Analysis of Organizational Culture, Power, and Motivation at Shell

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Organizational behaviour

Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................................................... 3
LO1.................................................................................................................................. 4
Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behavior of others in an
organizational context...................................................................................................4
LO2.................................................................................................................................. 7
Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal..............................7
LO3................................................................................................................................ 11
Demonstrate an understanding of how to cooperate effectively with others...............11
LO4................................................................................................................................ 16
Apply concepts and philosophies of organizational behaviour to a given business
situation...................................................................................................................... 16
Conclusion..................................................................................................................... 19
Reference list................................................................................................................. 20

Introduction
Organisational behaviour is the academic study of how the people behave in a
particular group. It is necessary to maintain the behaviour within a profit yielding
Business Company. An improvement in the company comes by the proper business
culture and decorum. This has to be maintained within the organisation for its
betterment. A good organisational behaviour involves more and more employee
participation which reflects on the customer gathering. More organised company makes
more economy as well as customers by their organised and good work culture. “Shell”,
one of the most successful organisations always keeps an eye on maintaining a good
organisational behaviour for better work culture. This helps the company to work
smoothly without facing any difficulties. This directly helps in upholding and maintaining
their reputation in the market.
This is to draw the attention on how politics, culture, and power reflects in the operation
of the company “Shell”. The paper will show how the company deduce the
effectiveness of the motivation of the employees individually as well as in the team. The
paper consists of the philosophical view undertaken by different work ventures
regarding the co-operation of the employees. Also the implication of the co-operation is
discussed in the following section of discussion.

LO1
Analyze the influence of culture, politics and power on the behavior of others in
an organizational context.
An organisation’s work culture, internal politics and power plays a very important role on
the overall growth of an organisation. This can be determined by the following
parameters.
Organisational Culture influencing behaviour:
It not only helps to engage the employees but also helps to maintain work harmony in a
group of team members. “Shell” has shown an extraordinary performance in maintaining
organisational behaviour. They have set an example of how they have divided the
employees into different work project for better organisational operation. A good
employee interaction and participation is the foremost important for a company
undertaking oil rigging action.
Task Culture:
The task culture of an organisation is determined by the organisation’s team work. The
effectiveness of the team work leading towards the organisational objective comes
under the roof of task culture. Task culture, mostly seen in the organisation, depends on
the employees with similar interests and able to correlate with the target of the
business. Managing team of “Shell” encourages Team Building and Event (TBEA) to
progress in their team work, employees are influenced to work with innovation in
developing new concepts on the pre existing business operation. This process has
boosted the company’s oil extracting work.
Role culture:
An organisation determines the maximum outcomes by determining the pros and cons
of every employee. The work employed by the management on the employees can only
be assigned if the person’s strength and weaknesses are known. The more the
responsibility sheared by an employee the more power is distributed to that person by
the management. Managers of “Shell” determine the potential of the employees by
MBTI assessment tool which determines which employee has ability to be a potent
leader in nearer future. This has set a milestone of effective organisational behaviour for
the rest of the industry.

Power Culture:
In work venture power of decision making is captured by few people. These are the
privileged people who enjoy comfort and spatial treatment than the rest of the
employees. “Shell” completely discourages these practices as this may cause a
downfall in the company’s reputation and wellbeing. The company does not support the
power being in hand of few inefficient people solely taking decision for the rest of the
people. “Shell” does not violate the ethical code of the conduct of the organisation.
Person culture:
In personal culture importance is given on the individual’s need than the organisation
itself. Here the individual employee looks into his or her own performance. The well
being of the organisation is completely ignored. The employee only work for the
remuneration of work. So becomes de-motivated and demoralised in the work place.
“Shell” has strongly opposed this act in their work environment. Rather the company
tries to work together all hand in hand towards the predetermined goal. This reflects in
their growing productivity day by day (Huhtala and Feldt, 2016).
Nature of power and politics influencing the organisational behaviour of “Shell”:
Use of power is essential of the superior to maintain a harmonious development. The
company has to use the power if the company is going to be a defaulter for an individual
or a team. But it has been accepted that an individual has to keep the organisational
interest above the personal need. “Shell” is using French and raven power base to
determine individual power within the organisation.
Legitimate power:
Formally it was said that power comes with the designation. The individual holding a
high position has more power than the rest. The emphasis was given on the power of
the influencer to influence and motivate other individuals (Kitchin, 2017). This working
process is very unstable and can lead to drastic shed of employees. But “Shell” is going
against the myth. They are using incremental changing in refining process and using
maximum human capital. This pace of work prevented the company from losing the
employee base. The legitimate power is given to the deserving candidate for
maintaining the position of the company in the market (Lenz, and Viola, 2017).
Referent power:
Referent power is the ability of the leader to influence an individual. The follower feels
connected with the thought and ideas of a leader or any person in authority. Referent
power is essential to make a co-ordinated work environment (Macdonald, et al., 2017).
This also helped the company to survive in the time of economic recessions. Influencers
share their own ideology with the followers and this in turn spread positivity and
motivation among the target people. “Shell” engaging the higher authorities to influence
the subordinate employees in the ups and downs of the company’s economy. The
leaders share their views and innovative ideas to achieve the operational goals with the
employees hand in hand (Mojibi, et al., 2015).

Expert power:
The hierarchy of any organisation are based on the expertise and knowledge of people.
The person with much better skill and experience only can lead other people towards
the goal. This is very helpful for the organisation as this directly reflect on the company’s
economy and productivity. The leader with high standard of achievement can only set
an example in front of the followers. “Shell” has taken care while selecting their experts.
The leaders have shown extraordinary performance in the critical times like fire
breakouts in the drilling process (Chmiel, et al., 2017.).
Organisational behaviour is majorly influenced by organisational policies. “Shell” has
faced many challenging situations. At the time of recession the company worked in a
much planned way and survived the employee crunch. The management of the
company has made a transparency in maintaining the organisation in hardship and kept
the motivation high within the employees. They provided monitory incentives and
promotions to keep the employees associated with the company. Through these
planning “Shell” has maintained the organisational policies to maintain the maximum
productivity of the company.
Figure 1: Organizational Iceberg
(Source: Owoeye and Muathe, 2018)

LO2
Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal.
Motivation is one of the utmost thing that drives a workforce towards achieving
organisational goals. Motivation should be used in an effective manner so that it can
reach out to every individual working under the organisation. If the word Motivation is
outstretched, there are two components of it i.e. Intrinsic Motivation and Extrinsic
Motivation. The motivation which is effected by external factors like grades, money,
promotion & praise falls under the category of extrinsic motivation. On the other hand,
Internal Motivation states a person’s behaviour which is caused by a person’s internal
forces. In recent times, MNC’s generally walked in the swift path of ‘Motivation’ to
achieve organisational goals & targets (Kark, et al., 2018).
When it comes to the theories of Motivation, two persons have had given a huge
contribution in this field. They are Abraham Harold Maslow & Frederick Irving Herzberg.
Their theories boosted up the whole scenario of motivation.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the mostly discussed motivational theory ever. It is a
five tier model consisting of basic human needs depicted over a pyramidal structure in a
hierarchical manner. The bottom half of the pyramid consist of basic needs of an
individual and the top most half of the pyramid consist of the utmost thing which an
individual can achieve in his/her lifetime (Jonas, 2016).
Figure 2: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
(Source: Jonas, 2016)

Physiological Needs
Very basic biological needs of an individual falls under this category. Physiological
includes activities like eating, sleeping, drinking, clothing, sex and many more. These
things need to get fulfilled to make an individual work efficient. According to Maslow, an
individual generally go for physiological needs first because it is easiest to achieve.
Moreover, these are the primary needs of an individual, until and unless these are
achieved he/she can’t climb up the pyramid.
Safety Needs
After completion of basic needs, the first thing that comes up to an individual’s mind is
safety. And that is what safety needs is all about. Components like protection, order,
security, laws and freedom from any kind of fear falls under this category.
Love and Belongings Needs
Once an individual wraps up the above two needs, the feeling of love and
belongingness comes up to his/her mind. These include love, friendship, trust,
acceptance and others. Love and belongingness is one of the most essential factor on
this list as it directly affect the mindset of a person. This is very true that interpersonal
relations have a direct effect on the behaviour of a person.
Esteem Needs
This is the only sector among the five which is sub divided into two more categories.
The first one is said to be personal esteem that covers up traits like accomplishment of
tasks, gravity, personality, mastery in a particular field and others. Esteem from others
is the second component which bounds up things like position, status, respect from
others, reputation and others.
Self actualization
This is the peak of achievement in an individual’s lifetime. Self actualization means
achieving each and every thing which a person has dreamt of becoming in his/her
lifetime.
To sum it up, Maslow stated that motivating an individual is a slow and gradual, step by
step process. It is necessary for an individual to achieve primary needs to go off for
secondary needs. MNC’s should take up this practice to keep a workforce motivated
and always keep them driven towards organisational goals and targets.
Herzberg’s two factor motivation theory
Herzberg’s two factor theory is also a theory which the practitioner should lay focus on
to keep their employees motivated. This theory contradicts with Maslow’s hierarchy
theory. Herzberg stated that there are only two factors that can drive an individual’s
motivation. He called it as Hygiene factors and Motivators. Factors affecting the working
culture of an employee and indulging them to work harder are known as motivators.
Hygiene factors don’t directly have its hand on the performance of the employees. It

generally deals with the working ambience in which an employee is working on, which is
indeed a great factor affecting an employee’s performance in his/her workplace
(Sanjeev and Surya, 2016).
Figure 3: Herzberg’s two factor theory
(Source: Alshmemri, et al., 2017)
In the above figure, it is portrayed that how motivators and hygiene factors affect the
motivation of an employee at his/her workplace. To be specific, hygiene factors are
coined as factors for dissatisfaction whereas motivators are coined as factors for
satisfaction. This opens up opportunity for big MNC’s to implement it and bring the best
out of their employees.
In 1964, a professor named Victor Vroom of Canadian Psychology College bought up a
theory known as Expectancy Theory. Effort, Performance and Outcome are the three
factors which are being bought up into the lime light by the man. The theory depicts
conscious choices of above three factors directly affect the behaviour of an employee.
Its prime objective is minimising the suffering and maximising the pleasure. Vroom
bought into notice that individual factors like experience, knowledge, skills and
personality have a direct indulgence affect on the employee’s performance. He also
pulled it out that motivation and performance are directly proportional to each other.

Emotional Intelligence is the art of adapting to a certain ambience and accomplishing an
individual’s target by recognising, gathering and labelling his/her emotions in an
effective manner (Petrides, et al., 2016).
Teamwork, decision making, communication, empathy, empowerment, problem solving
and so on are some basic soft skills which are generally carried by a compact group of
manager and his/her team. These soft skills are very essential when it comes off to
solving dilemmas. It becomes quite an easy job for a manager to achieve organisational
goals if he/she effectively uses the soft skills of their employees (Lippman et al., 2015).
The factors which help a team react out its highest level of production are team work,
co-operation and empathy. If there is a sweet chain of communication between
employees it becomes much easier to bring out the best out from a team.
Task oriented leadership theory focuses on a leader, who is not only goal oriented
but the person also lays of focus on specific task of an employee working under
him/her. A leader who is outlined by leadership oriented theory grabs up everything at
a single go. From making policies and processes to evaluate staff performance he/she
keeps a close look on each and every thing. These theories should be in regular
practice among MNC’s to bring out the best out of their employees (Rosenbach, 2018).

LO3
Demonstrate an understanding of how to cooperate effectively with others.
The important part of an organisation is the team working over there. The success of
the organisation is depends on the inter relationship between the team members. Many
large organisations find hard to compete in their sectors as they do not have a good
team. “Shell” is one of them. For a good business organisation a proper team
hypothesis and a well management group is needed. Their work collaboration can make
the Organisation more competitive in the market. This theory is also applicable for
company like “Shell”.
Different types of organisational teams
Mainly three kinds of teams are found. They are functional team, problem solving team
and project team. Brief ideas about these teams are given below.
Functional team
People with same kind of practical knowledge will form functional team. They work
together to meet the mutual business goals. The initial teams of an organisation are
functional teams. These teams work in different areas like finance, marketing,
accounting and so on.
Problem solving team
As the name suggest this team is meant for solving the problems and technical support
to the organisation. The initial work of this team is to investigate, diagnosing and solving
the IT hassles. “Shell” is one of such successful companies who have their own
problem solving team to look after the overall organisational performance.
Project team
An organisation is not complete without the project team. People from different fields
and groups are selected to do the project. They are allotted for various works for similar
project. For every project they have a particular time span. The project manager should
keep an eye so that the work can be finished without any problem (Aziz, et al., 2018).
The tool to success for an organisation like “Shell” is to have a project team.
Impact of technologies on organisational teams
With the help of technologies communication with people become very easy. This
advantage is also taken by the companies. Managers use technology to explain matter
to the employee. This will also save time and energy of both the team and manager.
Now a day’s business organisation is using various technologies available in the
market.