 100 percent or more in a single year. Despite the potential

impact of top performers, both the 1997 study and the year 2000 update

revealed a gap between awareness of the talent issue and an effective

29

response to it. Only 14 percent of the managers in last year’s survey (as

opposed to 23 percent in 1997) strongly agreed that their companies attract

highly talented people. Only 3 percent of the respondents to both surveys

strongly agreed that their companies develop talent quickly and effectively. At a

time of greater awareness of the shortage of talent and increased competition

for it, the imperative to manage it effectively is more urgent than ever. Leaders

must make talent a priority at all levels of their organizations, create reasons for

top talent to choose their companies, rebuild their recruiting strategies, create

plenty of opportunities for development, and learn to identify their A (as well as

their less capable) performers and invest in them appropriately companies and

preempt positions

Good people are great for business

“How much more does a high performer generate annually than an

average performer?” Mean of responses from 410 corporate officers Source:

McKinsey’s War for Talent 2000 survey of 410 corporate officers at 35 large US

companies increased revenue in sales roles 40% increased productivity in

operations roles increased profit in general management roles 49% 67% that

could have been used as development opportunities. Last year, nearly 60

percent of the respondents strongly agreed that they would be delighted if their

companies were quicker to dismiss underperformers or to move them into less

critical roles. Organizations that take talent seriously can deliver greater

shareholder value and start to realize the promise of competitive advantage

through better talent. But the implementation of that strategy must start at the

top: in the highest-ranked companies we studied, improving the strength of the

talent pool is among the top three priorities of senior leaders.

The cost of a bad boss

Learning and Performance in Teams and Organizations it starts with

some definitions. Performance is conceptualized as the achievement of goals.

Performance usually includes multiple dimensions, some more important to

30

stakeholders than others. For example, performance in hospitals typically

includes achievement of clinical as well as financial goals. In addition,

academic medical centers typically seek to achieve research and teaching

aims. Group goals are often aligned, such that their mutual achievement is

possible. However, some performance goals are not necessarily aligned, such

as when an organization seeks to excel in innovation while also achieving

superb quality and efficiency in an existing business. Where goals conflict,

organizations inevitably need to make tradeoffs among competing objectives.

In these situations, one aspect of learning is learning which performance

variables to maximize. This requires learning how to manage the tensions that

may exist between efficiency and cost versus clinical and customer experience.

31

CHAPTER 3

METHODS OF COMPETENCY PERFORMANCE

32

There are a lot of methods are there for performance the competence.

Some of them are as follows-

♣ Personal credibility♣ Interpersonal effectiveness♣ Personal management♣ Relationship orientation♣ Continuous learning♣ Tolerance for stress/change/ambiguity♣ Creative/analytical/problem-solving approaches rive♣ Adaptability

♣ Personal credibility

In today’s fast-changing environment, it is important that

employees not only represent the organization well, but that they also

establish personal credibility in the account. In the 1970s, it was thought

positive if a person worked at one organization for their entire career,

putting in 30 or 40 years. This type of individual was thought to be stable

and productive because they knew the practices and protocols of the

organization. Things have changed dramatically in the 1990s. It is

expected today that the most valuable employee in the organization will

have two or three different jobs, maybe as many as six jobs, in their

lifetime.

While loyalty and commitment are still considered to be valuable

assets, equally important is diverse experience. It’s thought that by

bringing in people from the outside, the organization is kept aware of

33

new and different thought processes that are occurring in the

marketplace. It is especially important that sales professionals recognize

this trend.

The one person that you have dealt with year after year in the

organization to buy your products and services may be soon is gone. If

one sees this trend occurring more frequently, there are a number of

things one can do to prepare for success, not only in today’s endeavors

but in the future as well.

Personal credibility also plays a vital role in the assessment of

competency. That means, one has to deal with more than just one

person in any account. It is advantageous when products and services

offered by an employee are recognized in the account by all levels of the

organization. Because the champion may leave and seek employment in

another organization, an employee does not want to lose the account.

How do you establish personal credibility?

What you have to do is continually resell the client. Your

competition will be in there nipping at your heels. From the day you get

the business, you must resell the account on the value of the

relationship. If you fail to do this, you won’t be able to establish your

personal credibility. You will not be known in the account and, if your

champion should leave the account, you are now vulnerable.

Job-hopping is a fact of life. In order to be effective in this changed

environment, we must recognize the trends in the environment and

respond appropriately. There is nothing a sales person can do that is

more valuable to the client or their organization than to establish

personal credibility within the account. When times are tough, the

account will turn to you for solutions and they will give you the benefit of

the doubt when things don’t go right. When times are good, you have the

ability to continue to build your relationship at all levels of the

organization, preparing for the pendulum to swing the other direction;

34

because no matter how good you have it in an account, you are

vulnerable if you do not have the personal relationship established when

things go wrong. We all know that we live in an imperfect world, and

things have a habit of not going right all the time.

- Paul Thomas

♣ Interpersonal effectiveness

Interpersonal Effectiveness is all about - getting along with others

in a particular situation to accomplish certain goals. The situation may be

at work, at home, in school or in the community, but it's success

depends on our ability to function successfully with others - even though

they behave very differently!  

The importance of Interpersonal Effectiveness: With an ever-

increasing reliance on virtual methods of communication, particularly

email, the opportunity to practice and develop one’s interpersonal skills

in a professional context has diminished. When situations arise which

require something other than written communication, whether it be

delivering a difficult message, handling a complaint or issue or building a

relationship with a new colleague or client, employees sometimes find

that they lack the key interpersonal skills required to achieve the

necessary result.

Benefits of Interpersonal Effectiveness Training

This programme will provide you with the tools to: Understand

and adopt the principles of effective interpersonal communication

Network and build rapport and trust Handle difficult situations with

professionalism. Be a more effective communicator in a wide range of

work-related scenarios and contexts

Who should attend an Interpersonal Effectiveness Course?

35

Anyone who:

Requires more confidence when interacting with colleagues and clients

Needs to refresh and develop their existing skill set

Has experienced challenging interpersonal situations

♣ Personal Management

Personal management is about performance a plan for your life

that will involve setting short-range and long-range goals and

investigating different ways to reach those goals. Education, training,

and experience all help make your goals become a reality. To achieve

your goals, you will choose the best path and make a commitment to it,

while remaining flexible enough to deal with changes and new

opportunities

Determining company policies and procedures as they relate to

personnel is another important aspect of the personnel management

process. HR functions often include drafting vacation, sick leave, and

bereavement policies that apply to all employees of the company. The

personnel management team often is also responsible for managing the

health care program provided to the employees as well.

One aspect of company organization that definitely requires the

input of effective personnel management is the drafting of a company

handbook. Establishing operation policies and procedures, requirements

for employment, commendation and disciplinary procedures, guidelines

for dismissals and promotions, and even something as simple as a dress

code has to be compared with state and federal guidelines before the

handbook is ready for release to the company at large. Personnel

managers and the HR staff are ideal for drafting and reviewing the

company handbook.

Depending on the size of the organization, it may be possible for

one person to handle the personnel management functions. As a

company grows, it may be necessary to expand from a single personnel

36

manager to a full-fledged personnel management, or Human Resources

team. By understanding the needs of the company at each point in its

growth, management can readily see to the addition to the Human

Resources team over time.

♣ Relationship Oriention

The relationship oriented person sees other people as the best way

to achieve success. In an extreme case, almost everything such an

individual does in life must involve other people.

Some general factors that describe a relationship oriented person: When faced with a problem or a new situation, the first instinct for a

relationship oriented person is to contact a friend or family member who

might be able to help solve the problem or explain how to deal with it.

This person does not like to be alone. Almost all activities must have a

social element, even such simple tasks as doing the dishes, walking the

dog, or working in the garden.

A weekend is not complete unless at least some parts have a social

element. A quiet Friday night makes a relationship oriented person

uncomfortable - unless by quiet you mean going out to a friend’s house

for drinks and a chat.

Recreational activities are in and of them selves not important -

only the social element of the activity is important. Almost any activity is

fun if there are friends along and as long as the focus is on the social

element and not on the activity itself (an important distinction).

Finding out about other people is a natural instinct for the relationship

oriented person. How people “fit” together - who is whose friend, for

example, is extremely important to relationship oriented people.

Verbal communication skills and body language awareness are the

highest of any orientation. Verbal skills are naturally developed from

37

infancy through the intense desire for interpersonal interactions. A

relationship-oriented person can sometimes be seen actually repetitively

practicing speech patterns, mimicking people they have strong bonds

with, and reveling in verbal handshaking.

Relationship oriented people who are not self-aware consider the other

orientations “boring and cold” (process oriented people) or “greedy,

selfish, and self-centered” (goal oriented people). Caveat: These

thoughts don’t last long if these other people show a modicum of real

sociability. All can be (nearly) forgiven if someone is friendly.

Homework or studying of any kind only works for relationship oriented

people if there are other people around to do the homework or studying

with.

Solitary, individual, no-talking exams are an abomination to the

relationship oriented person. Group projects with lots of time for social

interaction are a delight.

♣ Continuous learning

Continuous learning is NOT about continually taking courses --

it's about developing skills in reflection and inquiry -- it's about learning

how to learn so that your life's experiences become your own learning

lab. The concept of continuous learning has become quite prominent

over the past five years. Organizations are changing rapidly. Therefore,

it's difficult to find any approach to doing anything in organizations that

doesn't soon become outdated. The concept of continuous learning has

become important because it places priority on noticing, adapting and

learning from change.

Simply put, continuous learning is the ability to learn to learn.

Learning need not be a linear event where a learner goes to a formal

learning program, gains areas of knowledge and skills about a process,

and then the learning ceases. If the learner can view life (including work)

as a "learning program", then the learner can continue to learn from

almost everything in life. As a result, the learner continues to expand his

38

or her capacity for living, including working.

Requirements for Continuous LearningPeter Senge, noted systems theorist, explains that continual

learning and personal mastery are very similar. In continuous learning,

the learner continues to: Recognizes priorities or overall values about

themselves and how they want to live and work -- they have a personal

vision Takes an active role in the world and work Continues to reflect on

their experiences in the world and work Seeks ongoing feedback about

the world (including work) and their activities in it (which is why working

in teams, using 360-degree appraisals, etc., are so important in

organizations) Remains as open as possible to the feedback (which

requires a fair degree of personal maturity) Makes ongoing adjustments

Thus, important aspects of continuous learning are 1 Having some basic values in your life or priorities in your work

2 Doing something in the world, applying new information and skills

3 Taking the time to inquire and reflect about your life and experiences

4 Getting up-to-date feedback, that is, understood and useful information

about yourself and your experiences

What Continuous Learning is not?Continuous learning is a way of being in the world. It is not

staying busy by continuing to attend one course after another, gathering

more and more information. Someone once said that neurosis is doing

the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result

each time. (Those of us who have thousands of books in our library

might think more seriously about this definition.)

♣ Tolerance for stress

Tolerance for Stress -- Working well under pressure and/or

against opposition.

Many jobs need people who can work well and stay positive in a

stressful work environment. Time pressure, opposing ideas, group

39

pressures, and/or task difficulty can cause stress. If one or more of these

sources of stress is normally part of the job, then tolerance for the

specific stress is important.

Key Behaviors: Keeps the same style even when working under deadlines, tired, or

opposed on a point.

Stays calm when frustrated.

Works without making mistakes even when there are several conflicting

priorities.

Contributes constructive ideas even when everyone seems to hold an

opposing viewpoint.

Stays on course as policy or procedure changes suddenly.

Works well under tight deadlines.

Works well when having normal day-to-day stress in personal life.

Stays calm with irate citizens/clients.

Responds to citizens' needs in emergencies.

Key Words -- pressure, stability, opposition, conflict, deadlines,

problems, arguments, disruption, change, uncomfortable

♣ Creative/analytical/problem-solving approaches

This is an approach to highly deep-rooted, intractable conflicts

that uses social-psychological analysis to identify the fundamental

human needs that underlie the conflicts and hence hold the key to

resolution. Typically, carefully chosen disputants from all sides meet with

a panel of conflict scholars in a week-long workshop. The scholars help

the disputants work together to analyze the fundamental sources of

conflict, focusing especially on unmet human needs (such as identity,

security, or recognition). After identifying these needs, the participants

try to develop approaches for restructuring their societies in a way that

meets the needs of all sides simultaneously.

♣ Adaptability

40

Adaptability is a feature of a system or of a process. This word

has been put to use as a specialized term in different disciplines and in

business operations. Word definitions of adaptability as a specialized

term differ little from dictionary definitions. According to Andresen and

Gronau [1] adaptability in the field of organizational management can in

general be seen as an ability to change something or oneself to fit to

occurring changes. In ecology, adaptability has been described as the

ability to cope with unexpected disturbances in the environment [2].

However, the word definitions in these fields are just the starting points

for detailed analysis of system adaptability.

1. Development of the use of this term

In the life sciences the term adaptability is used variously. At one

end of the spectrum, the ordinary meaning of the word suffices for

understanding. At the other end, there is the term as introduced by

Conrad, referring to a particular information entropy measure of the biota

of an ecosystem, or of any subsystem of the biota, such as a population

of a single species, a single individual, cell, protein or gene.

In the technical research field this feature has been considered only

since the late 1990s. H. P. Wiendahl first introduced adaptability as a

necessary feature of a manufacturing system in 1999 [4]. The need to

consider adaptability arose in the context of factory planning, where it is

an objective to develop modular, adaptable systems. It has now become

an important consideration for manufacturing and system engineers.

2. Criteria of adaptability

2.1 Adaptability of a system

1 Development of the use of this term2 Criteria of adaptability 2.1 Adaptability of a system

41

Adaptability is to be understood here as the ability of a system to

adapt itself efficiently and fast to changed circumstances. An adaptive

system is therefore an open system that is able to fit its behavior

according to changes in its environment or in parts of the system itself.

That is why a requirement to recognize the demand for change without

any other factors involved can be expressed

♣ Results orientation

What is ... Results Orientation?

A Results Orientation is a healthy organizational practice of

looking at data to see if agency, program and case goals are achieved,

in order to maximize results and to learn and apply the most we possibly

can from our collective experience.

APPROACHES TO RESULTS:

Across disciplines, management and program improvement texts

are littered with approaches to create and sustain the use of data.

Unfortunately, the proliferation of similar terms may undermine clear

communication and successful collaboration (Friedman, 2003). Among

the approaches, Results-based Management (RBM) trumpets making

decisions regarding programs based on recently measured results and

consideration of obstacles and facilitators facing current operations.

Another example, managing for Results (MFR), emphasizes building a

results focus into every aspect of management practice and routine.

With Casey’s Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) effort, as with the

Annie E. Casey Foundation’s concept of Results Accountability, we

recognize that all who can contribute to finding solutions and making

improvements must be involved, not only “managers.”

♣ Team commitment

42

In order for any project to be completed successfully, each team

member must feel confident about, and committed to, his or her

responsibilities. The purpose of this segment is to provide some

practical guidelines on how to obtain and maintain the commitment of

team members to the project.

Method

While ensuring effective performance, one has to make sure that each

team member has a clear understanding of:

The work products they are being asked to produce and the quality

requirements for each work product,

  The applicable standards and procedures to be followed in producing

each end-product,

  The detailed cost estimates and schedule that they are being asked to

commit to.

Look for the signs that indicate that the team member has accepted

responsibility for the end-products. Commitment and confidence is usually

indicated by the team member asking questions, giving a specific time-frame

(e.g., you'll have it by Friday) and generally indicating "no problem" as opposed

to "I'll try my best" or "I'll see what I can do." Ask the team member to re-

phrase the responsibility in their own words. Assess their response to your

questions. Observe the non-verbal indications.

The delegation and acceptance of responsibility is an ongoing process

rather than a one time event. Witness, monitor, and maintain the commitment

level on an ongoing basis by:

  meeting with team members on an individual basis, both formally and

informally ("management by walking around") just to see how they're getting

along,

  observing their level of initiative and interest in their work, and the frequency

with which they approach you with questions,

  Reviewing and providing feedback on their project tracking documents and

weekly status reports,

43

 

CHAPTER 4

COMPETENCY MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

44

Introduction

1 WHAT IS ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS?

1 DIFFERENT MODELS OF ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

1 ORGANISATIONAL LIFE CYCLE

1 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

1 MEASURES OF STRUCTURE

1 TECHNOLOGY

1. WHAT IS ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS?

Organizational Effectiveness, within the Office of Human Resources,

serves as a gateway to training, development, and consulting resources that

build organizational capacity, increase individual capabilities, and promote a

culture of excellence through strong leadership. The division collaborates with

institutional stakeholders to strategically and systemically address the

University's mission and goals.

Areas of service include:

Employee Career Services

Organizational Development

Leadership Development

Personal & Professional Development

Supervisory Training and Development

Training Services

An organization's effectiveness is also dependent on its communicative

competence and ethics. The relationship between these three is simultaneous.

Ethics is a foundation found within organizational effectiveness. An

45

organization must exemplify respect, honesty, integrity and equity to allow

communicative competence with the participating members. Along with ethics

and communicative competence, members in that particular group can finally

achieve their intended goals.

Foundations and other sources of grants and other types of funds are

interested in organizational effectiveness of those people who seek funds from

the foundations. Foundations always have more requests for funds or funding

proposals and treat funding as an investment using the same care as a venture

capitalist would in picking a company in which to invest.

Organizational effectiveness is an abstract concept and is basically

impossible to measure. Instead of measuring organizational effectiveness, the

organization determines proxy measures which will be used to represent

effectiveness. Proxy measures used may include such things as number of

people served, types and sizes of population segments served, and the

demand within those segments for the services the organization supplies.

Volunteers), and amount of wastage. Since the organization has as its

goal the preparation of meals and the delivery of those meals to house bound

people, it measures its organizational effectiveness by trying to determine what

actual activities the people in the organization do in order to generate the

outcomes the organization wants to create.

Activities such as fundraising or volunteer training are important because

they provide the support needed for the organization to deliver its services but

they are not the outcomes per se. These other activities are overhead activities

which assist the organization in achieving its desired outcomes.

2. DIFFERENT MODELS OF AN ORGANISATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

To be effective and achieve its goals, an organization must successfully

respond to environmental factors. How can the effectiveness of an organization

be measured? Various models of determining organizational effectiveness exist

because organizations face different environments, they produce different

products, their organizational members are made up of different kinds of

people, and the organizations are at different stages of development. Each

46

model is most useful to an organization having a particular combination of

these environmental and organizational attributes.

According to the rational goal model of effectiveness, an organization is

effective to the extent that it accomplishes its stated goals. For example, the

formal goals of the Toronto Blue Jays are to win their division, the American

League pennant, and the World Series.

The human relations model focuses on the development of the

organization’s personnel. Marlin Travel sends its agents on familiarization trips

to expand their knowledge of specific hotels, cruises, and destinations.

The competing values model requires that an organization scrutinize the

balance among the above four effectiveness models. In this model there are

three sets of competing values. The first is the tension between internal versus

external focus. The more the organization focuses on one, the less it can

concentrate on the other. For example Apple Computer has focused externally

on its customers and making computers that are intuitive and easy to use. The

computer chip maker Intel has had a more internal focus on how to make faster

and more powerful central processing units at a low price. The second set of

values in competition is flexibility versus control. Flexibility allows quick

response to changing conditions and values innovation. Control values the

opposite. Stability and predictability mean that routine activities are performed

well but change is more difficult. The third set of competing values is the

relative concern with the feelings, needs, and development of the people

making up the organization versus the organization and its requirement to

accomplish its tasks.

An organization seeking legitimacy survives by acting in a manner seen

by other organizations as legitimate. An example would be producing a

business plan and projected income statement in order to obtain a bank loan.

Finally, the organization as a high performing system compares itself to

other similar organizations. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra can measure

ticket sales and customer satisfaction with performances. But to determine the

quality of the orchestra itself, comparison is made to other orchestras in the

world. Effectiveness is seen as the degree to which that comparison is positive.

One method used by high performers to make such comparisons is to examine

47

industry rankings. An example is the Maclean’s magazine ratings of Canadian

universities.

3. ORGANISATIONAL LIFE CYCE

What makes an organization effective varies with its stage of development.

As organizations pass through common stages throughout their life cycle their

structure changes, their basis of growth changes, and their goals change. It

should be remembered that organizations may not grow continuously but may

remain at one stage of development for long periods.

Most organizations are in operation for significantly fewer years than the

average person lives. We know that failure is very common with new

organizations. Restaurants, for example, are known to have high rates of

startups and closures. This tendency is called the liability of newness. Older

organizations die, too, though we often feel a sense of shock when we read of

a well-established company that closes its doors. A recent example is Eaton’s.

The next stage of development is the organization’s youth. Growth now is

by direction, as professional managers brought into the company start to

impose organizational rules and bureaucracy. The goal is growth and

management aims to provide a sense of mission to members of the

organization. The crisis faced at this stage is that senior managers may not

wish to relinquish control to more junior managers by delegating tasks and

authority to them.

At the organization’s midlife, growth is through delegation and coordination, the

goal is efficiency, and the structure becomes more bureaucratic and

departmentalized. To be able to change from a red-tape bureaucracy to a

collaborative team-oriented organization is the crisis that will eventually arise.

At maturity this collaboration will be achieved. The crisis at this stage is to avoid

becoming stagnant and enduring a slow decline and eventual death. Instead,

the organization must continually renew itself. In the final stage of decline and

death some organizations cannot change because their management becomes

a roadblock to change. Also, the organization’s current structure can become a

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constraint on necessary change.

4. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

The founder of an organization has to make a series of decisions about

what business to be in, what the organization’s goals and objectives are, what

work has to be performed to attain those goals, how the work will be divided

and coordinated, and who will do the work. These decisions may be

interdependent if the organization is small. Making one decision will affect

others. For example, the skills and abilities of the particular people hired into

the organization will then affect decisions about what the organization can do

and how it will do it.

Another simple form of organization would be a restaurant whose manager has

divided the staff into three groups: the bar, the food, and the service.

These simple forms could be much enlarged by adding more people to the

basic structure. But as more people work in an organization, coordination

becomes more difficult. There often isn’t enough time for the manager to deal

with every person individually on every issue. To solve this problem, more

vertical division of labour would occur. In the travel agency an assistant

manager could be hired to manage the Corporate Travel department. Those

agents would report to the assistant manager, whose job would be to help them

sell, deal with problems, and manage their work life (holidays, pay, training,

etc.). The agency manager would then, in this example, manage the holiday

travel agents as well as the assistant manager of corporate travel.

Besides accounting, other staff services might include public relations,

advertising, finance, and legal services. However, whether these activities are

staff or a line service depends on the basic work of the organization. For

example, accountants working for a public accounting firm are line personnel,

not staff.

As an organization grows it may become inefficient to have employees

who each deal with many different products and/or a variety of clients. It begins

to make sense for the organization to increase the amount of specialization of

its personnel. The travel agency may assign its corporate travel agents to

different teams. Each team might then deal with only a certain group of

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corporate clients or one large client such as a federal government department.

The teams are therefore specialized by customer and would be managed by an

assistant manager in charge of all corporate travel. Holiday travel agents may

be divided by their specialty knowledge of a particular geographic region or

type of travel (for example cruises, adventure travel). These agents would have

their own assistant manager.

Recently two U of A graduates, Shawn Lowry and Lorne Fierbach,

opened a web-based greeting card business in Los Angeles. Their technology

and structure can handle up to 200,000 cards per day. Lowry says, “We didn’t

want to be a small card store where we took a few orders a day and

personalized them and mailed them out. We built it like it was going to be a

very successful company where we would be taking care of the nations or

North America’s or the world’s greeting card needs.” Initial capital of $10 million

was required to set up the operation for large-scale activity.

Departmentation is the horizontal division of work into logical groupings.

It can be done on the basis of customer, product, geographic location, function

performed or special knowledge, project, or a mixture of these components.

The division of the travel agency into corporate and holiday travel is a

departmentation by type of customer. This separation assumes that there are

two distinct kinds of travelers, with different perspectives and needs. Work with

each group may be both more efficient and more effective if agents specialize

and train to understand either corporate or holiday travelers, but not both.

A division by product is illustrated in the supermarket example. Work is

split into bakery, meats, dry goods, and produce, the four classes of product

provided. Employees would specialize in working with and knowing one type of

product.

In manufacturing firm functional departments typically include

production, marketing and sales, and research and development. Production

makes the shoes; marketing and sales is responsible for advertising,

distribution, and pricing; and R&D studies new designs and materials for shoes.

Organizations often create a mixture, or hybrid, of the above-mentioned ways

to departmentalize.

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5. MEASURES OF STRUCTURE

Structure concerns more than the division of labor or the boxes on the

organization chart. It is also about the reporting relationships between

organizational members. These are the lines connecting the boxes, rules and

regulations about how the work is performed, and whether organizational

decisions are made at the top of the organization or lower down. In order to

compare one organization’s structure with that of another or to study the effects

of structure on organizational performance, we need to have consistent ways to

measure structure. Three important structure measures are complexity,

formalization, and centralization.

Formalization refers to the extent to which job activity is defined and

controlled by rules. The more rules there are about how to do the work and how

decisions are made, the more an organization is formalized. Police

departments are often much formalized as the activities of officers are strictly

controlled by rules that cover almost every situation that may arise. A campus

radio station, on the other hand, may be much less formal, having only a few

rules governing the broadcasting behavior of station members.

Centralization concerns where in the organization decisions are made.

When decision-making is reserved for top management, vertical centralization

is high. Vertical centralization is low when lower-level employees in the

hierarchy are given decision-making authority. Horizontal decentralization

occurs when workers in many different organizational units are allowed to make

decisions without referring to a more central authority.

  Organic organizations act more as living things. They have tasks that

are more interdependent and that are continually adjusted and redefined

through interaction with organizational members. An advertising agency such

as Saatchi & Saatchi needs to be flexible in dealing with customers and in

creating concepts for television commercials and print advertisements. In an

organic organization, control depends less on formal job position and more on

expertise relevant to the particular problem being considered. Communication

is both vertical (up and down the hierarchy) and horizontal (across different

departments of the organization) depending on where the needed information

resides. These communications primarily take the form of information and

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advice. Commitment in the organic organization is to the organization’s tasks

and goals. Members accept general responsibility for task accomplishment

beyond their individual role definition. That is, they do not stick to a job

description as a definition of the work they will do. Organic organizations tend

to be simple, low in formalization, and decentralized. They adapt to and create

change in their environments.

Bureaucratic theory makes the assumption that people are rational and

can work within the rules. These guide behavior, meaning that conflict would be

avoided. Weber provides guidelines for how to structure an organization. This

is the ideal type bureaucracy, as it should work. Non-rational behavior and

conflict between individuals were not anticipated. We now know that non-

rationality and conflict are present in bureaucratic structures.

TECHNOLOGY

Technology is defined as the sequence of physical techniques,

knowledge, and equipment used to turn organizational inputs into outputs. Joan

Woodward conducted research into the connection between technology and

structure by studying 100 manufacturing firms in the southern part of England.

She identified three types of technology.

Woodward’s second technology type was large batch/mass production.

This is the production of many units of an identical product. A common example

of mass production is an automobile assembly line. When in operation, many

units of the same product are made. An example of large batch production is

the making of beer, which in a brewery is made in large fermentation kettles

that may each hold many thousands of liters. Each kettle holds one batch of

beer.

Woodward’s third technology type was continuous process. This is the production of a standard product without pause. An example of continuous process technology is a nuclear power plant. Once started, electricity is generated without pause for a long period of time. A few highly skilled technicians monitor the nuclear reactor. Expended uranium fuel rods may even be replaced while the reactor is in operation. A second example of this type of technology is an oil refinery. Crude oil is continually input into the refinery’s cracking and distilling apparatus and refined products such as gasoline are continually extracted.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

53

CONCLUSION

Competency management is such a process by which one can

measure the working potential of a person or a group of Competency

performance is a process through which one assesses and determines

one’s strengths as an individual worker and in some cases, as part of an

organization. It generally examines two areas: emotional intelligence or

emotional quotient (EQ), and strengths of the individual in areas like

team structure, leadership, and decision-making. Large organizations

frequently employ some form of competency performance to understand

how to most effectively employ the competencies of strengths of

workers. They may also use competency management to analyze the

combination of strengths in different workers to produce the most

effective teams and the highest quality work.

Competency management also requires some thought, time, and

analysis, and some people simply may not want to do the work involved

to sufficiently map competencies. Thus a book like the above is often

used with a human resources team, or with a job coach or talented

headhunter. Competency management alone may not produce accurate

results unless one is able to detach from the results in analyzing past

successes and failures. Many studies find that people often overestimate

their abilities, making self-competency performance results dubious.

Usually, a person will find himself with strengths in about five to

six areas. Some- times an area where strengths are not present is worth

developing. In other cases, competency management can indicate

finding work that is suited to one’s strengths, or finding a department at

one’s current work where one's strengths or needs as a worker can be

exercised.

A problem with competency management, especially when

conducted by an organization is that there may be no room for an

individual to work in a field that would best make use of his or her

competencies. If the company does not respond to competency

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management by reorganizing its employees, then it can be of little short-

term benefit and may actually result in greater unhappiness on the part

of individual employees. A person identified as needing to learn new

things in order to remain happy might find himself or herself in a position

where no new training is ever required. If the employer cannot provide a

position for an employee that fits him or her better, competency

management may be of little use.

Finally, performance appraisals are an important part of performance

management. In itself an appraisal is not performance management, but

it is one of the range of tools that can be used to manage performance.

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APPENDIXBIIBLIOGRAPHY

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Performance Improve After Mergers?,” Journal of Financial Economics

31, pp. 135-175.

4. Hughes, J. (2005), “Bringing emotion to work: emotional intelligence,

employee resistance and the reinvention of character”, Work

Employment and Society, 19(3), Pp. 603-625.

5. Corelli C. (2003), “Creating a High Performance Culture of Excellence,”

Expert Magazine, ExpertMagazine.com.

6. Alexander J.A. (2001), “Creating a High-Performance Culture:

Leadership Roles and Responsibilities,” Professional Services

Leadership Report, 4th quarter edition, AFSM International, Florida.

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Addison-Wesley.

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Development,” Leadership & Organizational Development, Vol.17, No. 1.

9. Kotter J.P., and J.L. Heskett. (1992), “Corporate Culture and

Performance,” New York: Free Press.

10. Schein E.J. (1992), “Organizational Culture and Leadership,” 2nd ed.,

San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

11. McGregor, D. (1960), “The Human Side of Enterprise”, Auckland,

McGraw-Hill.