Analysis of Organisational Culture and its Impact on BBC's Performance

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Table of Contents
Introduction:..........................................................................................................................................2
Part A.....................................................................................................................................................3
Task 1.................................................................................................................................................3
a) A general introduction and definition of organisational culture, power and politics drawing
knowledge from different organisation study theories.................................................................3
b) Provide detail analyse on how an organization’s culture, politics and power influence
individual and team behaviour and performance of the organisation..........................................5
Task 2: Critically analyse how the culture, politics and power of an organisation can influence
individual and team behaviour and performance.............................................................................6
Task 3: Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and motivational techniques
enable effective achievement of goals in an organisational context.................................................7
Task 4: Critically evaluate how to influence the behaviour of others through the effective
application of behavioural motivational theories, concepts and models..........................................8
Task 5: Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and motivation that
enables teams and organisations to succeed providing justified recommendations.........................9
Part B...................................................................................................................................................10
Task 6: Explain what makes an effective team as opposed to an ineffective team to your
organisation management, and how you intend to ensure effective team performance that is
capable of moving the business to a greater high...........................................................................10
Task 7: Analyse relevant team and group development theories to support the development of
dynamic cooperation and how your organisation can apply these theories to improve team
building and team work in the company.........................................................................................12
Task 8: Apply concepts and philosophies of organisational behaviour within an organisational
context.............................................................................................................................................13
Task 9: Explore and evaluate how concepts and philosophies of OB inform and influence
behaviour in both a positive and negative way and how these may affect your business..............14
Task 10: Critically analyse and evaluate the relevance of team development theories in context of
organisational behaviour concepts and philosophies that influence behaviour in the work place. 14
Conclusion:..........................................................................................................................................16
References:..........................................................................................................................................16
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Introduction:
Organisational behaviour refers to that field of business studies which mainly focuses on the
way the various employees within an organisation interacts with one another and how they
behave within a team. It is the sum total of all the rules, beliefs etc. that makes up the
organisational culture. The performance of the organisation on the whole depends on the OB
as it affects the team as well as the individual behaviour which ultimately are responsible for
the overall performance of the organisation. The following assignment will discuss the
different aspects of the organisational behaviour as well as the impact the organisational
culture as well as power and politics have on the team behaviour and the individual behaviour
within BBC i.e. British Broadcasting Corporation, UK’s largest and most trusted
broadcasting organisation.
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Part A
Task 1
a) A general introduction and definition of organisational culture, power and politics
drawing knowledge from different organisation study theories.
Organisational culture is the sum total of all the values as well as the rituals that acts as the
organisational glue in order to bind together all the members of the organisation (King and
Lawley, 2016). Organisational provides the set of rules as well as values with the shared view
of what needs to be followed and why needs to be followed. It refers to the values that are
shared by all the managers and the employees. It defines the way the various employees as
well as the management interact with each other. The culture of the organisation gets
reflected by the dress code followed, the working hours and the policies followed by the
organisation, the benefits given to the employees, the way the management treats its
employees etc. As per the organisational theory given by Handy, culture are of the following
different types:
Power Culture: Power culture refers to the kind of organisational culture where the position
of the employee gives birth to power as well as authority and the ones enjoying those power
and authorities are responsible for the major organisational decisions (Christiansen, 2012).
Task Culture: Task Culture is the culture that is practised in the organisations which hardly
depends on the team work for getting tasks done in order to achieve their organisational
goals. Task Culture allots roles and responsibilities as per the skills and the expertise.
Role Culture: Most of the organisations in present times have adopted the role culture. The
role culture allots the roles as per the specialisation of the employee and therefore these
results in the maximised organisational productivity (MSG, 2019).
Person Culture: The organisations practising the person culture takes the individual goals
more seriously than the goals and objectives of the organisation (Christiansen, 2012).
Power
Power may be defined as the individual’s ability to influence the will or decision of the other
individual and make them do something against their wish so as to achieve personal
objectives (Easton, 2012). The perception of the individual towards whom power is directed
is of great importance as power might not be that powerful than what an individual might
think of it. When an individual is supposed to acquire certain power, there are certain
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purposes that are meant to be achieved out of it. Power is of great importance for the
organisational success as the ineffective as well as inappropriate use of power might result in
the failure of the organisation. As per the theory given by French and Raven, the power can
be of several types which mainly include the following:
Coercion Power: The coercive power refers to the organisational power that results in the
negative atmosphere at the workplace as the power results in making someone act against
his/her will which mainly result into the dissatisfaction and negative attitude (Easton, 2012).
Expertise Power: Expertise power is the type of the power that is based on the specialised
skill or knowledge possessed by an employee of the organisation. The power is given to an
individual on the basis of his/her expertise in a particular field and therefore the individual
gets rewarded with the title of the expert.
Rewards: Reward is the name given to the kind of power which is based on the belief of
rewarding employees in exchange for their outstanding performance or efficiency. The one
having this power has the right to reward employee on the basis of their performance.
Legitimacy: The legitimate power is the ones that are based on the title of an individual
within an organisation and arises out of the position which an individual possesses within an
organisation. The power as well as the authority remains till the title lasts.
Referent Power: Referent power refers to the power of the personality that is possessed by
some and therefore is capable of influencing others and serves as their role models and ideals
by means of their actions and words (Easton, 2012). The individuals having this power have
the charisma to gain the trust of others and lead them through their actions.
Political Behaviour
Politics is a general term that has been derived from the Greek word that means a city or a
state. The earlier sociologists have defined the word politics as the behaviour or the
relationship that gets developed by man who is a social animal, when one man interacts with
another man in the so called society. The term organisational politics may be defined as the
state of the politics existing within an organisation or the extent to which the behaviour of the
employees are destined towards the achievement of the personal or selfish goals rather than
the organisational goals and objectives (King and Lawley, 2016). Organisational politics
combines the sum total of all the selfish personal as well as the group goals that on the whole
proves to be harmful for the organisation. The organisational politics greatly influences the
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performance of the employees of the organisation and hence is sometimes referred as the
political behaviour within organisation. The organisational behaviour theory given by the
Chanlat have described the three basic characteristics on which the political behaviour is
based which are personal characteristics, structured characteristics and the decisional
characteristics and these characteristics are responsible for the political behaviour. The
personal characteristics refer to the characteristics that make use of the power and authority
for the effectiveness of the organisation. Decisional characteristics are the characteristics for
making the right and effective decisions out of the power and authority given. And the
structured characteristic is the characteristics for assigning various roles and responsibilities
to the different employees (King and Lawley, 2016).
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b) Provide detail analyse on how an organization’s culture, politics and power influence
individual and team behaviour and performance of the organisation.
The way the various employees and other members of organisation behave is greatly
influenced by the culture practised in an organisation as well as the extent of power and the
organisational politics. Due to the intense competitive market, employees need to worry
about more than just executing their duties and achieving their tasks and hence their
behaviour is greatly impacted due to the influence the culture of the organisation as well as
organisational politics does have on their performance (Cummings and Worley, 2014). The
organisational culture is the sum total of the attitudes, beliefs as well as the practices followed
by the organisation and hence the impact of them on the organisational practices and
behaviour gets reflected in the culture followed by the organisation.
The behaviour of the organisation BBC and its employees have been greatly influenced by
the culture, power and the politics. The decision making within BBC has also got influenced
by this. The behaviour of the employees as well as their interaction with organisation’s
clients also gets influenced by this. The organisational behaviour of BBC and its
organisational culture gets effected by the cultural changes, power and political influence.
The overall productivity of BBC has also been influenced by the power as the employees
have got the better conditions to work in (Javed, 2016).
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Task 2: Critically analyse how the culture, politics and power of an organisation can
influence individual and team behaviour and performance
The influence of the culture that is practised within an organisation as well as the influence of
the power and politics on the individual as well as the team behaviour can be explained from
the following:
The external situations as well as the political situations of UK are greatly responsible for
influencing the culture of BBC (Easton, 2012). The powerful employees and the person
sitting at high positions used to use their powers in the negative way and hence destroy the
lives of many female employees in the organisation (Northouse, 2013). This is being
confirmed as many female employees who have worked with BBC during their lifetime have
gone through the sexual harassment at workplace. But the organisational culture of BBC was
so powerful which made employees feel insecure and hence they did not use to make any
kind of complaints against anyone. However, when the culture of the organisation got
replaced by the clan culture, the culture of BBC got totally transformed. This organisational
culture change has impacted the behaviour of the individuals as well as the teams that exist
within BBC.
The impact of the power and politics as well as the culture of the organisation on the
behaviour of the employees as well as the team behaviour is both positive for the organisation
as well as negative. The most important as well as positive influence of the organisational
power and politics is the reward system adopted by the organisation which helps in increasing
the organisational efficiency. There are also negative impacts of the organisational culture on
the individual behaviour and this is because of the inappropriate use of the power by the
powerful persons.
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Task 3: Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation and motivational
techniques enable effective achievement of goals in an organisational context
Motivation is the process through which employees of the organisation gets stimulated so as
to achieve the organisational goals (Contactzilla, 2014). In terms of organisational context,
motivation may be defined as the process of encouraging employees to perform efficiently
and achieve organisational goals by enhancing their desire and will to put in their best efforts.
Motivation increases the organisational productivity and hence helps business achieve its
objectives.
The enhanced as well as improved level of motivation among the employees can result in
organisational growth as well as success. BBC can make the effective use of motivational
theories in order to motivate its employees so as to achieve organisational success. As a result
of improved motivation levels, the productive growth as well as profitability of BBC might
increase. This can be justified as motivation provides job satisfaction and the satisfied
employees always performs better and this leads to the success of the organisation(Mindtools,
2019).
The various theories of motivation are provided by various sociologists as well as business
experts. Mainly there are two categories in which motivational theories are classified. These
are Content theories and process theories of motivation.
Content theories of motivation mainly focus on the areas that needs motivation by
considering the individual needs of the various employees. Therefore these theories try to
make sure that the organisation fulfils the individual needs of the employees by identifying
their needs. The organisation might provide its employees with suitable rewards for their
efforts and performance and this might result in motivating the employees and hence
improved organisational performance on the whole. On the contrary, process theories are the
ones that are mainly concerned with the ways of providing satisfaction and through which the
employees of the organisation can be motivated and energised.
The main motivational theories that are utilised by the BBC organisation in order to motivate
employees to increase their performance are the Maslow’s theory i.e. hierarchy of needs and
the two factor theory. These theories help the BBC organisation to inspire their employees to
perform in an effective and efficient manner. The various theories of motivation used by
BBC makes sure that the individual needs such as physiological needs, safety needs etc. gets
fulfilled and hence emotional intelligence is developed among the employees (Furnham,
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2013). The organisation also uses situational leadership style and incorporates culture change
so as to provide job satisfaction as well as job empowerment. The use of the various
motivational theories results in the improved team effectiveness as well as team performance.
The use of the theories of motivation by BBC helps in providing motivation to employees by
providing them positive working environment and this makes the employees perform
extraordinarily and put in their best efforts. This on the whole results in enhanced team
performance and hence the use of the theories of motivation helps the BBC organisation to
achieve the desired level of outcome.
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Task 4: Critically evaluate how to influence the behaviour of others through the
effective application of behavioural motivational theories, concepts and models.
As explained above, BBC makes use of the various theories of motivation and the
organisational behaviour models so as to influence the behaviour of the employees and their
performance on the whole.
The earlier practices at BBC resulted in employee dissatisfaction and employee harassment as
the employees were rather bullied than motivated and managed within the organisation.
Therefore, the leaders as well as the management took the decision to motivate the employees
in order to make them perform their best (Burnes, 2013).
Due to the power culture practised within BBC and the bureaucratic management, the
organisation used to lack in the teamwork and the team performance. This aroused the need
for giving importance to teams. The bureaucratic management did not allow the employees to
perform well in teams and hence to increase the trust and loyalty among the team members so
as to develop team spirit, the organisation needed to improve the behaviour of the supervisors
and their way of treating employees.
Therefore the concept of motivational theories as well as the organisational behaviour models
can help the organisation in increasing their employee’s loyalty as well as productivity by
providing them the proper motivation and encouragement. This in turn will lead to the
improved organisational productivity as well as to develop trust and confidence among the
various employees. The content theories and process theories identifies various needs and this
must be fulfilled by BBC. For example, it is important for the BBC to provide safety as well
as occupational security to the employees who gets harassed and bullied at the workplace.
This will motivate them to perform as best as possible (Furnham, 2013).
Another way through which BBC can influence the behaviour of the teams and motivate
them are the provision of the proper rewards as well as appropriate recognition for the work.
Rewards can help BBC organisation in meeting the various motivational needs of the
employees and hence employees can get encouraged for the enhanced performance. The
management at BBC must motivate the employees so as to improve their efficiency as well as
the productivity of the different members of the team. Therefore in order to increase the
efficiency of the working teams which BBC lacks in, it is important for the organisation to
motivate its employees.
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Task 5: Critically evaluate the relationship between culture, politics, power and
motivation that enables teams and organisations to succeed providing justified
recommendations.
The organisational culture, the nature of the power that exists within organisation and the
organisational politics has a great impact on the individual and the team behaviour and are
interrelated and linked with each other. To enhance the productivity of the organisation, it is
recommended that BBC adopts the organisational culture that allows its employees to come
forward and participate in organisational processes and decision making. This can be
achieved through employee engagement as well as by providing them rewards based on their
performance. This will provide employees job satisfaction and they will be encouraged to
perform their best. In addition to this, BBC should also make use of the various motivational
theories. Also BBC should provide training to its employees so as to make them capable of
growing internally within organisation through promotions (Burnes, 2013). The employees
can be retained by the organisation by providing them positive and safe working
environment.
Thus, the organisation must motivate the employees as the motivation will make sure that the
organisation effectively achieves its business objectives and the employees gives more
preference to the business objectives rather than personal goals (Mullins, 2016).
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