1.0 Introduction
“A fearless adventure in knowing what to do when no one’s there telling you what to do.” (Valve Corporation 2012) The abstract to Valve’s employee handbook gives a concise representation of the organisation’s values; that is, the freedom of employees to be their own manager. While this may seem ideal to some, contextually, it has led to Valve’s failure to exercise organisational control over its employees and products, for example, its release of Half Life 2 thirteen months after schedule (Valve Developer Community 2016). This report will address three potential implications of Valve’s ‘No Manager’ Company, including power, task delegation and accountability and ethics, as well as provide conclusions and recommendations.
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Despite its mishaps, Valve is still praised as an innovative company, one management theorist Mary Parker Follett would describe as manipulating coactive power (Melé 2003), which refers to workers holding shared power. If not holding coactive power, an organisation would use coercive power, or sometimes referred to as ‘power over’ (Melé 2003). The theory, however, does not complement the case study; Valve evidently lacks either form of power, still experiencing the ‘Valve Time’ phenomenon to this day with its recently late releases of updates to Team Fortress 2 (Valve Developer Community 2016).
With Valve’s ineffective use of power also comes its failure to appropriately delegate tasks, also leading to poor organisational performance, seen continually as late releases. Employees are encouraged to select projects at their discretion, demonstrating the lack of formal and informal task delegation. Instead, Valve trusts its employees to align exclusively to McGregor’s Theory Y which describes workers who are highly motivated, want to work, and demonstrate innovation (Sorensen, Minahan 2011). Despite good-natured employees, the literature supports that employees still require delegation for high performance outcomes, with Ben-Nera et al. 2014 arguing, “[Tasks] are designed for efficiency relative to
Theory X takes the position that the average human being is “lazy and self-centered, lacks ambition, dislikes changes and longs to be told what to do” (Stewart, 2010). It portrays the perspective that a worker avoids responsibility and has to be controlled every step of the work process. There is little to no delegation of
Moving up to a higher level of delegation provides more time empowers the team member for increased productivity. Roebuck, Chris. (1998).
When it comes to worker empowerment, Chad believes that “all managers should realize no matter what industry, that when you empower your employees and give them greater responsibility you create an environment that gives employees greater job satisfaction. It has been my experience that greater job satisfaction for employees often translates into better production from the employee which is good for the company” (C. D. Cerkoney, Personal Communication, February
Empowerment, however, is not an act or physical incident. It is employees’ perception that they believe in and (actually do) control what happens to their work processes and that they are capable of controlling those processes efficiently and effectively (Holt, 2000). Stephen Covey stated that “an empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.”
When looking at French and Raven’s Five Forms of Power in this situation, you can understand where the power comes from in this workplace (French, Raven, 1960). I see only four of the five forms being actively used in the RetailMax scenario. The CEO, who helped put the company back into a positive growth, has legitimate power since he believes that he has the right to make demands and get compliance from others in the organization. This can be seen as he authorizes another department to make an offer to Cam. Vince Mangini, Vice President of Professional Services (PS), has reward power and is able to compensate Cam for joining his department with a higher salary and a larger bonus. Cam Archer has the expert power and he wields is well. He has become a more-rounded team player and is continuing to gain credibility and experience in the company. And Regan Kessel has the referent power since he has gained the respect of other workers. With over twenty years of experience in the industry, he is a trusted leader. This has been shown by the relocation of the marketing team under his purview.
Power has been addressed in academic literature in several ways but most commonly describing “power as the ability to control valued resources and administer rewards and
Weber believed that power occurred due to the presence of bureaucracy and on the other hand Foucault believed that power was present in every aspect of life. These two theorists evaluate power and dominance in different ways (Roth and Wittich, 1968). Both of them had different perspectives in looking at these aspects. This essay will evaluate the powers of both managers and workers and will also explain role of managers and elaborate on the roles of employees. Comparing the theories of Weber and Foucault would do the evaluation.
This leadership style bases itself on McGregor’s Theory X, that regards team members to be careless and disliking work, assumes they attempt to avoid work as much as possible, and are in need of guidance from their leader.
Understanding the Role of Power in Decision Making- Pfeffer explores the advantages and limitations of power. Pfeffer states that if power is a force, a store of potential influence through which events can be affected, politics involves those activities or behaviors through which power is developed and used in organizational settings. Power is a property of the system at rest; politics is the study of power in action (Shafritz, Ott,
Power is defined as the capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B so B acts in accordance with A’s wishes (p.198). Being a collaborative organization, Stryker’s power resides in four key teams: accounting, human resources management, information technologies management, and a cross functional team known as the steering committee. Power resides within these teams because they control the things that the organization needs to function. The relationships that these teams have with the organization are based upon dependence, these departments can influence the distribution of resources in the organization. These teams exercise their power to help the organization generate a profit, respond to changes, to limit the number of errors,
Douglas McGregor was a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He introduced a new motivational theory in his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’, stating that all workers were divided into two groups: Theory X and Theory Y. Theory X workers were lazy, irrational and unreliable, and were only motivated by money and threatened by punishment. Theory Y workers were able to seek and accept responsibilities and fulfil any goals given.
The company can increase employee responsibility through delegation. If they are responsible for a task a person is more likely to ensure that it gets done and done well, even more so if the task contributes to a team effort and they can expect to receive recognition for their contribution.
Job satisfaction and motivation are to the key to a good organizational culture. Employee uncertainty is a main ingredient to poor project teams and bad organizational culture. People need some type of motivation to remain active during the failure of a project. The secret to any successful project is keeping important key players in place to help aid out the transition to the next project team (Jernigan, L., Hammond, L., and Robinson, T., 2003).
McGregor (1960a) assumed workers refer to Theory X are lazy, hate to work, responsibility aversion and more concern about lower levels of human needs rather than pursuing self-achievement. McGregor (1960a) suggests that managers should supervise and control the workers in order to adjust their behaviour and neutralise heir negative attitudes toward work, even punish and push them to achieve a minimal level of performance. Punishment is necessary because of the nature of inherently lazy. Managers would find encouraging them to perform better by reward maybe only valid in a short-term as lazy workers eventually submit adequate effort as they do not pursuit self-actualisation (McGregor 1960a). in a word, managers centralise the decision making power, set rules, SOPs and procedures to guide workers what they should process and monitor the process in order to safeguard the minimal requirement of performance is achieved
Firstly, the issue of Self-organising via self-selection; At Valve, employees are allowed to pick how to utilise their time and talent. Each employee can pick which projects to work on. As an outcome, self-selected groups of people suddenly emerge around subjects of interest. There is no manager or authority to supervise or control these decisions. Furthermore, the official Valve handbook is subtitled: "A fearless adventure in knowing what to do when no one’s there telling you what to” (Valve Handbook, First Edition 2012.) One can argue that this is the point of McGregor’s Theory Y. However, after a new employee reads this handbook they will then think that it’s ok to work on whatever project they want to work on, to join whichever group they want to join. It has the potential to switch management theories. For example, from theory y, to theory x; since Valve workers are compensated for their commitments; there is an incentive to be a part of successful projects.