West Coast Architects (WCA) has been operating for the last ten years now.

No longer the new kid on

the block, the organization has steadily become more professional during your time here.

Five years ago, the company had 50 employees and now has grown to 100 staff in Vancouver, Calgary,
and Toronto. You have been successful in your career as a people manager practicing what you learned
in your BCIT OBRG 1105 class many years ago. You are managing an HR Department that is based out
of Vancouver and has a mixture of recruiters, HR consultants, and payroll staff. You silently take stock
of your situation and marvel at how lucky it has been to grow with a company that has really appreciated
your contributions. That brass name plaque on your office door could use some polishing as its
developing some patina!

1. You are in the lunch room one day having your typical peanut butter and jam sandwich with a
Partner named Sam. She explains to you that hiring and keeping talented employees is the most
important task for managers at WCA. Explain whether you agree or disagree with Sam’s statement,
and feel free to compliment this with other organizational behavior perspectives as you see fit to
assess the workplace situation.

I agree with you. Hiring and keeping talented employees is very important to managers. Human capital is the most apparent
form of intellectual capital - knowledge, skills, abilities that employees carry around in their heads. Human capital is
valuable, rare, difficult to imitate, and nonsubstitutable (BARNEY, 1991).

Employees are valuable because they help the organization to discover opportunities and to minimize threats in the external
environment. They are rare and difficult to imitate, meaning that it is difficult to find talented people, and they can- not be
cloned like sheep. Eventually, human capital is nonsubstitutable because it cannot be easily replaced by technology. This
type of talent cannot be missed or lost; that is why talent management is so important.

Retaining this valuable capital leads us to places that have high-performance work practices - HPWP - perspective begins
with the idea that human capital - the knowledge, skills, and abilities that employees possess is an essential source of
competitive advantage for organizations (HUSELID, 1995). 

Talent management is a lengthy task to keep on. To hire and retain great employees than leading to HPWP can be highly
tricky due to the amount of unique procedures that can be applied throughout the employee career. There are dozens of
different approaches to recruit and retain high-quality talents like: 

 Job description;
 Job post writing and recruiting location placement for the posting;
 Employee starting day and onboarding process;
 On-the-job training;
 Goal setting and feedback;
 Coaching and relationship building by the manager;
 Formal feedback systems such as performance management or an appraisal process;
 Ongoing employee development;
 Career planning and pathing;
 Promotions, lateral moves to a similar role in an organization, transfers in the company.

After applying multiple processes to retain those high-quality employees, motivation will be your most important task when
trying to keep them, leading to high-performance work practices. People will be engaged when the job demands - an
emotionally, mentally or physically demanding job, job complexity, work pressure - are compensated with a similar, or
higher, level of the job resources - autonomy, performance feedback, social support, coaching, relevant knowledge. So,
someone working in a highly taxing job should have a high degree of independence, proper education, excellent and
structured feedback, and social support from their supervisor and peers to achieve optimum engagement.
2. WCA has just sent a dozen (mostly white male) managers from Canada to its new site in a remote
area of China. Few of these managers have worked with Chinese employees, so the company has
asked you to design an on-site one-day experiential training program to help these managers to
minimize perceptual problems that might otherwise occur. The program must be experiential (i.e.
participants interact with each other rather than attend an awareness lecture) and the activities must
help the managers to discover biases that may be hidden or unknown to them. Describe a minimum of
two key features of this training program and discuss its conceptual foundations. 

When working with people from different cultures, ethnicity is often an example of cultural differences in the workplace,
mainly where communication, language barriers, or how to conduct business are varied. A manager must have cultural
competency in today's workplace. Being culturally competent is critical not only to your success but to the success of your
organization, as well. This refers to the ability to interact with people from different cultures, as well as social and
economic backgrounds. It measures the capacity to effectively work with people who don't share the native language, who
may not share the same beliefs, principles, or lifestyle as other employees. 

An experiential training program to help these managers to minimize perceptual problems that might otherwise occur is
necessary, and it must approach two key factors:
 Understand the importance of ethical sensitivity.
 Improve the manager's perceptions through the application of the Johari Window Model and the contact
hypothesis.

Ethical sensitivity is a personal characteristic that enables people to recognize the presence of a moral issue and determine
its relative importance (SPARKS, HUNT, 1998). They are more likely to sense whether a question requires ethical thought;
that is, they can more carefully estimate the moral intensity of the problem. Ethically sensitive people manage to have
greater empathy. They also have more knowledge about specific situations. For example, accountants would be more
ethically sensitive regarding the appropriateness of particular accounting procedures than would someone who has not
received training in this profession.

Training managers to be open to a new culture and bring their attention to how to be better in an environment that they are
not aware of. Showing managers that they should interact, ask questions and, more importantly, listen to the Chinese
employees. Listening and understanding what they have to say and why is how managers will know how to act when
approaches thought culturally different methods present to them.

Diversity awareness training tries to minimize discrimination by making people aware of systemic discrimination as well as
prejudices that occur through stereotyping. Awareness of perceptual biases can reduce these biases to some extent by
making people more mindful of their thoughts and actions. However, awareness training has only a limited effect (WHITE,
LOCKE, 2001).

A more powerful way to minimize perceptual biases is to help people discover biases in their own decisions and behaviour
(COSTELLO, ZALKIND, 2000) We need to understand our beliefs, values, and attitudes to be more open-minded and
nonjudgmental toward others. Another way to increase self-awareness and thereby reduce perceptual biases is by applying
the Johari Window (LUFT, 1973). This model of self-awareness and mutual understanding divides information about you
into four "windows" - open, blind, hidden, and unknown - based on whether your values, beliefs, and experiences are
known to you and others.

All this so we can reach the most crucial part, what studies call, contact hypothesis. While the Johari Window relies on
conversation, self-awareness and mutual understanding can also improve through meaningful interaction (DIXON,
DURRHEIM, 1986). Meaningful interaction is founded on the contact hypothesis, which states that, under certain
conditions, people who interact with each other will be less prejudiced or perceptually biased against each other. Only
spending time with members of other groups can improve your understanding and opinion of that person to some extent.

The training will bring employees together, breaking apart any stigma that they might have of each other — making them
be ethnically sensitive, adjusting them understand different cultures and at the same time, obtaining their perceptions
interacting with the Chinese employees.
3. Employees at WCA have had heavy workloads over the past year, due mainly to competition and
increased demand for architectural projects. The Partners want to introduce a stress management
program that would control the consequences of this stress. The Partners have asked you to prepare a
short presentation for their upcoming board meeting. Describe three types of stress management
programs that would help employees to cope more effectively with the physiological and/or
psychological consequences of stress. Your answer to the Partners should also briefly state the specific
benefits that each type of program provides. 

Stress is an adaptive response to a situation perceived as challenging or threatening to a person's well- being. The stress
experience, called the general adaptation syndrome, involves moving through three stages: alarm, resistance, and
exhaustion. Stressors are the causes of stress and include any environmental conditions that place a physical or emotional
demand on a person. Three stressors that have received considerable attention are harassment and incivility, work overload,
and low task control. Many interventions are available to manage work-related stress, including removing the stressor,
withdrawing from the stressor, changing stress perceptions, controlling stress and receiving social support.

With those definitions in mind and the training necessities that the organization has, we are going to focus on three types of
interventions: remove the stressor, changing stress perception and controlling it.

There are many ways to remove the stressor, but some of the more common actions involve assigning employees to jobs
that match their skills and preferences, reducing excessive workplace noise, having a complaint system and taking
corrective action against harassment and giving employees more control over the work process. Another meaningful way
that companies can remove stressors is by facilitating a better work-life balance. Work-Life balance initiatives minimize
conflict between the employee's work and nonwork demands. Five of the most common work-life balance initiatives are
flexible and limited work time, job sharing, teleworking, personal leave, and childcare support (EBY, 2005).

Employees experience different stress levels because they have different levels of positive self-evaluation and optimism.
Consequently, another way to manage stress is to help employees improve their self- concept, so that job challenges are not
perceived as threatening. Personal goal setting and self-reinforcement can also reduce the stress that people experience
when they enter new work settings. Research also suggests that some, but not all, forms of humour can improve optimism
and create positive emotions by taking some psychological weight off the situation (ABEL, 2004).

Exercise and maintaining a healthy lifestyle are an effective stress management strategy because it controls stress
consequences. Research indicates that physical activity reduces the physiological effects of stress by helping employees
moderate their breathing and heart rate, muscle tension, and stomach acidity (ENSEL, LIN, 2004). Research has found that
various forms of meditation reduce anxiety, reduce blood pressure and muscle tension, and moderate breathing and heart
rate (ARMOUR, 2003). Wellness programs can also help control the consequences of stress. These programs inform
employees about better nutrition and fitness, regular sleep, and other good health habits.
4. The partners have come to you to ask for your opinion. They are concerned about how employees are
gossiping, and using the organizational grapevine (not official channels) to pass information to each
other. One partner admitted he had a meeting with his staff and they had already heard important
company information from the lunch room. They’ve asked you to present at the next leadership team
meeting on whether you think it is good or bad to have informal information being passed between
employees.

The grapevine is an unstructured and informal network founded on social relationships rather than organizational charts or
job descriptions. Employees turn to the rumour when they have few other options.

Research conducted several decades ago reported that the grapevine transmits information very rapidly in all directions
throughout the organization. The typical pattern is a cluster chain, whereby a few people actively spread rumours to many
others. The grapevine works through informal social networks, so it is more active where employees have similar
backgrounds and can communicate easily. Nevertheless, the grapevine distorts information by deleting fine details and
exaggerating key points.

Employees rely on the grapevine when information is not available through formal channels. It is also the main conduit
through which organizational stories and other symbols of the organization's culture are communicated. A third benefit of
the grapevine is that this social interaction relieves anxiety. This explains why rumour mills are most active during times of
uncertainty (WALKER, BECKERLE, 1993). Finally, the grapevine is associated with the drive to bond. Being a recipient
of gossip is a sign of inclusion, according to evolutionary psychologists. Trying to suppress the rumour is, in some respects,
an attempt to undermine the natural human drive for social interaction (NICHOLSON, 1997).

Having those definitions in mind, we can agree that the grapevine can be something beneficial when appropriately used by
any company. That is the way that message is passed through by most of the employees in all organizations, and way more
with social media right beside us. One way to keep the grapevine but at the same time making sure that employees have the
correct information on hands I would suggest an Organization Communication Board, where the company's Internal
Communication would be responsible for putting up important messages from top management to the rest of the staff. In
that way, the organization can still trust in the speed of the grapevine and not be worried about the lack of details on that
same message.
5. The Partners are concerned that the office is becoming less and less creative now that it has become
larger. Develop an organizational plan for the company to become a more creative environment for
WCA. 

Creativity is at work when imagining opportunities, such as how a company's expertise might be redirected to untapped
markets. Creativity is present when developing alternatives, such as figuring out new places to look for existing solutions or
working out the design of a custom-made solution. One of the most critical conditions that support creative practice is that
the organization has a learning orientation; that is, leaders recognize that employees make reasonable mistakes as part of the
creative process.

Motivation from the job itself is another essential condition for creativity (AMABILE, 1997). Employees tend to be more
creative when they believe their work benefits the organization - task significance - and when they have the freedom to
pursue novel ideas without bureaucratic delays. Creativity is about changing things, and change is possible only when
employees have the authority to experiment. More generally, jobs encourage creativity when they are challenging and
aligned with the employee's competencies.

Hiring people with strong creative potential and providing a work environment that supports creativity are two foundations
of an innovative workplace. The third foundation consists of various activities that help employees think more creatively.

By verbalizing the problem, listening to questions, and hearing what others think, you are more likely to form new
perspectives on the issue. A set of creative activities that can be very helpful, known as associative play, ranges from art
classes to improvised storytelling and acting. Another associative play activity, called morphological analysis, involves
listing different dimensions of a system and the elements of each aspect and then looking at each combination. This
encourages people to examine combinations that initially seem nonsensical carefully. The last set of activities that promote
creative thinking is cross-pollination. Cross-pollination occurs when people from different areas of the organization
exchange ideas or when new people are brought into an existing team.
6. You have been given the unique opportunity to develop a 'greenfield' site for a new location in
Montreal. A greenfield site means that the entire location is new, including employees, managers,
structure and practices. You want to ensure that the new office supports self-directed work teams,
unlike the Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto offices which mainly focus on individual performance.
Describe four different elements of the organizational and team environment that you need to
consider that influence team effectiveness. Feel free to introduce additional element outside the
relevant chapter, but please justify your answer.

A team is effective when it benefits the organization, its members, and its survival (SHEA, GUZZO, 1987). Most groups
exist to serve some organizational purpose, so the achievement of those objectives partly measures effectiveness. A team's
effectiveness relies on the satisfaction and well-being of its members. People join groups to fulfill their personal needs, so
this need fulfillment partly measures efficiency. Finally, team effectiveness includes the te viability-its ability to survive.

With that said, Team Size, Rewards, Communication and Delegation are the four different elements of the organizational
and team environment that we need to consider that influence team effectiveness primarily. Our goal is that the new office
supports self-directed work teams and focusing on those four elements, we might be able to achieve the goal.

The organizational and team environment represents all conditions beyond the team's boundaries that influence its
effectiveness. Team members tend to work together more effectively when they are partly rewarded for team performance
(DEMATTEO et al., 1998). Another environmental factor is the organizational structure. Teams flourish when organized
around work processes because this structure increases interaction and interdependence among team members and reduces
cooperation with people outside the group. High-performance teams also depend on organizational leaders who provide
support and strategic direction, while team members focus on operational efficiency and flexibility (WAGEMAN, 1997).
The physical layout of the team's workspace can also make a difference.

The ability to forecast the team size would decide on the percentage of success of the assigned project. The manager will
have to consider a higher number of members in a team, which in turn creates more resources available to achieve the
target. However, sometimes, as team size increases, the conflicts and misunderstandings also increase, resulting in
decreased levels of cohesion and lesser productivity. The company will have to be careful while choosing the size of the
team. Managers will be able to increase productivity to ensure high levels of effectiveness. Communication is an essential
reaction to any successful team performance. The entire team must know the "strategy" on how the group is progressing
toward meeting those goals and how they would be achieving on the target. A clear vision of the strategy will be
communicated to every member of the team.

Without considering the size of the team, examine the type of rewards that can be large or small. Management can afford to
provide some compensation for a completed task. These rewards are always motivators for team members to achieve the
group targets in projects. Rewards promote great motivation for any successful team, and they also encourage other
coworkers to join in the future project. Organizations that work well together understand and support the strengths and
weaknesses of each team member. As a manager, speak to the powers of individual team members in the presence of
project members and suggest how the team could share and take advantage of others' strengths and perform together
towards a successful target.
7. Since the beginning of WCA, many of the original partners were using a computer aided design
software (CAD) that was developed 12 years ago specifically for WCA. It was ground breaking at the
time and allowed WCA to be an industry leader with the software. However, times have changed and
CAD software is no longer a competitive advantage. Sadly, only one Partner, John, remains from the
original company who remembers how to maintain the software. It’s complicated, not user friendly,
and is prone to crashing on a regular basis. Normally, John is able to quickly jump in and figure out
the problem and get the system up and running again for the rest of the architects. John has
regularly modified the software over the years, but has refused to teach or document any of this
information (saying it is too difficult to document the details). You once looked in the computer
room, and all you remember was a dust filled room, with wires haphazardly strewn across the floor,
and you swear you even saw a hamster on a hamster wheel powering one of the computers…. The
other partners have thought about firing John unless he documents the maintenance procedures, but
they realize that there is no one else who can repair the equipment. The partners have asked for a
confidential assessment of the situation from your perspective. Use your knowledge of sources and
contingencies of power, and compliment this with other OB perspectives to explain why John is
behaving this way.

John is acting like that because of the source of its expert power and centrality of its contingencies. Expert power originates
from within the powerholder. It is an individual's or work unit's capacity to influence others by possessing knowledge or
skills valued by others. A critical form of expert power is the ability to perceive and manage uncertainties in the business
environment. In this case, it is operating the difficulties of the CAD software that once were valuable to the company.

Organizations are more useful when they operate in predictable environments, so they value people who can cope with
turbulence in consumer trends, societal changes, unstable supply lines and many more. Expert power is a way to earn
respect and influence independently of the hierarchy of the organization. With expert power, people can influence others
because of recognized talent, skills, and knowledge. They are conscious of what they need to know to do their job well and
build those skills. Cross-training is another way to gain expert power – employees won't just know their job, but others'
roles as well. The power of expertise is similar to the power of authority - legitimate power - because many people tend to
follow the guidance of these experts without careful thought (CIALDINI, GOLDSTEIN, 2004).

Centrality refers to the powerholder's importance based on the degree and nature of interdependence between the
powerholder and others (HICKSON et al., 1985) Centrality increases with the number of people dependent on you as well
as how quickly and severely they are influenced by that dependence. High centrality, like John, the organization would be
adversely affected by his absence, and they would be affected quickly.

John's competitive advantage has been outdated, and he feels obsolete. To keep him motivated, the HR team and his
supervisor should go for a training need analysis. After the examination, based on his interest area and expertise, John
should be equipped with training and development programs. Enhancement of knowledge, skills, and techniques will
motivate him, and he will start enjoying his work. At times, learning a new skill could be tedious but will be inspiring and
pushing him to achieve goals. In the initial phase, much resistance is expected from him, and non-willingness would be
there, but showing the picture of his bright future could help.
8. The Partners have decided that they need a new performance plan for the architects. The architects
are currently paid based on senority. The longer they work at WCA, the more they get paid. This
new plan must introduce a focus on winning new architectural projects for WCA, but not at a cost of
team morale, nor losing existing clients. Recommend a new performance plan for the architects that
achieve these three goals.

A team consists of all types of people. Some may be newer, while some may be seniors. The performance plan for
architects is based on seniority, which can demotivate some of the newer team members. Consequently, giving equal
chances to all employees is very important.

It is necessary for an organization that every employee must be allowed to work and show their talent. Teamwork is always
helpful when each member is encouraged to put-in efforts and all work towards achieving a common goal. If the whole
team works in shifts for late hours, then not only the rewards will be given to all, but also the entire work would be
completed well before time. The new performance plan must include all employees of the team and must work in shifts.
This way, the team morale will be high and neither will they lose the existing clients. Not only the work will be done
effectively, but also all three goals could be achieved.

Sorry, I got stuck on this one.

9. It’s after work, and you are having a quick drink with a co-worker before heading home. You start
to talk about your managers at WCA, and get into a discussion on leadership. Your co-worker asks
your opinion on whether you think leaders need to be charismatic. Make an argument for, or against,
whether a leader needs to be charismatic to be successful.

Charisma is an essential trait of a successful person. If you look at the leaders, innovators, or any successful people, the one
quality all of them possess is charisma. It is one of the only attributes that you are born with, so mostly it comes down to the
luck. Some argue whether it is a product of nature or nurture, but after close examination of the most successful people on
planet earth, researchers have noticed it is something with which you are born.

Successful people are leaders; they can get people around them to help them achieve their ultimate goal. A task that's a lot
easier said than done. Leaders are essential presences in humanity, they are the ones that have the courage and the ability to
instill belief inside others to support what they are doing and help them get to where they want.

In my opinion, leaders need to be charismatic to become successful because a charismatic leader poses a dominant
personality with a high level of self-confidence, strongly believes in their ideas. They are ready to take a certain degree of
risk and try to empower their followers.

Charismatic leaders are beneficial for the work that could be linked to the ideological values of the followers and have an
appeal for them, due to their visionary and innovative approach to things. Therefore, they have significant influential and
motivational power and articulate their ideas in a very effective manner to their employees.
10. The Partners at WCA have realized that they want to modernize the office culture. Your efforts have
begun to pay off and they realize that they really want to change the culture to your vision of what the
office should look like. They want to move it from a task -based team to a relationship-based team.
Outline a multi-year plan on how you would create a change management strategy, and what features
the plan would have to make it a modern organization that would have a highly engaged work team
that says great things about WCA, stays for longer periods of tenure, and strives to work as hard as
they can to make WCA successful. 

A key element of leading change is a strategic vision. A leader's view provides a sense of direction and establishes the
critical success factors against which the real differences are evaluated. Furthermore, an idea offers an emotional foundation
for the change because it links the individual's values and self-concept to the desired change (GOODSTEIN, BUTZ, 1999)
A strategic vision also minimizes employee fear of the unknown and provides a better understanding of what behaviours
employees must learn for the desired future.
Multi-year plan for the change management strategy:
 Create a vision so the new culture can be established.
 Communicate the change throughout the organization and what is each employee roll in the transition.
 Have a clear connection between the plan and the expected outcomes.
 Motivate employees to adapt to the new culture.
 Monitor the execution and performance of employees while the change is being implemented.
 Simulate and take corrective action to update the plane in case of any problems.
 Talk with the staff and get feedback from them.
 Appreciate and reward employees by their work.
 Good compensation.
 Empower employees, allowing them to lead projects.
 Involve multi-level staff to essential meetings, showing transparency.
 Flexible work hours, work from home.
 Keep engagement high.

Really sorry for the weak work. I had some severe problems at the company that I work for, so my head
was all over the place. I understand that this is more important, but I had to step up when the problem
happened.

I wanted to let you know that you were an extraordinary teacher and probably one of the best that I ever
had, even after three colleges. I hope we could meet again since I doubt that I was able to grasp all the
knowledge that you have to share.

Thank you for everything.

Paulo Ferraz
Section 4 - Participation Grade Input
Your grade will be used as an input for determining your overall participation grade. Remember if you self-
assessment is not aligned to the below guidelines, your instructor will take the lower of their assessment and
yours.

Participation (10% of the course grade). Your grade for participation will be determined by regular
attendance, the extent to which you are prepared for class, your contribution to class discussions and the
extent to which you enable others to participate. Your ability to demonstrate appropriate workplace
behaviours – both in lecture and labs will also be considered when determining your grade for participation.

Excellent participation (8 – 10): Attends all labs, consistently participates and moves class discussions
forward. Volunteers high quality analysis and insights or applications of course content. Assists other class
members to understand course objectives. Helps others participate effectively. Punctual and attentive.

Satisfactory participation (6 – 7): Misses no more than one lab, prepared with good observations and
analysis when called upon. Understands assigned readings and able to explain the concepts in the text.
Participates in a manner that is not dominating or overwhelming of others. Does not distract others.

Unsatisfactory participation (0 – 5): Not prepared when called upon; misses classes; presents poorly
reasoned observations and analysis; frequently “off task” in lab activities. Does not contribute to large class
discussions or small group activities. Dominates class or small group discussions. Treats others in a way that
is intimidating, discriminatory or does not demonstrate an acceptance of diversity. Demonstrates
inappropriate workplace behaviours.

Please self-assess your participation for the semester: _____9______/ 10