David Tinsley
CMGT500-A
Week 2-Application Assignment
Academic Article Review
This week’s reading on organizational structures dealt with many concepts involving the changing landscape of organizations. One of the more interesting and thought-provoking concepts was organizations as open systems. According to Morgan (1998) we should view organizations as “an organism seeking to adapt and survive in a changing environment.”
The 21st Century has brought significant and rapid change to many organizations, and to the employees who make them up. “Survival of the fitting” (Morgan, 1998) has certainly become a challenge to people as they seek to fit themselves into what has turned into a new and strange environment. Based on Morgan’s theories, the writer has decided to take a look at how the environmental and societal changes have affected the employee and the organization.
Schein (1996) revisited some of his research originally completed “in the mid-1970’s pertaining to career anchors and self-concepts again in the 1980’s” (Schein, 1996). Schein found that since his earlier investigations, there had been a shift in and an addition to categories that “reflected basic values, motives and needs” or “anchor categories” (Schein, 1996). His original findings included the “categories of 1) Autonomy and independence; 2) Security/stability; 3) Technical-functional competence; 4) General Managerial Competencies; and 5) Entrepreneurial Creativity (Schein, 1996). His subsequent studies with “a wider range of occupations revealed three additional anchor categories; 6) Service of Dedication to a Cause; 7) Pure Challenge; and 8) Lifestyle” (Schein, 1996).
It is interesting to see these three additional categories and to think about what they mean. Once can deduce that these new categories represent a new priority system that has evolved in society. People’s value systems have become more personal, perhaps deeper, as the organizations they work for have changed their priorities as far as employee value and loyalty. While these may be “career anchors” as Schein has stated (1996), they could also be viewed as personal values anchors. Society seems to have moved toward a focus on self, personal satisfaction and fulfillment.
Schein proposes that organizations will have to change their ways of thinking as well due to their ever-changing competitive and organizational environments (Schein, 1996). “Hiring and development will depend more on competency profiles built from work history” (Schein, 1996) “The competency profile rests not only on actual skill competency, but on a person’s ability to quickly adapt to the environment, the information they receive from it, and to make decisions based on that information” (Schein, 1996).
Because of the rapidly changing world, and as social values shift priorities, “it will become more difficult for companies to tell what a given job should consist of and how one should hire and train people” (Schein, 1996). It’s apparent from the readings and the article that those people who are not afraid of change and challenge will, most likely, succeed.
The writer believes Schein’s concepts of changes or shifts in both employee motivation and values and the needs of today’s corporations are all a indicative of that “organism seeking to adapt and survive in a changing environment” (Morgan, 1998). That, indeed, both organizations and the people that work in them are constantly changing to face the challenges of the times.
References
Morgan, G. (1998). Images of organizations: executive edition (pp. 35-68). Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Schein, E. (1996). Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21st century. The Academy of Management Executive, (10)(4), 80-88.
David, it seems Schein's (1996) piece reflected many of the same ideas that were present in this week's reading. Because employees are changing their career anchors, do you think other parts of an organization need to change as well? Using the Star Model, how could organizations maintain policy alignment in the face of this change? Because you say society seems to focus on self satisfaction and fulfillment, do you think leadership styles and rewards need to change?
ReplyDeleteCourtney,
ReplyDeleteSchein absolutely reflected many of the concepts we read about this week. It was actually through some research I was doing on the Morgan reading that I found the Schein publication.
Companies definitely must adapt the organizational structure to the addition of new career anchors, and the shifting of the anchors Schein discovered in his research in the 1970's and 1980's. If we follow both Schein's and Morgan's theories, organizations have to reshape themselves to be able to, at the very basic level, hold on to and bring in qualified employees. If corporations are unwilling to change, they will lose their talent pools to companies that ARE willing to adapt to the current environmental and social norms or expectations that are outlined in the Schein's anchors. Another result is those companies that are not willing to become "changeable structures," or "reconfigurable," as Morgan called them, will not be able to compete in the marketplace. Their adaptive competitors will rob them of talent, product innovation and superiority.
As far as your question regarding the Star Model, Galbraith (who I did not know was on the faculty at USC) presented a very workable example of a "reconfigurable, but aligned Star Model," that would appear to be a good way to keep policy aligned to a great extent. Strategy would have to be adjusted some to fit the more focused, corporate and individual social changes. Flexibility is a must in the areas of People, Structure, Rewards and Processes. One of the common themes in each of those areas in Galbraith's example is "cross-unit." The key here is the integration concept. Going back to Schein's discussion of career anchors, I think that working in a more cross-unit, collaborative structure would help meet the changing needs of employees who are not afraid to learn and change. Therefore they will be more challenged in their work lives.
As I mentioned before, rewards must be part of the change process. Personal satisfaction is derived so much more dynamically than in the past, and if you take Shein's career anchors in a composite way of thinking, all of the anchors have moved to a more self-centric, self-satisfaction focus. If the rewards are not geared to the ways that people perceive personal satisfaction, they will leave for a company that is more progressive in their rewards system. As far as the leadership styles changing, I think that is going to be the most challenging area in which to make meaningful changes. In today's environment, managerial roles have to be so much more fluid and those roles (the people) have to be equipped to work across functional areas. That idea goes against the traditional, more vertical structure that many senior managers, especially, have been trained to handle. I saw this happen in the last company I worked for. From my perspective, the lack of training, or the unwillingness to accept a more lateral, cross-functional system was responsible for a disproportionate amount of friction and job dissatisfaction, especially in middle management. From that personal experience, it appeared the middle managers (who were younger, perhaps more progressive) were willing to adapt, while their senior managers above them were very resistant. This made for an unhappy corporate and social environment.