Individual and Organizational Factors †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Individual and Organizational Factors. Answer: Introduction The universal agreement that is in place regarding organizational culture is that it exists and that is has a role to play in shaping the behavior in organizations. However, there exists a lack of consensus as to what exactly organizational culture is, leave alone the influence it has on behavior and whether it is in the hands of the leaders to be changed. What is known about organizational culture is that it is the way organizations are doing things. Culture is something consistent and observable as patterns in the behaviors inside an organization. Culture is largely a product of compensation and is powerfully shaped with the help of incentives (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). Organizational culture is what is used for describing a jointly shared definition of any organization from its inside. It is a process of making sense inside an organization, the summation of the values and practices that are serving as a kind of glue for the integration of the members of the organization. In short, organizational culture can also be called as a civilization in the workplace, working as a form of a social control system or its immune system, protecting it from all kinds of wrong thinking and wrong people (Alvesson 2016). In this particular study, the discussion would be focusing on specifically the organizational culture in Accenture and what impact the elements of organizational culture have on it. Two areas of organizational culture would be focused on - management and leadership, and conflict and negotiation. Critical Discussion and Application What we know about Accenture is that it is a global leader that is known for offering innovative leadership solutions which are already allied with business strategy and which allows new mindsets along with new behaviors amongst the leaders, spread across all the applicable levels of the organization. They are even known for maintaining a persistent concentration on driving quantifiable advancements in the performance of the people and the whole organization. Accenture even has a confirmed track record of successfully transporting these benefits, permitted by their international level substructure and wide ranged resources that include technology platform for leadership (Accenture.com 2017). The distinctive capabilities that they have are: Global experience: Accenture has experience in working with organizations of all sizes, which includes a majority of the Fortune Global 100 and extends to more than three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500 (Accenture.com 2017). Concentration on outcomes: Accenture is known for delivering measurable advancements in their business performances. They are committed to distinctive results and they deliver. They are even extremely dedicated to customer satisfaction and strong customer relationships. Validated leadership assessment: Accenture is offering a wide extent of authenticated and action-oriented 360 leadership assessment tools for facilitating evaluation of the leaders against necessary capabilities and developing proper leadership behaviors with the help of focused one-to-one and team coaching. Wide ranged industry and customer experience: Accenture provides their clients with a wealth of both cross-industry and customer involvement in leadership development. They even draw on their network of international experts for input and for authentication of their references and outputs. Commitment towards innovation and proprietary research: the leadership approach in Accenture is built over more than two decades of exclusive and differentiated researchthat is concentrated on the critical levers that are making an important impact on leadership efficiency. Their practitioners work carefully with their researchers, along with leading universities and external research organizations. This work of theirs helps generate practical insights that are helpful in making their solutions deliver on time assistance regarding issues with their clients, along with challenges that are just appearing (Accenture.com 2017). Characteristic approaches towards learning and development: Accenture is known as a leader in the domain of enterprise learning and they are harnessing their resources for creating a varied, action-learning based experience. Impact of Leadership on Accentures Organizational Culture In terms of leadership, the culture of any organization gets created by means of four distinctive methods: Actions and behaviors were shown by leaders Attention paid by leaders What is rewarded and what is punished Allocation and emphasis on resources (Fullan 2014) Leadership is all about coping with changes, working as an ability to influence and motivating others for achieving a certain goal in an effective manner. It is necessary that every organization gets a leader for committing to any challenge, for fostering followers and for being a powerful influence for them to be translating that into productivity by sharing a specific vision of future (Bryman 2013). Exemplary leaders practice challenging the procedure, spurring any shared vision, modeling the way, encouraging the heart and enabling others for acting. Focusing on leadership types, transformational leadership lies on true honesty and trust, whereas transactional leadership asks for quality evaluation. It has been widely speculated that leadership is associated with organizational performance (Northouse 2015). Inside Accenture, organizational leadership would be acting as a strategic role in which the business would be essentially concentrating on other specific roles for elevating th e growth of the organization. As leaders are always focused on vision, change, and path, the leaders inside Accenture would be always working towards adapting with the imminent changes, attracting prospective and contributing towards enhancing the companys productivity (Nieminen, Biermeier-Hanson and Denison 2013). Inside any organization, leadership is a simple element of organizational culture and inside Accenture, it can be assumed that by determining of the organizational values and creating of the social reality by its leader, Accenture would naturally become an organization with strong organizational culture. Inside Accenture, the leaders even have the option of creating their own tools for either evolving the present culture or for changing the existing standards. The leadership pattern inside Accenture would be different based on the way the subordinates would be observing their organizational culture. Working together with leadership, the organizational culture inside Accen ture can get changed as needed, also get fostered and get influenced when there is any decision taken or any plan made by the decision makers. Leadership is not any static style that would be able to fit into all organizational cultures (Bolman and Deal 2017). Therefore, in Accenture also the leader needs to get adapted to any specific approach for fitting into any specific situation. Management and Its Impact on Accentures Organizational Culture Culture is present in every organization, but at times it is elusive and is even open to different interpretations. Majority of the managers do not deny that organizational culture is important, but they fail in realizing the direct influence they have on it and the way it gets shaped. If the culture of an organization is strong then the managers take a strong lead in shaping and supporting it. No one culture is omnipotent, with what is working today might not be working tomorrow (Antonakis and Day 2017). Accenture is a high performing organization today is because they have no employees who are just inside the organization for the ride. All employees are engaged. The managers at Accenture are able to get their employees to be committing completely to the culture of the company. Accenture already has a culture in which the employees are believing in their leaders and the mission, vision, and goals. The employees are not just engaged but they are enabled and energized. This has led to astonishing results for them, with advancements in their already positive work culture. Inside an organizational team, everyone might not be running for their life, but there is a fierce competition that threatens the survival of the organization. What the management does in such situations is identifying and defining the burning issues and separating it from the routine challenges for galvanizing the employees into believing in the management and their vision and strategy (Awadh and Alyahya 2013). Management can be divided into three types - top level, mid-level and first level (Szczepa?ska-Woszczyna 2015). For creating a culture of belief inside any organization, the management explains in very clear terms for their teams as to the reason of their stepping up and refocusing on their efforts. Following this approach in Accenture would not only help the employees understand the competition but even help frame an honest and real conversation for them to relate to. It is the responsi bility of the management to be creating an organization in which trust exists by means of transparency and sharing (Welford 2016). At times it is also believed that cultures are predetermined, which is actually a false assumption. It is important that managers at all the levels are aware regarding their roles and responsibilities in the upholding of a constructive work environment that would be helpful in increasing employee satisfaction. The major reason behind employee turnover is dissatisfaction and that can have a detrimental effect and environmental effect on the organization. Inside Accenture, the managers are always under scrutiny, with every action of theirs getting followed by their subordinates. The managers need to make sure that they are exercising caution while taking any decision, making sure that equitability and fairness are existing among the staff, along with the upholding of ethical standards on a continuous basis. The cultural components or managerial traits of trust, trustworthiness, consistency, empowerment, and mentorship influence the culture of organizations and the managers at Accenture can take the help of theses for allowing the employees to get an opportunity for empowering themselves and for flourishing, therefore increasing their own efficiency and that of the organization too (Azanza, Moriano and Molero 2013). As an example, at Accenture, there is an inverse pyramid of leadership that has now been copied by many organizations. In Accenture, everyone is considered a leader and everyone has the responsibility of understanding the business and making decisions to support it. Managers are reinforced to leave work each day for making the organization a better place to work at (Bersin 2012). Conflict and Its Impact on the Organizational Culture at Accenture Most of the organizations today are having business relationships with multiple collaborators and partners. Relationship building has become an important part of the job descriptions of the executives and at times the obligations get misinterpreted, people fail to get along and the expectations get into conflicts (Armstrong et al. 2015). At Accenture, in some cases, where they are involved in long-term business relationships, they have learned to resolve conflicts effectively by overcoming the immediate hurdles and in the end strengthening the whole relationship. In other cases, however, they have seen the conflict getting out of hand, which has led to lawsuits and damages in millions of dollars. Every business relationship in Accenture encounters issues, but that cannot be counted as conflict, which has led to most of the providers and customers mentioning them seldom having any significant conflicts. However, workplace conflicts are not always an aberration, as it has the potential of creating or providing an opportunity for the reconciliation and correction of the organization and the employees. A constructively managed conflict can encourage positive performance, while a destructively managed one can heat up the environment at work bringing dislocation and polarization of the whole group, reducing the productivity and job performance (Danielsson et al. 2015). As workplace conflict is permanent in nature, Accenture can become a completely high performing organization if they carry on constantly developing the proper methods of managing these conflicts for achieving set-standard and goals. Conflict in organizations has the capability of accelerating change within it (Cahn and Abigail 2014). It prompts a modification in policies and procedures, which can happen in Accenture too. Reviewing the goals and objective of Accenture for meeting the needs of the conflicting groups might be resulting in the accomplishment of coherence and goal congruence. The conflict that arises can even help in cultivating innovation and ingenuity amongst the employees at Accenture. It is essential that among the employee's new strategies are developed along with different ways of carrying out business for keeping up with the internal competitiveness. The organizational goals at Accenture might get compromised if the conflicting parties drive the quest of their own interest. Accenture might even end up losing their precious time and resources because of conflict, as employees might be wasting time on divisive issues (Wallensteen 2015). Conflict Resolution and Negotiation Impact on Accentures Organizational Culture Conflicts are completely inevitable in organizations of any size. However, it does have some amount of advantages, if they get handled correctly. Unfortunately, at times conflicts spiral out of hands and become detrimental to everyone who is in the equation. At that time, conflict resolution becomes a necessity (Sonnentag, Unger and Ngel 2013). In managing conflict, at first, the conflict elements need to be identified. Then its orientation needs to be changed so that each of the parties is aware of the elements. Changing the elements would allow the modification of the conflict direction leading to the apparent solution. A positive conflict resolution if happens in Accenture would help unify the employees with the knowledge that they are expected of doing the right thing and foster a positive organizational culture. It would also help in building trust within the conflicting parties, helping build a positive work environment. The most common approaches that can be found while resolv ing crucial conflicts are aggressive, balanced and collaborative (Accenture.com 2017). However, negotiation seems like the preferred decision-making mechanism at the time when employees are looking for specifically tailored solutions, such as any kind of adjustments. On the other hand, the employees are also looking for compensation to be founded on performance criteria and wish for organization-wide policies to be dictating employee entitlements (Firth 2014). Negotiation is the basic mean of resolving disputes and conflicts at the workplace. Negotiation can be carried out with the help of different strategies, by which the conflicting parties can get help in mending their partnership, all the while attempting at avoiding the lawsuit expense and even creating value (Bret and Thompson 2016). Conflict and negotiation both are found to be more prevalent in a larger business organization such as Accenture as more number of individuals are involved the operations of the organization. Conflict and negotiation might result in many options getting created for resolving different tough situations. Accenture might be pushed into following a few steps at the time of processing discussion options and solutions identification of the problem, analysis of the problem, the creation of different approaches or plans and acting on ideas or outcomes. These steps would provide Accenture with a logical procedure for following at the time of solving conflict an d negotiation issues (Pruitt 2013). Accenture can make use of conflict negotiation for creating a more favorable outcome at the time of dealing with a stronger party. Accenture must make use of negotiation while creating relationships that would be providing their organization with a competitive advantage over other companies in the economic marketplace. At times, Accenture had realized that they would not be able to obtain all of their requests at the time of the conflict and negotiation process. Having a BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement) would help to make sure that Accenture would get as many concessions as possible at the time of the negotiation process. The conflict and negotiation process can effect in one party getting engaged in unethical conduct. In such situations, an integrative negotiation method would be a better method for the long-run (Sebenius 2017). Conclusion From this study, it has been understood that culture is something consistent and observable as patterns in the behaviors inside an organization. Culture is largely a product of compensation and is powerfully shaped with the help of incentives. Organizational culture is what is used for describing a jointly shared definition of any organization from its inside. It is a process of making sense inside an organization, the summation of the values and practices that are serving as a kind of glue for the integration of the members of the organization. In short, organizational culture can also be called as a civilization in the workplace, working as a form of the social control system or its immune system, protecting it from all kinds of wrong thinking and wrong people. In this particular study, the discussion was focusing on specifically the organizational culture in Accenture and what impact the elements of organizational culture have on it. Two paired areas of organizational culture were focused on - management and leadership, and conflict and negotiation. Inside any organization, leadership is a simple element of organizational culture and inside Accenture, it can be assumed that by shaping of the organizational values and constructing of the social reality by its leader, Accenture would naturally become an organization with strong organizational culture. As workplace conflict is permanent in nature, Accenture can become a completely high performing organization if they carry on constantly developing the proper methods of managing these conflicts for achieving set-standard and goals. The organizational goals at Accenture might get compromised if the conflicting parties drive the quest of their own interest. Accenture might be pushed into following a few steps at the time of processing discussion options and solutions which would provide Accenture with a logical procedure for following at the time of solving conflict and negotiation issues. References Accenture.com. 2017.A better way to resolve business conflicts | Accenture Outlook. [online] Available at: https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insight-outlook-better-way-to-resolve-business-conflicts-outsourcing-bpo [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017]. Accenture.com. 2017.About Accenture. [online] Available at: https://www.accenture.com/in-en/company [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017]. Accenture.com. 2017.Leadership Development, Strategy and Architecture to Improve Talent - Accenture. [online] Available at: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/service-leadership-overview [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017]. Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015.Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge. Alvesson, M. ed., 2016.Organizational culture. Sage. Antonakis, J. and Day, D.V. eds., 2017.The nature of leadership. Sage publications. Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015.Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education. Awadh, A.M. and Alyahya, M.S., 2013. Impact of organizational culture on employee performance.International Review of Management and Business Research,2(1), p.168. Azanza, G., Moriano, J.A. and Molero, F., 2013. Authentic leadership and organizational culture as drivers of employees job satisfaction.Revista de Psicologa del Trabajo y de las Organizaciones,29(2), pp.45-50. Bersin, J. 2012.It's Not The CEO, It's The Leadership Strategy That Matters.. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2012/07/30/its-not-the-ceo-its-the-leadership-strategy-that-matters/#6818b5b06db8 [Accessed 29 Nov. 2017]. Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E., 2017.Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership. John Wiley Sons. Brett, J. and Thompson, L., 2016. Negotiation.Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,136, pp.68-79. Bryman, A. ed., 2013.Leadership and organizations. Routledge. Cahn, D.D. and Abigail, R.A., 2014.Managing conflict through communication. Pearson. Danielsson, C.B., Bodin, L., Wulff, C. and Theorell, T., 2015. The relation between office type and workplace conflict: A gender and noise perspective.Journal of Environmental Psychology,42, pp.161-171. Firth, A. ed., 2014.The discourse of negotiation: Studies of language in the workplace(Vol. 15). Elsevier. Fullan, M., 2014.Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John Wiley Sons. Nieminen, L., Biermeier-Hanson, B. and Denison, D., 2013. Aligning leadership and organizational culture: The leaderculture fit framework for coaching organizational leaders.Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research,65(3), p.177. Northouse, P.G., 2015.Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications. Pruitt, D.G., 2013.Negotiation behavior. Academic Press. Sebenius, J.K., 2017. BATNAs in Negotiation: Common Errors and Three Kinds of No.Negotiation Journal,33(2), pp.89-99. Sonnentag, S., Unger, D. and Ngel, I.J., 2013. Workplace conflict and employee well-being: The moderating role of detachment from work during off-job time.International Journal of Conflict Management,24(2), pp.166-183. Szczepa?ska-Woszczyna, K., 2015. Leadership and organizational culture as the normative influence of top management on employee's behaviour in the innovation process.Procedia Economics and Finance,34, pp.396-402. Wallensteen, P., 2015.Understanding conflict resolution. Sage. Welford, R. ed., 2016.Corporate Environmental Management 2: Culture and Organization. Routledge. Bradley, B.H., Anderson, H.J., Baur, J.E. and Klotz, A.C., 2015. When conflict helps: Integrating evidence for beneficial conflict in groups and teams under three perspectives.Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice,19(4), p.243. Branch, S., Ramsay, S. and Barker, M., 2013. Workplace bullying, mobbing and general harassment: A review.International Journal of Management Reviews,15(3), pp.280-299. Chhokar, J.S., Brodbeck, F.C. and House, R.J. eds., 2013.Culture and leadership across the world: The GLOBE book of in-depth studies of 25 societies. Routledge. Gilin Oore, D., Leiter, M.P. and LeBlanc, D.E., 2015. Individual and organizational factors promoting successful responses to workplace conflict.Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne,56(3), p.301. Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014.Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson. OReilly III, C.A., Caldwell, D.F., Chatman, J.A. and Doerr, B., 2014. The promise and problems of organizational culture: CEO personality, culture, and firm performance.Group Organization Management,39(6), pp.595-625.