Organizational Theory - Case Study

Identify and write the main issues found discussed in the case (who, what, how, where and when (the critical facts in a case).

The insurance industry’s performance is highly correlated with the state of the economy and specifically GDP growth. From the data outlined in this report, it is evident that the insurance industry flourishes alongside the economy where factors such as output, unemployment, and other variables are growing as well. Since the 2008 crisis, the Canadian economy has recovered quite well. One of the key concerns going forward is the current exchange rate of the Canadian dollar. Going forward, as the economy goes into a boom it will be crucial for the insurance industry to reach its potential.

Christine Brooks, the regional claims manager for the national insurance company for Westchester zone (Rosenberg, 2003). Christine was in charge of implementing this major zone reorganization in which four offices under her responsibility would be consolidated to one location by the end of the year. This reorganization was due to deregulation and continuous economic weakness, company had decided to the cost-cutting moves for some regional areas and one of which included the Westchester zone reorganization. There were many factors which were associated with the case of national insurance company as financial gain, cost-cutting budgets, and down-sizing (Banerjee, 2002).

According to The Journal for Quality and Participation, "a company's culture is embedded in its DNA." With that being said, establishing a productive organizational culture is a crucial component to the success of the company, even before they are in business. In a nutshell, "organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions....which governs how people how people behave in a culture." When employees of a company are aware of what is expected and accepted, they are more likely to perform their jobs according to those set standards. Whether it be how they dress, speak, or respond to diversity, each area in an organization is highly affected by the culture. Due to the fact that organizational culture is what ultimately

Overall, Christine was not an affective group leader. The team had an end goal of completing a group project and that was not getting accomplished. Christine was not an effective group leader,

Over time, the culture can change or adapt. This may be due to new leadership, mergers, or acquisitions. It may even be due to a change in the market climate itself. As new employees are brought on, they must be taught the company culture to keep it strong and in line with the overall company umbrella. Most large companies have established culture programs for their leadership, so that they may take those tools, thought processes, and examples back to their teams to keep the culture strong.

American Executive Centers are a company that offers executive office suites as well as supplying their customers with office services. As General Manager, Dana oversees 57 different office spaces, each one filled with a different company and their own individual set of needs. Under her title, Dana has multiple roles. For starters, it is her job to maintain a close to 100% occupancy. Since clients can lease the spaces for different amounts of time, vacancy can vary greatly over a course of a year. Another role that Dana has been to manage a staff of 4 people. While that number is small, it does not include the clients they handle in their building.

All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

Organizational culture is the stable beliefs, values, and assumptions shared by a group of people. I used to work at a bar and there was a shared understanding between the servers and bartenders. The bartenders were the managers, and each manager had their style of how the bar was ran each night. The servers had their system of who get what section, but they also had to follow the style of each bartender. The instrumental purpose of our organizational culture was influenced by who was managing the bar each night. There were some bartenders who did not like being bothered with questions from the servers and there were some who were nice and helpful. The bartenders that did not care, influenced the servers by letting them choose who had each section, deciding who had to clean and stock, and who was able to leave and at what times.

Ms. Hogan was against this method of leadership style and decided to change. She shifted her office to second floor, where she could see the factory herself and made it easier for the employees to come to her office. The workers were surprised by her actions. She then established different groups for different goals where each group held meetings two times a week one with and one without Hogan. She wanted to motivate the employees by giving them a plan to reach their goal.

When Melanie was brought into the company to step in as President, the culture immediately changed into a mercenary culture, where everyone is expected to strictly follow the franchise system. Melanie introduced formal controls into the system. She was even nicknamed “Melanator”.

Peter Nicholson wishes to convert the factory in the north east to production of the electric taxi. Using data in Appendix C, Table 1, calculate payback period and the average rate of return.

An organization’s culture governs day to day behavior. This type of power may be seen as a control mechanism, which businesses use to manipulate internal and external perception. Every organization has a set of assumed understandings that must be adopted and implemented by new employees in order for them to be accepted. Conformity to the culture becomes the primary basis for reward by the organization. “The role of culture in influencing employee behavior appears to be increasingly important in today’s workplace, as organizations have widened spans of control, flattened structures, introduced teams, reduced

In reading the first article Coach Knight: The Will to Win, I found the article found Coach Knight to be very offensive and mean to his players. Coach Knight did not display good leadership skills. According to the article, Coach Knight’s drive and passion for excellence was not always received as well as his record of wins and losses Snook, Per low, Delacey, 2005).

When looking back at all of the weekly written assignments there are a few things I should note. There were some questions like naming the ‘theories of rationality’ in the written assignments which I did not yet fully grasp at the moment of answering the questions. When I look back at the first assignment I now understand what was asked of me. To some degree, this also applies to some of the other exercises. What I have noticed is that my writing skills have improved hugely thanks to the Organization Theory course, which can be seen in the difference in quality between my first assignment and this final essay.