MG312

ORGANISATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
Final Assessment

(Replacing Final Examination

50%

NAME: DEEPSHIKA RAJ

ID: S11160679
Solutions

Section A

Case study 1

Part: i

Gender biasness has been almost forever in the workforce. The males always having dominant
power and always have the opportunities to succeed. It was back in the olden days when
women were only allowed to be house wives and not come out in the work force. The 21
century brought in a lot of changes till date there are women in the work force and filling up
most of the leadership positions. The fact that back some years ago the society was male
dominated and even though women have dropped into the work field there are still some
aspects of gender equality missing at some workplaces. The managers who are in the process
for performance appraisal play a very important role and it is understandable that a lot of effort
is placed on their objectivity to ensure the ratings are liable and accurate.

However despite the stress there is always biasness on the way performance feedback are
given to women in the organisation. The feedbacks given to women are more personal than
being subjective. For instance a man will be given feedback such as “Peter should gain more
expertise to operate this model” whereas a woman will be given a feedback as such “Nikita is a
team player, she is good working with teams”. Which clearly indicated that women tend to
receive feedbacks that are based on their personality rather than work-related. Appraisal
feedback needs to be tailored to the individual to match a particular individual and
circumstance. It should be focusing on the specific behaviour or the action of the person that is
of concern rather than the personality of that person and when it came to women they often
fell in the category of being addressed based on their personality.

This biasness is basically a tendency based on the personality which is either towards
something or completely against it. When in an organisation the performance assessment is
critically towards an individual and when we consider gender biasness it can be related to both
men and women. When a supervisor is biased towards an individual it makes the process of
evaluation subjective and they tend to assess people on their personality rather than being
objective. Gender biasness is usually towards the women in the workplace. The level as which
women will work will be always hard to digest by males. Most people think women are soft and
are not good with expertise work and never even push them towards it.

The fact that even when women reach some great positions in a company or an organisation
they are often treated like they nothing as important. Many women around the world have
went through this and even till date there might be many women fighting for their equality in
an organisation. The term that even when women reach top level and are still pushed down by
certain people is known as the “glass ceiling effect”. This term is basically implying that a
women can reach a high level and there is a glass above her through which she can see but not
pass because she is a women. The male dominated organisations always have had a picture of
not seeing women go ahead then them. They do not wish to see women leading and also
believe that they have less opportunities for advancement and this was one of the very reasons
for gender biasness when it came to appraisals and the fact that it was not only male managers
but female managers as well who were likely to discriminate other women because just as men
it is somewhat difficult for other women to praise another women, that is nature.

Solution

Part: ii

There are certainly ways to consider where the performance appraisal process can be modified
or rather controlled to avoid a bias of feedback towards staff of different genders. Firstly, by
minimizing the use of trait-based evaluations. When using trait-based evaluations, it legit turns
out to be pretty much on the subjective side than being based on the results or being objective.
Using that simply without any reason is baseless. Unless and until someone really needs to be
addressed specifically for their trait. By avoiding or minimizing the use of trait-based
evaluations it decreases the level of biasness as well as stereotyping which is basically avoiding
mistakes that can happen in an appraisal process. An approach should be used where it tests if
the measure used for performance appraisal is objective, and is consistent on the effect or does
it have any sort of job relatedness. It is always best to ensure what employees are addressed on
in their performance appraisal.

Another way of avoiding bias is through training and awareness building whereby managers
need to be subjected to any short discussion before the performance appraisal. The discussion
may contain the importance of how the performance management system process takes place,
how to best evaluate the performance and also on how to avoid biases. This will be a sort of
guideline for the managers to follow and keep it fair when evaluating the performances of
employees. It is much easier to follow and evaluate people on what their job description
requires from them avoiding biases. Managers also need to know about the team he or she is
working with. Allow for collaboration with the team and align goals together and also should be
allowing the managers to provide constructive feedback that is objective and work related. Also
through understanding and frequent conversations, the tendency to biasness is reduced.

Another good way to avoid biasness is through the use of 360 degree feedback tool. What 360
feedback tool does is it allows a lot of people to be part of the evaluation. An employee is
evaluated by people within the organisation including the supervisors, the peers, co-workers,
colleagues. Through this way the manager is easily able to figure out that how people who work
around the employee on a regular basis feel about the employees’ performance. This way it is
easier for the manager to get an absolute idea of the employees’ performance which he or she
is not able to see themselves due to the biases. After which the manager can further focus onto
evaluating the performance appraisal in an objective manner, because so many people can be
certain about a persons

In the evaluation process managers should also avoid “open box”. Mainly because the review
process lacks structure and provide with open ended questions and a large empty space that is
to be filled. So when there are already empty spaces biases turn up in those because that is
certain. How little guidance managers get in general is what symbolizes the open box. It is
mainly because managers are unaware of the people working around him or her. It should be
necessity for the organisation to help the managers improve which can be done by encouraging
and training them to collaborate with the team and also align certain goals for the time and
delivering constructive feedback which is focused on the development made. More frequent
conversations could reduce the tendency for biasness as well. Managers also need to provide
some sort of technology to which allows discussion of the team. The fact lies in when a
manager gives strong guidance and provides a good structure, they are less likely to see the
open-box biases.
Case study 2 solution

Factors in the environment and the current global competition has been causing changes in
many organisations today. With the ongoing competition in the market and the new trends it is
becoming more of a challenge for organisations to manage the performances of their
employees. The main aim of downsizing is to basically reduce the size of the organisation which
is through the following ways; layoffs, reductions, early retirement, selling business or
outsourcing. It was mainly associated with workers of lower levels but generally it can be
targeted to anyone in the workplace despite of their roles and positions and is much more
focused on layoffs than anything else. Although at certain point in time downsizing may be the
only option left to deal with. Organisations have various factors to look at when laying off
workers because there are external forces driving for the change.

However, when we look at the how the organisations are improving their profitability by
downsizing and at the same time looking to survive in the market. There are factors that one
needs to be addressed. Theoretically when organisations opt in for downsizing they cut down
on most of their costs and they use that same money elsewhere in the market to compete in
the market and move ahead. Sometimes having a lot of employees/workers is a lot and when
the organisations feel that they are not making profit and are not going to be able to further
take chances of facing losses they opt for downsizing. Somewhat is said about downsizing that
it eliminates the redundancies and cuts down employments costs and helps the organisation to
perform more effectively and efficiently.

Even though downsizing may bring in some sort of profitability to the organisation, it is going to
be difficult for the business to run on a long term with less worker. Having more employees
must have meant to be spending a lot on each one of them and all but then when an
organisation is downsized along with it comes a lot of long term challenges and with time it
keeps on getting worse. For instance, when companies tend to hire and retain employees they
put in a lot of effort, from training to all other basic set of skills. In that process and over the
years the workers gain so much of the knowledge and expertise from the organisation and
when they are laid off the more loss gets to the organisation is general as they are the ones
who lose more than just an employee, they lose the knowledge of the employee, the expertise
and many of the experience of the employee.

However when we come back to the organisations improving profitability. When we refer back
to the case study of how the technology can take the place of humans, to some extent it is true.
As around the world many of the paper work has now been automated and thus the work
environment is becoming much easier and when the organisation choses to use technology
which would be more effective, efficient and less costly then yes they are definitely going to
survive in the business world and to a great extent save the amount they were going to use on
their employees but we cannot disregard that there are times when technology turns things
into a whole new way and sometimes it just does not work at all. So basically in times like these
it makes the company more losses than profit. However, if we consider the current global
pandemic “COVID19” which has done a lot of damage physically, emotionally and just as well as
economically. Businesses around the region are either on the state of closing or have already
closed. So many employees have been laid off from their jobs because the people have no
money and if they have no money how will they contribute to the businesses and the
businesses cannot contribute to employees’ income if they are not getting their income. Day by
day it is getting very hard for businesses to survive and so many businesses and Fiji and the
other pacific island countries have downsized.

Accordingly there are other change strategies that organisations can opt into to survive in such
conditions besides downsizing. Firstly rather than laying off workers, organisations could have
instead reduced their pay. It is through the proper communication whereby the organisation
can negotiate with its employees. Laying off in such bad circumstance where finding another
job is impossible the employees would have rather accepted reduced pay then to be
terminated fully. For instance according to an online news website [ CITATION Ras20 \l 3081 ]
stated that 500 employees of Jacks Fiji will not have any job from mid-May. 500 is deliberately a
very large number and terminating all those employees is just not the right way. Instead the
manager could have structured out a pay cut for them, from their usual rate which would not
have led to the job loss of 500 people all at once in such devastating times.

Secondly, the organisations could look into applying shift works which will keep a flow of
employees and everyone will be working. For instance the “Life Cinema” in Fiji is owned by RB
Patel as they are under the same subsidiary known as Fijian Holdings Limited. Ever since March
17th 2020, all cinemas have been closed in Fiji and so many people have lost their jobs. In an
interview to FBC News the CEO of Damodar Group of Companies, Div Damodar says that he had
to lay off 200 employees who were working for the cinema [ CITATION Far20 \l 3081 ]. While
coming back to RB patel, instead of terminating their Life Cinema staff what RB Patel did was
allow them to work for their supermarket as cashiers and whatever roles they perceived. RB
Patels staff work on shift basis and in a way Rb Patel has saved Jobs for those who lost their
roles due to COVID19.

Thirdly, redeploying workers within the same organisation. As known that the Fijian economy
has already gone down. Terminating workers at such a point in time makes things certainly
worse. The Motibhai Group of Companies director Rajesh Patel said that they will lay off 200 of
their employees who were based on their tourism arm which included the retail operations of
tourism industry at the Nadi International Airport and also at many of the upmarket
resorts[ CITATION Fre20 \l 3081 ]. Due to COVID19 all tourism sectors were affected badly as well,
but when looking at Motibhai, they specialise in so many areas of businesses, rather then laying
off 200 employees they can redeploy them within different areas of their organisation and for
instance if they are not familiar with the work, they can pay them for causal or part time staffs.
In all chances they are going to support the employees as well as make them learn new areas of
the business acquiring more knowledge and skills.
Section B

Essay

Question 1 solution

Organisational Culture and its Elements

Organisational culture is basically how organisations do things within their environment. The
culture is very much consistent which implies that what we do, think or focus on a daily basis.
Organisational culture is a set of shared beliefs and the values that have been placed by the
leaders. The culture is then communicated and applied into prospect through various methods
to shape the perceptions of employees, their behaviours and their understanding. The key to
understand the organisational culture are the elements and the models which are interpreted
differently[ CITATION Suł12 \l 3081 ]. The purpose of this essay is to discuss organisational culture
and the major elements associated with it at different levels of awareness. This essay will also
outline on how the organisational culture is linked to the effectiveness of the organisation.

Organisational culture being known as the beliefs and assumptions, and especially the values
which are interpreted through which interaction in an organisation a takes place. A culture of
an organisation tells a lot about the organisation. The culture defines how people within that
organisation act, behave and do things likely for the sake for the organisation. Organisational
cultures need be bonded quite well together without any lose ends to ensure that the
environment is unique and different. The culture an organisation perceives does a lot of
changes to its performances. For instance a good organisational culture will increase the overall
performance of the overall organisation. A strong culture is very much responsible to be utterly
bringing in benefits which can be enhanced trust and cooperation, less conflicts and effective
decision making[ CITATION SHR18 \l 3081 ].

Accordingly listing the elements of organisational culture. The elements are; values, norms,
cultural patterns, ways to communicate or narrate, organisational controls, the rituals and
symbol and many more all within the organisation. The elements help in fostering the
behaviour at which people are likely to perform in an organisation. The values in the
organisation are directly implying the steps that are used to motivate the behaviour and
responses to emotional situations of the employees. With values the organisation is clearly able
to create a link between the employees and themselves, which helps both parties to deal
situations within the organisation smoothly. Value is more important because it reveals
personal characteristic and the abilities to deal with certain situations.

Communication being the other important element in the area of work. Effective
communication is very vital in any workplace. Since organisations consist of many different
individuals who have different perspectives to most things it is important to ensure that there is
a flow of communication among ach one. There needs to be a proper way to share information
in an organisation. The information should be exchanged effectively so that there are no
confusions later on. When people in an organisation have the ability to communicate
effectively, work around them is much more pleasant and easier with that they also build
strong bonds with people in the organisation as well as out of the organisation.

Rituals and symbols are just as important as values and communication. A regular activity that
an organisation opts into which indicates that they care and value about their people. For
instance the family fun day that is annually organised by big organisations in Fiji like BSP and
TFL and many more. Indicates that the organisation values its workers and are doing a bit for
them. Having activities like these builds a strong bond between other people around you, and
also shows the type of reflective nature people have. These rituals openly place more value and
upscale the organisation on the basis of them valuing other people around them.

All in all, organisational effectives is achieved by the people. When the organisation has the
right culture propelled, anything is possible. The culture plays a vital role in the performance of
employees and enhances their skills and abilities to act and work in an organisation. Meanwhile
when a slack organisation culture can destroy the ability of effectiveness, a strong
organisational culture with all core elements can promote to much more than just
effectiveness. It can promote to some real growth and image of an organisation. Hence, a
strong organisation culture is vital.
References
Anon., 2018. SHRM. [Online]
Available at: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-
samples/toolkits/pages/understandinganddevelopingorganizationalculture.aspx
[Accessed 5 June 2020].

Begum, F., 2020. FBC News. [Online]

Available at: https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/business/close-to-200-cinema-workers-laid-off/
[Accessed 5 June 2020].

Elbourne, F., 2020. Fiji Sun. [Online]

Available at: https://fijisun.com.fj/2020/05/15/motibhai-to-lay-off-260-employees/
[Accessed 5 June 2020].

Kumar, R., 2020. Fiji Village. [Online]

Available at: https://www.fijivillage.com/news/500-employees-of-Jacks-Fiji-to-have-no-jobs-from-mid-
next-month-xfr548/
[Accessed 5 June 2020].

Sułkowski, Ł., 2012. Elements of Organizational Culture – theoretical and methodological problems.
Management, 16(2).