a. According to leadership/management research the following practices, one could say with a better than chance of success, should be continued:
1. Value and behavior of maintaining harmony.
2. Long-term employer-employee relationships.
3. Value of creating an intimate workgroup.
4. Knowing the need for face, cooperation and group welfare.
5. Management philosophy based on loyalty (trust), collectivism, and high tolerance for ambiguity.
6. Familiarity with local culture and established guanxi networks
7. Remain and concentrate on being good regional players
New behaviors:
8. Investment in human resources
9. Creating motivating empowered work cultures that stimulate innovation which will probably take another generation.
10. Consolidations, mergers, takeovers to increase economies of scale.
11. Fast use of Chinese manager skill of networking to do so with multinational companies and the making of business deals with them.
12. Use of universal principles for ethical decision-making.
b. According to leadership/management research the following practices, one could say with a better than chance of success, shouldbe adjusted or not continued:
1. Nepotism
2. Scant reliance on universal laws and principles
3. Too much reliance on seniority/age to designate senior people who have status, authority/power.
4. Benevolent Authortarian/Authortarian Styles of Leadership (System 2 and 1 of Likert's Styles).
5. Rigid hierarchies with centralized decision-making leading to the lack of empowered-employees.
7. Small size
8. Simple Structure
9. Unwillingness to hire skilled labor from outside the family
10. Lack of investment in human resources leading to non-motivating work cultures
11. Lack of consolidations, mergers, takeovers to create economies of scale.
12. Slow Networking.
13. Lack of enough investment in advanced technology and processes
2. After graduation you join an organization in an Asian country. The company values collectivism and is organized into teams, most of which are self-managing. The leader of the organization makes a speech at an all-team member meeting in which he claims that being unnecessarily absent from work or unnecessarily late for work is an immoral and unethical act. During your college class in “Business management in Asian Countries” you remember spending a considerable amount of time discussing a minimum definition of business ethics, barriers to ethical thinking, and basic principles of ethics as well as their application to Asian countries. What do you think of your company’ leaders statement? On what basis can he say that being absent or late, when it is not due to an emergency is unethical and immoral.
First of all what do we know about this organization and what assumptions may we make?
Since this Asian organization values collectivism it probably places importance on loyalty to the group, working closely as a group and making decisions as a group.
The company is "organized into teams" meaning that the team members are mutually accountable to each other for team performance. The team's performance is probably measured and rewarded on some type of team basis (i.e., team component of compensation), meaning that if the team does not do well then the individual members are not rewarded as well.
Unnecessary lateness or absence means that it could have been avoided. The absence was not due to sickness or inability to get to work, etc. It was not due to their not being some mechanism, such as taking a personal day, for an planned absence for which the team could made necessary adjustments.
You know from your course that a minimum definition of Ethics is that the ethical decision must be reasonable to other persons and impartial in that it takes other peoples interest into account and not just one's own interests.
You also know that psychological and ethical egoism in which we basically decide for ourselves what is ethical without thinking of other people are not real ethical thinking but are barriers to ethical thinking. The case does not say that many people are absent which might make us consider another barrier to ethical thinking "moral or cultural relativism." Probably the opposite is true as it is a team organization structure.
You also know that "Universalism" and Kant's Categorical Imperative" state that one should act as if you would have any other person on earth act and that the way we do things and not just the end result is important. Since the way of doing things would be to have an unnecessary and unplanned absence which would negatively affect your team's performance and its team rewards thereby hurting every member of your team...you understand why the leader calls an unnecessary absence from a team organization an unethical and immoral act! In that the organization is also in Asia whose people value collectivism which goes along with the organization's structure behavior such as being absent from the team might be considered against society's values as well as the organizations.
a. What do we about her from the case:
"Pornthip Sompong was confused" by organizational behavior in her company.
a. Personality Traits From The Big Five Model:
1. Surgency or Dominant personality
2. Not Agreeable in terms of getting along with other people. From the following statement we might conclude that she is low on the Agreeableness trait having to do with getting along with people.
At first some of the department managers and first-line supervisors spoke up but she rejected their claims that the employees felt well treated, "
3. Nothing to indicate she is not Stable so we can say she is Stable.
4. Conscientious because she is extremely interested in achievement for herself and her company.
5. She seems to also have Openness to experience because she has changed thing from how her father ran the company.
Derailed Traits:
From how the case reads we might assume that she has some of the traits of derailed executives:
1. Bullying style viewed as intimidating, insensitive and abrasive
2. Cold, aloof, arrogant.
3. Betraying personal trust.
4. self-centered and viewed as overly ambitious.
5. having specific performance problems with the business and
6. over managing and are unable to build a team.
Others that are Traits of Effective Leaders:
High Energy, Internal Locus of Control,
Low Flexibility
Low Integrity
High Self-confidence
Intelligence
Insensitivity to others.
a. Ideas about Motivation:
She does not believe in the 2 Factor Theory that Money and Working Conditions can create dissatisfaction if not at acceptable levels.
She seems to believe that employees are not motivated to do a fair day's work unless watched (i.e., Theory X) so she does not believe in Intrinsic motivators of the 2 factor theory, nor does she believe in Expectancy theory.
She does believe in Goal Setting Theory as she has created new performance quotas.
She does not seem to believe in the importance of Equity Theory.
She does not believe in positive reinforcement from Reinforcement Theory either.
Attitudes: Theory X, Believes in Numbers
Theories of Leadership
Behavioral Theories: Michigan: Job Centered, Ohio State: Initiating Structure,
Leadership Grid: Authority-Compliance Leader
System 1 Autocratic or System 2 Benevolent Autocratic
Leadership Continuum Theory: Style 1 Leader makes decisions and announces it to followers.
b. What should she change:
Personality:
Agreeableness
Also stop traits of derailed leaders #1-6 above and work on doing the opposite such as:
being sensitive to others
being warm to others
being respectful and diplomatic with others
build a team
build trust
only use managerial actions and behavior when appropriate.
Motivation
Try to become more Theory Y
Adopt and implement the 2 Factor Theory to improve the hygiene or extrinsic factors as well as the motivators.
Accept Reinforcement Theory.
Pay attention to Equity Theory
Understand and implement policies that go along with Expectancy Theory to give employees the rewards they expect and value.
Increase her Need for Affiliation and respect employees need for Affiliation.
Leadership
Many of the theories will help her.
She seems to fit the profile of the Chinese business leader who values hierarchy and tends to be authoritarian so she should use styles that are more in line with giving employees greater involvement in decision making.
Fiedler's Theory might tell her to change her style of management to Relationship as she has Situation 5 of having poor relations with followers, a repetitive task, and strong leader position power.
System 4 might tell her to be more participative with decision making
She should be more Initiating Structure or Employee Centered.