YARDSTICK INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE

ONLINE PROGRAM

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND

DEVELOPMENT

ASSIGNMENT ONE

Submitted by - ABEL DANIEL (ID MBAO/5206/15A)

Submitted to- Instructor Professor Belete

June, 2023

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 Table of Contents
Title page
1. Background of the Organization ............................................................................................................... 3
1.1. Overview of the Organization ............................................................................................................ 3
1.2. Vision, Mission and Values of the Enterprise.................................................................................... 4
1.2.1. Vision .......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.2.2. Mission........................................................................................................................................ 4
1.2.3. Values ......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.3. The Main Services Provided by the Enterprise .................................................................................. 4
1.4. Organizational Structure .................................................................................................................... 5
2. Result and Discussion .............................................................................................................................. 6
2.1. Factors Affecting Behavior of Employees ......................................................................................... 6
2.1.1. Society Level .............................................................................................................................. 6
2.1.2. Organizational Level Analysis .................................................................................................... 6
2.2. Effect of Behavior ............................................................................................................................ 10
3. Conclusion and Recommendation ......................................................................................................... 11
5. References ............................................................................................................................................... 12

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 1. Background of the Organization

1.1. Overview of the Organization

To maintain the commendable economic growth that has been registered in the country the
Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise was established by the council of ministers
regulation number 255/2004 during November 2011 through the merger of the former Ethiopian
shipping lines share company, Ethiopian maritime and transit service enterprise and the dry port
administration. At the end of 2014 commet transport Share Company which is engaged in
rendering road transport and dry port operation also additionally merged to the ESLSE by the
decision of the government.

ESLSE, is a state owned company, served as a carrier, render to its esteemed customers sea freight
transport, freight forwarding and clearing, returning empty containers to Djibouti, dry ports full-
fledged services and warehousing etc. and conduct logistics and shipping transport services to
government organization, NGO, manufacturing sector, service sector, importer, exporter,
industrial organization, investor and other organization.

The enterprise have four sector ; corporate sector, port and terminal sector, freight forwarding
sector and shipping sector and each of them have their own job function that make the organization
profitable in a market and builds its capacity in terms of human resources, materials deployments,
computer technological application and service provision. To achieve the country emerging trade
demands, from the time of establishment, it has made effort to maximize its work efficiency by
adopting winning management strategies such as quality improvement, BSC (i.e. Balance Score
Card) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering) for effective outcomes. This change
management strategy helps the enterprise in measuring its performance and improving its service
in terms of costs, quality and time that makes it competitive and effective in terms of global
logistics market efficiency. This paper will examine the dominant behavior of the ESLSE based
on the organization behavior theory and recommend the possible results.

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 1.2. Vision, Mission and Values of the Enterprise

1.2.1. Vision
“By providing competitive shipping & logistics services, we will become preferred and renowned
African logistics company by 2020”.

1.2.2. Mission
“Through building and upgrading organizational capacity that render world class and competitive
shipping and logistics services; there by contributing towards the rapid economic growth of the
country”.

1.2.3. Values
 Reliability,
 Transparency and accountability.
 Efficiency,
 Productivity and professionalism.
 Readiness to learn and excel.

Motto

“We add value to your business”!

1.3. The Main Services Provided by the Enterprise

As set out in the regulation issue by the Federal Government of Ethiopia in 2011 (Regulation No.
255/2011), the objectives for which the ESL is established are:
 Render coastal and international marine and inland water transport services.
 Render freight forwarding agency, multimodal transport, shipping agency and air agency
services.
 Provide the services of dry-port, warehousing and other logistics services;
 Provide container terminal services;
 Engage in the development, management and operation of ports;
 Establish and run human resources development and training center in the fields of
maritime profession;
 Study the country’s import and export trade demand and thereby develop technological
capacity in order to render maritime and transit transport services;
 Engage in other related conducive activities to the achievement of its objectives.

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 1.4. Organizational Structure
To accomplish its target the Ethiopian Shipping and Logistic Services has established its new
structure based of, it has four sectors led by the four deputy CEO's, namely: Shipping sector,
Freight forwarding sector, Port & terminal sector, and corporate services sector. There are also 14
departments, 35 divisions and 8 branches (one in Djibouti). The department’s report to the deputy
CEO's depending on their line of function. These days, all departments, divisions and branch
offices are doing their best to fulfill the objectives of the company.

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Figure 1: Organizational Structure of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise

2. Result and Discussion

A variety of methods could be used to understand organizational behavior; here the study uses
qualitative method, which evidently describes observations based of diagnostic tools or models.
Basically the study categorizes the factors in three levels based on the literature reviewed.

2.1. Factors Affecting Behavior of Employees

There are set of issues that determine employee’s behavior in the organization and conversely
several different outcomes at the individual and group level would affect the performance of the
organization. Various theories and models directly or indirectly address most of these factors. For
simplifying the way to approach and address the basic problems associated with organizational
behavior in the institute, we are using SOGI model to classify the factors as Society, organizational,
group and individual level factors.

2.1.1. Society Level

Stakeholder is a person, group or organization that has interest or concern in an organization.
Stakeholders can affect or be affected by the organization's actions, objectives and policies.
Stakeholder management is a critical component to the successful delivery of any project, program
or activity. A stakeholder is any individual, group or organization that can affect, be affected by,
or perceive it to be affected by a program. Effective Stakeholder Management creates positive
relationships with stakeholders through the appropriate management of their expectations and
agreed objectives. Stakeholder management is a process and control that must be planned and
guided by underlying principles. Stakeholder management within businesses, organizations, or
projects prepares a strategy utilizing information (or intelligence) gathered during the following
common processes.

2.1.2. Organizational Level Analysis

Organizational factors are a set of affecting variables exists at the organizational level. At the
organizational level of analysis, organizational behavior involves study of topics such as
organizational cultures, organizational structure, internal cooperation and technology.

A. Organizational Culture

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According to E.H. Schein organizational culture refers to a system of shared meaning held by
members that distinguishes the organization from other organization (E.H. Schein, 1985). This
system of shared meaning is, on closer examination, a set of key characteristics that the
organizational value. Robbins suggests that seven primary characteristics that, in aggregate,
capture the essence of an organization’s culture (Robbins Stephen, 2010).

Innovation and Risk Taking

Robbins mentions that this is the degree to which employees are encouraged to be innovative and
take risk. With this basic assumption, Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise
(ESLSE) set a directive that facilitates innovation and researches. But employees complain that
committee organized by the top management to direct the job, is not promoting and encouraging
employees to do researches. As a big organization, research and development tasks are not given
with enhanced attention so that within past years no research is get acknowledged by the top
management. Risk taking level seems to be insignificance in the case of directors; every decision
is done directly by the general director level including payment approval for every small
transactions. On the same way, employees at the lower level, has nothing to do in contributing
better ideas to the management rather, the only thing what they do is, implementing decisions from
management without any confrontation to it.
Attention to Detail
According to Robbins explanation, attention to detail is the degree to which employees are
expecting to exhibit precision, analysis and attention to detail. In ESLSE when we look at
employee’s attention to the works detail, it gives the impression that everybody is becoming very
rough, this is due to the miss allocation of tasks to the wrong employees. Irrespective of the type
of profession, work experience and department, every employee is expected to focus only on
weekly evaluation and follow up of customer and operational performance of the enterprise.
Employees have not clearly visible job description thereby there is not clear attention to the details
of every given job details.
Outcome Orientation
This is the degree to which management focuses on outcomes or results rather than technique and
processes used to achieve the outcomes. This is a major challenge for the enterprise. A possibility
of a processes to occur in the report is, much more higher, basically, this is due to that, the tasks
needs much time to carry out even month and more. Quantitative reports and statistics have no
place to indicate the real job done.
People Orientation

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Based on Robbins explanation peoples orientation is, the degree to which management decisions
take in to consideration, the effect of outcomes on peoples within the organization. In this case
obviously the decisions would affect the outcomes of the employees both positively and
negatively. It is observed that most decisions related to privileges to employees are the major area
of dissatisfaction and even cause of turnover given that a problem of transparency.
Team Orientation
Robbins elaborates team orientation as, the degree to which work activities are organized around
team rather than individuals. According to this explanation team is the key position where ideas
are generated and tasks are basically carry out. In ESLSE, teams are structured beneath
departments, and every worker is a member of one of the teams. Structurally, it is very comfortable
to employees to explore their ideas but practically what is happening is different. The teams are
not functional in performing activities. There is nothing goes up from the teams therefore this built
the impression that talking in team meeting is just killing time without any value addition to the
enterprise.
Aggressiveness
According to Robbins definition aggressiveness is the degree to which peoples are aggressive and
competitive rather than easy-going in their work area. Here the experience clearly designate that,
due to the limited participation of majority of workers and restricted communication across the
hierarchy, employees has becoming passive and simply following order from their boss rather than
sticking with own plan.
Stability
Robbins explained stability as the degree to which organization activities emphasize maintaining
the status quo in contrast to growth. With this regard, the enterprise has developed a five years
growth and transformation plan which briefly explains the dedication of the institute towards
growth and development. And the plan is cascaded to all the departments, division and individual
employees based on the official hierarchy. The challenge is come up in implementing this plan;
every detail is prepared in the top management and the employee has no place to put into operation
on his own plan. Generally, most of the employees build an intuition that the working environment
in the enterprise is totally difficult and is not comfortable to work freely. High employee turnover
might be one of the manifestations of weak organizational culture and low employees relationship.
B. Organizational Structure

An organizational structure defines how the job tasks are formally divided, grouped and
coordinated. There are six key elements that managers need to address when they design their

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organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of
control, centralization and decentralization, and formalization (R.L. Daft , 2004).

Work Specialization

According to Robbins, work specialization or division of labor is a term to describe the degree to
which activities in the organization are subdivided into separate jobs. And he suggest that the
essence of work specialization is that rather than entire job being done by one individual, it is
broken down into a number of steps, with each step being completed by a separate individual
(Robbins Stephen, 2010). ESLSE as a government organization, it develops and uses of a structure
which seems to prepare based on mechanistic model. In mechanistic model a structure organized
will have extensive departmentalization, high formalization, a limited information network and
high centralization (T. Burns and G.M. Stalker, 1989). Even if the structure is prepared in such a
way that it enhance work specialization, all employees are limited to do the same work routine
without well-arranged work specialization.

Departmentalization

Departmentalization is the base by which jobs are grouped together. ESLSE is group jobs based
on operational and support department in which the operation department serve the customer and
the supporting department helps the operation department for flat flow of customer service. This
type of departmentalization is intimately followed by almost all service organization such as banks,
airline, logistics and other service rendering business. ESLSE uses this structure directly with the
intention that, every department would support the resembled department that offers services.

Chain of Command

The chain of command in ESLSE is clearly stipulated that facilitate coordination. Each managerial
position is given a place in the chain of command. The unity of command is also preserves the
concept that a person should have only one superior to whom the person is directly responsible.

Span of Control

In ESLSE, one sector on average does have two departments and 6 division but the span of control
has four levels which makes the vertical communication complex and slows down the decision
making process. The top management is isolated and the employees’ don’t get accurate
information on time to function properly.

Centralization and Decentralization

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Centralization refers to the degree to which decision making process is concentrated at a single
point in an organization (Robbins Stephen, 2010). Typically, it is said that if the top management
makes the organizational key decision with a little or no input from the lower-level personnel, then
the organization is centralized. The usual practice in the enterprise is using highly centralized
power in decision making. Obviously, the general director will decide each and every small
decision that could possibly handled by a single director. Actions are very sluggish, a very few
peoples provide input into decisions. Currently, employees are feeling alienated from those who
make the decision that affect their work.

Formalization

Formalization refers to the degree to which jobs within the organization are standardized. Robbins
suggests that if a job is highly formalized, then the job incumbent has a minimum amount of
discretion over what is to be done, when it is to be done and how it is to be done (Robbins Stephen,
2010). Majority of the experts complains that the job behavior in ESLSE is mostly none
programmed and providing they don’t have a great deal of freedom to excise discretion in their
work, because of the centralized decision process.

2.2. Effect of Behavior

Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise is the only monopolistic organization that has
got much attention for its boundless economic contribution of the county. Keep in mind this intent;
the supports and the services provided by the enterprise to different private and governmental
organization are vital to acquire a lion share in the smooth flows of goods and services to and from
the country. However, Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise is not much victorious,
even if it continues to endeavor to achieve the GTP goals set by the government. This is mainly
due to poor utilization and improper handling of employees' which end up with to poor employee
motivation and high turnover rate. Turnover in leads to the loss of competent employees, which in
turn will cause a delay of activities of the enterprise that, would have to be done on time. The
delays of activity result in delay in the achievement of the targeted plan which could end up with
inefficiency in global competition of the enterprise in terms of logistics service delivery. There is
an increasing agreement in lower level of the enterprise that, the working environment doesn’t
permit employees to contribute their effort to the development of the logistics service. External
stakeholders are also complaining about the service provided by the enterprise. This is due to
employee’s turnover as well as uncomfortable working environment which causes behavioral
change on the employees who serves the stakeholders.

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 3. Conclusion and Recommendation
To sum up the Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise organizational behavior
assessment; the majority of disparities are outshined at the organizational level. The top
management should have to think critically to take out the employees from this subtle working
environment. Reversing plan has to be prepared after open discussion with all members of the
enterprise. The following points are supposed to be the areas in which emphasis has to be given
for intervention.

Today’s successful organization must foster innovation and master the art of change to secure its
sustainability. Victory will go to the organizations that maintain their flexibility, and continually
improve their quality of service. Innovation plays an indispensable role for the development of any
organization. Shipping and logistics service have been changing from time to time based on
dynamic global economy. The global market is extremely dynamic, so that it has to be managed
with fully dedicated employee. Therefore, the enterprise top management should stimulate and
initiate employees to engage in Research & Development. The organizational structure of the
enterprise is also one of the bottlenecks that needs to revise and prepared based on function of
departments, this will reduce duplication of tasks across departments and teams and, will
strengthen work specialization. It is difficult for individuals to resist a change decision in which
they participate. The employees have the expertise to make a meaningful contribution; their
involvement can reduce resistance, obtain commitment and induce the quality of the change
decision. Planning directorate needs to follow the Balanced score card planning system properly
so that, cascading of tasks to the proper directorate and employee would be make possible, and

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rewards should be ordered accordingly, based on the actual outcome of the employees. The plan
and reports should never been filled with processes, on the contrary, it should be focus on results
and outputs only. Centralization should never go longer because in a decentralized organization,
action taken can be more quickly to solve the problems; more people provide input into decision
making.

Teams are part of organizational system. Teams can’t function if they can’t agree on who is to do
what and ensure that all members contribute equally in sharing the work load. Agreeing on the
specifics of the work and how they fit together to integrate individual skills requires team
leadership and structure. This has to be provided by the top management of the enterprise. This
support by the higher management also includes timely information, adequate staffing,
encouragement, appropriate feedback and administrative assistance.

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