Organizational Behavior: Analyzing Culture, Politics, Motivation, and Teamwork in ASDA

This assignment explores the influence of organizational culture, politics, and power on individual and team behavior within ASDA, a leading UK retail company. It examines how content and process theories of motivation, along with motivational techniques, contribute to goal achievement. The study also delves into the dynamics of effective and ineffective teams, applying Tuckman's team development model and Belbin's team roles theory. Finally, the assignment analyzes how organizational behavior concepts and philosophies, such as reward schemes, decision-making processes, and change management, impact ASDA's business environment.

Organizational behavior
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Table of Contents
Introduction:.......................................................................................................................3
L01 Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behavior of others in an
organizational context........................................................................................................3
Using your organization analyze how an organization’s culture, politics and power can
influence individual and team behavior and performance [P1].........................................3
L02 Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal...........................6
Using your organization evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and
motivational techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an organizational
context [P2]........................................................................................................................6
LO3 Demonstrate an understanding of how to co-operate effectively with others...........8
Using your organization Demonstrate an understanding of what makes an effective
team, as opposed to an ineffective team [P3]...................................................................8
LO4 Apply concepts and philosophies of organizational behavior to a given business
situation..............................................................................................................................9
Using your organization Apply concepts and philosophies of OB within the
organizational context [P4]................................................................................................9
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................11
Reference List:.................................................................................................................12
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Introduction:
The main aim of this discussion is to judge the several factors related with the
organizational behaviors that hinders or fosters the organizational activities. For proper
understanding of the organizational behaviors, the managers of the organization need
to be judge the entire scenario of the organization in order to include the necessary
criteria required for the organization in order to increase the business efficiency. In this
context, one of the renowned retail companies in UK, ASDA has been chosen to justify
the organizational strategies and the essential changes that has been done by the
organization in order to incase the service efficiency of the company (Vibert, 2017).
The political social and the economical factors are going to be discussed in this
particular study to have understandings of the entire scenario. Apart from this, the
teamwork, co-operation between the employees are also most vital factors that is
directly related with building an effective organizational culture for the organization
(Pinder, 2014). In this scenario, which the organization is going to entre in new market
and at the same time to fulfill the customers’ choices promptly, firstly they need to build
up a proper organizational culture that will increase the business efficiency of the
organization. In this context, it is going to be discussed that how the political, social and
the power allocated to individual helps to build up a proper organizational culture for the
organization. The impacts of all this factors upon the production efficiency are also
going to be highlighted in this module.
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L01 Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behavior of others
in an organizational context
Using your organization analyze how an organization’s culture, politics and
power can influence individual and team behavior and performance [P1]
There are several aspects of the organization, which is directly focusing on improving
the condition of the organization culture in order to increase the organizational efficiency
and to achieve desired target of production. The impacts of the culture, politics and the
organizational power upon steady organizational culture are discussed as follows:
Organizational Culture:
A steady organizational culture builds up from the effective organizational behavior of
the employees and the managers of the organization. The managers of the organization
need to come up with effective ideas of maintaining proper rules and regulations based
upon which the entire organization can achieve the desired target of the production
efficiency and the customers satisfaction (Pinder, 2014). Being one of the largest retail
companies, ASDA has developed a numbers of organizational strategies for the
employees by following which the company has managed to overcome the issue faced
from the market. Apart from this, while the organization is planning for expanding their
business in the international market, the employees of the organization need to be
responsible enough in order to maintain the proper organizational culture. The values
beliefs and the set of norms that the managers and the employees of the organization
need to be followed are the basis of forming proper organizational culture (Zhao et al.,
2015).
The corporate culture can be also subcategorized as the top down and the bottom up
approach. The top down approach is based on the factors of the organizational norms
that the employees and the mangers need to follow. The bottom up approach is related
with the nature of customer, their purchasing behaviors, and the sub cultures and so on.
All these factors are essential for the ASDA Company to be taken into consideration in
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order to increase the production efficiency at the same time to get competitive
advantage in the domestic as well as in the international market (Junker and van Dick,
2014). Strong culture is built up by the following factors:
 The clear observation and proper organizational values of the senior
management
 Explicit business strategies
 Unidirectional business approach
 The reinforcement of the values through trial and error practice upon the
implemented strategies that is again sub categorized as prescribed policies,
common rituals and the appropriate rules for the employees.
 The strong culture is also incorporate with the factors of the empowerment and
freedom. However, the entire cultural aspects of a particular company are
incorporated with several important factors that bounds the freedom to certain
level. Hence, all these factors are incorporated within the corporate culture and at
the same time to improve the organization’s working culture.
Politics and power:
This is one of these vital factors that need to be taken into consideration by the
organization’s managers. The political power has become one of those mainstream
considerations that help to direct the entire organizational process towards success.
However, politics is again subdivided in two factors namely personal and the
organizational politics. Personal politics is sub categorized as follows:
Values:
Values are the key aspects of a human being based upon which the nature of the
human being can be judged. The main criteria for working in a well established
company in the market is to have the proper understandings of the behavior of the other
people. While particular person is accustomed with the organizational culture in which
the person is working for, it becomes easier for both the organization and the
employees to work efficiently to achieve the desired target of the organization.
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Perception:
Perception is the understanding of the things and the inner meanings of the incidents in
the surrounding. Based on the perception a human being reacts to a situation and gets
idea for a particular incident. Therefore, it is the key responsibility of the organizations
manager to establish clear concept of the organizational strategies and the related
factors in front if the employees so that they gets the appropriate understandings of the
factors.
Personality:
This is the key understandings of the factors which are related with the nature of the
human being, his or her life styles, likes dislikes and so on. Moreover, based on the
personality the employees of an organization get proper rewards from the job. Hence, it
can be stated that, based on the personality of an individual, an organization gets
optimistic results and the employees gains promotion for the job done.
Organizational politics:
Organizational politics is gain sub divided into several factors of horizontal, vertical,
cultural and communication factors.
Horizontal conflicts:
This factor is entirely related with the departmental conflicts and the conflicts among the
employees. In case of the retails sectors companies, there are numbers of departments
in operation to deliver the final product to the market. As per the opinion of various
researchers, the proper communication in the several departments of the organization
helps to improve the condition of the service delivered or the products offered to the
customers. On the other hand, the vertical politics is with the higher authority of the
organization where the terms and condition implemented by the higher authority of the
organization becomes difficult to maintain and conflict arises. The cultural factors is
related with the competitive condition in the market, the challenges and the threats
faced from the sub cultures for the organization.
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Communication plays one of the most vital role for the organization based upon which
the busien efficiency can be judged. The improper communication among the several
departments of the organization, the entire scenario of the lack of information,
inappropriate channels of communication forms the conflicts among the organization.
Hence, all these factors need to be analyzed carefully by the managers of the
organization in order to have the proper justification of the efficiency of the entire
organization. The managers of the ASDA company has come out with effective
planning’s for these issues that has managed to overcome the political factors for the
organization as well as improving the production efficiency.
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L02 Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal
Using your organization evaluate how content and process theories of motivation
and motivational techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an
organizational context [P2].
Motivation is the basic characteristics that help to achieve the desired goals. A common
factor pushes individual to work hard to achieve their dreams and to provide the
sufficient strength to overcome the issues faced in daily life scenario (Miner, 2015).
However, in the organizational context, there are three common theories of motivation
has been followed namely:
Content theory:
It is mainly focused on the macro factors and the common human behavior. It is again
sub divided with the underneath factors:
 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
Figure 1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
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(Source: Gelfand et al., 2017)
The above diagram represents the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which is classified in
five stages. The stages have been arranged in a chronological order in order to have
the understanding of the basic human nature. While a person are provided with the
psychological needs, safety needs, the love and belongings needs, esteem needs and
the self-actualization needs, the person get motivated to di some useful work.
Therefore, the managers of the organization need to be aware whether all the factors
are being fulfilled for the employees is that that they can work efficiently for the
organization.
Alderfer ERG Theory:
The ERG theory is related with the factors of the Existence, Relatedness and the growth
related issues. These factors have been discussed below:
Existence: This factor is similar to the Maslow’s Psychological and the safety needs.
The most essential factors that are related with the survival of the human being are
food, air water and proper working conditions (Huff, et al., 2016). While all these factors
have been fulfilled properly, a person gets proper motivation for working for the
organization. Hence, the managers of the ASDA Company need to maintain all the
factors for their employees so that they can work properly for the organization and to
achieve the desired target set up by the company.
Relatedness:
It is the basic human nature is to get proper social recognition for themselves to
establish themselves in the society. Therefore, they are aligned with getting credit for
the job done by them for the organization (Luthans et al., 2015). Hence, the managers
of the ASDA Company need to give proper credit and financial rewards to their
employees so that they gets proper motivation to work. In this process, all the
employees of the organization get proper motivation to work hard and to give entire
efforts for the work (Miner, 2015). According to various researchers while the company
and the employees are properly bonded and the interpersonal relationships is better,
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the organization proceeds towards achieving the desired target of business in the new
market. The ERG theory is related with the factors of the more than one need at the
same time and to highlight the exact humanitarian values required for the organization.
Growth:
As per the viewpoints of the Alderfer, the growth factors are related with personal
achievements and the intrinsic desire of individuals in their life (Greenberg, 2014).
Therefore, the ASDA organization should have scopes for their employees to progress
further and to build a steady carrier. By this process, the organization will get loyal
employees and at the same time the employees will get proper self actualization in the
society. In many contexts, it has been seen that while the employees are getting
enough scopes in order to enhance their professional as well as the person and skills in
the organization they becomes eager to work and to achieve the desired target. This is
the prime criteria for the teamwork.
McClelland’s Need Theory:
This theory is totally separated from the previous two theories that give an idea of
achieving the difficult task. This is entirely related with the factors of accomplishing and
demonstrating the master task and corresponding skills of individual. Apart from working
hard for the organization, the employees want to be in asocial relationship in the
organization and to get love and affection from the people around them. Therefore, it is
the key responsibility of the managers of the organization to build up an effective
organizational culture, in which the employees can fulfill all these tasks to work properly
and to deliver optimum efficiency for the organization.
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LO3 Demonstrate an understanding of how to co-operate effectively with others.
Using your organization Demonstrate an understanding of what makes an
effective team, as opposed to an ineffective team [P3].
For analyzing the effectiveness of the team members in ASDA, every is provided with
an activity of helping the company to position itself in UK as the cheapest price
supermarket. The teams are allocated with work in order to analyze the benefits of
working as a team and to shed light on factors that can influence or hinder teamwork.
Teamwork is beneficial and this is because the management of every company relies
on teamwork to achieve certain objectives. The leaders are the ones that direct the
teams to work more effectively in order to help the organization enhance their
productivity (Ruch et al., 2018). For ASDA, team work is very necessary and this is
because being a retail store, ASDA has huge tasks to complete and those can only be
done if the teams are working cooperatively with each other. The lack of teamwork in
the company can make ASDA face lots of challenges in their business. An important
part of teamwork is communication; every team members must have proper
communication with their team leaders and the management to get knowledge about
the required work and provide the best support to the management (Raes et al., 2015).
The effectiveness of the teams will be assessed with the help of the famous team
development model of Tuckman. Tuckman introduced the team development theory in
the year 1965. According to this theory, there are three factors that helps in determining
the effectiveness of team performance, which are content, process and feelings.
Content is referred to what the team is doing, process is referred to the way the team is
working to reach the company objectives and feelings depict how strong teams can
underperform. According to Tuckman’s model, the lifespan of a team covers four stages
of development and after the completion of this stages, either the team is effective or is
ineffective. The four stages that Tuckman identified are Forming, Storming, Norming
and Performing (Raes et al., 2015). As per this theory, the effectiveness of the teams
will not be assessed until they have reached the performing stage in which the team will
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focus on initiatives that will help in fulfilling the job and the team will also develop
processes that will help the team to ensure that the final objective of the business is
achieved. In ASDA, many teams are facing the problem of not being able to move
forward from forming stage as the idea about the responsibility is not clear to them and
hence they lack confidence of working in the team. It is recommended that the teams
must be able to reach the norming stage where they will be flexible to work in teams
and feel concerned about their own responsibilities, this is because if the team fails to
be in the norming stage, it will make them stay in storming stage in which they will find
reasons for not being a part of the team and for finding reasons of not doing any tasks.
Another factor that can hinder the effectiveness of team is the time span taken to
complete this whole team development cycle (Mathieu et al., 2015).
The factors that are helpful in analyzing the effectiveness of a team are its frequency, its
cooperative nature, communication among the teams and leaders, stability of the team
members and the nature of the work. Other than these, the main factor that depicts
about whether the team is effective or ineffective is the role of the leader. As a leader it
is very important to guide, help and resolve every query that a team member has and
try to build up a proper team. The role of a leader is very essential in making a team
effective or ineffective. It is the responsibility of the leader to provide required training to
the members and engage them in fulfilling organizational objectives. However, it is seen
that the present business context of the world is dependent on effectiveness of virtual
teams rather than on traditional teams because virtual teams are more technology
dependent, which helps them fulfill their work in shorter time (Bush et al., 2017).
Another way of assessing the team dynamics is the Belbin’s theory. This theory focuses
on the point that training and identifying the skills of the team members and making
them work according to their skills will help an organization enhance their productivity.
Belbin in his model has identified nine clusters that help in identifying the role of a team
within an organization. For analyzing the impact of behaviors within a team, Belbin’s
model is very helpful because his research about team dynamics made it clear that
every team consists of a mixture of behaviors and they have admittance to all the nine
clusters. For assessing the behaviors and performances of team members, this theory
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focuses on self-perception inventory (Belbin, 2014). Hence, for ASDA this inventory
along with the theory will be important in order to gain review about team performance
and analyze their effectiveness. However, ASDA first needs ton identify the team work
objectives and then plan on the tasks that will be performed. ASDA can use Belbin’s
idea of analyzing team effectiveness by understanding the mixture of behaviors among
the team members.
Hence, it can be said that in order to identify whether a team is effective or not, ASDA
will need to shed light on the roles of the team members, share their organizational
objective in a proper way and discuss about strategies with the team members in order
to get increased productivity.
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LO4 Apply concepts and philosophies of organizational behavior to a given
business situation
Using your organization Apply concepts and philosophies of OB within the
organizational context [P4]
Employees are often noted to follow different behaviors at work and at other places. The
reason behind this change is the existing organizational culture. The structure of the
company, their existing policies along with management role and communication among
stakeholders determine the organizational culture of a business. These elements
together influence the employees to work harder (Luthans et al., 2015). In the business
context of ASDA, it is seen that the existing organizational culture determines the
organization behavior and highlights the present cultural policies of the company.
Organizational culture in ASDA knows how to make the employees more efficient and
enhance more productivity in the organization. To any business situation the role of
organizational behavior is huge.
Organizational culture is one of the philosophies that determine the role of
organizational behavior. Whenever an employee joins ASDA, the way they act is
influenced by the work culture of the organization. It is important for every person to act
according to the environment they are surrounded with and hence in ASDA the new
employees do the same. ASDA provides the new employees with the opportunity to talk
without fear and highlight any issue they are facing in the organization. This is why the
new employees of ASDA are able to narrate about their ideas to the management.
However, if the company had the culture of not providing the employees with the
opportunity to speak without fear then the culture of the company would have been
ineffective for the employees. Furthermore, ASDA is planning to shed light on their
organizational culture by providing the employees with brief idea about the company
policies and objectives and practicing them regularly (Alvesson and Sveningsson,
2015).
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On the other hand the other concept that determines the impact of organizational
behavior in the business is the company’s reward schemes. This system highlights the
point that not only salary can encourage the employees to work and that is why,
providing the employees with some additional benefits are very necessary. ASDA tries
to add up some benefits to their organizational behavior to avoid employee attrition and
among them providing them rewards for good performances is an encouraging way to
engage the employees with the organization. ASDA believes that if the employees are
able to foresee the relation between their performance and reward than they might
actually try to improve their performances. The managers of ASDA try to achievable
goals and measures the employee performances regularly in order to ensure the
proficiency of the reward system (Shields et al., 2015).
The next philosophy that plays a huge role in determining the organizational behavior of
the company is their decision-making process. Any company which has a proper
employee-employer relationship is able to make a better decision. ASDA too practices
communication strategies to influence employer-employee relations and involves the
employees in decision-making processes. This philosophy helps the company to assess
the risk factors they might face and deals with those risks along with their employees.
ASDA engages the employees in risk mitigation plans so that they can get various
thoughts about risk assessments. Hence it can be said that ASDA and other
organizations that follows proper decision making and risk assessments, they are able
to practice innovation within their work culture (Romiszowski, 2016).
The next philosophy that helps in identifying the impact of organizational behavior in the
organization is the change management. This is because it is very important for every
company to act on the changing trends of market and incorporate strategies that will
help to fulfill the customer needs. Similarly, it is very necessary for ASDA to act on the
technical advancements of the market and also have knowledge about the change in
customer preferences. However, ASDA was facing the problem of non-adaptive
reaction of the employees as it is quite evident that employees prefer to in their
accustomed surroundings. Being one of the largest retail companies, ASDA has
developed a numbers of organizational strategies for the employees by following which
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the company has managed to overcome the issue faced from the market. Apart from
this, while the organization is planning for expanding their business in the international
market, the employees of the organization need to be responsible enough in order to
maintain the proper organizational culture. Hence, ASDA is planning to discuss about
the importance of change management within the organization in order to provide the
employees with a brief idea about the planned changes. The managers of ASDA are
also planning to find out employees who are not comfortable with the changes and try to
persuade those employees to rely on the changes for betterment of the company
(Hayes, 2018).
Hence it can be said that providing the employees of ASDA are open minded and
allowed to represent their ideas in front of the management because the management
involves them in every decision-making process and even provides the employees
rewards when they perform well. Thus it can also be said that, the employees of ASDA
are satisfied with their jobs but they are not at all ready to adapt to any organizational
changes and that is why the organization is planning to influence the employees to
adapt to changes by making them understand the importance of change management
in the business. ASDA is known to be a leading retail company in UK market and that is
why it is very important for them to shed light on the impact of organizational context
within their business environment to establish an effective work culture.
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Conclusion:
From the above it can be concluded that, there are many business aspects of an
organization that directly focuses on improving the condition of the organizational
culture in order to increase the organizational efficiency and help the organization to
achieve desired target of production. The impacts of the culture, politics and the
organizational power upon steady organizational culture are also discussed in the
assignment. This assignment also sheds light on the importance of theories of
motivation and highlights the motivational techniques that enable effective achievement
of goals in an organization. Furthermore, this assignment also sheds light on the
theories of team development and even focuses on factors that influences and hinders
team effectiveness. Through this assignment it is known that the factors that are helpful
in analyzing the effectiveness of a team is their frequency. It is hence identified from the
above that Organizational culture in ASDA knows how to make the employees more
efficient and enhance more productivity in the organization. To any business situation
the role of organizational behavior is huge. Lastly, this assignment highlights the impact
of organizational behavior within the chosen organization and discusses about few
concepts and philosophies that will be helpful for the company.
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