Korean Organizations and Management Practices.

Today, in competitive business world organizations utilize various management and operation

practices to run a business. In Korea, the organization's managing system is very responsible work, as it

requires good decision making and leadership skills. Five vital approaches make up the Korean

organization's management system. This essay intends to explore these five common Korean operation

management practices, as well as provide pros and cons of styles with clear examples.

The first approach used in Korean companies is Centralized management. Centralized

management has central control system where one or a few individuals operate, make decisions, and

lead the company. Just like every managing approach comes with its benefits and drawbacks, this one is

not an exception. The advantages of centralized management practice are standardization, unbiased

work allocation, and flexibility. Standardization ensures equality between a worker in terms of attitude

and behavior by setting workplace ethics and a solid judgment system. Unbiased work allocation is

about the distribution of workload equally to raise fairness and decrease issues with discrimination

between the top and bottom line employees. Flexibility is about the fast implementation of the new

decision at a lower level of organization. For instance, top managers will decide without a low-level

manager’s consent which saves time and helps avoid conflicts. Low-level managers, in turn, implements

plans that come from the top layer by planning and discussing with bottom line workers.

Drawbacks of centralized management concepts are that it encourages dictatorship, limits

communication and creativity. Bureaucratic leadership can be noticed in a centralized management

system, as top executives assign and get back results from bottom line workers. It is effective and

flexible in many cases such as system decline work performance of workers due to the scarcity of

motivation. By limiting communication as mentioned earlier, low-level managers and simple workers
cannot share ideas while making decisions, which may create sabotage within company workers. Also,

this leads to limited creativity as employees cannot share personal ideas and creative suggestions.

The second approach is Top-down decision making which is a common management practice

where a hierarchical system is set in the company. Decision making is also used in centralized

management where each role mission stated by higher-ups. One of the advantages of top-down

management is that it sets the right goals within a small period. As decisions are done by top-level

managers in a small group, other employees do nothing about company problems and not disturbed for

participating in the process of decision-making. Instead, they just focus on the task and their

performance.

In fact, it is an effective approach however, it seems unfair towards employees that work in the

low level who cannot share their ideas. The only disadvantage of top-down decision making is ignoring

knowledge of bottom line workers. This practice may lead to sabotage and low performance in the

workplace. Also, it may require spending of money on motivation and training process, as after

modification and decision, employee’s workload and workplace may change and this costs much

money.

Korean companies similar to other countries used to have two kinds of leadership types:

authoritarian and paternalistic. Authoritarian leadership style is where an individual takes control of the

company and makes all decisions with a small group of followers. Authoritarian leaders mostly make a

selection by themselves and rarely accept advice from followers. The paternalistic leadership style

involves a dominant figure, who acts as a father or mother and treats every employee as a family

member. In paternalistic leadership, people may feel democracy and may discuss questions and get

feedback, but still, decision making remains only in the hands of the leader.
 The positive sides of authoritarian leadership are that it provides direction and relieves pressure.

For example, in small group works such as in school and workplace scarcity of leadership is often seen.

In this kind of situation, authoritarian leadership can work well, as they are strong leaders that offer the

structure of workload, which assign tasks to different members of the group and set the deadlines. This

leadership style is also used well in pressure involved situations. A perfect example can be military

service, where soldiers follow the leader without any hesitation. Also, any conflict between group

members can be stopped by a leader’s command. The negative sides of the authoritarian leadership

approach are that high churn rate group members and over-reliance on a leader. People often feel abused

about authoritarian leadership as it may seem bossy and dictatorial. Sometimes leaders overestimate

themselves and do not consider partners' knowledge and accept their contribution this may result in

resentment of team members. Just the same, group members may over-rely on the leader and become

dependent on them. In other words, some workers may become lazy as leaders do most of the tasks.

The advantages of paternalistic leadership are high employee loyalty, low rate of absenteeism

rates, and staff turnover. High employee loyalty comes from a good relationship between bosses and

employees as a leader hears the needs of workers. In other words, managers are involved in the

employee’s personal lives that make a strong connection with the workplace. Low rate of absenteeism

and staff turnover monitored in the paternalistic leadership approach which is the reason behind a

positive friendly environment in the workplace where everyone respects each other. Drawbacks of

paternalistic leadership are high dissatisfaction in crisis and dependence on leaders. During times of

crisis, the top figure inadvertently upsets workers by making bad decisions that cause problems.

Employees will dependent on a boss that creates needs such as a timely and appropriate manner from the

leader.
 The fourth approach is that flexible employment with a long-term orientation which is a rare

occasion in today’s business world. However, due to the pandemic of Covid-19, this kind of work

became usually works schedule for today. This approach has benefits for both sides, companies, and

employees. For instance, the employee has control over their own schedule in which they have to work

and do assigned tasks. The company has benefits such as high productivity, reduction of absenteeism,

tardiness, and employee satisfaction. Due to an employee making their own work schedule, they will not

be late to work or may choose not to come to the workplace. With an enthusiastic working schedule,

workload productivity of employees would rise and a worker gets more satisfied by efforts that

contribute to working hours. Nevertheless, there are also disadvantages of flexible employment such as

lack of control over employees, lack of communication, and sometimes doing late tasks. As a worker

and an employer’s face to face communication will decrease, employers may feel a lack of control. Even

within schedules set by employees, workers may need more time to do tasks and have problems keeping

deadlines. In the long term, this kind of lateness may result in decreased production quality or service

level of a company.

In the business world, the employer or high managers are eligible to reward its employee

depending on their performance and seniority. This kind of action has both advantages and

disadvantages which is based on specific explanations and understandings. One main advantage is

motivating employees to work harder, to improve productivity and the performance of the employee.

For example, if the employee is rewarded based on his good performance on the specific project, since

the results from the project gave the company numerous opportunities in the development sphere,

receiving rewards by him will be fair and the motive for him to work harder becomes visible. Besides,

another advantage can be the environment created thanks to this kind of system of rewarding employees.

The environment in the company will be good enough for the company to have a chance to hire only
experienced and skilled staff members. In addition to this, the employee who is currently hired will also

have a good level of productivity and task completion performance and it is clear that it will give the

company a couple of advantages in these fields compared to the other firms.

The disadvantages of rewarding and compensation will be in case of improper planning and

checking the employee works. More precisely, if the work done by the employee is flawed but

rewarded, it will affect the environment in the firm negatively and the performance will decrease and

productivity as well. One drawback is related to spending too much finance on this sphere. Giving more

than enough rewards for each project that has been successfully done will decrease the proper effect of

this system so that employees will no longer be motivated by this system and it will result in wasting the

finance of the firm. It is clear by wasting more finance without correct decision making will result in the

bankruptcy of the company in the long term.

This paper covered five main approaches that most managers and outsiders pay attention to in

firms. The conclusion can be that each aspect of the business management style has both advantages and

disadvantages. Having proper plans and usage of these spheres will have a company to be further

developed, but without the correct organization and proper usage of the fields, there will be lower

performance, the negative environment in the firm, and lower comparative advantages in the business

world. A good suggestion would be to plan and organize every action or system before implying it in

reality.