Globe Trot Airlines Organizational Assessment - Assignment Example

Globe Trot Airlines Organizational Assessment Organizational Behaviour 1. Introduction Globe Trot Airlines is an organization whose inner structure remains untouched since the mid 1990s. An organization managed from the very beginning by Steve Logan himself and his closest managers. They drew their competitive strength from cheap and hassle free flights and operating at the lowest cost possible. The airline only offers 6 months renewable contract for its employees and spend very little amount of time and money for orientation and on-the-job training. Consequently, when the competition became intense, the airline suffers numerous setbacks and Logan finally realized that he can no longer compete on price alone and must reassess his business strategy immediately. This paper will analyse the current situation at Globe Trot Airline and discuss various theories on organizational culture and behaviour, and the significance of cultural awareness in an organization. 2. Review and Analysis Organization behaviour has a contentious relationship with management practice as some critic says that it’s excessively ‘managerialist’ since it is only focused on managerial performance and failing to deal with the political dimensions of organizations. For instance, power and inequalities in organizations are often ignored. Power is unequally distributed and management symbolize an elite group that has access to information and resources that are not obtainable to employees. Managers are often trend victims in their search for methods and techniques with which to manage. The more ‘managerialist’ approaches tend to view this management trend uncritically and push managers to consider ‘quick fixes’ to long-term and complex problems (Lashley and Lee-Ross 2003:4). Organizations are more than just social activities with collective goals since they are entities that are concerned with performance, choices about best use of resources, monitoring, and control of individual performance to achieve goals. Organizations often involve specialization of tasks and the division of labour and admission to it is normally controlled (Lashley and Lee-Ross 2003:5). Steve Logan’s ‘no frills’ Globe Trot Airlines is an organization whose internal structure remains unchanged since the mid 1990s. An organization managed from the very beginning by Logan himself and his closest managers. The airline’s business strategy seems investing on the competitive advantage of operating at the lowest cost alone thus majority of its flights avoids airports with high landing fees and expensive hub operations. Moreover, due to its low cost operations, it has adopted an exclusive approach to customer service, which is far more radical than those offered by traditional airlines are. For instance, thinking that most customers just want to fly cheap, quickly, and hassle free, Globe Trot Airlines removed the traditional check-ins and seat allocations that we are all familiar with and introduces a swipe-card ticketing system at the gate. Logan also introduced dispensing of non-essential provision of airline food to avoid lengthy turnaround time at airports, created a ‘flexible’ work force scheme so that more resources would be available on peak season, and laid them off once it is over. Consequently, the airline only offers 6 months renewable contract for its employees and spend very little amount of time and money for orientation and on-the-job training. However, this unorthodox treatment of his employees did not stop Steve Logan to cover more routes, enhance his airline’s scheduling, and boost his profits. Since then competition became intense as other airlines copied Logan’s strategy and begun to offer similar operations. As a result, Globe Trot Airlines has been forced to reduce the number of flights to major cities in Europe. Furthermore, the airline has been troubled by turnovers caused predominantly by competitor airline stealing its excellent staffs consequential to immediate hiring of new inexperienced staff. Operating on very limited resources, the airline was forced to set very low entry requirements and hires even those applicants with no foreign language skills thus the number of customer’s complaints concerning incompetent and unsociable staff soars. This includes abnormally stringent and insensitive baggage weight limitations imposed by the check-in operators and the language limitations of monolingual, recently hired flight attendants. Aside from disillusioned customers, their very own employees have also started complaining about their contracts consequential to a one-day strike. As expected, the media reported other adverse issues regarding Globe Trot Airline’s prolonged direct flight between destination airports and cities. Consequently, competition and declining number of customers now embattle Steve Logan’s long-time fruitful strategy. He finally realized that he can no longer compete on price alone and he must quickly reassess his business strategy to prevent Globe Trot Airline’s looming collapse. In his quest for a better alternative, Steve Logan suddenly realizes the possibility of using the Airline’s existing human resources to recover. He intends to do this by adding extra value to the customer experiences thus; he himself organized a series of outings for all his employees to introduce his new ideas and mission. On the business agenda, he intends to maintain the reputation as the number one, ‘no frills’ airline is on top of the list followed by reputation for efficiency to attract new customers. Retain existing customers through loyalty service and discounts for internet booking. Enhancement of customer service includes providing excellent service at all times and commitment to constant improvement. Improvements of the organizational structure through enhance performance management and staffs involvement in the decision-making process. He is now very keen in promoting teamwork throughout the organization and provides staff training in cultural awareness. To have at least one multilingual crewmember and to offer cultural sensitive reward packages. Surprisingly, these rewards include gratifying staff loyalty with permanent contracts. Steve Logan’s sudden shift of principle and business strategy to sustain competitive advantage is in practice more complex since he needs to keep a considerable amount of flexible labour to keep operating costs down. He will also need to work harder to purge senior management’s autocratic reputation and provide his employees with genuine training and development program. “Organizations cannot be insulated from changes occurring in their external environment”. McKenna (2000) explains that there is a significant increase in competition globally and this has a direct impact on the way companies are adhering to the dictum of “getting it right first time” and using techniques such as total quality management (p.15). This includes what Steve Logan has termed as “adding extra value to customer satisfaction” or simply satisfying customers and promoting worker satisfaction through the continuous improvement of all organizational processes. His initiative is in fact on the right track since creating a flatter structure in place of the more hierarchical systems of organization with improve integration of communication and management systems within the organization is a good move. Furthermore, pushing decision making further down the organization so that workers are free to make choices about how best to arrange and execute various tasks is valuable since it will eliminate employee’s isolation and autocratic image of his organization. As Murray et. al. (2005) explains that commitment in an organization depends on the relative strength of an individual’s identification with and involvement in a particular organization. Thus, strongly committed employees are more likely to remain with the organizations that are those with weak commitment (p.57). In relation to this, is the development of core competencies since skills that are crucial for the efficient execution of organizational tasks and encouraging employees to embrace learning as normal can make an organization more effectual and successful (McKenna 200:15). Particularly in an airline company, staff training in cultural awareness is essential as recognizing the differences between people is not limited to people in global setting but to differences in people within different countries (workforce diversity). “Culture is a collective force” (Murray et. al. 2005:93) thus to focus on the organisation from only one perspective increases the chances that important elements of the cultural fabric will be missed, and attempts to tinker with the culture may generate unforeseen consequences. There is recognition that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, ethnicity, and country of origin thus managers like Logan should develop skills to deal effectively with the values and life-style preferences of those working for him. One way to develop a rich appreciation of culture is too look at significant moments in an organizations life and then to tease out the threads of meaning. Murray et. al. (2005) emphasized the varying degree to which workers simultaneously accept the dominant organizational culture being promoted by management. Some of them tend to distance themselves in order to protect their own sense of themselves since they cannot simultaneously accept two opposing realities (p.101). Creating a flexible workforce is also indispensable as a more versatile workforce can easily adapt to the changing operating conditions (McKennan 2000:15). His decision to depart from the traditional system of managerial directives or commands and moving to positions of ‘empowering’ workers, and then cultivation self-management as applied to individuals and teams is a very congenial decision. Managers according to McKennan (2000) are expected to sacrifice control to empowered workers who now have to assume more responsibility for the making of decisions. Therefore, self-managed teams are expected to function with the normal intervention form a manager (p.15). Moreover, promoting the concept of the manager who is more likely to be a facilitator and coordinator, who is fair minded and employee centred, and is well equipped with appropriate interpersonal and leadership skills is much more likely to be accepted than an authoritarian leader. Organizations responding to the challenges posed by the changes also include the ramification of the drive for continuous improvement, similar to what Steve Logan’s is planning to do, in terms of frequent changes to the tasks performed by employees. This signals a need for employees to update their knowledge and skills continually so that they can operate effectively. Lastly, their job descriptions need to be more flexible to cope with the turbulent conditions. 3. Globe Trot Airlines and Team Theory “A team is a purposeful entity, created to achieve a collective output that is meaningful for the members and the organization alike” (Saiyadain 2003:197). Self-organizing or self-managed teams according to Murray et. al. (2005) takes complete responsibility of a specific range of goods or services. Ideally, the team is self-contained in that its members have all the skills required to complete production. Wherever, possible, the team collectively makes its own managerial decisions. Certain human resource management functions, such as hiring and discipline, may be conducted within the team. However, central management might choose to retain functions where operations require organizational legitimating. For instance, the final responsibility to dismiss an employee might be retained centrally, even though formal warnings have been used at team level (p.24). For Globe Trot Airlines, organizing teams might resolve the structural dilemma that exists in a bureaucracy of whether to adopt loose or tight coupling. Coupling is the degree in which workers are interdependent upon one another thus in a tightly coupled bureaucracy, employees may loss efficiency because they cannot cross the lines of demarcation between those aspects of production that they are authorized to perform and those they are not authorized to perform. On the other hand, there is plenty of room and sovereignty in a loosely coupled organization, and less demarcation between roles. However, the associated lack of accountability obstruct senior management’s need to track and reward performance. Self-organizing teams also appeal to the human resource values of empowerment, autonomy, job enrichment, and equity. They can give form to related ideas such as lean production and the learning organization, both of which require workers to generate, share, and collectively reflect on production-focused information. Organizations often set up autonomous units when seeking innovation, either by establishing them as independent legal entities or by giving then mandates and accountabilities that are separate from those of other line operations (Murray et. al. 2005:25). In a study conducted by Liu (2004), when a team is committed to quality of services offered to the customer, there is an increasing trust from the customer (p.1). A team working towards defined and agreed objective to defeat competitor, increasing efficiency and so on (Eldrige and Crombie 1974:166). However, it also shows that involvement of the whole organization would be important and it would be necessary to explore how each area of the organization could contribute to the improvement. For instance, according to Saiyadain (2003), studies have shown the change of leadership, reflection and rethinking in the top management team are powerful triggers for organization change as their style, and behaviour provides signals for the rest of the organization (p.117). 4. Globe Trot’s Organization Culture and the Achievement of Company Objectives Culture, whatever the type, is a tool managers should use to guarantee the success of the activities. McLaughlin (1999) explains that if the appropriate culture prevails where that set of activities prevails, then that part of the organization will be more effective (p.126). Culture is presented uniquely powerful in directing change since the customs of and traditions of a place are a powerful way of influencing behaviour. Therefore, part of the work in directing change includes the construction of a new culture capable of carrying through the change desired (p.126). Globe Trot’s organizational culture is seems inconsistent with the theoretical effective organizational culture. The business strategy itself although offering cheap, quick, and hassle free flights for its customers, seems to ignore other significant aspects of traditional airlines operation. For instance, due to its low cost operation, the company avoids spending time and money on its staff orientation and training thus the quality of service deteriorates significantly. Another is the mentality that employees should only get 6 months renewable contract that encourages frequent turnovers and immediate hiring. Thus, employees who already developed their skills during their short stay are lost and replace by new, inexperienced, and non-qualified staff. Hiring untrained and incompetent staff is apparently consequential to customer’s disillusion and decline. More importantly, the company’s very own staffs by themselves are not happy with their own working condition resulting to frequent strike and delays. Globe Trot Airlines is an organization controlled by few with diminutive employee participation and therefore staffs has no genuine commitment to quality of service. As we mentioned earlier in the works of Eldrige and Crombie (1974), an effective team is working towards a defined and “agreed” objective and without it, efficiency, and commitment will be almost impossible since organizational performance fully depends upon employees’ positive attitudes towards their jobs, supervisors, or managers (Hoque 2006:27). However, since change of leadership, reflection, and rethinking in the top management can trigger organizational change, Steve Logan’s initiative to use the Airline’s existing human resources to recover is quite remarkable. Enhancing performance management and staffs involvement in the decision-making process, promotion of cultural awareness, and teamwork is no doubt a brilliant move to sustain competitive advantage. However, he should always remember that none of these would progress if senior management’s autocratic reputation is still evident and staff development program is temporary. More importantly, he should always bear in mind that culture is a characteristic of all organizations, through which at the same time, their individuality and uniqueness is expressed. The organizations culture refers to the unique configuration of norms, values, beliefs, ways of behaving and so on that characterize the manner in which groups and individuals combine to get things done. Furthermore, the distinctiveness of a particular organization is intimately bound up with its history and the character-building effects of past decisions and past leaders. It is manifested in the folkways, mores, and the ideology to which members defer, as well as in the strategic choices made by the organization as a whole. The individuality or cultural distinctiveness is attained through the more or less constant exercise of choice, in all sections and levels (Eldrige and Crombie 1974:89). In his sudden change of leadership style, Steve Logan is actually enhancing human relations in his organization. This is because supervision and leadership according to Hoque (2006) ensure maximum probability that in all interactions and all relationships, each member regardless of his background, values, and expectations will view the experience as supportive and one, which builds and maintains his sense of personal worth and importance (p.26). 5. Importance of Cross-Cultural Awareness Cultural awareness training requires participants to understand the aspects of culture that are universal and specific. Thus cross-cultural awareness requires individuals to understand from their own cultural perspective that they are cultural beings and to use this understanding as a foundation to further figure out the distinct characteristics of other cultures in order to interpret effectively the behaviour of others in intercultural interactions (Samovar et. al. 2006:358 referring to the work of Triandis (1977)). In the case of Globe Trot Airline, the implications of hiring monolingual staff and setting very low entry requirements is the apparent miscommunication and cultural collision between incompetent and unsociable staff and customers. Undoubtedly, this staffs does not have the slightest idea how cross-cultural interaction works since none of them has underwent such training. Inter cultural awareness is something we can consider as a process of “attitudinally” internalizing insights about those common understandings held by groups that dictate the predominant values, attitudes, beliefs, and outlooks of the individual (Samovar et.al. 2006:358). Apparently, the Greeks expect some leniency in their excess baggage as they are travelling in a group of six and charging them for just two extra kilograms is indeed quite unsociable and insensitive. Furthermore, intensified by language barriers and lack of cross-cultural awareness training, staff-client interactions overlooked the client’s request. Undoubtedly, in situations like this, the customer (the Greeks) was requesting the staff to just let go of the excess baggage but refused. “Request” according to Chiappini and Harris (1997) is central to most business negotiations and along with the heightened sense of cultural awareness, it is important to recognize certain linguistic and realistic strategies when making and receiving a request. Moreover, without a heightened sense of cultural awareness both sides are likely to misinterpret the style of communication of the other and to make negative judgements (p.10). For instance, according to Chiappini and Harris (1997), speakers may find it difficult to make request, especially those that the hearer may find problematic because the required action is difficult. The hearer may even feel insulted or threatened by a particular request like “I must ask you to lower your price by at least thirty percent, or we shall have to find another supplier”. Therefore, the process of formulating request is of crucial importance affecting both business and interpersonal relationship (p.72). The French opposition to a short-term contract is not surprising as according to Bin Halima (2007), French labour laws allow firms to hire workers only on two types of regular employment. These are Indefinite-Term Contracts and Fixed-Term Contracts. A company only on very specific reasons however, can offer the latter and it cannot be use to fill a job that would exist under normal and permanent business conditions. For the French government, employers should not make unwarranted use of fixed term contracts predominantly short-term contacts as it has been considered as a key factor in the development of social exclusion. Normally, successive fixed term contracts may last no longer that 18 months in total and it cannot be renewed more than twice in the same period. Moreover, it can only be used in a very limited situations such as replacing an absent employee, if a company grows temporarily and needs additional staff for a certain period, for seasonal work, to fill vacant post until a permanently staff starts the job, and in sectors where permanent contracts are not applicable. The French probably realized that none of the above is applicable to Globe Trot Airline since the company is not experiencing temporary growth but expanding permanently. Furthermore, an airline company is not one of those sectors where permanent contracts are not applicable (p.3). On the other hand, even if the reason of the opposition to short-term contracts is not based on French labour laws, employees under a fixed term contracts anywhere, are likely to have negative experiences of their work or job insecurity demeaning employee well-being Gallie (1998:208). Furthermore, study shows on the nature of contracts reveal a strong negative association between working on a short-term contract and involvement in the job. Short-term temporary work then is associated with lower levels of work motivation and this is primarily due to the insecurity it involves (Gallie 1998:218). Steve Logan of Globe Trot Airline should continue with the organizational restructuring since sustaining his company’s competitive advantage depends entirely on how competent and effective his staffs are. He must always bear in mind that he should always extract principles that can used for future organizational change since companies even in a stable environment can still exploit existing structures to enhance flexibility. Leaders create context in which the status quo is challenged, new information is brought in, and new opportunities are taken up (Saiyadain 2003:117). 6. 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