1a. An open office layout is a type of office layout where employees work in an open setting or side by side with other employees. In this type of office layout, employees are able to interact and communicate without being blocked due to office partition. Additionally, an organization using this type of office will be able to minimize its expenses when it comes to daily operations by being able to share pieces of office equipment in the organization. In the case study, Cheetham and Wynne is a fast-growing firm with the aim of changing the outlook of their office. The senior partners sent a memo to other employees about changing the office layout to be open. With this, the company was aiming at minimizing the cost involved in running the daily operations of the company. Their efforts to change into an open layout was stopped by employees resisting the change.
As an illustration, there are many reasons why employees were resisting this kind of organizational change. First, there is shock and fear of the unknown. During the organizational change, there are a group of employees who may want to cling to their past lives. They may also resist changing their behaviors. They have the perception that, the less the organization knows about their lives, the better. According to the case study, employees were claiming that they won’t be able to talk to their boyfriends. The open office layout will be exposing the private lives of employees. This was something that employees were not prepared to handle especially in a multicultural working environment.
Secondly, employees felt that there is a loss of control of their working environment (Duncan et al., 2013. P. 16). Being asked to change the way they operate makes them powerless hence making it hard to accept change. Some employees within an organization resist change due to being weak to engage in a new routine. This shows a lack of competence which may affect the overall performance of the organization (Khazanchi et al., 2018, p.17). Lastly, there is the issue of office politics where there will be rumors going on within the organization. This is evident in the case study because some employees were basing their ideas with unrealistic information. In the case study, employees were discussing that a section of employees were being treated better than others. These petty office politics makes it hard for change to take place.
1b. The first step towards minimizing resistance from employees is the identification of the cause of resistance. The major symptoms of organizational resistance can be observed. Some of the symptoms include; the past performance of the organization with change, inadequate awareness in the causes of organizational resistance, and inadequate support and commitment from the top management among employees. When the causes have been identified, the management should come up with strategies on how they can be reduced (Tharim, Samad and Ismail, 2018, p. 17). From the case study, the senior partners of the law firm ought to have conducted a meeting with other partners and employees to inform them of the reasons why the office layout was being changed. Through this, employees would be able to mentally and psychologically prepare to be working in an open office layout (Otterbring et al., 2018, p.333). The next step will involve the use of resistance managers who will be able to take leadership actions and handle the resistance. This may involve outsourcing managers or using available top executives within the organization.
2a. Communication is an essential factor to be considered when it comes to organizational success. However, in certain situations, there are barriers towards effective communication which lead to organizational conflicts and other challenges (Saha, Perera and Murphy, 2017, p.275). According to the case study, one of the identified barriers of communication include emotional barriers which usually arise due to mistrust and suspicion. In the case study, Anna Ivanova was suspicious because she had the perception that one of the senior partners had never nicely talked to her. This was bothering her making her be unhappy about her job. There is also the issue of biasness which normally arises due to human nature and self-perception. In the case study, there is an employee who was not sure whether her boss believes in her or not. This type of cognitive bias makes it hard for employees to increase their job performance due to fear of not being appreciated (Conway, Tsourtos and Lawn, 2017, p.319). Thirdly, there is misinterpretation which usually occurs during phone communication or face to face communication.
2b. Effective communication will only occur if there are minimal barriers. The first step towards dealing with biases as a barrier to communication is that employees or management should stop stereotyping each other. In this case, it is important for everyone to have a grasp of the actual information rather than having a stereotype of them. Assuming listeners will lead to misinterpretation of information. For Anna, she has to stop the perception of stereotyping her boss. Furthermore, employees should be able to recognize the perspectives of people such as cultural differences, priorities and personal values (Ritchie, 2007, p.57). This will open a platform for understanding the other person hence opening a channel of free communication with minimal barriers.
When it comes to dealing with communication barriers, the management or employees within an organization should be in a position to form and establish a relationship among each other. The next step will be communication among employees (Yuriev et al., 2018. p.182). Once there is a relationship, people will stop their negative bias during communication. For the management, they should be able to practice full disclosure where the give out full information about the organizational performance and organizational requirements. With this, employees will not be able to have different information in regards to the information being given by the management.
The organization should have a chain of command or a line of communication. This can either be vertical or horizontal. Having a chain of command helps in ensuring that there is a procedure to be followed when there is a problem within the organization. For example, when an employee as an issue to deal with his/her salary, the human resource manager should be contacted. The next step will be informing the top executives of the issue. Communication chain should be short. With this, in case of a problem that has been identified with the management, the employee should be directly communicated to with an objective of addressing the issues affecting him or her (Boutellier et al., 2008, p.373). In most cases, employees may distort information because of seeking favors from others.
Moreover, distortion of messages can occur when there is a long communication chain hence leading to the message being filtered. Effective communication is characterized by anger control. In this scenario, employees should refrain from overreacting when told to correct a mistake. They should learn that mistakes are parts of human nature. Therefore, once a mistake is made, it should be fixed, and lessons should be learnt to prevent the occurrences of similar mistakes.
3a. An organization is always made up of people who exercise power through interpersonal relationship or forcing it. According to the cases study, there are different types of power which have been used hence influencing organizational management response from employees. As an illustration, in the case study, there is the use of legitimate power. This type of power is also known as positional power (Klein, 2017, pg. 56). An example can be given by junior employees reporting to their senior such as managers.
Additionally, the senior leaders can assign tasks to the juniors to be completed with a specific time. When it comes to legitimate power, the high the hierarchy level, the higher the power. In the case study, the senior partners in the law firms had the upper hand when it comes to addressing issues affecting the company. Additionally, there were in a position to dictate organizational practices. For instance, the senior partners in the law firm were dictating the type of layout to be adopted by the organization. They were sending other junior partner emails regarding the organizational change. With legitimate power, employees were feeling left out and abandoned. This resulted in numerous complaints from employees. In the case study, employees were complaining about how they were treated. An example can be given by employees complaining about a section of employees being treated better. This was a time when the senior partners of the organization were advocating for change in office layout.
With legitimate power, ineffective interpersonal relationships were existing between the senior employees and junior employees. For instance; junior employees were feeling that their work was not being appreciated despite the numerous effort that they were applying in the organization. Employees in the organization were resistant to change. This made it hard for the senior partners to come up with an organizational change.
The second form of power is expert power. In the case study, there were lawyers and secretaries. Each of these employees had a role to play in the organization. Additionally, there were senior lawyers and junior lawyers. This was based on their level of experience and accumulated knowledge in the line of duty. With this type of power, certain employees were feeling that their efforts were not being appreciated and they were also being underpaid based on their level of expertise (Moron and Mujtaba 2018, p.15).
3b. The senior partners have been able to use attractive offers to win over employees into their firm. As an illustration, when Anna was employed by the firm, she was promised a good salary if she had a high performance. Anna was able to perform well in the organization once she was employed. Consequently, she has been working for the organization without any future of her salary increasing. This tactic also made the organization get an accountant since the organization was lacking one. The organization was able to use employ lucrative offers which they were not able to fulfill. This led to a majority of the employees being stranded on how to approach the issue.
The organization is also working on teamwork through the introduction of an open layout where all employees will be able to interact and share ideas (Thompson, 2017, pg. 139). This is an objective that is aimed at increasing the performance of the organization. Initially, the organization considered the closed office layout to be derailing the performance of the organization. When it comes to the interior design of the open office layout, the organization opted for colorful space based on the preference of the employees. This is a strategy towards ensuring that all employees are in a workplace where they feel comfortable and connected. This is a strategy toward motivating employees both mentally and psychologically. Without satisfying the interest of the employees, it will be difficult for the employees to achieve optimal performance.
References
Boutellier, R., Ullman, F., Schreiber, J. and Naef, R., 2008. Impact of office layout on communication in a science?driven business. R&d Management, 38(4), pp.372-391.
Conway, J., Tsourtos, G. and Lawn, S., 2017. The barriers and facilitators that indigenous health workers experience in their workplace and communities in providing self-management support: a multiple case study. BMC health services research, 17(1), p.319.
Duncan, M.J., Rashid, M., Vandelanotte, C., Cutumisu, N. and Plotnikoff, R.C., 2013. Development and reliability testing of a self-report instrument to measure the office layout as a correlate of occupational sitting. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 10(1), p.16.
Khazanchi, S., Sprinkle, T., Masterson, S.S. and Tong, N., 2018. A spatial model of work relationships: the relationship-building and relationship-straining effect of workspace design. Academy of Management Review, (ja). pg. 17
Klein, G.A., 2017. Sources of power: How people make decisions. MIT press. pg. 56
Moron, V. and Mujtaba, B.G., 2018. Helping Non-English Speakers Speak English in the Workplace. American Journal of Education and Learning, 3(1), pp.14-26.
Otterbring, T., Pareigis, J., Wästlund, E., Makrygiannis, A. and Lindström, A., 2018. The relationship between office type and job satisfaction: Testing a multiple mediation model through ease of interaction and well-being. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 44(3), pp.330-334.
Ritchie, L.D., 2007. Parents’ workplace experiences and family communication patterns. Communication Research, 24(2), pp.175-187.
Saha, S., Perera, S. and Murphy, R., 2017. Investigation into workplace health and safety issues within the Australian commercial construction industry’s migrant workforce. In Proceedings of the 6th World Construction Symposium 2017: What’s New and What’s Next in the Built Environment Sustainability Agenda? 30 June-2 July 2017, Colombo, Sri Lanka (pp. 272-280).
Tharim, A.H.A., Samad, M.H.A. and Ismail, M., 2018. Relationship between Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and Occupant’s Satisfaction in Malaysian Rated Office Building: A Pilot Study. In Regional Conference on Science, Technology and Social Sciences (RCSTSS 2016) (pp. 15-25). Springer, Singapore.
Thompson, J.D., 2017. Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. Routledge. (pp. 123-148)
Yuriev, A., Boiral, O., Francoeur, V. and Paillé, P., 2018. Overcoming the barriers to pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace: A systematic review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 182, pp.379-394.
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