Revision Question 1
Critique how research, theory, and practice contribute to our understanding of the changing nature of the team.
The crucial factor to achieve the top imperatives of business is effective teamwork in that business. The significant thing to be acknowledged in modern times is the changing nature of teams. It is assumed by most of the research and theories regarding the changing nature of teams that most teams possess few common characteristics. It is observed businesses have entered into a new era where most of the teams operate in a complex, dynamic, and fluid environment. The teams are now more dispersed geographically, operating with loose boundaries and changing and adopting more frequently. In this context research, theory and practice are considered as a base for understanding the changing nature of the team. Different social and behavioral theories are developed for understanding the events, team behavior and situations which are faced in teamwork. The changing nature of the team can be understood by research in different ways. The way in which research, theory, and practice would help to understand the changing nature of the team is that research can be helpful in finding new theoretical connections regarding the changing nature of the team. Understanding of the teamwork theories and behavioral theories would be helpful in comprehending certain behavior, procedures, and circumstances. After getting understanding of the theoretical knowledge of the changing nature of the team, the theory is transformed into practice which will give complete understanding that of planning, implementation and evaluation of changing nature at the community, organizational and individual level. It is a process of learning from scratch to outcome.
Research: Research on changing nature of team will give a chance to find new things regarding the changing nature of the team. Research is conducted to find a solution to any problem.
Theory: a theory is important for understanding how a manager can develop a workplace protocol in the teamwork in order to increase productivity and efficiency. For example, organization behavior theory is one of the well-known theories regarding the understanding of the behavior in teams of the organization. Considering this theory helps in understanding how the changing nature of a team is linked and associated with the behavior of the members and employees working in a team.
Practice: Practice of theory in the organization gives a chance to understand the nature of members of the team, and it will give a practical understanding of the interaction levels between the people working in the team. Practice is the key for learning how the changing nature of a team impacts problem solving, decision making, motivation, and leadership. Organizational change theory is one of the famous theories that are practiced by the companies for getting the basic concerns of the team member regarding the change policy of the organization (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Boyle, 2013).
Revision Question 2
Explain key megatrends (E.G., those shaping work; the workforce; the workplace) and analyze the implications for organizations of these.
Societies and economies are two important factors that are affecting the nature of work and working lives. It makes it important to understand the principal trends that shape the organizations and their implications for them.
Trends are shaping work: It is observed that trends show that knowledge-based services are increasing, and companies are undergoing the process of de-industrialization. Another important trend in modern times is that both employment and output are increasingly focused on services rather than manufacturing. It could be seen that higher level of demand of industrializing economy is pulling the people to the towns and cities and service sector is playing a very important role in employing the people that evolved the trend of decline employment in the manufacturing sector. The trend revealed that highly skilled knowledge-intensive areas had greater job growth. It is observed that both the governments and businesses are facing challenges because of the need for changing skills. Companies are facing challenges because they require developing workforce of technical competence.
Trends are shaping the workforce: The two important trends that are shaping the workforce include the increased participation of female in labor market and demographic change that means migration and an aging population. It is observed that the number of females in the labor market is increasing that bring societal change. This trend of female participation revealed that the workforce is now split evenly in the context of employment. The participation of women increased the availability of talent pool for the companies. Demographic change is also an important trend in respect of the workforce because it is noted that the process of population aging has been seen in different countries around the world. The trend revealed that increase occurred in the mean age of the people that eventually increase the proportion of people in older age due to which the aging of the workforce. It is important to note that this shift is not occurring only because of the demography because it is also observed that this aging trend is because of the higher participation of people in higher education that become the reason of lower young people in employment. Due to this, the companies are facing a labor market with lower young professionals that implied to give focus to retain a skilled workforce.
Trends shaping the workplace: Higher diversity in relationships of employment and way of working and decrease of collective workplace institutions are important trends that shape the workplace. In the context of considering the implication, it is noted that opportunities are widening by diverse forms of employment both for the employers and individuals, but it increases the complexity level regarding HR management. By looking at another trend, it is noted that individualized employment relations have replaced the collective forms of employment relations (Parikh & Gupta, 2010).
Revision Question 3
Distinguish between the key elements in the interpersonal communications process, illustrate barriers to Heeter communications and discuss how these can be managed at work.
Interpersonal communication is the exchange of information between two individuals through verbal and non-verbal messages. An important thing regarding interpersonal communication is that it is face to face communication. Some of the key elements of interpersonal communications process are given below:
- The communicators: The interpersonal communication occurs between at least two persons one. During the interpersonal communication between two individuals, one is the sender of message and other is the receiver of the message.
- The message: the message is the second element of the interpersonal communications process, and it is not only the information or speech, but message element also includes the body language, tone of voice and facial expressions which are the examples of non-verbal communication.
- Noise: anything during the interpersonal communications process that distorts the message is referred as noise. Noise is an important element of interpersonal communication because it can change the actual saying from the sender.
- Feedback: feedback is what the receiver returns to the message sent by the sender. The important thing regarding the feedback is that it enables the sender to know whether the message was accurately received by the receiver. The feedback from the receiver might be based on both the intentional and unintentional message of the sender.
- Context: context is that element of interpersonal communication that can influence all communication.
- Channel: the physical means used by the sender to transfer the message refers to a channel. Vision and speech are the channels of face-to-face context (Brooks, 2018).
Barriers and their management at work
A harmonious workplace could be turned into a loss of productivity, frustration, general confusion and a hostile one in the presence of communication barriers. Some important barriers and their management at work are given below:
- Bypassing: Bypassing is the use of euphemisms and slang terms at work. Bypassing at work is a thing when two or more people think that a word has the same meaning as to others. For example, when a supervisor tells the employees to finish the work soon, then it is the case of bypassing because it created confusion about what soon means by supervisor whether it is an hour, whole day or week. Bypassing at work can be prevented by the use of precise language by the supervisor.
- Jumping to a conclusion: the basic meaning of jumping to conclusion is that when any person at work makes an assumption based on incomplete information or data. It is observed that people at work jump to a conclusion based on his or her past experiences or in another way based on what he or she thinks about another person at work. It is considered a barrier because the wrong conclusion by the person at work leads to the creation of a new problem at work. This barrier can be managed by creating an environment and guiding the people at work to give a chance to another person to explain rather than to assume immediately wrong conclusion (Brooks, 2018).
Revision Question 4
Critically evaluate and compare that path-good theory of leadership and Hersey and Blanchard situational leadership model and discuss their implication for leadership development practice.
The path-goal theory of leadership and Hersey & Blanchard situational leadership are interrelated to a great extent. The former is based on a good fit between a leader’s leadership style and employee and work environment. The basic goal of this theory is to make sure there is a real connection between what leadership style employees are expecting from the leader and what is adopted by him. The theory emphasizes employee engagement, empowerment and increased motivation level of employees so that they perform well, and organizational goals are achieved.
Path-Goal theory is derived from Expectancy theory of Victor Vroom that the individuals would be expected to behave in a certain way depending on the valence of the outcome. If the valence of the outcome is high and looks attractive, individuals would try to put more effort as compared to the outcome with low valence. This theory could be best understood as a thought process where specific behaviors or roles are taken up by managers (leaders) according to the situation, working environments and employees concerns so that they the leaders of the manager could help them follow the certain path to make them achieve the required goals.
Whereas Hersey & Blanchard model Situational leadership theory implies that no universal leadership style could be applied to every situation. Leadership styles adopted by the managers differ according to the situation. The leadership style is affected by many situational factors including the nature of the task to be accomplished, the abilities and experience of the employees, the time frame and resources available for task accomplishment.
Situational leadership theory helps managers to identify mature employees so they can be engaged with managers. Path-goal theory lacks this, but it could be applied to managers who have less control over the situation as they just need to provide a path to the employees so that they can achieve their desired goals. The path-goal theory could easily be applied to tasks with time constraints and high complexity in comparison to Situational leadership theory.
These theories help companies to recognize potential leaders for the future. Many companies are now engaged in employee transformation and growth so that they can be empowered and act as leaders whereby required in different situations. It helps in the quick decision-making process, where employees do not hesitate to take new steps and decisions and try to act independently. It makes them gain confidence and leads to the growth of employees. They overcome the challenges of lacking adequate skills to handle different situations and transform themselves according to the situations. Concerning Path goal theory, employees become so empowered over time that they don’t need guidance in every step of task processing from their managers (Kitchin, 2010).
Revision Question 5
What is meant by perception? Answer and provide an example and common perceptual distortions, e.g., appraisal.
Perception refers to the process of interpreting stimuli received from the environment. Perception is included in our daily activities and the way we experience things around us. For example, we recognize our favorite perfume just by its fragrance coming from somebody else. We can recognize our favorite song just by the lip sing and tune. All these things are based on our perceptions, the experiences which we have already gone through, and we interpret similar situations based on the similar stimuli we have received in the past.
The recognition and interpretation of sensory information also includes the way we respond to the information received by different stimuli. Perception could be thought of as a process where we receive information from the environment through our senses, the processing of that information and our reactions are known as output given back to the environment in a meaningful form. One of the examples could be of a manager trying to distribute tasks among the subordinates. The manager would tend to give tough tasks to the employees who performed better in the past as he would know that these specific employees can accomplish the tasks. Whereas the easiest and least important tasks would be assigned to employees with low performance because the manager would perceive that they would not do well on these tasks as well just like in the past (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Boyle, 2013). These perceptions are common and usual. We as individuals perceive people and situations in almost every action we perform.
Some of the common perceptual distortions are:
- Stereotyping: In stereotyping, we assign attributes to an individual that are commonly associated with a group, and there is something common between the two. For example, if an employee has not performed well, the manager would think of him as belonging to a group of social loafers in the company because they have a commonality of poor task performance.
- Halo Effect: It is a type of cognitive bias where the overall judgment of an individual is based on a specific trait. For example, if an employee performs a task well in the area of marketing and the manager assumes that he would also do well in finance-related tasks, it would be referred to as “halo effect”.
- Appraisal: It refers to the instances where general appraisal forms or techniques are used for every employee. In reality, managers know that a certain appraisal form or technique could not be applied universally to all employees. For example, an appraisal form that emphasizes more on financial calculations and ratios would allow an employee in finance to perform well but a Human Resource employee would score less due to different job requirements (Brooks, 2018).
Revision Question 6
Different theories and motivation offer different perspectives on the meaning of pay as an extrinsic reward. Discuss.
Motivation could be aligned with different intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Some theories of motivation refer to pay or compensation of the employees as an extrinsic reward and give a different meaning to them. An extrinsic reward is one which is tangible and is received by employees in turn for achieving any goal. Such rewards have monetary values assigned to them. They are usually decided by the employee’s immediate supervisor or manager who supervises the activities of that specific employee.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy theory, there are five levels of needs. They are categorized as physiological, safety, belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. First, one is the most basic need and once fulfilled the person jumps to the next level. According to this theory, pay is an extrinsic reward which lies under the category of safety needs where employees need to earn money to secure their future (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Boyle, 2013).
According to Alderfer’s theory, needs are classified in three forms which are a need for growth, the need for relatedness and need for existence. Pay again is described as an extrinsic reward which comes under the category of existence because people need to earn money to fulfill basic life needs and to survive. So, here pay is a form of survival whereas, in Maslow’s theory, pay is a form of safety (Parikh & Gupta, 2010).
In two factor theories, motivation is affected by two types of factors known as “hygiene” and “motivator” factors. Motivators are explained as those factors whose absence leads to any type of dissatisfaction or demotivation. Hygiene factors are those whose absence affects the level of motivation of an individual. Under this theory, pay is an extrinsic reward and categorized as a motivator factor. If an employee is working without compensation for a long period, he will become dissatisfied, and his or her job performance would be affected (Kitchin, 2010).
Pay under “Acquired Needs Theory” is categorized as the need for achievement. There are two other needs including the need for power and need for affiliation. Pay is a need for achievement because individuals after performing certain tasks and goals need to achieve their personal goals like buying a new car or a house which could be accomplished by the money (Parikh & Gupta, 2010).
According to Expectancy theory, motivation is equal to the product of expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. If any one of the factors is zero, the overall motivation is zero. Expectancy refers to the perception of an individual that the efforts he or she puts would lead the expected outcomes. Instrumentality refers to the perception of an individual that the performance given by him or her would lead to certain results in the form of reward or punishment and valence is the value attached to the specific outcome. Under this theory, pay is described as an extrinsic reward which is output (Brooks, 2018).
References
Brooks, I. (2018). Organisational Behaviour: Individuals, Groups and Organisation (5 ed.). Pearson UK.
Kitchin, D. (2010). An Introduction to Organisational Behaviour for Managers and Engineers: A Group and Multicultural Approach (2 ed.). Routledge.
Parikh, M., & Gupta, R. (2010). Organisational Behaviour (1 ed.). Tata McGraw-Hill Education.
Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. (2013). Organisational Behaviour (1 ed.). Pearson Higher Education AU.
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