Understanding Power And Politics And Organizational Culture: A Case Study Of Multicom

Background of Multicom

Write an essay on Multicom for understanding Power and Politics and Organizational Culture.

Multicom is a public relation firm that was founded by Jim Walsh and Wendy Bridges, the former is a marketing specialists and the latter is a public relation expert. They were colleagues in a communication firm and thought of opening their own Public Relation firm as they felt they together can provide an excellent base and can be successful businessmen. They made two major and two minor partners in their firm. Bridges and Walsh hold 40% of the firm’s equity each and Marie Beaumont and Frank Rossi hold 10% equity each. Rossi was an editor and Beaumont was film and video person (Shahzad et al. 2012). At the initial stage each of them struggled to develop the business and all of them had accepted the client-centred mode of organization that gives prime importance to client satisfaction level and make strategies to retain their clients forever and serve them better than any other firm. Due to their single goal and cooperation in achieving the goal, in few years, the firm developed the competency in serving the clients. They together followed the same strategies and trained their staff and the unity and the one goal has made the staff work hard to obtain growth and success to the firm (Chatman et al.2013).

However, in the third year, the things started to change and power and politics started playing role between the stakeholders. Walsh and Bridges believed in Unitarism perspectives of decision-making management system and Beaumont and Rossi believe in Pluralism perspectives of decision-making management system. Under unitarism, decision making is the process followed from top-down and hierarchical structures. Here, managers own the right to manage things and taking decisions, the employees has no role in decision making. Walsh and Bridge wanted to set such practices where decision is centrally controlled and the employees are under strict rules and should look upon the managers for any decisions. However, in Pluralism, importance is given to diversity of individual and group interests. The view of all the employees is considered in case of making decisions. Any decision is taken by taking into consideration every employee individual viewpoints (Andersen and Moynihan 2016).

There was a clash between the partners due to their different principles towards treating the employees of the company. As a result of it, clashes started taking place between the partners due to which the employees’ unity and one goal target took a back seat. As a result the performance and profit of the organization reduced. Further, Beaumont and Rossi wanted to share more responsibilities of work for the company and desired to increase the share of equity but Walsh and Bridge played their power game and did not wanted to hand over the control to them (Yesil and Kaya 2013).

Power and Politics in Multicom

With the passing time, the difference in their philosophy of work became obvious as Walsh and Bridges were more concerned with the disciplinary actions of the employees, and Rosssi and Beaumont were only concern about the results of the work. By the end of the forth year, the difference between them reached the ultimate point and Walsh and Bridges used the politics and power of their majority shares and started taking decision among themselves without taking the view point of Rossi and Beaumont. Walsh and Bridges thought this would affect the other two partners but on the contrary, the other were hardly affected by the elder partner’s decision and were continued to grow in the following years (Hogan and Coote 2014).

Rossi and Beaumont left the company and formed a new one in their place and worked hard to form a new company called Media 2000 The Company Media 2000 quickly became a fruitful company with growing developments and started experiences learning by doing and bringing new innovative methods of meeting the requirements of business (Liden et al. 2014). 

There is extensive literature on the culture of corporate. According to Hugh (1993), the autonomy of the managers restrains the development of the employees and they do not work with full effort. He believes in Theory Y, which says, the management style is decentralised and they follow that the employees are happy at work and are creative and self-motivated. They enjoy their work with great responsibility and are motivated to fulfil their goals. They consider work as natural part of their life and solve the problem at work with full effort and dedication as they do for their own self. The corporate culture should change, the general theory X of controlling employees and supervise them at every step should be replaced with Theory Y. The employees should not be forced, controlled and threaten for the delivery of task reduces their productivity. They should be rather given opportunity to excel in their task and work without any restriction. It will increase the productivity of the employees (Willmott 1993)

In the case the similar differences are seeing in the believes of the shareholders where Walsh and Bridges believes in controlling employees and directing them without giving them any power to take decision but Rossi and Beaumont believes in treating the employees as independent person and taking their advises in decision making for the company (Alvesson 2012)

Organizational Culture in Multicom

The emergent approach to manage employees emphasis on “being yourself” through the expression of individuality, fun and difference. It is different from old and traditional pattern of fun and culture and identifies the authentic aspects of the employees’ selves. It implies free work environment without any external control, the employees’ should be at themselves and should be free to work according to their own self. The management should only be considered with the productivity of the employees and the employees are to be left free to perform and excel themselves rather than be treated with restriction and assertion. It will help them to take the responsibility and be accountable for their task and be productive (Fleming 2009).

Some studies have discussed that the basic feature of organizational behaviour is irrational. The decision-making of the organization tends to be irrational and their ideologies bias their perceptions. The studies make an effort to understand how the irrationality can be converted into rationality and how to make organization behave rationally. However, some studies support irrational behaviour and say that for organizational actions irrationality is necessary. They assert that the commitment and motivation are maximised when actions are facilitated by irrational decision-making procedures and choices are facilitated by clear but narrow organizational ideologies (Brunsson 1982).

There are confirmative evidences that the bargaining power of the partners in a joint venture has an impact on the control pattern of the new venture capital that they have started through joint venture between the firms. If there is conflicts between the partners then the employees’ performance also get affected. On the other hand, if the Partners are united and concentrate on the objective of the firm, then many complex issues get solved and employees also perform well (Yan and Gray 1994).

Critically, it can be said that in an organization the behaviour and attitude towards o improve the performance of the employees the management should leave their personal issues and concentrate on larger corporate goals. In the case study, the firm performed well and earned high profit at the initial stage when every employee of the firm from top to down worked towards reaching the goal of success keeping behind their own philosophy of work and differences in their profit share. However, when the firm got stabilised and started earning profit, the top management started getting diverted from the goal and concentrating on their differences in work philosophy. Such change in the attitude of the share holders affected the work environment and deteriorated their efficiency and performance (Martinez et al. 2015).

The issue that is reflected in the case can also be supported by the literature review that has shown several studies of organization where the work culture plays the major role in bringing efficiency among the employees which is the string to success. The views regarding the management philosophy of practicing unitarism or pluralism are also critically discussed. In today’s competitive world, pluralism practice seems to be more successful than unitarism practice. In the former case, the employee’s views are taken while making decisions regarding the strategies of corporate in achieving the goals whereas in the latter case, the employees are regarded as subordinates and strict rules are imposed on them without any contribution in decision making. The former makes the employee feel the ownership be accountable for their work whereas, the latter just make them follow the rules. 

References

Alvesson, M., 2012. Understanding organizational culture. Sage.

Andersen, S.C. and Moynihan, D.P., 2016. How Leaders Respond to Diversity: The Moderating Role of Organizational Culture on Performance Information Use. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, p.muv038.

Brunsson, N., 1982. The irrationality of action and action rationality: decisions, ideologies and organizational actions. Journal of management studies, 19(1), pp.29-44.

Chatman, J.A., Caldwell, D.F., O’Reilly, C.A. and Doerr, B., 2013. Parsing Organizational Culture: The Joint Influence of Culture Content and Strength on Performance in High-Technology Firms. University of California, Berkeley.

Fleming, P. and Sturdy, A., 2009. Just be yourself!”: Towards neo-normative control in organisations. Employee Relations, 31(6), pp.569-583.

Hogan, S.J. and Coote, L.V., 2014. Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein’s model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1609-1621.

Liden, R.C., Wayne, S.J., Liao, C. and Meuser, J.D., 2014. Servant leadership and serving culture: Influence on individual and unit performance.Academy of Management Journal, 57(5), pp.1434-1452.

Martinez, E.A., Beaulieu, N., Gibbons, R., Pronovost, P. and Wang, T., 2015. Organizational Culture and Performance. The American Economic Review, 105(5), pp.331-335.

Shahzad, F., Luqman, R.A., Khan, A.R. and Shabbir, L., 2012. Impact of organizational culture on organizational performance: an overview.Interdisciplinary journal of contemporary research in business, 3(9), p.975.

Willmott, H., 1993. Strength is ignorance; slavery is freedom: managing culture in modern organizations. Journal of management studies, 30(4), pp.515-552.

Yan, A. and Gray, B., 1994. Bargaining power, management control, and performance in United States–China joint ventures: a comparative case study. Academy of Management journal, 37(6), pp.1478-1517.

Yesil, S. and Kaya, A., 2013. The effect of organizational culture on firm financial performance: Evidence from a developing country. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 81, pp.428-437.