Organisational Behaviour Report: Influence on Individual Performance

This report provides a detailed analysis of organisational behaviour, using Ryanair as a case study. It examines the influence of organisational culture, power, and politics on individual and team performance. The report delves into various aspects, including organisational culture typologies (artifacts, espoused values, basic assumptions), Kennedy’s typologies of culture (Tough-Guy, Work Hard/Play Hard, Bet-Your-Company, Process), and different types of cultures (Role, Task, Person, and Power) within the context of Ryanair. It explores how these elements impact employee behaviour and overall company performance. The report also discusses the application of motivational theories and concepts, and team development. Furthermore, it covers the philosophies and concepts of organisational behaviour, providing recommendations for enhancing overall company performance and effective team development strategies.

Organisational
Behaviour

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
PART A...........................................................................................................................................1
Organisational culture, power and politics influence individual performance.......................1
Theories of motivation...........................................................................................................4
Application of behavioural motivational theories, concepts and models...............................5
Recommendations for improving overall company performance..........................................6
PART 2............................................................................................................................................6
Concepts and philosophies of inform organisational behaviour............................................6
Relevance of team development theories, concepts and philosophies...................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Organisational behaviour can be defined as the comprehensive study of individual and group
behaviour within the bounds of an organisation. When the organisational behaviour is effectually
studied, it leads to recognition of issues prevailing within the premises of a company (Balwant,
2018). The current project seeks to gain comprehensibility of the concept of organisational
behaviour on the basis of case study based on Ryanair. This is a low cost airlines company
operating within aviation sector and providing services to people across the globe. The report
includes discussion done upon the impact of culture, politics and power on team and individuals’
behaviour via the application of certain models and theories. It also contains process and content
motivational theories. In addition to this, the ways in which effective team is developed are
covered. At the end, the philosophies and concepts of organisational behaviour are included in
the assignment.
PART A
Organisational culture, power and politics influence individual performance.
An organisation is composed of culture, power and politics. These elements are essential
to be studied in the light of the impact they hold on team as well as individual behaviour and
performance. All of these elements play essential role in the growth of every company as they it
influences the core behaviour of the employees in both the positive and negative manner. It is
highly important for every management team of entity to focus on ensuring them all these
elements must be used within the company for influencing behaviour of the employees in the
positive manner so that they can attain success in the quicker manner. In order to incorporate
them positively within the company the respective manager have emphasised gathering detailed
knowledge on the same so that they can easily improvise the lack areas. All of these element in
the context of Ryanair as explained as follows:-
Culture
Culture is considered as the social behaviour of the people within the society.
Organisational culture is basically tends to as the integration of value, ideology and traditions
held within the company.
As per the information specified by the Edgard Schein, it has been analysed that the
organisational learning, development and planning of the change can only be determined
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effectively by simply considering organisational culture. This is so because; if the culture of the
entity is not in favour then it won’t be possible for the company to implement it in appropriate
manner. As per Schein, there are mainly three levels of organisational culture which are specified
as below:
Artifacts: This acknowledged as the top level where visual organisational structures as
well as processes relies. It simply belongs to the surface level which can be easily discerned but
still quite complicated for understanding.
Espoused values: At this level strategies are developed as goals of the company.
Basic assumptions and values: This is the last stage where culture of the entity is
developed by simply making assumptions on the perceptions, feeling, and thoughts of the
associated person. All of these are hardly to understand as it completely depends upon the nature
of humans, their activities, and relationship with others, truth, reality and many other aspects.
Kennedy’s typologies of culture: Corporate culture is basically considered as the belief as
well as behaviour which clearly depicts that employees of the company are behaving and
interacting with the management team and others while performing business responsibilities.
Corporate culture of the company can be easily understood by Kennedy’s typologies of culture.
It includes four main types which are specified as below:
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Figure 1Kennedy’s typologies of culture, 2020.
(Source: Kennedy’s typologies of culture, 2020)
Tough-Guy, Macho – In this type, employees enjoys taking risk and also takes
feedbacks from others on their decisions so that improvement can be made on the same. Here,
excitement level of the employees is so high and they perform work with extreme hard work.
Team work is less valued within this culture.
Work Hard/Play Hard – In this type, employees’ focuses on taking several risks and
put additional efforts with the involvement of the team members for increasing their performance
in the rapid manner and attaining their respective goals and objectives in the quicker manner.
This boost up organisational performance in rapid manner as employees is executing their work
in effective manner.
Bet-Your-Company – This typology clearly suggests that decisions taken by employees
might be risky here but still they get feedback after several years. This typology of culture is
mainly followed with the oil and gas companies, architectural firms and organizations in other
large, capital-intensive industries.
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Process – In this culture, feedback is slow, and the risks are low. Large retailers, banks,
insurance companies and government organizations are typically in this group. No single
transaction has much impact on the organization's success and it takes years to find out whether a
decision was good or bad.
Cultures within the organisation are of many types such as Role culture, Task culture,
Person culture and Power culture. These elements are studied with reference to Ryanair as
follows:-
Role culture: Role culture is said to be as the type of culture where superiors or top
management team of the company delegates roles and responsibility among their employees as
per their qualification, interest, specialization so that they carry out work with their best possible
efforts. For instance: Authority of Ryanair assigns the role and responsibilities to its employee’s
accordance with their interest and expertise. Following this culture within the confines of
Ryanair, boost up to the performance of individuals as well as teams. This tends to foster the
development of positive behaviour in teams and personnel (Chou and et. al., 2019). When
positive working atmosphere is created, individuals and teams work with their full potential to
ensure that the goal and objectives of Ryanair are met in the time frame prescribed by the
management.
Task culture: This kind of culture is basically developed within the entity when teams
are developed for addressing specific problems or project in company. While incorporating this
kind of culture, power is generally provided to several people with the motive of completing the
task within the available period of time. In context of Ryanair, it has been determined that the
implementation of this culture would mean that positive reinforcement of individual and team
behaviour will take place. It can be said that implementation of task culture develops positive
environment within the entity as employees feels motivated while getting opportunity of the
performing new work. This has a positive influence upon the performance of individuals as well
as teams. In the long run, it implies that the collaborative efforts lead to attainment of positive
outcomes for the respective airlines company. This is considered as one of the most ideal
cultures which when followed within the bounds of an organisation, stimulates the workforce
positively and cultivate loyalty in them towards the enterprise.
Person culture: This is a negative kind of culture as claimed by several researchers and
academicians over the course of time. Hereby, the focus of the culture is over the individuals and
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not on the group or the company. This has severe consequences for the organisation as a whole.
In an instance whereby this culture is followed within the premises of Ryanair, it would imply
positive influence over the behaviour and performance of individuals (Brankovic, 2018).
However, the contrary impact would be noticed in context of team. This is so because
individuals hereby start considering themselves to be superior to the group and the company.
Thus, their individual contribution to the team diminishes. This has a negative impact on the
team behaviour along with the performance exhibited by the group as a whole. In case this
culture is followed in Ryanair, it will be able to retain the employees for the long run but not able
to ensure sound business performance.
Power culture: Power culture is basically tends to be as the culture whereby authority
vests with very few individuals. They have the power to take crucial decisions for the company.
This culture creates a negative atmosphere within the entity as hereby the decisions taken by
higher authority are forced upon the employees and teams (Islam and et. al., 2018). The
individuals and the teams working within the bounds of an organisation hereby start to feel
discouraged and demotivate as their creativity is hampered to a large extent. In this relation, it
can be said that the implementation of this culture within the confines of Ryanair would imply
negative impact over the behaviour and performance of individuals along with teams. The long
term implementation of this culture within a company can hamper the productivity levels of
employees to a substantial extent.
It has been noted that Ryanair follows power culture owing to which the employees and
the teams stay discouraged. It has also been seen that incorporation of wrong or negative type of
culture within the entity would definitely influence the behaviour of employees in the negative
itself because due to non corporative culture employees are not able to perform their work with
full potential. As a result, long term consequence of this is seen within their performance. Along
with this, its results could also be seen on the customer satisfaction levels these employees are
not providing quality services to the customers due to ineffective culture of the entity. All this
clearly depicts the behaviour of employees as well as customers have been influenced by the
culture of company.
Politics
Politics is mainly concerned with the human interaction behaviour that is used by the
individual while making use of power in distinctive manner. This could be seen in both the
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positive and negative manner. This also includes influential tactics as well as personal interest of
the person who have power. It is an informal effort to gain influence, increase personal power,
impact the organisation or attain other outcomes. With reference to the Ryanair, it can be said
that respective manager of the entity effective makes use of Chanlat's characteristics of political
behaviour approach with the motive of analysing overall impact of the politics within the entity.
As per the Chanlat’s model, it can be said that there are several types according to which
political behaviour can be differentiated. This simply includes personal, structural and decisional.
All of these are explained below in detailed manner:
Personal characteristics: While recruiting employees within the company, the
management team often goes for determining personal characteristics of the candidate. This can
be effectively done by analysing qualities of the individual and their passion related to the use of
power and political behaviour.
Decisional characteristics: This is the second most characteristic which bifurcated into
two types that is structured and unstructured. It is commonly seen that structured can be
implemented with the inclusion of the decision rules whereas unstructured can be incorporated
with the inclusion of this. In simple words, it can be said that top management team of the
company makes use of unstructured decision characteristics as they are not required to involve
anyone in the decision making.
Structured characteristics: It has been acknowledged that within an organisation every
employee is assigned with the respective roles and responsibilities as per the core requirement of
their job role and their goals towards the same. This simply creates differentiation at workplace.
It can be said with this much differentiation chances of the conflicts as well as the political
behaviour ultimately develops and creates issues.
It can be further said that political behaviour among the leader is highly important as it
provides supports in taking rightful decision within the entity according to the capability of the
employees. Also, it has been acknowledged that behaviour of employees can also be influenced
with the politics at workplace as it develops the feeling of competition at workplace which
influences employees to perform the similar kind of work in more effective manner. This results
in the accomplishment of organisational performance in rapid manner.
Power
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Power is mainly acknowledged as the authority provided to the person belongs to the
superior of the entity. As the per the thoughts given by French & Raven, it can be said that there
are mainly five types of power that can be adopted by the leaders in order to attain huge success
in the organizational situations. All these 5 types of power are specified as below:
Reward power: This generally witnesses that leaders hold authority of providing reward
to deserving employees within the entity. This simply develops the positive behaviour among
employees which fosters their performance in positive manner.
Coercive power: This is basically acknowledged as the threat used by the leaders to
influence interest of individuals as well as the team members so that they can deflate the thinking
process of the employees. This also states that here employees with the less skills can also
accomplish whole task with the support of their team members.
Legitimate power: This authority is mainly given to the superiors’ authority within the
entity such as CEO. This power does not support to creativity among employees. Also, it is
commonly taken as the negative behaviour by the workers as they are not supported by the
superiors.
Referent power: Here fictitious form of authority is exercised by the individual who
possesses the “x-factor” and characteristics to gain the attention of other members of company.
This leads to increment in productivity of individuals as they are keen to take the same place as
that of referent leader.
With reference to the above specified several types of powers, it has been analysed that
the Ryanair mainly makes use of reward based power within the entity in order to motivate its
existing staff as with additional monetary support they are able to fulfil their core requirements’.
Theories of motivation
Motivation can be defined as a procedure through which organisations seek to stimulate
the behaviour of individuals as well as groups in an effectual manner (Lugosi, 2019). In this
regard, the top management of Ryanair makes use of certain motivational theories in order to
encourage the individuals and teams within the bounds of the company. There are mainly two
types of motivational theories, namely, content and process. These are explained in a detailed
manner as follows:-
Content Theory
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Content theories lay down the aspects which tend to motivate the people to work in a
certain direction. One of the most prominently used motivational theories is acknowledged to be
ERG Motivational Theory. These are discussed in relation to Ryanair as follows:-
ERG motivation theory
It is a theory which was coined by Clayton P. Alderfer. This theory compresses the 5
needs mentioned in the Maslow’s theory of needs into 3 main categories which are named as
Existence, Relatedness and Growth.
Existence Needs: These tend to consist of the physiological or the materialistic needs
like air, water, clothes, water and many more. In this regard, it has been determined that this
category of needs of employees within the bounds of Ryanair is met by the top management with
the use of motivational techniques like incentive, bonus, staff satisfaction survey, and so on
(Hiekkataipale, 2018).
Relatedness Needs: This category of needs tend to includes social esteem along with
external needs. This implies that relatedness is concerned with the development of relations of
individuals with their friends, family and other co-workers. This category of needs within the
confines of respective airlines company is met by the management team via the usage of
motivational techniques like recognition and rewarding of employees (Odor, 2018). Also,
organizing informal meetings and parties helps Ryanair in fulfilling these needs.
Growth Needs: This category of needs is concerned with the availability of opportunities
to an individual for achieving their highest level of potential. This is important for the employees
as it enables them to carry out professional development. For this purpose, the management team
of Ryanair conducts training whereby employees are acquainted with the various aspects of
working and the best ways in which these can be executed (Ahmad and et. al., 2020). Further, the
development session held enable the employees to develop their skills and potential so that they
can significantly contribute in timely accomplishment of goal and objectives.
Process Theory
Process theories tend to focus upon the manner in which a company grows and develops
with the passage of time. There are several process theories of motivation which are used by
companies functioning in the corporate sector. The most prominently used theory out of these is
recognised as Adam's Equity theory. This is discussed in context of Ryanair as follows:-
Adam’s Equity Theory
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This theory was coined by John Stacy Adams. The core foundation of this theory is based
upon 2 principles. The first principle states that there must be equilibrium between the input and
output of personnel functioning within the bounds of an entity. Besides this, the second principle
is that fair treatment should be given to the employees at all times so that they feel at par with the
co-workers (Grufman, 2018). In this regard, it is acknowledged that the top management of
Ryanair implements this theory through provision of financial as well as non financial incentives
like bonus, certificates, paid leave, productivity linked pay, etc. The respective airlines company
seeks to apply both the principles in an effectual manner so as to stimulate the behaviour of
individuals in a positive way and foster them to achieve organisational goals in due course of
time.
Application of behavioural motivational theories, concepts and models.
Through the application of content and process motivation theories such as ERG
Motivation along with Adam's Equity, the management of Ryanair seeks to stimulate the
behaviour of individuals and teams. ERG theory encourages the individuals to work with their
full potential to ensure the timely accomplishment of organisational goal and objectives
(Karatepe, Ozturk and Kim, 2019). Besides this, Adam’s theory ensures that every individual has
access to equitable and fair behaviour within the premises of Ryanair. However, it is seen that
whereby the input of employees is not matched with the output, it tends to generate a sense of
alienation and discouragement within the workforce.
Recommendations for improving overall company performance
The implementation of positive form of culture (task and role), power (reward, referent
and expert) and politics (Chanlat’s characteristics) fosters an organisation to generate a positive
form of working scenario whereby individuals stay motivated at all times to achieve the
corporate goals. Now, when any or all of these elements turn out to be negative, then this would
imply discrepancies within the bounds of company (Pan and et. al., 2018). The same was
witnessed in Ryanair whereby power culture was being fostered. This discouraged the teams and
individuals, having adverse impact over their performance. It is recommended that the company
should follow Task culture, Reward Power and Chanlat’s politics as this is the ideal mix for
culture, power and politics.
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PART 2
Concepts and philosophies of inform organisational behaviour
Organisational behaviour is the collaboration of the values, ideologies, beliefs, systems,
customs and other different elements. Here, it can be said that respective leader of the business
entities are effectively required focusing aligning the overall characteristics of the workforce as
per the corporate goals effectively (Rawabdeh and et. al., 2019). Wit reference to the current
provided situation of the Ryanair, Path Goal Theory is one of the most important theories that fit
best to the situation of the restructuring within Ryanair. Application of this theory with the
present context is specified as below in detailed manner.
Concepts of OB
Path Goal Theory
The respective theory was given by Sir Robert House which clearly emphasizes on the
effective achievement of the goals that are adopted by the leaders with the motive of attaining
success within the journey. The respective theory clearly justifies several styles of leadership that
could be adopted by the leaders in different organisational situations in effective manner. This
simply states that leader's are responsible for allocating duty as well as providing adequate level
of information and resources to employees which ultimately contributes in attaining
organisational objectives effectively. The main objective is to encourage employees to make
them productive members. Also it contributes in executing their work in such a manner so that
better services could be delivered to the customers in rightful manner with which they can
maximise their satisfaction effectively (Nwali, 2018). With reference to current specified
situation of restructuring path goal theory is mainly consisting of few elements which are
specified as below:
Employee Characteristics: In this, the main focus of the leader is to develop effective
strategy so that they can effectively motivate employees in timely manner and satisfy them at
extensive level. It has been acknowledged that customer review for the Ryanair is negative
which clearly means that the employees of the entity are not able to deliver expected services to
the customers which results in decline of employees’ satisfaction level. Thus, by providing
effective training to employees entity could easily enhance satisfaction level of the customers
too.
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