A telecommunication firm is facing difficulties
in the financial year 2002-2003 and I am the line manager
of the software development group in this company. Chapter
4, in the book "Essentials of Organizational Behavior"
by Stephen P. Robbins states that motivation theories are
culture-bound (Page 53), hence to give this paper and the
situation described in the question a different perspective
I am going to set this telecommunications company named BPL
Mobile in India and I am going to take into account the cultural
factors affecting motivation and productivity and explain
them in this paper.
My software development group has 15 employees working under
me and we lost 3 employees due to lay offs. We supply software
and training to about 25 stores in Bombay, India and those
are specialty stores supplying only BPL cellular phone handsets
and call plans (contract and prepaid) to the customers. Overall
BPL Mobile is one of the major cellular phone companies in
India, its main competitors being Orange (the British Telecommunications
giant). In India Orange and BPL Mobile have a fair and equal
share in the market of about 30% each and the rest belongs
to the smaller companies. As chapter 2 describes the framework
for assessing cultures, I would apply the following characteristics
to Indian employees and customers (Page 18). The power distance
in India is largely unequal, there exists an equal blend of
individualism and collectivism, it is the quantity in life
that has more importance and that is because India is a poor
country, as far as uncertainty avoidance is concerned they
prefer structured situations and finally people are long term
oriented. Hopefully this gives you an idea of the corporate
life in India. I will now go on to explain how I will handle
the situation described in the question.
There are many people fighting for jobs in India but since
I have collected a good team, which is now demoralized, it
is my job to motivate them to perform better. According to
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory (Page 43) the need
for physiological needs will be primary but in the work environment
safety and security needs will be of growing concern. The
reason for this is that, since there is a vast population
of qualified people waiting to be hired, people who have jobs
are under pressure to maintain them. In such a situation,
knowing that I have a qualified and valuable team with me,
I would not like to hire different people and train them.
For the same reason I would as a manager like to adopt Douglas
McGregor's Theory Y and the assumptions entailed within it
(Page 45) to apply to my workforce. Knowing that my people
value their jobs, I would try and assure that they feel they
are valuable to the company and to me. That I would do by
periodically and critically reviewing their performance and
getting feedback through them about the direction the company
is taking. Talking with my team as a group and individually
will ensure that I know what they expect and can reassure
them of their place in the company. The Expectancy theory
validates this point by stating "the strength of a tendency
to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation
that the act will be followed by a given outcome and on the
attractiveness of that outcome to the individual" (Page
52).
Knowing what Frederick Herzberg says of the two-factor theory
that "an individual's relation to work is basic and that
one's attitude towards work can very well determine success
or failure" (Page 45). The attitude of my workforce is
what I as a manger have to maintain. To do so I would try
and keep the optimism factor alive in the workforce and within
myself.I would try and present examples of companies
in trouble and maintain that the work environment today calls
for meeting such challenges with a positive attitude and that
can make a difference between success and failure. It is important
that a two way communication channel is left open all the
time for me as a manager to be considered approachable by
my team. Since power distance is largely unequal in India
I would try and do things in a different way by reducing the
gap between employees and their superiors. I believe that
such communication can be useful to motivate the employees
to stay with the company.
Goals, I believe are important guidelines to good performances.
I will apply the goal setting theory because I would like
my team to project themselves out of the box to fulfill these
goals. Knowing that goals will set boundaries for my team
I would like to set difficult goals that are determined with
the help of my team. The knowledge that the team has participated
in the goal setting process would enable the team members
to think of the goals as personal achievements and that should
motivate them to fulfill the goals even if they are hard to
achieve (Page 49). The Reinforcement theory states "people
will exert more effort on tasks that are reinforced than on
tasks that are not" (Page 50). Applying this theory would
ensure that people will be wary of the consequences of their
actions. Adequately I will appreciate good performances and
evaluate and redesign poor performances. Threatening people
or demoralizing people will not help in the given situation.
I will stress on the fact that I believe that communication
is the strength with which I would like my team to operate.
Of course I would make sure that respect and boundaries are
enforced to this communication but having this communication
will help my team value and enjoy a place within the organization.
Management by Objectives (MBO) is another way of empowering
my team and encouraging their participation. MBO is a method
with which you can measure and evaluate the performance which
broken down by objectives. Each person can get a defined goal
and because three members have been laid off from my team,
I do see a need for redefining goals. Decision-making and
feedback on performance encourage participation and a feeling
of involvement and that can motivate my team to perform better.
Implementation of OB Mod will also ensure that the team constantly
improvises.
As far as employee recognition is concerned, I believe that
it is extremely vital that employees are appreciated for their
good work. Such encouragement can do wonders for the morale
of the employees and can persuade them to perform better and
tackle more complicated matters. Since the company is not
doing so great employee stock ownership plans are not going
to provide too much incentive. Any kind of participation may
it be representative participation, board participation or
participative management will be encouraged (Page 62-62).
In fact I would encourage my team to further break down into
sub teams to perform various tasks. Doing so will encourage
leadership and instill confidence in the minds of my team
members. Since my team forms a department I would implement
gain sharing to encourage productivity. Being a service company
piece-rate pay plans and profit sharing plans are not likely
to work as well as gain sharing.
Since all technical training has been postponed till the end
of the first quarter of 2003, I would encourage self-learning
and reward people who take the initiative to do so, either
monetarily or by verbal appreciation. Skill based pay can
help the team members to keep up to date on the technical
aspects of the job without formal technical training.
The business customers are to be attracted by reducing prices
and hence the layoffs have taken place. I will try and maintain
that superior customer service is what can differentiate BPL
Mobile from Orange, both being similar companies. So I would
stress to my team, the importance of customer service in order
to succeed. I would ask my team members to maintain their
business contacts and provide them with the optimum quality
of customer service; I would reward long existing contacts
and newly established contacts. Since prices for business
customers are to be reduced I will prepare my team for a larger
client base and prepare them to capture a segment of the market
from the competitors since BPL Mobile will now have the core
competency of cost leadership.
Since the top software engineers and designers have threatened
to quit I will ensure that they get involved in a management
type of role besides being technical. This would make them
far more involved in their jobs and reduce the chances of
them quitting. Besides since we discussed that expectations
are the driving force behind employee performance, I will
try and find out what the employees expect and try and make
provisions for the same.
Hence in this manner we see that a demoralized team can be
motivated and can be made productive. The key to all this
is communication, feeling inter-dependence on each other and
leading the team to be a winning combination so that working
in the team and as an individual for the organization becomes
attractive for the employees and they can perform to the best
of their abilities, with me as a leader, being able to extract
the best from them.
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