Are You Changing Your Work-Space?

July 15, 2010 Leave a comment

Listen to this postMany companies had redesigned their office space from the traditional set up which have rooms designated for one or two office workers to cubicles or open space design. Some cultures would accept the new set up but others would like to  maintain their privacy in the office. According to Jones (2007), the main purpose of the organizational structure is “to control the way people coordinate their actions to meet organizational goals and to control the means used to motivate people to achieve these goals” (p. 7). The workspace is defined as an organizational resource and is designed to advance the organizational goals (Vaske & Donnelly, 1999). The marketplace especially the international market is influenced and segmented by religion (Wenger, 2004).

Organizations would attract workers who conform with the dominant religion in the organization and in the environment, employees with different religions may face glass ceiling and bear stereotype effect during promotions and salary increase. Wenger (2004) relates religious marketplace theory to the failure of communism to replace religion in China. Religion may have a positive effect from the point view of some (having the same religion) or seen as a hurdle by others. Many companies in the Middle East region are changing their work place set up to cubical or open-space set up similar the Western office layout. The new theories may support the open-space layout and “barrier removal” to enable workers to interact openly but not all agree. New researchers have found that such optimism does not continue when workers find that they lose privacy and independence with it (Chan, Beckman, & Lawrence, 2007). Another research found employees’ satisfaction decreased after they moved from the traditional office layout to the open-space layout (Chan, Beckman, & Lawrence, 2007).

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References:

Chan, J. K., Beckman, S. L., & Lawrence, P. G. (2007). Workplace design: A new managerial imperative. California Management Review, 49(2), 6-22.

Jones, G. (2007). Organizational theory, design, and change (5 ed.). New York: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Vaske, J. J., & Donnelly, M. P. (1999). A value-attitude-behavior model predicting wildland preservations voting intentions. Society & Natural Resources, 12(6), 523.

Wenger, J. E. (2004). Official vs. underground protestant churches in China: Challenges for reconciliation and social influence. Review of Religious Research, 46(2), 169-182.

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Cultural Differences in Business

July 14, 2010 3 Comments

Listen to this postCultural differences are considered as one of the main reasons for work stress and management conflicts during business relationship development in the U.S and China (Li, 2009). Chinese avoid confrontation especially when the conflict is with someone who holds authorities. The Chinese believe that direct approach with the boss will ruin their relationship with him (Johnston & Hongmei, 2009). Cultural diversity has two dimensions, the first consists of age, ethnicity, gender, race and sexual affection orientation which molds the workers self-image and fundamental worldview. The second dimension manipulates the workers self-esteem and definition because it consists of “educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, religious belief” (Edewor & Aluko, 2007, p. 190). The cultural diversity would strengthen the differences between two countries. Globalization help advancing business growth and taping economical resources but cultural differences would limit theses business opportunities. Pinggong (2009) stress the importance of not isolating one culture from the other but to try to relate the cultural experiences and integrate them to have a harmonious organizational culture.

The Islamic culture stress the importance of bonding and team work. Similar to the Chinese culture, the Islamic culture would demand respect and obedience to the superiors and leaders. Most of the Arabic cultures (mostly Muslims) are build on the fundamental of electing an Amire (leader) and then follow the leader whom the community had selected.
Reference:
Edewor, P. A., & Aluko, Y. A. (2007). Diversity management, challenges and opportunities in multicultural organizations. [Article]. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities & Nations, 6(6), 189-195.

Johnston, L. M., & Hongmei, G. (2009). Resolving conflict in the chinese and U.S. realms for global business entities. (English). [Article]. China Media Report Overseas, 5(4), 22-36.

Li, C. (2009). Managing business relationship development: A cross-cultural perspective. Portuguese Journal of Management Studies, 14(2), 123-147.

Pinggong, Z. (2009). Rethinking the impact of globalization and cultural identity in China. [Article]. China Media Research, 5(2), 25-34


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Forming And Growing A Team

July 10, 2010 4 Comments

I was asked to give a one hour presentation for non-profit society, but the suggested time for the presentation was conflicting with my schedule. So I went for the next best thing which was video recording the lecture and then presenting it for the audience at their convenience. The lecture language was Arabic as requested by the audience. The video give brief history of team formation as introduction then describe the “forming, storming, norming and performing” steps of the team life cycle. The video is 22 minutes long and I assure you that it will not be boring.  Enjoy!

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Maintain Longterm International Relationship

June 21, 2010 Leave a comment

Listen to this postBusiness should target long term  strategies to grow up the profit gradually while maintaining healthy profit and satisfying the stakeholders. Business should use the corporate social responsibility model to serve the community by meeting the national and international obligation and the ethical standards. Self regulation would be a good tool to meet the internal ethical standards and the local ethical responsibilities. The ethical issues and the ideas of being right or wrong are governed by the religious, cultural or professional value base believes as stated by O’Donohue and Nelson (2009). Around the world, organizations may set rouls and regulations to cover ethical issues but the individuals behavior and his background would limit his or her ethical behavior.

Grotenhuis (2009) state that 50% and up to 80% of the mergers and acquisitions fail to make the expected benefits. The main reasons for the failure is weak research of the target company and its context, unfocused strategic issues on the intended merger and acquisitions and finally the leadership and cultural issuers that lead to cultural clashes and fatal misunderstanding (Grotenhuis, 2009). Cultural differences should be studied in earlier stages of the merger or acquisition to expect the problematic areas and sort them out before they develop to culture clash that slow bonding of the two organizations. In a merger between Dutch and Japanese organization the Japanese felt that the Europeans are “person-oriented” that look for short-term profit while the Japanese are more group-oriented and always explore and target the long-term profit (Grotenhuis, 2009).

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References:

Grotenhuis, F. D. J. (2009). Mergers and acquisitions in Japan: Lessons from a Dutch-Japanese case study. [Article]. Global Business & Organizational Excellence, 28(3), 45-54. doi: 10.1002/joe.20258

O’Donohue, W., & Nelson, L. (2009). The Role of Ethical Values in an Expanded Psychological Contract. [Article]. Journal of Business Ethics, 90(2), 251-263. doi: 10.1007/s10551-009-0040-1

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Example of An International Expansion Strategy

June 12, 2010 1 Comment

Listen to this postThe color TV market boomed after the introduction of color TV in the late 1979. China opened for commercial production and the electronics manufacturing moved steadily to China up to the 1990s because of the cheap labor cost. Growth in the TV market in the past 10 years was dominated by the flat screen TV. TCL is an emerging Chinese company which bought Thomson television business and Alcatel Mobil phones in line with its main business of multimedia , communications, home appliances and electronics. This accusations moved TCL from being the 60th in the 1995 to be the number one brand in China now. TCL vision is to strengthening their foundation by reforming their basics and continuously innovating . Acquiring the Thomson television and Alcatel Mobil brings in a proven and successful technology to TCL and widen the ambitions goal of the “top 10 in 10 year” globalization vision (“Vision”, 2007-2008).

Innovations is a strong part of TCL business and part of the organization vision. TCL set up the first Research and Development (R&D) center for audio research in 1992. Currently, TCL has 18 R&D centers with 20 manufacturing bases around the world. TCL operated as separate business units in 2004. Some of the business units are multimedia, telecommunications, personal computers, consumer electronics and CD/DV distribution. Multimedia and mobile handsets generated most of TCL’s revenues at the same period. Supply chain management is a key success factor for TCL, which employed 80 people for sourcing and quality management. TCL made substantial profit because of its efficient supply chain management while its competitors lost money although all of them are sourcing their material from china (C. Bartlett, Ghoshal, & Beamish, 2008). The perfect supply chain enabled TCL to integrate its businesses and R&D centers together to move faster than its competitors in selecting the promising innovations and convert them into competitive product distributed around the world (C. Bartlett, et al., 2008).

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References:

(“Vision”, 2007-2008). Vision  Retrieved Jun 10, 2010, from http://www.tcl.com/main_en/About%20TCL/Vision/index.shtml?catalogId=13047

Bartlett, C., Ghoshal, S., & Beamish, P. (2008). Transnational management: Text, cases, and readings in cross-border management (5 ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

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Safety Culture Prevents Accidents

May 24, 2010 1 Comment

Listen to this postFriend (2000) suggest setting up key performance indicators to check the safety culture and act on deviations from these performance indicators. Periodic review is suggested to confirm the validity of the key performance indicators and culture development. Reid (2008) highlights three steps to build up a safety culture. First, team’s errors, intentional or unintentional, are unacceptable and should be dealt with to either mitigate or end them. Second, acknowledge human factors in the care delivery. Third, set permanent quality improvement in the medical teams and leaders. Hard work is required to prove that such problem does exist at the work place. The problem might be intangible like potential for loss which can be prevented by an insurance policy. Management support and commitment is required to build safety culture. Management can support the culture by endorsing written safety documents like safety manual, safety policy, rules and regulation. Management should support a carrot and stick system to reward good safety behaviors and denounce unsafe behaviors.

Intangible items like shared values, beliefs and perceptions set safety culture in the work site. Management will focus on selected intangible elements of the culture according to the job nature. Deviations will not be accepted in these selected elements. Management should improve safety attitude and constantly assess the safety related issues to build a solid safety culture. Set up standard operating procedure and proactively manage assets. Assess each incident and share the learned lessons with employees. Encourage employees to document incidents regardless of their size or effect on the workplace. Analyze each incident and set a remedy to prevent its reoccurrence.

One of the important management responsibilities is to balance between safety and the incident cost reduction. Management should elevate safety awareness as part of their support to safety culture. Train employees, new and veteran, on safety related issues and encourage them to report incidents. Employ safety personal make them report to the highest management levels possible.

References:

Enhance safety culture in your manufacturing sites. (Oct 2007). Hydrocarbon Processing, p.NA. Retrieved October 19, 2008, from Gale PowerSearch database.

Friend, M. (2000). Establishing a safety culture: getting started. Professional Safety, 45(5), 30. Retrieved October 18, 2008, from the EBSCOhost database.

Reid, J. (2008). Building a safety culture. The Journal of Perioperative Practice, 18(4), 134.  Retrieved October 19, 2008, from ProQuest database.

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Loosely-Coupled Organization

May 22, 2010 1 Comment

Listen to this postCentralization was the best managerial method long time ago, but still some organizations are happy with this kind of set up. Recently, most organizations are transforming from centralized organization going through a multi-divisional set up to reach a loosely-coupled network form (Scott, 2003). Disagreement and conflict more likely to develop within the differentiated and loosely-coupled organization. the disagreement would take place when the part of the loosely-coupled organization act alone away form the organizations strategic objectives.  The good part of being a loosely coupled organization is the ease and the flexibility to be more effective and efficient because the organization can quickly matches the environment it works in (Scott, 2003).  The environment does not influence the decentralization level of information services but influence the structure of information services across the organization (Olson & Chervany, 1980). Tightly-coupled organizations should be centralized to keep up the link between the managers and the performers. The performers can pre-plan the captivity if the task was well understood prior to performing otherwise more knowledge will be needed that may change the resource allocation (Galbraith, 1974).

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References:

Galbraith, J. (1974, May). Organization design: an information processing view. Interfaces,4(3), 28-36. Retrieved April 26, 2009, from Business Source Complete database.

Olson, M., & Chervany, N. (1980). The relationship between organizational characteristics and the structure of the information services function. Mis Quarterly, 4(2), 57-68.

Scott, W. (2003). Organizations: rational, natural, and open systems (5th ed.). New York: Prentice-Hall.

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Multinational Organizations Role in Human Rights

May 13, 2010 2 Comments

Listen to this postI witnessed a heated discussion over the human rights and one of the discussion points was around the question “Should multinational organizations work in countries that are accused of human rights violations?”

Multinational organizations may work in countries that are accused of human rights violation. The organization should not intentionally violate human rights or encourage it. However, the organization should help the local community by paying them a fair wage to the amount of work done by the labor. Lam (2009) surveyed Chinese executives working for American multinational organizations in China and the executives felt that “Corporate Social Program” are human resources department job. The Chinese executives did not see their ethical responsibility or feel the obligation toward the society because their functional strategies did not incorporate social responsibilities (Lam, 2009). Multinational organizations, similar to domestic  organizations, are influenced by three conflicting needs, the organization, the industry and the society (Labbai, 2007). The ethical conflict between personal ethics and the organization would have strong effect on the organization operations in the international market (Labbai, 2007). The executives’ and the line managers’ ethical responsibilities would be the deciding factor for the multinational organization to behave ethically in countries that violate human rights.
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References:

Labbai, M. (2007). Social Responsibility and Ethics in Marketing. Paper presented at the International Marketing Conference on Marketing & Society, 8-10 April, 2007, IIMK.

Lam, M. (2009). Beyond Credibility of Doing Business in China: Strategies for Improving Corporate Citizenship of Foreign Multinational Enterprises in China. [Article]. Journal of Business Ethics, 87, 137-146. doi: 10.1007/s10551-008-9803-3

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Mediating the Negotiation … Ouch!

May 11, 2010 4 Comments

Listen to this postThe negotiating parties might not have a conflict of interest but the emotional involvement and the negotiators’ ego may cause the conflict (Noll, 2009). The mediator will face a challenge to control the personal differences during the negotiation because some of the reasons for the conflict is the readiness to meet and discuss. The mediator’s job is to listen to both sided of the discussion. Noll (2009) state that “many disputes end up in litigation because someone feels that he or she has not been heard.” (p. 45). The mediator should use his authority as a mediator to stop the repeated interruption and give equal and fair chance for both sides to state their views. The mediator might offer encouragements or threaten to take away benefits to help steer the negotiation in the right direction (Favretto, 2009).

The mediator has to be neutral with good negotiation leadership to be able to end the discussion. Mediation as stated by Fridl (2009) is a form of intervention to resolve  a conflict by negotiating an acceptable settlement. The definition of “acceptable” would vary from one person to another. The mediator should lead the negotiation by his or her communication skills to reach a compromising solution (Fridl, 2009) that both parties could not reach by themselves. Fridl (2009) state that the negotiation would not reach an acceptable solution for three main reasons. First reason would be the readiness of the negotiating parties to accept a compromise. Sometimes the parties would not compromise their demands because they feel that what they have asked for is their right to have and the other party should compromise.  The second reason would be the mediator’s failure to lead the negotiation toward a compromising solution. The third reason would be the benefactors readiness to seek out a constructive alternatives. The benefactors could be the shareholders or board of directors of the negotiating parties.
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References:

Favretto, K. (2009). Should peacemakers take sides? Major power mediation, coercion, and bias. [Article]. American Political Science Review, 103(2), 248-263.

Fridl, D. D. (2009). Kosovo negotiations: Re-visiting the role of mediation. [Article]. International Negotiation, 14(1), 71-93. doi: 10.1163/157180609×406526

Noll, D. E. (2009). The myth of the mediator as settlement broker. [Article]. Dispute Resolution Journal, 64(2), 42-48.

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Should Organizations Operate Internationally?

May 1, 2010 5 Comments

Listen to this postOrganizations should work internationally because they would probably transfer their culture and best practices to the countries where they chose to work in. Transferring the knowledge to subsidiaries and international branches would help the multinational organization to save time and effort in communications and production (Mostyn, 2004). The standardization in the business processes would ensure consistency in the production and its quality, however, robust processes are needed to reach this level of alignment (Mostyn, 2004). Collective knowledge creation, trust-base collaborations and the multinational organization’s willingness to collaborate is the success reason to knowledge sharing and best practice implementation (Miesing, Kriger, & Slough, 2007). Multinational organizations might not be obligated to transfer their knowledge and best practices without the local government enforcement, but the organizational ethical commitment and the benefits resulted from it would help the organization to be ethical and supportive to the local community.
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References:

Miesing, P., Kriger, M. P., & Slough, N. (2007). Towards a model of effective knowledge transfer within transnationals: The case of Chinese foreign invested enterprises. Journal of Technology Transfer, 32(1-2), 109-122. doi: http://www.springerlink.com/link.asp?id=104998

Mostyn, A. (2004). The rise of global awareness. [Article]. Strategic Communication Management, 9(1), 5-5.

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