Organizational Behavior & Human Resource Management

1. Surepleasure Airlines
a. The informal elements of the organization are yardsticks for
intervention activities in the development of the organization as a
whole. Informal elements are important since people’s feelings,
emotions, assumptions, beliefs; attitudes etc, about their work affect
their behavior and performance. Employee’s moods, emotions and
dispositional affects all influence critical organizational outcomes,
such as job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover,
teamwork and leadership. The Surepleasure airlines are under
tremendous informal work style where acceptance to a healthy work
environment is dominated by social groups. Biasness and favoritism
deprives a new talent joining the organization to have a productive
work environment, unless the work group accepts them.
b. No, there could not be any use for an informal organization in this line
of business. The reason is because the nature of business is controlled
by external task environment governed by Airport Authority
Regulation and could lead to violation of norms and resulting in legal
actions in case of incorrect information. All rotatable parts of the
airline business have a limited life to the number of times it can be
used before it is overhauled. It becomes absolutely imperative to
practice caution in recording information accurately without delay.
The interaction between employees and weekend gathering should no
way impact their job duties and authenticity of the record in any way,
lest many lives will be at stake.
c. My prime recommendation would be to become a part of the group.
Every group has a face and a voice. Management could tread carefully
to win trust and loyalty of the group as a whole and slowly implement
changes benefitting the company line of business. A closely knitted
group with the senior manager as a probably leader can allow
smoothen the new employee since it would not be questions or
frowned upon by others. Senior management can certainly adapt to
the work style to some considerable affect in face of diversification.
2. Microelectronics- Training for Whom?
a. From the perspective of a Human Resource executive, the high
turnover is definitely the most challenging part of this steady growing
organization. Secondly, the engineers hired have projects assigned to
them post their security clearance. This poses a challenge to them
since many engineers may not be working for what they love than
what they are good at. Therefore, the prospects of growth or job
enrichment aren’t too surprising and sound mundane after half a
decade.
b. In my opinion, the need analysis will begin with a questionnaire
during for constant improvement every quarter. Technology is an ever
growing business and the environment is very dynamic. Hence, it
would be my core responsibility to have training programs that suit
the need of individual engineer as much as possible and keep them
abreast with the market trends to keep a low turnover rate or
inadvertently increase the cost of training a new employee.
c. The dissatisfaction in Microelectronics is due to the lack of effective
training and development program. The issue further enlarges due to
lack of post assignment progress. Engineers do not have anyone to
guide or anyone to provide them subject matter expertise while
working on live assignments. Eventually, the organization reaches its
turnover for employees at a 5 year interval and leaves the retention
rate significantly low.
d. The mentorship program is a very effective strategic options but the
set of candidates being opted for are in the younger age group which
does not present a loyal image for those who worked hard and grayed
hair in the organization. In my opinion, a judicial mix of the energetic
young blood and the experience of a tenured employee will bring
about an effective mentorship program and avoid future rising
problems amongst work groups and inter departmental conflicts. The
mentorship program and its probable recruits will also lay foundation
for the long run stability of the organization for more than 5 years.
 PART B- Answers

1. Define, what is Organizational Behaviour and state why it is importance to study

Organizational Behaviour?

Organizational behavior is individual behavior and group dynamics in

organizations. The study of this behavior is related to psychosocial, interpersonal
and behavioral dynamics in organizations. It is important to study organizational
behavior since an organization not only deals with external task environment but
also internal. People are opinioned, perceptive and not always accepting a change
in face of adversity. Therefore, ensuring the employees are well addressed,
conflicts are resolved in time and there will be great productivity and efficiency.

Organizational behavior has various disciplines and is comprised of objective

knowledge and applied research. It has three major pillars, namely the objective
knowledge, skill development and self understanding of the skill expertise and the
application if knowledge and skills. To further elaborate, the objective knowledge
requires cognitive mastery of theories, conceptual models and research findings.
Skill development in itself is a vast and structured process and aims at four
important skills to succeed at work place. Resource management skills,
information management skills, personal interaction skills and finally systems
behavior and performance skills are the ones which are mostly stressed upon.

Finally, the application of both objective knowledge and application of skills

developed for work place together make its pragmatic approach a final stage on the
process.

2. Describe three level of organization and discuss ethical behavior of formal and
informal organization with examples?

There are three levels of Organization, namely Individual level where the analysis
begins at the level how individual functions within an organization. This level
heavily draws insights through the science of psychology.

Group level analysis is the second level where in the group dynamics and inter
team performance and behavior is monitored. Mode of communication amongst the
group members and coordination of activities are the areas of result findings for
this group level analysis.

The third and final level which is the Organizational level analysis describes the
organization as whole. Topics such as organizational culture, organizational
structure, cultural diversity, inter-organizational cooperation and conflict, change,
technology and many other external environmental forces become a part of action.

The organizational levels also talks about the importance of ethical behavior. It is
defined as the study of moral values and moral behavior which is acceptable across
all domains of working culture. Acting in ways consistent with one’s personal
values and commonly held values of the organization and society ensures that the
ethical behavior is maintained. Ethical behavior leads to attracting new talent
benefitting both the prospective employee and the management. Imagine a credit
card industry charge you interest every month for the amount due. A statement
billing cycle assessed with late fee and interest is paid of that month by the card
member. But since the late fee and interests were charged, the points and benefits
he received for the card product that month were forfeited too. It would be
unethical for a card industry firm to penalize a card member to such an extent that
one may lose interest in the product. Hence, charging fees and interest would be
ethical but forfeiture of card earned points and benefits would not be. Not only can
unethical behavior be detrimental to business but an unethical employee can leave
strained perceptions affecting other individual employees, teams and even
department. Monitoring of internet usage in companies have become a common
practice to ensure that the employees do not access sites other than what the line of
business needs or have a direct correlation. In turn, many employees frown upon
this practice, but many accept this as a part of ethical behavior policy to ensure
standardization.
 3. Explain how personality influences behavior in organizations either using Big Five
personality traits or MBTI Instrument?

Traits are defined as the distinguishing quality of an individual or group of people.

When associated with an organization, behavior is broken down into observable
actions or traits and hence the Big Five Personality Trait Model came into
existence. The traits are-

Extraversion- The person is assertive and sociable (as opposed to reserved, timid
and quiet).

Agreeableness- The person is cooperative, warm and agreeable (rather than cold
and antagonistic).

Conscientiousness- The person is hardworking, organized and dependable (as

opposed to lazy, disorganized and unreliable).

Emotional Stability- The persona is calm, self-confident, and cool (as opposed to
insecure, anxious and depressed).

Openess to Experience- The person is creative, curious and cultured (rather than
practical with narrow interests).

The relationship between personality and pay package preferences also differs
significantly according to the cultural context. In an Indian sample, introversion
was significant predictor of a security/commitment pay strategy, and extroversion
and neuroticism were significant predictors of performance-driven pay strategies.
Indian economies have implemented the Big Five and MBTI as great tools for
individual assessment and pay package equivalency to ensure great levels of job
satisfaction and no stone is unturned when the job description requires hard work
equivalent to beyond the routine level of work analysis.
 4. Identify steps in decision making process in an organization and explain with
example?

Decision making is an important aspect for leaders and managers. It ranges from
programmed to non programmed decisions. Managers make decision with
significant risk and uncertainty and often without full information and hence the
process of decision making can be very stressful. The process encompasses of the
following steps-

• Recognize the problem and the need for a decision.

• Identify the objective of the decision.
• Gather and evaluate data and diagnose the situation.
• List and evaluate alternatives.
• Select the best course of action.
• Implement gather decision.
• Gather feedback
• Follow up

As an example in my organization, we realized there was a significant increase in

the number of card replacement calls over the course of last 3 weeks. Reasons were
mostly around damaged cards. With the rising call trends, we recognized there was
a problem for the corporate cards which were sent out. We requested all team
leaders to request their team members to keep sample accounts for type of the
damaged card such as worn of magnetic strip or malfunctioning chip, etc. This data
was gathered in a week by 12 team leaders with 10 accounts per leader. This was a
great samples size we had to explain our card replacement project analyst to
analyze the problem and see what was going on. Internally we request the project
analyst team to look into a permanent fix, while we worked on replacing the card
and expediting deliveries for the card members who were facing problem due to
the damaged cards. Management course of action soon resulted in ensuring a new
batch file to be processed as there was an internal error in the replacement of the
card.
 5. Define conflict and negotiation in organization and Explain the nature of conflicts in
organizations?

Conflict is defined as any situation to which incompatible goals, attitudes,

emotions, or behavior leads in disagreement or opposition between two or more
parties. Negotiation on the other hand defines a common ground of resolution
between two parties involved in a conflict. Negotiation can occur in an
organization with its suppliers, to achieve a cost effective raw material for
production. There are two significant types of conflicts-

• Functional conflict is where new solutions and ideas come to light; else they
would have not surfaced. Such a conflict is encouraged by organization but
is equally controlled or supervised by senior leadership to keep the idea of
the discussion on track for the vision. Functional conflict is viewed as a
healthy and productive debate between two or more people.
• Dysfunctional conflict is an unhealthy and destructive disagreement between
two or more people and takes the focus away from problem solving. Not
only does it drain all energy out of an individual, it also leads to personalized
anger and resentment amongst individuals.

In an organization, the conflict arises on account of interpersonal relationship

where the focus is on the individuals and the tension between them than the
project at hand, task conflict where discord is among members over the nature
of task to be performed or process conflict where clashed occur amongst team
members due to difference of opinions on how to accomplish the work.
 6. Describe the steps involved in selection process and explain the challenges when
using social media for recruitment purpose?

Selection process is concerned with searching the most potential prospect or

individual form the pool of qualified applicants processed during the recruiting
process. The process of selection is divided in the following steps-

• The first step is gathering information about the members of the pool of
qualified candidates regarding their level of skills, knowledge and abilities.
Educational and experience factors too play necessary part.
• The second step in the process is evaluating the qualification of the
applicants through explicit and implicit standards. For example, a candidate
possessing 6 years of experience may be considered for further advancement
of the process than someone exceeding 6 years of experience.
• The final step is making the actual decision about which candidate or
candidates will be offered the employment with the organization, the offer of
employment could be offered to a large number of people such as factory
workers getting hired in comparison to a manager for a project. This is the
final process leading to a decision of hiring the potential candidate.

Social media is a known platform of advertisement and marketing of job profiles

used by various human resource managers of organizations to cut the cost of hiring
down and hire best potential candidate. Arguably, social media is a great source for
recruitment, but organizations often frowned upon by society on account of
privacy concerns and crossing of ethical and legal boundaries. These platforms not
only see recommended candidates but also the non recommended ones. Potential
new employer cannot ascertain the factual data to assess the candidate/s and a
personal vendetta or jealousy can turn out to be more detrimental for a candidate
on such platforms. Since this is a platform of public view, we aren’t restricted in
sharing our opinions. New software applications are developing which can filter
out such redundancies and makes it a unbiased platform of hiring and selection.