Components of a Great Corporate Culture - Assignment Example

Running Head: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR Organisational Behaviour Student’s Name Course Tutor’s Name Date Word Count: 1,768 Question 1 Zappos’ organisational culture is best described as customer centric and comfortable for employees. According to Colquitt, Wesson and LePine (2008), organisational culture captures how things are in a particular organisation. It includes the knowledge, beliefs, values, behaviours and attitudes shared by people working in an organisation. In Zappos’ YouTube video (ABC News, 2008), it is quite evident that the company’s chief executive officer (CEO) underscores the need for employees to create rich customer experiences while at the same time having fun. For example, the CEO says that his role is to create an environment that encourages employees to express themselves without any reservation. This culture is evident from the case study transcript, where employees are given a freehand to talk to customers without any pre-written scripts. It is also evident that at Zappos, having a passion for what one does is part of the requirement as is evident from the $2,000 ‘bribe’ offered to new trainees to quit the job. Writing about the link between employees’ passion and job performance, Zigarmi et al. (2011) note that people derive passion from several factors, which include meaningful work, fairness, connectedness to others, connectedness to the organisational leader, growth, collaboration, recognition, and autonomy. Arguably, all the foregoing factors are evident at Zappos since employees are undoubtedly able to derive meaning from work. Additionally, the CEO is not overbearing and as such, the employees have a sense of autonomy. Collaboration at Zappos is evident from the work teams that work together to attain organisational objectives. Connectedness to colleagues is also evident especially in the work teams while connectedness to the leader is evident in how the CEO interacts with the employees. Fairness is arguably evident in the provision of snacks and (possibly) remuneration in an unbiased manner. The formal and informal elements at Zappos also seem to work perfectly together to create an overt organisation whose brand and service delivery is liked by customers as is evident from the repeat purchases, and a covert organisation that appeals to many employees who have embraced the organisation’s culture. According to McShane et al. (2011), the formal organisation is evident from the products and services offered by the organisation, the communication channels it has adopted, its financial resources, policies and procedures, goals and objectives and job description. The informal organisation on the other hand is based on the beliefs and assumptions that prevail in an organisation, the employees’ attitudes and perceptions, their vales, group norms, feelings, and informal leaders. Arguably, what goes on in the informal organisation affects the organisational culture and to a great degree affects what is reflected in the formal organisation. At Zappos, the CEO has underscored the importance of getting the organisational culture right. He further argues that once Zappos gets the culture right, everything else would fall into place. Evidently, some formal aspects at Zappos guide the informal organisation. For example, the company’s core value is to deliver ‘WOW’ through service and for that to happen, the employees who interact with customers have to have the right attitudes, beliefs, feelings and values to enable them deliver superior customer experiences. To use the communication channels (like telephone) to deliver ‘WOW’ through service, the employees need to have the right perceptions and attitudes not only about the organisation, but also about the customer. From the YouTube video, it is apparent that Zappos invests a great deal of resources in training its employees on how to use the telephone while communicating with customers. It can be said that the organisational culture seeks to be more helpful to customers, rather than selfish and self-serving. For example, Tony indicates to the interviewer that employees are at liberty to refer a customer to a competitor for an out of stock product. Through such references, Zappos may lose out on a sale, but it arguably ends up gaining in terms of customer loyalty. Question 2 The personality, attribution and perception models Personality refers to the characteristics that influence a person’s behaviour. On the other hand, attribution refers to the explanations that people have regarding own or others’ behaviour. On its part, perception is the interpretation that people make from information given by another person. One of the obvious ways that Zappos uses the personality, attribution and perception models when hiring its staff is through the use of interview questions based on each of the company’s ten core values (Hsieh, 2010, para. 11). The interviewers test each interviewee’s commitment to Zappos’ core value using the aforementioned tool, and arguably, the success or the lack thereof of a candidate depends much on their personality, the attribution made to their responses by the interviewers and the perception created by the job applicants and interpreted by the interviewers. Hsieh (2010, para. 11) notes that a lot of smart, talented and even experienced people end up being not being hired because they come across as egotistical. Notably, pride and big egos are contrary to one of Zappos’ main core value, which underscores the importance of being humble. Arguably, the decision on whether an interviewee is humble is based on personality, attribution, and perception models, how the interviewees present themselves, their mannerisms and the answers that they provide. Richards (2010, para. 7) notes that the right employment candidates for Zappos are rare since only 50 percent of their suitability is judged based on skills. The remaining 50 percent suitability is judged based on how well candidates can fit into the Zappos culture. One’s personality plays a big role in getting him/her a job at Zappos because as Richards (2010, para. 8) notes, humbleness at Zappos is thought to enhance greater collaboration among employees. As a reserved person, however, the CEO agrees that the culture is not about him but about a fusion of different authentic personalities. Therefore, going by the CEO’s statement, one can argue that a potential employee’s personality can be anything – i.e. extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable and open to experience – as long as they uphold humbleness. According to Salgado (1997, p. 31), openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion are the five big personality traits that shape personality and behaviour in an organisation. Would I work at Zappos? Yes I would. The culture at Zappos seems to uphold togetherness, meaning that one would always feel like part of a large Zappos family. Additionally, Zappos appears not to have a hasty pursuit of money and profits, something that I think is commendable and would like to be a part of. After all, profits should arguably be a by-product of customer satisfaction, something that Zappos seems to have understood perfectly and done its best to uphold. The culture at Zappos appears to be one that would leave an employee with a high sense of self-worth as well as a high level of job satisfaction. The free meals, medical and dental covers are also an added advantage that makes Zappos a place where anyone would like to work in. Empowering people has also been cited as one of the critical factors that enhance good organisational culture since employees can make independent decisions (Robbins, 2001, p. 16). Notably, Zappos seems to be empowering its employees, and this is one more reason why I would love to work at this organisation. Question 3 Motivation and high performance at Zappos The motivation and high performance at Zappos is evidently a result of a combination of several factors that make up the organisational culture. As noted by Nelson et al. (2011), theories of motivation indicate that motivation can be inspired by internal variables within an individual, processes that the individual interacts with, and external variables that are within the environment that a person acts. For Zappos, it can be argued that all these claims are true. Internally, for example, a person needs to have the beliefs, attitudes and values that match well with Zappos’ core values. The process theory of motivation on the other hand, could be perceived as the manner in which things are done at Zappos (e.g. by upholding a playful environment and taking as much time as possible talking to customers without cutting them off) that motivates the employees. Nelson and Quick (2011, p. 54) note that it is not the number of sales that one closes that really matter, but the quality of conversations that keep encouraging repeat customers to call Zappos. Externally, motivation and high performance at Zappos can be attributed to the work teams, the incentives given by the company (e.g. free food, medical and dental cover, and the stress-free work environment). Arguably, Herzberg’s two-factor motivational theory appears applicable at Zappos, since it can be argued that motivators such as achievement and recognition among other factors lead to job satisfaction and hence motivation. Lessons that other organisations can learn from Zappos The importance of core values on which to base a company’s culture is one of the outstanding lessons from Zappos. In addition to being an arguably happy place to work in, there is no doubt that Zappos employees are satisfied in their jobs, something that leads to high quality work, which can be traced to high internal motivation. As noted by Nelson et al. (2011), the core job dimensions such as autonomy, feedback and task significance affect the critical psychological state of the employees, which in turn affects their personal outcomes as well as work outcomes. Therefore, the lesson for any organisation is to create the right job environment by upholding a good organisational culture, since such an environment will in the end affect the work outcomes in the organisation. Could the Zappos model work in all organisations? As Tony Hsieh indicates in an interview conducted by Richards (2010), each organisation is different. The Zappos model works for the company because it is uniquely meant for Zappos and work performance is reviewed based on how well an employee lives up to Zappos’ core values (Whitehorne, 2009, para.8). According to Coleman (2013), there are six components to a great culture, which include the values, vision, people, practices, place and narrative that an organisation has. Since Zappos’ components are different from other organisations, there is little doubt that each organisation needs to shape its own culture. Perhaps, other organisations could draw vital lessons from Zappos by identifying what their core values are and ensuring that their culture revolves around those core values. As Colquitt et al. (2008, p.9) note, organisational commitment and organisational performance come about if the employees’ individual characteristics, the group mechanisms and the organisational mechanisms work together to enhance individual mechanisms. These mechanisms include job satisfaction, motivation, learning, decision-making, and work enjoyment at the workplace. References ABC News. (2008). Zappos culture – the Zappos family on nightline. YouTube Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFyW5s_7ZWc&feature=youtu.be Coleman, J. (2013). Six components of a great corporate culture. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/05/six-components-of-culture/ Colquitt, J., Wesson, M., & LePine, J. (2008). Organisational behaviour: Improving performance in the workplace. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Hsieh, T. (2011). How Zappos infuses culture using core values. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2010/05/how-zappos-infuses-culture-using-core-values McShane, S., Olekalns, M., & Travaglione, T. (2012). Organisational behaviour: Emerging knowledge, global insights (4th ed.). North Ryde: McGraw-Hill. Nelson, D.L., & Quick, J.C. (2011). Understanding organizational behaviour. Chula Vista, CA: South-Western College. Nelson, D.L., Quick, J.C., Wright, S., & Adams, C. (2011). ORGB: Asia Pacific Edition (1st ed.). South Melbourne, Victoria: Cengage Learning Australia. Richards, D. (2010). At Zappos, culture pays. The thriving internet show retailer has made its name and a lot of money by being eccentric. Strategy + Business, 60. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10311?gko=c784e Robbins, S.P. (2001). Organisational Behaviour (9th ed.). San Diego, CA: Prentice Hall. Salgado, J.F. (1997). The five factor model of personality and job performance in the European community. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82, 30-43. Whitehorne, S. (2009). Culture lessons from the leaders at Zappos.com. Retrieved from https://www.asaecenter.org/Resources/ANowDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=43360. Zigarmi, D., Houson, D., Witt, D., & Diehl, J. (2011). Employee work passion: Connecting the dots. Perspectives, 3, 1-10. Read More