Management And Organisational Behaviour For Experiences Of Workplace Incivility

Problem Identification

Describe about the Management and Organisational Behaviour for Experiences of Workplace Incivility.

The given case study describes an incident or a circumstances faced by Barbara, in her first job out of college, where she is not satisfied with the job profile as it does not meet to her expectations, as promised to her during her recruitment. This case study also encompasses the primary hurdles, which occur in any large corporate firm such as hostile environment in the workplace, uncooperative team members and also the stress faced due to difference of opinion among boss and employee or due to difference of opinion at a management level. This is referred to as the work pl ace emotions, and the consequences of such emotions lead to positive motivation or demotivation of employees. The company mentioned in this company is a manufacturing company named Matalvi Engineering,  situated in Hamilton, New Zealand. It also has plants in South Auckland and Christchurch and has about 450 employees making it one of the large companies in New Zealand. Only the prime employees have been highlighted in the case study, especially the Chief accountant, named Bob Nash who is quite approachable, Vernon Sarte Chief cost accountant, who is easy going according to his employees, Peter Broome the Management Accountant, who is referred as moody by his employees, and he also is Barbara’s boss. This case study aims to analyse the problems faced by Barbara in this company especially with regard to her boss Peter Broome and to provide recommendations to such issues as how one can improve the emotions expressed in a workplace and reduce hostility considerably.

Being a graduate student in management studies, Barbara showed interest in a company like Matalvi Engineering, because of two main reasons, first due to the exposure that she will get, on the accounting procedures of a large firm, and second reason being the higher starting salary that she was being offered by the company as compared to other firms. The designation that she had been provided was that of assistant cost accountant. The first hurdle, which she faced on her first day at job, was that no one was expecting her. First being the uncooperative environment at office, made her feel miserable and secondly to make things worse, she was not provided with the designation that was promised to her on the day of recruitment instead she was assigned to management information system.

Analysis and Evaluation

Her main job role as mentioned by her boss Peter Broome, included compiling information for monthly management report termed as ‘Big Brother’, but the work she was engaged in was mainly clerical, which was again against her expectations. After the collation of the monthly report there was hardly any job at hand for Barbara, which questions the efficiency of the people in charge of the job. Managing monthly information does not necessarily require four people, it could be easily done by two or three people.  Engaging more people in a job profile than required, results in uneven distribution of task and is an overall loss for the company, since the company has to provide remunerations for excess labour as well.

The third hurdle or issue in this case study, is the communication gap among the managing heads of the company. Chief accountant Bob Nash, not only informs Barbara about the management workshop in Auckland but also encourages her to participate in the same. Since Peter was away on leave for two weeks, Barbara was unable to ask for his permission or inform him to which Bob reassured that he would have a word with Peter, which he never did. Because of which Peter accused Barbara of not informing him and claimed that he was losing his value in the company. However, Barbara’s colleagues were supportive and consoled her. On reporting this to the chief accountant, he again assured that he would talk to Peter on this matter, but he does not.

The fourth issue in this case is the misbehaviour of a leader or a manager with his employees.  As seen, in this case Peter verbally assaults Barbara, on hearing that she has attended the workshop without informing him. He accused her for conspiring against him, by not asking his permission. He even threats her that since she reports to him, she should ensure to abide by his rules.  The Chief cost accountant, Vernon on the contrary seemed friendly, he had taken time out of his schedule to talk to an employee who does not report to him and advised Barbara to write a report of her encounter with her boss, which would be brought up during the meeting. Barbara requested for a transfer writing the same and submitted the report to the Chief accountant’s secretary.

The final issue of this case is Peter’s acts of prejudice, of not appreciating his employees for their ideas and taking credit for the same. This is demotivating for the employees since they do not disclose their opinion and negative environment is created. In this case Peter, improvises on Mike’s ideas on revising the monthly managing report and proposes to present  the same  to the meeting as his own.

The issues in this case study is analysed on the basis of the emotions and attitudes portrayed in a workplace. Positive emotions in a workplace tend to motivate the employees and aid in achieving targets (Vie et. al 2012). Expression of negative emotions at workplace not only creates a negative impression of the company amongst the employees but also affects the overall reputation of the firm in the outside world (Wilson 2013). However, this case depicts negative emotions such as hostile environment, where people are very unwelcoming on her first day of the job which demotivates her. Stress is another emotion that is faced by Barbara especially the dilemmas she has to go through while deciding to attend the workshop (Schiopu  2015). Promising a designation to Barbara which has no existence is an act of prejudice on the company’s part, this is also a negative emotion. There is another such instance where Barbara’s mentioned job role in MIS is compiling information, but in reality it is purely clerical and is not worth the management degree. Such an act forces an employee to distrust the organization and also decreases the job satisfaction and demotivates the employees, which in turn affects the productivity of the company (Vacharkulksemsuk and Fredrickson 2013). The final negative emotion that is observed in this case is the verbal abuse of employees by their seniors (Stets and Turner 2014). This creates a negative impression on employees, who then are so extremely dissatisfied with their job, that they have no other option than to resign. As in this case Barbara either thinks of a transfer to a different department or a resignation. In such issues it is the reputation of the company that is affected.

The major attitudes in a workplace can be classified as cognitive, affective and behavioural (Glaso and Notelaers 2012). The affective component of an attitude is the feelings that an individual person has about an object.  The behavioural component describes a persons’ behaviour towards the object, while cognitive depicts the individual beliefs about an object (McLeod 2014). Considering the instances in the present case, the first negative attitude encountered by Barbara was the unwelcoming attitude of the employees of the company, which is a behavioural component of an attitude.  The second instance of where Barbara’s colleagues console her saying that it is a usual attitude of their boss to be irritated, but he will soon calm down, depict a cognitive attitude, since it is their individual belief about their boss. Highlighting another behavioural attitude is, behaviour of Peter towards Barbara, and accusing her of conniving against him. This behavioural component leads to the affective component of both individuals towards each other, which changes the cognitive attitude of the individual (Langton, Robbins and Judge 2013). As seen in this case, such behaviour initiates negative feelings inside Barbara regarding Peter (affective), which in turn changes her belief that Peter is an uncooperative person (cognitive) (Bunk and Magley 2013). A similar instance is seen, where Mike has a negative feeling about Peter for presenting Mike’s revision plans as his own, which changes his beliefs about him, to never trust his boss again.

The following measures can be adopted for improving the organizational behaviour in Matalvi Engineering –

A face to face meeting with employees is necessary in such cases in order to receive a feedback and suggestion from them. In this world of technology, one should emphasize on the personal interaction of the management system with their employees, because everything cannot be communicated through mail which are quite impersonal (Dalege et. al 2016).

Rephrasing instructions is also a way to make an employee feel valuable. For example instead of ordering a person on how a job must be done, one should make it look as if it’s a coordinated job. Like replacing “You must do it this way”, with “Let’s do it this way”, while providing instructions to employees (Henderson et. al 2013).

Exhibiting a vulnerable side in case of a manager, could prove to be beneficial. Generally it is observed that employees perceive their managers as perfectionists and thus be intimidated by them. They often tend to hold a belief that managers are unapproachable, displaying flawlessness makes the employees feel inferior of their shortcomings. Just as it is often said to err is human, demonstrating vulnerability makes them realize that their managers are also subject to emotions, and can make mistakes, yet be a leader despite of imperfection (Russell and Friedrich 2015).

References

Bunk, J.A. and Magley, V.J., 2013. The role of appraisals and emotions in understanding experiences of workplace incivility. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 18(1), p.87.

Dalege, J., Borsboom, D., van Harreveld, F., van den Berg, H., Conner, M. and van der Maas, H.L., 2016. Toward a formalized account of attitudes: The Causal Attitude Network (CAN) model. Psychological review, 123(1), p.2.

Glasø, L. and Notelaers, G., 2012. Workplace bullying, emotions, and outcomes. Violence and victims, 27(3), pp.360-377.

Henderson, C., Williams, P., Little, K. and Thornicroft, G., 2013. Mental health problems in the workplace: changes in employers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices in England 2006-2010. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 202(s55), pp.s70-s76.

Langton, N., Robbins, S.P. and Judge, T.A., 2013. Fundamentals of organizational behaviour. Pearson Education Canada.

McLeod, S., 2014. Attitudes and behavior.

Russell, S. and Friedrich, E., 2015. The Relationship between Emotions and Workplace Pro-Environmental Behaviors.

Schiopu, A.F., 2015. Workplace Emotions and Job Satisfaction. International Journal of Economic Practices and Theories, 5(3), pp.277-282.

Stets, J.E. and Turner, J.H. eds., 2014. Handbook of the Sociology of Emotions (Vol. 2). Springer.

Vacharkulksemsuk, T. and Fredrickson, B.L., 2013. Looking back and glimpsing forward: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions as applied to organizations. Advances in positive organizational psychology, 1, pp.45-60.

Vie, T.L., Glasø, L. and EINARSEN, S., 2012. How does it feel? Workplace bullying, emotions and musculoskeletal complaints. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 53(2), pp.165-173.

Wilson, F.M., 2013. Organizational behaviour and work: a critical introduction. Oxford University Press.