Case Study Analysis: The experience of George, a new employee at ABC Consulting

Part A: Case Study Analysis

The case study relates to the experience of George, a new employee at ABC Consulting. The employee joined the company with high hopes and enthusiasm, but three months down the line things deteriorated and he decided to resign from his position in the firm. The organization failed to provide motivation and support to improve performance. Three concepts relating to organizational behavior that emerges in the case study are employee motivation, leadership in organizational settings, and power and influence. The discussion focuses on an analysis of the three concepts related to organizational behavior and explaining the issues that emerged in the case study, such as lack of effective motivation, poor leadership, misuse of power and influence, and a negative organizational culture. The paper includes solutions to the issues, such as adoption of transformational leadership, change of culture, improved collaboration, and support for learning and development, especially for new employees.

Critical Analysis

The case study involves in intention to resign from an organization after working for three months only. George, a graduate consultant, had worked at ABC Consulting for three months before realizing that he could no longer operate comfortably in the organization. He was quite hopeful when he joined the firm, but did not know that things would worsen so fast. His decision to resign meant that he was demotivated and had low morale due to issues that had cropped up in the course of the three months that he had been working in the company. The organizational culture was not supportive of his desire to develop and contribute new ideas to the organization. Various challenges inform the intentions to reside, especially when an employee is no longer comfortable at the workplace. Although George’s desire to quit can be explained using various concepts related to organizational behavior, the most relevant are employee motivation, leadership in organizational settings, and power and influence.

Motivation

Various issues crop in the case study associated with motivation as an important concept in organizational behavior. Motivation is one of the most important concepts in organizational settings since it gives employees the drive to work and perform exceptionally. Motivation relates to the question of why people (employees) behave the way they do.[1] Modern organizations attract educated and qualified employees to achieve their objectives, but their performance depends on how well the company motivates them to use their skills and knowledge.[2] Therefore, managers in organizations should use various motivational instruments, both monetary and non-financial, to motivate their employees to improve their performance.[3] Motivated employees have been revealed to have a high level of organizational commitment since they work effectively to improve their performance and achieve overall organizational goals.[4][5] Motivation has a significant positive relationship with organizational commitment and the desire to continue working.[6] Thus, George’s desire to leave the company reveals a low level of motivation, which affected his organizational commitment.

Although ABC Consulting had a structured motivation system, it failed to motivate new employees, such as George to develop the desire to continue working and developing in the long-term. George was highly motivated when he started working for the company and did not know that things would change so fast. Although he had two offers, one from a Big 4 organization and the second from ABC Consulting, he chose the medium-sized firms since he believed the level of motivation would be greater. George was seeking a company that would capitalize on his internal motivation by providing an opportunity to innovate and use his creativity in projects. Many employees in the modern organizations are motivated by intrinsic factors, such as support to use their knowledge and skills to enhance organizational performance.[7] However, ABC Consulting believed in extrinsic incentives to performance, such as bonus after three months, which in the end they denied George. The organizational culture of ABC Consulting denied George the opportunity to learn and develop, which is what he sought in the workplace.

Various issues associated with lack of motivation emerge in the case study. George failed to achieve his goal of joining the company, which was to work with people on interesting projects and contribute new ideas. He realized that the organizational culture did not allow him to use his creativity and innovation. Although the leaders had promised him that the organization supported collaboration and thinking outside the box, he soon realized that this was far from the reality. During his first days in the organization, he realized that he did not have the opportunity to contribute new ideas since employees who had worked there longer did not allow him to contribute. Besides, leaders, such as Janet, who had promised to give him an opportunity to excel did not fulfill their promise. Besides being denied the opportunity to excel and lack of support to develop, the company failed to give him the promised bonus at the end of three months. Generally, the firm failed to provide intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for George to excel in the firm, which would occur only if he was motivated.

Leadership in Organizational Settings

Leadership is critical in the success of any organization since it influences people, through motivation, to achieve individual and organizational goals. Leaders influence people to achieve organizational objectives that sustain performance outcomes in the long run.[8] Leadership effectiveness is necessary to drive employees to improve their productivity through motivation.

For example, effective leadership in the workplace increases organizational commitment and prevents the intentions to leave.[9] Transformational leadership is one of the styles that improve motivation in the workplace to improve performance and retention.[10] A transformational leader can motivate followers to improve their effort and performance outcomes in organizational tasks and projects.[11] Such leaders also sacrifice their self-interests for the sake of employees, creating a supportive working environment, such as one with work-life balance.[12] Therefore, effective leaders are more interested in the needs of employees since they understand the significance of their input in the success of the company.

Leadership in the organization is at the center of success and impressive performance outcomes. Good leaders understand their subordinates and provides incentives to improve their level of performance.[13][14] For example, they know that different employees have diverse sources of motivation and approach each of them differently. While some employees are motivated by material incentives, such as compensation and bonus, others are internally motivated and seek a workplace that challenges them to use their innovative skills and creativity.[15] Therefore, effective leadership should not only recognize the differences, but also implement measures to motivate individual employees. Effective leadership includes diverse motivational instruments to meet the needs of each employee to improve their potential. The leadership also includes support, such as training and development to improve the performance outcomes of all employees.[16] Such effective organizational leadership lacked at the ABC Consulting, which led to George’s intention to leave after three months only.

Various issues emerges in the case study related to lack of effective leadership in the organization that reduced George’s morale and caused the intention to resign. One of the issues that emerges in the case study is the leadership failure to support George to achieve his objective of being an innovative employees and use his skills and experience. George had just graduated when he joined ABC Consulting and required considerable support from the management to grow and develop. When he was recruited, the HR director and Janet, his area manager, believed in his capability and skills. However, they failed to support him to realize the potential. Besides, the leaders in the company has created a culture that failed to support new employees to use their potential to learn and develop. While George had ideas that would have improved the company’s projects, the leaders failed to provide the opportunity to air and incorporate them into team projects. While George was initially motivated when he joined the company, lack of effective leadership left him demoralized and intending to resign.

Power and Influence

Power and influence are also important concepts in organizational behavior since they determine the relationships between employees themselves and workers and their organizations. Having power and the way to use it has an impact on the outcome of the company, including the level of performance. For example, employees obeys a manager even without any promise of a reward [17]simply due to the power the position entails. At the same time, a leader has the power to influence employees using various mechanisms, such as rewards and punishments.[18] While leaders can use power and influence positively to generate positive results, others use them negatively and create discontent in the workplace. In George’s case, leaders, such as Janet and employees, with influence, such as Harry, used their power and influence negatively and affected the employee’s morale. They denied George the opportunity to excel in using his skills and competence in challenging projects.

Various issues emerge in the case study associated with the concept of power and influence in the organization. Although the human resource manager and his area manager affirmed that he had the skills necessary to perform exceptionally, power and influence in the company denied him the opportunity to achieve the goal.[19] Power and influence were evident in the office dynamics in the company, such as denying George the opportunity to share new ideas to the colleagues since they were experienced and cohesive. Harry Main openly informed George that it was impossible to give opinions and that he had to contend with the ideas of the experienced employees. He also experienced the same treatment from Daniel, the project manager, and Janet, the client manager when he got the chance to work with them in a project. They disregarded his ideas and entire work on the project regardless of the considerable effort he put into the project. Power and influence also cost him the chance to get the bonus after working for three months, regardless the fact that the HR director and Janet has indicated that all employees get the incentive, performance notwithstanding.

Solutions

Effective leadership is necessary at ABC Consulting to prevent high rate of retention by motivating employees to use their skills and knowledge. Leaders in the company should adopt transformational style to influence and motivate employees to perform exceptionally and improve retention. Leadership that affects motivation improves human behavior to improve their productivity.[20] One of the solutions to the issues is to change the leadership style to become more employee-focused, such as to allow employees to use their innovative skills and creativity to improve performance (intrinsic motivation).[21][22] For example, the human resource manager and other leaders should train new employees to understand the culture and allow them to use their current knowledge. They should also avoid using power and influence negatively to demoralize employees.[23] Another solution to the problem is to improve communication and collaboration in the company to ensure that the contribution of each employees (new and experienced) is felt. Leaders should accept the ideas of every employee and offer positive criticism when the ideas cannot be used.[24] Finally, the company should use more effective motivators, such a reward and other financial incentives to improve the performance of employees. The system of rewards and punishments influence human behavior and performance.[25] The changes will support positive growth and development among employees and ensure organizational commitment and improved performance outcomes.

Conclusion

George joined ABC Consulting after graduating, but experienced considerable challenges emanating from lack of motivation. The challenges that caused his intention to leave only three months after joining the company emanated from motivation, leadership, and power and influence as important concepts in organizational behavior. The organization lacked effective management, such as transformational leadership, that would influence and motivate employees to improve performance. Besides, the company’s managers and experienced employees denied new employees the opportunity to use their innovative capability to grow and develop within the firm. Therefore, the solution to the issues include adoption of transformational leadership at ABC Consulting and implementation of motivational strategies to ensure organizational commitment and improve performance outcomes. The managers should also change the organizational culture to make it more supportive to new employees and prevent the use of power and influence to prevent employees from expressing their ideas and opinions.

Part B: B1- Reflection on Group Dynamics

‘Tuckman’s Model of team development’ is the model that applies to the development of my team. Bruce Tuckman, a psychologist, proposed the model in 1965, suggesting that teams go through five stages of development: “forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning”.[26] The stages begin when individuals meet for the first time until when the complete the project and deliver its deliverables. My team went through the five stages in the order, from when we decided to form the group and work on the topic of motivation.

The initial stage in Tuckman’s Model is forming, which is when individuals come together and decide to form the team to work on a project. Although we knew on another since we were classmates, the knowledge did not apply to working as a team in the project. During the forming stage, we needed to understand the strengths of each member and the contribution each would make to the team, create project goals and timelines, establish guiding rules, and the role of each member. The team begins to form by familiarizing themselves with the project and the expected deliverables.[27] Our team went through the stage successfully.

The second stage in the model is the storming stage, which is the point at which members of the team are aware of each other’s characteristics and they might become irritating or annoying. People are differences and they bring the diversity to the team, which affects the direction that it takes.[28] However, being a small group, it was easier to understand the differences and prevent any negative effect on the project. In the team, it was better to embrace the differences and individuals’ characteristics to accomplish the team goals.

After the challenges inherent in the storming stage, we successfully entered the norming phase. During this stage, members begin to realize and appreciate the strengths that each member bring to the table.[29] For example, while some members were good at conducting research, others were better at writing the report. The team took advantage of the difference strengths to complete the project successfully and within the time required by the professor. However, I realized that the stage sometimes overlapped with norming as new disagreements would emerge that needed to be resolved in order move forward.

However, we moved past the stage and successfully entered the performing phase of team development. During this phase, members have adequate understanding of the team goals and motivated to achieve them within the timelines.[30] Members of the team were motivated and confident with the project and could work on their roles and responsibilities to complete it. During this stage, for example, members arrived early for the meetings and contributed ideas about how to complete the project.

The final stage was the adjourning phase, which came when we completed the project and handed over the report to the supervisor. The team was no longer necessary, unless we were given a new project in the future. We were not ready to terminate our work together and the leader thanked each member for their contribution towards the success of the project.

PART B: B2- Reflection and Critical Evaluation of Personal Performance

The input of each member of the team was critical in the successful completion of the project. In a formal group, people take different roles depending on their skills and competences to complete it successfully.[31]  We needed to examine the role of the facilitator or the team leader and other members depending on their input to the group process. When we first create the group to work on the project of motivation assigned by our professor, we shared roles and responsibilities that each member would take. The success of any team depends on the ability of each member to understand and take their role seriously.[32] I understood the necessity of taking my role seriously and ensuring that I made a positive contribution to the team effort. For example, I always attended the meetings called by members of the team to work on the project and gave my ideas and research findings. I knew that my contribution was necessary to ensure that we completed the project deliverables within the timeline.

I took the role of researcher and idea generator since I believed in my ability to obtain knowledge from different sources. Members of my team could count on me to research various aspects of the topic and come up with information and ideas that would make the project successful. As a researcher, I spent considerable time in the library learning about the topic of motivation. I also worked closely with the supervisor, who would answer various questions relating to the topic and help any time we got stuck. I also engaged other members of the team in researching the topic to come up with adequate information related to the subject. As a result, we spend time online researching and discussing ideas and noting down questions for further exploration. The team was successful in completing the project due to the collaborative effort of every member and the research role that we took to ensure that all aspects of the project were successful. The person writing the report counted on our input for the information to include.

Various things went well in the project since we each took different roles based on our strengths. For example, I realized that working as a team in the research process makes things easier for the group. For example, any time we engaged in a group effort to research information, it was always easier and faster to locate necessary information to include in the report. Besides, I realized that allocating duties was better than working without a clear direction since each person knew what was expected on their part. For example, I knew that the team counted on me to lead the research to locate information for discussion and to include in the report. However, I also identified things that we could do differently in the future. For example, we would begin by discussing each role in details to ensure that every member understood. The step is critical to prevent confusion and delays from members who did not understand their roles well.

Bibliography

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Braun, Susanne and Claudia Peus. “Crossover of work–life balance perceptions: Does authentic leadership matter?.” Journal of Business Ethics 149, no. 4 (2018): 875-893.

Buble, Mario Ana Juras, and Ivan Matić. “The relationship between managers’ leadership styles and motivation.” Management: Journal of Contemporary Management Issues 19, no. 1 (2014): 162

Cerasoli, Christopher P., Jessica M. Nicklin, and Michael T. Ford. “Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis.” Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 4 (2014): 980.

Clarke, Nicholas and Malcolm Higgs. “How strategic focus relates to the delivery of leadership training and development.” Human Resource Management 55, no. 4 (2016): 541-565.

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Fulk, H, Kevin, Reginald L. Bell, and Nancy Bodie. “Team management by objectives: Enhancing developing teams’ performance.” Journal of Management Policy and Practice 12, no. 3 (2011): 17

Gatling, Anthony, Hee Jung Annette Kang, and Jungsun Sunny Kim. “The effects of authentic leadership and organizational commitment on turnover intention.” Leadership & Organization Development Journal vol. 37, no. 2, (2016), 1

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Kozlowski, Steve WJ, Daniel J. Watola, Jaclyn M. Jensen, Brian H. Kim, and Isabel C. Botero. “Developing adaptive teams: A theory of dynamic team leadership.” (2009), 2

Largent, David L. “Measuring and understanding team development by capturing self-assessed enthusiasm and skill levels.” ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 16, no. 2 (2016): 2

Laurentiu Hauser,. “Work motivation in organizational behavior.” Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 9, no. 4 (2014): 239

Lepper, Mark R. and David Greene, eds. The hidden costs of reward: New perspectives on the psychology of human motivation. Psychology Press (2015), 66

Lian, Huiwen, D. Lance Ferris, and Douglas J. Brown. “Does power distance exacerbate or mitigate the effects of abusive supervision? It depends on the outcome.” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 1 (2012): 107.

Lobo, Vanessa M. “Transformational leadership to promote cross-generational retention.” Nursing leadership (Toronto, Ont.) 23, no. 2 (2010): 21.

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Pinder, Craig C. Work motivation in organizational behavior. Psychology Press, 2014.

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[1] Ruth Kanfer, and Gilad Chen. “Motivation in organizational behavior: History, advances and prospects.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 136 (2016): 6

[2] Pinder, Craig C. Work motivation in organizational behavior. psychology press, (2014): 32

[3] Hauser, Laurentiu. “Work motivation in organizational behavior.” Economics, Management, and Financial Markets 9, no. 4 (2014): 239

[4] Baek-Kyoo, Joo and Taejo Lim. “The effects of organizational learning culture, perceived job complexity, and proactive personality on organizational commitment and intrinsic motivation.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 16, no. 1 (2009): 48-60.

[5] Griffin, Ricky W., and Gregory Moorhead. Organizational behavior. Nelson Education, 2011

[6] Barbuto Jr, John E., and Joana SP Story. “Work motivation and organizational citizenship behaviors: A field study.” Journal of leadership studies 5, no. 1 (2011): 23

[7] Marc Bellemare, Sriram Srinivasan, Georg Ostrovski, Tom Schaul, David Saxton, and Remi Munos. “Unifying count-based exploration and intrinsic motivation.” In Advances in neural information processing systems, pp. 1471-1479. 2016.

[8] Linda, Talley, and Samuel Temple. “How leaders influence followers through the use of nonverbal communication.” Leadership & Organization Development Journal (2015), 1

[9] Anthony Gatling, Hee Jung Annette Kang, and Jungsun Sunny Kim. “The effects of authentic leadership and organizational commitment on turnover intention.” Leadership & Organization Development Journal vol. 37, no. 2, (2016), 1

[10] Vanessa M. Lobo, “Transformational leadership to promote cross-generational retention.” Nursing leadership (Toronto, Ont.) 23, no. 2 (2010): 21

[11] David Fernandez,. “Employee retention and transformational leadership: A phenomenological study.” PhD diss., University of Phoenix (2011): 34

[12] Susanne Braun, and Claudia Peus. “Crossover of work–life balance perceptions: Does authentic leadership matter?.” Journal of Business Ethics 149, no. 4 (2018): 875-893.

[13] Kavitha, Sethuraman and Jayshree Suresh. “Effective leadership styles.” International Business Research 7, no. 9 (2014): 165.

[14] Kavitha, Sethuraman and Jayshree Suresh. “Effective leadership styles.” International Business Research 7, no. 9 (2014): 165.

[15] Mario Buble, Ana Juras, and Ivan Matić. “The relationship between managers’ leadership styles and motivation.” Management: journal of contemporary management issues 19, no. 1 (2014): 162

[16] Nicholas Clarke and Malcolm Higgs. “How strategic focus relates to the delivery of leadership training and development.” Human Resource Management 55, no. 4 (2016): 541-565.

[17] Huiwen, D. Lian, Lance Ferris, and Douglas J. Brown. “Does power distance exacerbate or mitigate the effects of abusive supervision? It depends on the outcome.” Journal of Applied Psychology 97, no. 1 (2012): 107.

[18] Molenberghs, Pascal, Rebecca Bosworth, Zoie Nott, Winnifred R. Louis, Joanne R. Smith, Catherine E. Amiot, Kathleen D. Vohs, and Jean Decety. “The influence of group membership and individual differences in psychopathy and perspective taking on neural responses when punishing and rewarding others.” Human brain mapping 35, no. 10 (2014): 4989-4999.

[19] Tonci, Grubic and Ian Jennions. “Do outcome-based contracts exist? The investigation of power-by-the-hour and similar result-oriented cases.” International Journal of Production Economics 206 (2018): 209

[20] Ralph Nader. “Leadership and motivation.” PhD diss., 2019.

[21] Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. “Intrinsic motivation.” The corsini encyclopedia of psychology (2010): 1-2.

[22] Cerasoli, Christopher P., Jessica M. Nicklin, and Michael T. Ford. “Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives jointly predict performance: A 40-year meta-analysis.” Psychological bulletin 140, no. 4 (2014): 980

[23] Marcia P. Miceli, Janet P. Near, Michael T. Rehg, and James R. Van Scotter. “Predicting employee reactions to perceived organizational wrongdoing: Demoralization, justice, proactive personality, and whistle-blowing.” Human relations 65, no. 8 (2012): 923

[24] Christina, Meyers, M. Marianne van Woerkom, and Arnold B. Bakker. “The added value of the positive: A literature review of positive psychology interventions in organizations.” European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 22, no. 5 (2013): 618

[25] Mark R. Lepper, and David Greene, eds. The hidden costs of reward: New perspectives on the psychology of human motivation. Psychology Press (2015), 66

[26] McShane, Steven L., Mary Ann Von Glinow, and Sharma R. Radha. “Organizational Behavior (Skimming and Scanning).” (2009), 285

[27] Kevin Fulk, H, Reginald L. Bell, and Nancy Bodie. “Team management by objectives: Enhancing developing teams’ performance.” Journal of Management Policy and Practice 12, no. 3 (2011): 17

[28] David L Largent. “Measuring and understanding team development by capturing self-assessed enthusiasm and skill levels.” ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 16, no. 2 (2016): 2

[29] Steve WJ Kozlowski, Daniel J. Watola, Jaclyn M. Jensen, Brian H. Kim, and Isabel C. Botero. “Developing adaptive teams: A theory of dynamic team leadership.” (2009), 2

[30] Kevin Fulk, H, Reginald L. Bell, and Nancy Bodie. “Team management by objectives: Enhancing developing teams’ performance.” Journal of Management Policy and Practice 12, no. 3 (2011): 17-26.

[31] McShane, Steven L., Mary Ann Von Glinow, and Sharma R. Radha. “Organizational Behavior (Skimming and Scanning).” (2009), 278

[32] Stephen E. Humphrey, Frederick P. Morgeson, and Michael J. Mannor. “Developing a theory of the strategic core of teams: A role composition model of team performance.” Journal of applied psychology 94, no. 1 (2009): 48.