OBD2010sols

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Organisational Behaviour Edinburgh Business School 1

Past Papers - Examiner's Solutions

December 2010

Essay Questions

Essay 1

Your organisation has gone through a period of downsizing following the global credit crunch. The

organisation is still profit-making, but a recent and extensive consultancy report has identified that

employee engagement has reached a very low point. You have been asked by the corporate Board

to identify actions that managers can take to address this issue. What would you advise that manag-

ers can do to enhance work-related attitudes?

(60 marks)

Essay 1

Your organisation has gone through a period of downsizing following the global credit crunch.

The organisation is still profit-making, but a recent and extensive consultancy report has identi-

fied that employee engagement has reached a very low point. You have been asked by the

corporate Board to identify actions that managers can take to address this issue. What would you

advise that managers can do to enhance work-related attitudes?

(60 marks)

The three key concepts on work related attitudes are Job Satisfaction (JS), Organisational Commitment(OC) and Job Involvement (JI).

JS is a pivotal construct that includes facets of work, rewards (extrinsic and intrinsic), attitudes of fellowworkers, supervision and promotion. The fact that the company has gone through change includingdownsizing and de-layering indicates that JS will have been affected by these changes. Downsizing usuallyinvolves changes in work load, inevitably results in changes in personnel, and cuts down possible careeroptions through a flattened structure. For the individual, the determinants of JS are years in career andexpectations, the latter being effected by downsizing/de-layering. The organisational determinants of JSare supervision (reducing through downsizing/de-layering), job challenge (possibly increasing), job clarityand incentives (including, of course, the idea that people look for equity in pay). There is an indirect linkbetween performance and JS with rewards being a mediating function.

It is not clear that the company is regularly measuring JS currently and there are methods available thatcan be adopted, such as the Job Description Index and the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. Once

measurement has taken place, the key actions to encourage greater engagement are:

Communicating clearly how people can achieve promotion with a possible refocusing on job enlarge-ment or involving additional job challenge through alternative progression structures like careerchanges.

Careful design of rewards systems to ensure that these are being perceived as equitable alongside awider understanding that rewards need not always be about money are important.

Through downsizing and de-layering, the role of supervision is likely to have changed especially if self-directed teams have been introduced and the consequences of this need to be clearly communicated tostaff, possibly through training.

OC and JI are two other work-related attitudes that have been more recently researched. OC is about

employees buying into organisational objectives, a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of thecompany and a desire to remain part of the organisation. Employees with OC will be ambassadors for the

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Past Papers - Examiner's Solutions / December 2010


organisation and defend its reputation. OC is different from JS because it involves a wider perspectivegoing beyond the job to the whole organisation. JI is about how much an employee identifies withhis/her job, active participation in the job and is a key element of how the individual identifies their self-

worth. JI is less at risk from the effects of downsizing/de-layering because the attitude is tied to theindividual job rather than organisational factors.

The Board is not clear what the current position is and there is, therefore, a need to collect data todiagnose what the problem actually is; Defining clear promotion paths, equitable reward structures (both extrinsic and intrinsic), and having

clear roles, especially for supervisors, are practical methods for ensuring that individual expectationslead to JS;

For OC and JI managers need to: Demonstrate that they care for employees; Create opportunities for people to achieve personal goals; Modify jobs through job design and enlargement to increase opportunities for intrinsic rewards; Find ways to reward people regularly and equitably; Set goals including both organisational and personal development issues that are meaningful to

employees.

Essay 2

As part of the team-briefing system in operation in your company, your team of highly qualified

technical managers have said that they are disillusioned by the organisational approach to managing

conflict in the work-place. Currently, they feel that senior managers ignore conflict as an issue and

imply that it does not impact on the delivery of key objectives. Your senior manager has given you

permission to trial a different way of working with conflict. From your understanding of OB, what

would you do?

(60 marks)

Essay 2

As part of the team-briefing system in operation in your company, your team of highly qualified

technical managers have said that they are disillusioned by the organisational approach to

managing conflict in the work-place. Currently, they feel that senior managers ignore conflict as

an issue and imply that it does not impact on the delivery of key objectives. Your senior manager

has given you permission to trial a different way of working with conflict. From your understand-

ing of OB, what would you do?

(60 marks)

Conflict can be dealt with in a number of ways, each of which are appropriate depending on the circum-

stances. Avoiding conflict, often seen as having negative connotations, can be seen as a passive ignoringof conflict that much research would suggest is detrimental to achieving high performance. It is, however,appropriate when the conflict is trivial and there is no chance of change, or when dealing with the conflict

would be too disruptive, or when there is a need for a breathing space, or when gathering information ismore important than immediate action. Accommodating (letting others have their way), forcing (usingpower to impose a solution) and compromising (reaching a mutually acceptable solution) are more active

ways of dealing with conflict. In the team sense, however, collaboration is usually seen as the mostappropriate as it involves participation of the parties involved in the conflict reaching mutual commit-ment to a solution that will provide a permanent solution to the problem.

It is also important to recognise that conflict is part of the process in which teams develop towards beinghigh performing. The team development process of forming, storming, norming and performing inher-

ently recognises that conflict is expected and necessary within the storming phase so that team membersbecome accepting of their own roles within the team and buy-in to supra-ordinate goals for the team.

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The role of the team leader is important in managing the processes described above both as a role modeland a coach. Especially when taking a situational approach to leadership, the leader can help the team tomanage conflict in a way that is most appropriate for any particular set of circumstances.

From the question it appears that your manager is leading a team that is somewhat stuck in the Stormingphase of development. The action that he needs to consider includes:

Clarifying with the team what the over-riding objectives of the team are; Helping the team, by example, to identify what the important areas of conflict really are and how these

could be overcome using an appropriate conflict resolution strategy;

Looking at the size of the team to see if it is of an appropriate size to deliver the objectives it has beenset;

Encouraging the group to develop norms for: Dealing with conflict; Sharing information; Creating solutions.

Managing the team in such a way as to give the group time to develop relationships and trust, forexample, by organising a team-building event away from the work place;

In decision-making, to separate ideas generation from evaluation of ideas; Giving the team and individuals, feedback on behaviours that are helping or hindering the team

process.

The use of team building to implement these changes would be the most effective way forward.

Essay 3

You are a partner in a medium-sized professional consultancy organisation. In the past year, the

mission of the organisation has been changed from a concentration on delivering consultancy reports

to providing implemented solutions to client problems. It is generally accepted that to fully achieve

this shift in focus there needs to be a much more entrepreneurial approach to problem solving.

Some of the other partners have heard this described as encouraging intrapreneurial behaviour.

You have been asked, having just completed your EBS MBA, to advise what the organisation needs

to do next. What would you advise?

(60 marks)

Essay 3

You are a partner in a medium-sized professional consultancy organisation. In the past year, the

mission of the organisation has been changed from a concentration on delivering consultancy

reports to providing implemented solutions to client problems. It is generally accepted that to

fully achieve this shift in focus there needs to be a much more entrepreneurial approach to

problem solving. Some of the other partners have heard this described as encouraging intrapre-

neurial behaviour. You have been asked, having just completed your EBS MBA, to advise what

the organisation needs to do next. What would you advise?

(60 marks)

To promote intrapreneurship the organisation needs to encourage the characteristics that are found inentrepreneurial people. Entrepreneurs tend to be tenacious and make sacrifices in their family life andstandard of living to create and run with a new idea. They are achievement driven and retain the drive tosucceed even in the face of failure along the journey. The have a clear vision of where they are going withan idea and are able to explain it to others. They seek situations in which they can take responsibility forsuccess, failure and problem solving. They catch the things that other people miss and appreciate newideas. They feel that they are in control of their destiny and that they can cope with a high degree ofuncertainty. They take calculated risks and handle failure as a temporary phenomenon.

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To achieve the above needs, individuals have to be psychologically prepared to accept responsibility; andthe organisation needs to be prepared to empower employees through effective delegation of authority.

To ensure individual preparedness requires that employees experience meaningfulness in their work, haveresponsibility for work outcomes and have knowledge of the work results. In a consultancy organisationit is likely that these individual motivators already exist. At the organisational level, effective delegation

would be achieved through a flat organisational structure in which managers are prepared to give uppower and responsibility to empowered staff. The partners, in this case, need to be able to walk the talkto ensure that everyone buys in to the proposed changes. As the organisation has been living with thechange in approach for the last year, it is unlikely that any major planned change process would benecessary but there may be a need to use a team approach to ensure effective implementation.

Finally, it is important to ensure that the organisational reward system is aligned to the new ways ofworking. Whereas in the past, a key metric might have been delivery of consultancy reports, for thefuture, customer feedback may be seen as a key driver for reward.

In terms of systems to ensure that innovation is encouraged, it would be advisable to identify ideaschampions who can generate ideas and retain ownership for developing the idea in the company. Ideaschampions recognise problems or opportunities and generate solutions. To support these champions, the

organisation needs to identify sponsors who will provide support and apply organisational resources todevelop new ideas. At senior level in the organisation, there is a role for a godfather who can help toovercome internal, political, barriers to innovation happening. The appointment of these three roles

within the organisation will encourage entrepreneurial employees and demonstrate that the organisation isserious about changing ways of working.

In addition, if the organisation is large, there may need to be horizontal control mechanisms put in placeto protect innovation teams from outside interference. That interference could come from line managers

wanting to apply the skills of those involved in an innovation in more traditional work roles. To avoidthis, ring-fencing of some teams to create islands of excellence is appropriate and these can then be usedas examples throughout the rest of the organisation. This role modelling of the new behaviours that theorganisation wants to encourage can be the most powerful way of demonstrating that the organisation isserious about making the change part of the way of doing business.

In aiming for more creativity, the organisation needs to ensure that groups of employees have a commongoal or clear focus on where they are going. These groups will have a standard method of decision-making that will ensure that the generation of ideas is separated from their evaluation. Ideas should beevaluated on their own merits by the group who create the evaluation methodology. Conclusions reachedabout new ideas are freely shared with the wider organisation. Internally within groups there is a recogni-tion of the value of each others time and contribution; members should feel at ease to participate; thegroup should not be dominated by a single individual and should not be deflected from its stated pur-pose. The group should have access to high level management for support and should have a standard ofhigh creativity from its members. Finally, there should not be a blame culture in operation as this wouldinherently stifle creativity. This paragraph defines many of the attributes of a high performing team.

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