MGT20007 - Organisational Behaviour Case Report: Advert Co Analysis

This case report analyzes organizational behavior issues within Advert Co, a graphic and advertising firm in Auckland, New Zealand. The case study focuses on the interplay between employees Sue Yan, George Thong, Sally Jones, and Tom Jones, highlighting issues such as poor communication stemming from pay disparities and lack of transparency, a complacent team culture influenced by behavioral modeling, poorly articulated goals leading to conflict, and a lack of emotional control resulting in workplace issues. The report identifies these issues as sequential, providing recommendations to improve communication, balance opportunities, utilize employee feedback, and clarify goals to enhance organizational comprehension and employee commitment. The analysis utilizes relevant organizational behavior theories and provides practical solutions for Advert Co to overcome these challenges.

COURSE NAME : ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
COURSE CODE : MGT20007
SESSION : FEBRUARY 2022
PROGRAMME : BACHELOR OF BUSINESS 3+0 IN
COLLABORATION WITH SWINBURNE
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, AUSTRALIA
TITLE : CASE REPORT
NAME OF LECTURER : RONALD HOR
CLASS : S1
SUBMISSION DATE : 5 JUNE 2022
STUDENT DETAILS
NO STUDENT NAME STUDENT ID
1 YIP KAR KEONG 103698877
2 BRYAN KAN YAO BIN 103706314
3 NG MAN HONG 103711143
4 LIONG KAI JIUNN 103698453
5 DARREN SIAW TING SHIUN 101233865

Executive Summary
The report aims to analyse organisational behavioural issues found in a case study involving
Advert Co, a graphic and advertising firm in Auckland, New Zealand. The characters integral to
the case study are Sue Yan, George Thong, Sally Jones, and Tom Jones. Each somewhat
represents an organisational behavioural issue and appropriate organisational behavioural
theories except George.
Upon analysis, four organisational behaviour issues were found within the case study: poor
communication, complacent team culture, poorly articulated goals and lack of emotional control.
However, the issues found are considerably unique due to sequential evolvement. Poor
communication was the result of the lack of transparency between the management and the two
newly hired employees which are Sue and George; complacent team culture was the result of
having a generally good atmosphere despite seemingly having poor job performance which
involves Sally’s team; poor articulation of the goals was the result of the management not
elaborating further on “try hard” and “improve work quality” before evolving into a potential
conflict, which involves Sally and Tom; upon escalation, Sally’s team decided to retaliate against
the management, resulting in Tom’s counter-attack that was poorly executed due to poorly
managed emotions.
Upon conclusion of the case study, recommendations were provided to overcome the issues. The
recommendations are to improve communications, provide balanced opportunities, apply
employee involvement theory and improve articulation of goals. The improved communication
between the management and the employees would improve organisational comprehension; the
provision of balanced opportunities would help to combat expectational and behavioural issues
via the four drives theory; utilisation of the employees’ feedback to enhance the employees’
commitment to success via employments involvement theory; improve articulation of the goals
by contextualisation via mutual agreements.

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Case Study Overview......................................................................................................................2
Issues................................................................................................................................................3
Poor Communication...................................................................................................................3
Complacent Team Culture...........................................................................................................3
Poorly Articulated Goals..............................................................................................................4
Lack of Emotional Control..........................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................7
Improve Communication.............................................................................................................7
Provide Balanced Opportunities..................................................................................................7
Utilise Employees’ Feedback.......................................................................................................8
Improve Articulation of the Goals...............................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
Appendices....................................................................................................................................10
Appendix A: Team Charter........................................................................................................10

Introduction
Organisational behavioural problems are widespread within business entities. The degree to of an
organisation is being affected is heavily dependent on the severity of the said issue. Advert Co is
undoubtedly not an exception for the subject of the case study. The case study discusses how the
three employees being recruited on the same day into the said firm evolve into an unfathomable
mess. The case study was selected because it presents a series of issues considered unique as
they occur sequentially. The problems range widely from every level of the organisation's
organisational branch, affecting everyone in the workforce.
The report aims to identify the Organisational Behaviour (OB) issues and study and analyse the
relevant issues found within the case study before making recommendations to combat the said
issues, if not overcome them. The research for the preparation of the report was done via the
Internet. Article journals and other relevant online sources were utilised as research materials to
prepare the report. The research was done on a qualitative method via content analysis. Various
sources were thoroughly analysed before being used as materials.
Recommendations will be provided upon the conclusion of the analysis of the case study. The
recommendations would guide Advert Co to combat the said organisational behaviour issues
found within the case study.

Case Study Overview
The case study discusses a series of organisational behaviour disaster-class sequentially occurred
within Advert Co, a large graphic and agency firm based in Auckland, New Zealand. The case
study begins when two Indonesian employees, Sue Yan and George Thong, have been
transferred from the Indonesian office to the headquarters in Auckland. However, they quickly
found out that the pay difference was huge shortly after employment. Sue was highly dissatisfied
with the huge pay gap, resulting in her loss of motivation. Meanwhile, George was highly
grateful for the opportunity to work overseas, being impressed with the locals altogether.
At around the same time, Sally Jones was hired. Sally was initially very motivated and
hardworking. However, her teammates weren’t very enthusiastic. Since Sally was desperate to fit
in, she began mimicking their behaviours and eventually became part of them. As a result, the
management quickly took notice of their antics due to their lowered productivity. The
management attempted to resolve the issue by offering performance-based rewards but was
poorly articulated. In addition, Sally’s team was effectively being left on their own to complete
more complex tasks, resulting in conflict between Sally’s team and the management.
The issues found within the case study are considered unique because the organisational
behavioural problems evolved from something minor to significant over time. The four issues are
poor communication, complacent team culture, lack of emotional control and poorly articulated
goals.

Issues
Poor Communication
One of the issues faced by Advert Co. is the lack of communication between the management
and the employees. This can be shown through the actions of Sue after finding out the pay
difference for doing the same job between her and the local New Zealand employees. Without
knowing the reasoning behind the pay difference, she felt that it is unfair to receive a much lesser
salary than the local New Zealand employees for doing the same job. Sue began to post her
personal belongings back to Indonesia using the company postal service. She also often surfs the
internet during her working hours and takes her sweet time during lunch breaks. Moreover, Sue
occasionally delegates some of her workloads to her New Zealand colleagues as she thinks they
are supposed to do more since they are being paid more. Thus, it can be seen from Sue’s actions
that she does not understand the reasoning behind the pay difference as she is not well versed in
the reasons and is not being adequately explained by the management.
Complacent Team Culture
The second issue presented in the case study relates to an expectation and behaviour problem the
organisation faces and its employees. Sally is an employee who goes through the three stages of
organisational behaviour modification (McShane et al. 2018, p.168). The initial behaviour she
encounters is the antecedents, in which she is eager to make a favourable impression and take
advantage of the opportunity. At this point in her career, she exhibits goal-directed behaviours
with the effort-to-performance (E-to-P) expectation that arriving half an hour early and staying
late to stay on top of her workload will result in a specific level of performance (McShane et al.
2018, p.166). Sally becomes intimidated by her colleagues' practises due to the behavioural
modelling described by McShane et al. (2018, p.171). According to OB Mod, Sally's asocial
behaviour results from her desire to "fit in" with the rest of her coworkers. According to Hart
(2014), the fundamental need for attachment and belonging reveals the human mechanism to

protect against threats and strengthen close relationships. According to McShane et al. (2018,
p.165), Sally is experiencing the need for affiliation based on the theory of learned needs; hence
her behaviour was influenced. Her E-to-P ratio has shifted to reflect her efforts to be liked by her
coworkers by relaxing her deadlines and taking longer work breaks. Due to her persistence and
modelling of this behaviour, she has created a poor work ethic and environment for her team,
resulting in poor team performance. Based on her influence, Sally has altered her expectations
and conduct, which is now a problem for the company.
Poorly Articulated Goals
Additionally, there is also a lack of clearly articulated goals by the management of Sally’s team.
This results in an aimless team working towards nowhere and potential burnouts within the entire
team that can lead to long-lasting negative impacts. Moreover, having adopted a more top-down
approach with the company’s performance-based reward scheme, having articulated goals is
essential for the team and management to evaluate their performance at a viable criterion.
What is most outrageous is that the management would inform the team about their goals for
them to ‘improve work quality and ‘try-hard, and yet, at the same time, they would be result-
oriented rather than effort-oriented by the negligence of the work quality and time taken by the
team to finish the given tasks. The inexcusable matter of the management setting vague goals
and not following through with what they have set for the team is damaging its morale and
loyalty to the company in the long term. Fundamentally, it is irrefutably the management
contradicting themselves, which will, ultimately, lead to internal chaos with finger-pointing
conflicts across the workplace’s hierarchy.

Lack of Emotional Control
The decision of Sally’s team to walk off the job after receiving a negative reply from Tom could
be one of the organisation’s behaviour issues. This issue can be analysed through an individual
perception, Attribution Theory. According to (Bhasin 2022), Attribution theory addresses how
individuals infer causes or construct a causal explanation for someone's actions or circumstances;
in making these attributions, consensus, consistency, and uniqueness are three sorts of
information that individuals rely on (Tyonote 2022).
Based on the case study, because of Tom's attitude, Sally's crew does not work hard and often
moans, which indicates that the "consistency" of workers’ complaints was valued highly by Tom.
According to (Tyonote 2022), consistency is how a person reacts to the same stimuli; it is a
regular pattern or style of individual behaviour. Besides, Tom has also placed a high value on the
“distinctiveness” of different issues complained about by the same employees. The degree to
which a person's responses differ from circumstance to circumstance is distinctiveness (Tyonote
2022). The uniqueness of a behaviour pattern increases with its variability (Tyonote 2022).
Moreover, Tom is the only manager who sent angry emails. Hence, Sally and her team have
rated a high value on “consensus” the term consensus refers to how most individuals react to a
comparable circumstance in the same manner (Tyonote 2022). Also, the same goes for
“consistency” since no action has been taken despite several complaints to management.

Conclusion
To sum up the case study analysis, Advert Co do indeed face a series of organisational
behavioural issues that need resolution as soon as possible. The huge pay gap between foreign
and local employees had undoubtedly caused a significant difference in behaviour between Sue
Yan and George Thong. Sue had negative reception upon learning about their low pay, resulting
in a loss of motivation; George had positive reception due to his gratefulness for working abroad.
Sally Jones’ involvement with her team had undoubtedly caused her to be complacent, resulting
in thmanagement's loss of productivity and intervention before eventually evolvingve into a
conflict. However, the conflict was partially caused by the management’s poor articulation of the
goals despite offering performance-based rewards. Despite the issues, recommendations would
be provided to overcome the said issues as every problem certainly would have a solution.

Recommendations
Improve Communication
To avoid the re-occurrence of the issue of Sue feeling unfair and deciding to practice unethical
actions, it is vital to have adequate communication between the management and the employees.
Hence, there should always be downward communication which means that information is
passed down the hierarchical ladder (Milojevic 2022). By doing so, organisational
comprehension can be increased. To be more precise, employees can understand the organisation
better, and there will be an increase in open communication. In the case of Sue, the management
should have communicated and provided several explanations to Sue when she had just
transferred from the Indonesian office to prevent any misunderstanding and clarify the roles. For
example, the management can tell Sue about the reasoning behind the pay difference between
her and the local employees, such as the difference in the level of relevant qualifications and the
difference in the first language. Sue can only know and understand the pay difference for doing
the same job between her and the local employees. Thus, she will not complain about her salary
and be motivated to learn from her colleagues and handle her tasks properly.
Provide Balanced Opportunities
Advert and Co. should provide Sally with a balanced opportunity based on the four drives theory
to satisfy her needs to combat expectations and behavioural issues. According to Lawrence &
Nohria (2001, p. 145), all humans have a drive, including the desire to acquire, bond, the passion
for comprehending, and the willingness to defend. They also note that those who complete all
four fundamental movements will perform better than those who meet only one or two. Sally
desires to satisfy her need for affiliation and bonding with her coworkers. McShane, Olekalns, &
Newman (2018, p. 162) explain that her employer should allow her to satisfy these drives by
hosting more social events to help her realise her dream, enhancing her performance and well-
being.