Abstract
Employees’ social and behavioral practices can positively or negatively impact organizational performance. Understanding of leadership and behavioral concepts is a necessity to create an enabling organizational culture where teams can perform effectively. Such a culture must also factor in the role of internal environmental factors, especially in aiding or limiting organizational communication, processes, and operations, which are critical for optimum productivity. It is also important to recognize the need for change, which should be implemented with special considerations of employees’ concerns.
Analysis of Leadership Theories and Behavior Approaches
Employee productivity is positively or negatively correlated to organizational performance. Management of employees to maximize productivity and enhance organizational competitiveness is a mounting challenge because of the rise in diversity of employees in any given organizational settings. Diverse groups of employees differ in terms of cultural practices in relation to work ethics, which may positively or negatively impact aspects such as teamwork, adoption of technology, or generally offer resistance to change. Empirical evidence has shown that social and behavioral factors greatly influence team performance because it leads to formation of social identity, group emotion, group mood, and emotional intelligence (Adams, 2010). In an era where teamwork is heralded as the kingpin of organizational performance, social and behavioral factors are instrumental in the success or failure of a project and must be addressed through appropriate measures.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Management of employees through effective and efficient leadership is necessary to inspire change in social and behavioral practices. The stepwise process should include initial audit of organizational practices to identify areas that need serious redress. As evidenced from the case study, the low employee morale requires a situational approach which uses a specific contingency model to first arrest further decline in employee motivation. From situational analysis, an appropriate leadership style to inspire change. The leadership style chosen should focus on advancing personal development and organizational performance goals. Transactional and transformational leadership are essential in performing this role as the former appeals to the self-interests of followers to realize organizational goals, while the latter creates a vision for attaining such goals by aligning the goals to the ideals and values of employees, hence aiding in their motivation. However, the interaction between a leader and employees requires sensitivity in communication strategies. Transformational leadership is great for inspiring change, but the change process itself begins with thee leader.
Therefore, a leader must be inspirational and charismatic in their social and behavioral approaches and must be capable of arousing positive emotions from their followers through a strong vision and sense of mission. The leaders must thus act as a pacesetter by expecting and modelling excellence and self-direction. Working with groups requires going an extra mile in terms of leadership. An affiliative leader is best suited to creation of the necessary emotional bonds that give employees a sense of belonging to the organization hence look at themselves as an entity rather than competing individuals. This approach works best in rebuilding trust as it puts people first. The success of these leadership approaches is dependent on the level of democracy in an organization. It is the responsibility of the leader to ensure that consensus if built through participation, a critical aspect of teamwork.
Leadership styles are intended to elicit behavioral changes towards a desired organizational culture, where teamwork is central to performance. According to Raes, Kyndt, Decuyper et al. (2015), it is mandatory for employees in a team to pass through a series of developmental stages before they can operate at the required level and context. In addition, progressive learning is crucial to sustain employee effectiveness. Tuckman model for group development is thus a critical approach for use in employee learning and development to respond to the growing importance of teams in workplaces (Bonebright, 2010). The role of a leader is highlighted in the four stages of Tuckman model, especially in the forming, storming, and norming stages where guidance from the leader is central to overall success of the group development. The forming stage has power centralized to the leader who must be ready to address all questions from the highly intolerant team members. The situation is complicate in the storming stage where power struggles dominate as niches and cliques are formed. A leader must stamp their authority at this stage but do so democratically by encouraging participation. At the norming stage, facilitation is the main role of the leader because the team has direction and power structures and roles have been established, making the last stage of performing easier to handle.
The Role of Internal Environment in Influencing Employee Motivation
The success or failure of knowledge management initiatives is dependent on organizational culture. Examination of the relationship between organizational culture and knowledge conversion on corporate performance indicates the existence of a positive correlation (Tseng, 2010). The role of adhocracy, which refers to organizational culture that is flexible, informal, and lacking in formal structures that are found in bureaucracy, has been highlighted. According to Snape and Redman (2010), the role of adhocracy in influencing the relationship between HRM practices, organizational citizenship, and performance has been noted as crucial in illustrating the influences of organizational culture on employee attitudes and behavior. Employee social and behavioral characteristics can immensely impact change efforts due to acceptance or resistance.
Organizational culture, language, technology, and power structures determine perceptions of employees and overall performance levels. Organizational language is crucial in communication, an important paradigm in building relationships and conveying instructions within the organization. A language understood by all employees, breeds trust and courtesy hence encouraging bonding and successful teamwork. Technology can be disruptive to organizational operations, and it is common for proponents of the status quo to offer resistance to adoption an implementation technology that is new. Investment in adaptable and relevant technologies is essential to justify adoption and implementation to employees. Organizational politics can be enhancing or detrimental to group performance because of power struggles. Founded on organizational structure, politics influence day-to-day operations between departments and teams affecting their output.
Overcoming Challenges of Low Employee Morale
Informal work groups have been demonstrated as capable of developing feelings of close affiliation among members, an aspect lacking in formal work groups where loyalty is nonexistent. One can argue that leadership and organizational culture are fundamental to group performance. Adoption of an enabling culture where individuals can freely express their opinions, by eliminating language and bureaucratic barriers can be instrumental in boosting employee morale. Organizational leadership and culture foster positive levels of family-friendliness, effective communication, and employee value creation, which are necessary in team building. It is imperative that disruptions adopted for implementation at organizational level be consistent with existing structures to avoid instances of change resistance, a common occurrence where shifts in technology and processes are involved.
However, team management represents the best approach in ensuring the success of the team. Effective management ensures a team is comprised of individuals that can fit into a functioning work group with a high degree of loyalty, interaction skills, and high performance goals. While emphasis on Tuckman model steps of forming, storming, norming, and performing is essential in the developmental phase, enabling environment that is supportive of team efforts and innovations is mandatory. This can be achieved by addressing the source of power struggles through division of roles. However, the `central source of authority and final decision making should be clear to all team members.
It is also important to consider group size during constitution, but this is dependent on the complexity of the project to be undertaken in terms of the quality of decisions to be made, the need for consensus in a conflict situation, and instances where both quality and consensus are required. Group norms must also be instituted to ensure members operate within the required behavior and code of conduct. Leadership must be present even in informal groups, but emphasis must be placed on adhocracy culture where consensus is central to decision-making processes. The role of progressive employee development should not be ignored to avoid any incidences of resistance to change of technology or processes.
References
Adams, S. L., & Anantatmula, V. (2010). Social and behavioral influences on team process. Project Management Journal , 41 (4), 89-98.
Bonebright, D. A. (2010). 40 years of storming: a historical review of Tuckman's model of small group development. Human Resource Development International , 13 (1), 111-120.
Raes, E., Kyndt, E., Decuyper, S., Van den Bossche, P., & Dochy, F. (2015). An exploratory study of group development and team learning. Human Resource Development Quarterly , 26 (1), 5-30.
Snape, E., & Redman, T. (2010). HRM practices, organizational citizenship behaviour, and performance: A multi ‐ level analysis. Journal of Management Studies , 47 (7), 1219-1247.
Tseng, S. M. (2010). The correlation between organizational culture and knowledge conversion on corporate performance. Journal of knowledge management , 14 (2), 269-284.
