Ryanair Organisational Behaviour: A Comprehensive Analysis

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Ryanair – Organisational Behaviour

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................................2
TASK–1.......................................................................................................................3
TASK–2.......................................................................................................................8
TASK–3.....................................................................................................................12
CONCLUSION.......................................................................................................... 17
REFERENCE LIST................................................................................................... 18
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INTRODUCTION
The organisational culture can be defined as the behaviours and values that are
responsible for creating the psychological and social organisational environment. It's
based upon the shared customs, beliefs, and attitudes along with the applicable
organisational rules whether unwritten or written developed during the organisation's
lifetime that is still considered relevant (Cacciattolo, 2014). The first task explores the
impact of organisational culture along with the political behaviour and the power on
the staff performance. The second task explores the applicability of content and
motivation theories on Ryanair. The third task is focused on team types and team
effectiveness at Ryanair.
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TASK–1
A) THE ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE, POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR, AND THE
NATURE OF POWER OF RYANAIR MANAGEMENT
Organisational Culture
The organisational culture is expressed in the manner of treating the employees,
ways of conducting the business, customer handling, handling the community, etc.
It’s also responsible for the extent of freedom accorded to the employees in making
decisions, innovating, experimenting, and otherwise expressing themselves. The
organisational culture defines the information and power flow within the
organisational hierarchy and the extent of employee commitment towards the
organisational goals. It can be surmised that the organisational culture is exclusive to
every organisation and differs from others (Cacciattolo, 2014).
Model of Organisational Culture – Charles Handy
Figure 1: Different Types of Organisational Culture (Wordpress, 2015)
Charles Handy in his Model of Organisational Culture proposed four types of
organisational culture that are Role, Power, Person, and Task (Janićijević, 2013).The
Role Culture is based upon the Greek God Apollo and it’s procedural in nature with
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the power invested in the designated roles. The authority invested in the roles is
clearly defined in the role culture (Janićijević, 2013). The Power Culture is based
upon the Greek God Zeus and it’s centralised in nature with power limited to a
selected few. Based upon Dionysius, the Person Culture is person focused in nature
and it focuses on employee requirements and needs. The Task Culture is based
upon Athena and its focus is on results. It involves the use of small teams and it's the
most flexible culture of all the other types (Janićijević, 2013).
Ryanair exhibits the Power culture where the power is invested into its CEO, Michael
Kevin O'Leary. The power is delegated to the managers to a small extent while the
majority of control and power lies with the CEO. The power culture allows the
company to be a quick responder of changing business scenarios. Also, the Ryanair
remains result focused and doesn’t focus on analysing the means but on achieving
its objectives.
Nature of Power
In the Theory of Power, French and Raven categorised the organisational power
distribution into five power bases. These are Coercive, Legitimate, Reward,
Referent, and Expert (Lunenburg, 2012).
Figure 2: The Five Power Bases – Theory of Power by French and Raven (Free-
management-ebooks, 2017)
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The Referent Power requires a leader that can be accepted by their followers/team.
These leaders need to be role models of their team/ followers and the team should
be driving towards gaining their approval and that can be used as a performance
enhancement tool (Lunenburg, 2012). The Legitimate Power base corresponds to
role-based power investiture with the inherent authority of punishing and rewarding
the team performance. The coercive Powerbase is using aspects like withholding
rewards or punitive measure to elicit compliance from the employees (Lunenburg,
2012). Expert Power, on the other hand, corresponds to the superior skill and
knowledge levels of the manager that makes them respectable and authoritarian in
the eyes of employees/team. The rewards power is associating performance with
rewards allowing power to managers through performance appraisal (Lunenburg,
2012).
The Coercive and Legitimate Power bases are exhibited by Ryanair while Expert
power is summarily absent from the organisation.
Political Behaviour at Ryanair
Organisational politics can be considered as the process of which Power is an
attribute (Lee and Lawrence, 2013). It involves various actions focused on achieving
self-goals through the use of power either developed or vested whenever there’s a
disagreement or uncertainty regarding the outcome. The causes of organisational
politics on a personal level involve individual perceptions, interests, values, and
personalities. On the other hand, the organisational politics stem from
interdepartmental conflict, challenges to higher authorities, inherent competitiveness,
lack, or abundance of communication, and irregular flow of information (Lee and
Lawrence, 2013).
The political behaviour stems from the personal aspects of managers along with the
necessity of pleasing the management. The focus of Ryanair on minimising costs
gives managers ample opportunities to misuse the inherent power of their position to
advance their personal gains. Also, the lack of expert power is a source of conflict
between managers and employee that again produce opportunities to indulge in
organisational politics.
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B) THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE, POLITICAL
BEHAVIOUR, AND POWER ON STAFF BEHAVIOUR AND THE
ORGANISATIONAL PERFORMANCE
The Power culture exhibited by the Ryanair is de-motivating to the staff and affects
their satisfaction and performance levels (Huczynski et al., 2013). The Power culture
ensures that the control of the organisation remains with the senior management
without any participation or contribution of the employees. This has led to the
implementation of the cost reduction model within the organisation to an extreme
extent without considering the damages to the employee morale and their loyalty to
the organisation. The lack of seasoned employees can be seen as an example of
employee dissatisfaction. The average age of Ryanair Pilots is 35 years as
compared to the industry average of nearly 44 years. This indicates that employees
leave the organisation as soon as their personal objectives are fulfilled and they get
a better opportunity somewhere else (Huczynski et al., 2013).
The Power bases prevalent within Ryanair are Legitimate and Coercive. This allows
the management to infuse authority and power to the designated roles. Also, the use
of punitive measure is prevalent within the organisation with a cost component
attached to every punitive action. All this along with the antipathy of the management
towards their plight de-motivates the employees and limits their performance levels.
The Power bases being utilised along with the organisational culture of Ryanair
makes the employees vulnerable to exploitation that’s evident from the wage
structure of the company as well as the exhaustive work hours (Huczynski et al.,
2013).
The lack of expert power base is another point of contention since the employees
don't consider managers to be skilled or knowledgeable enough to lead them. The
impact of organisational culture and nature of power leads to the political behaviour
of the management that’s often autocratic and leads to employee exploitation
(Huczynski et al., 2013). The effects of these elements can be surmised as the
employee de-motivation, higher employee turnover, lack of highly skilled employees
at senior levels, and a string of employee strikes. The impact on organisational
performance was surprisingly low except when the employees went on strike. The
company was able to access new candidates for their business operation and was
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able to maintain its staff strength in spite of the high employee turnover and general
antipathy towards work (Huczynski et al., 2013).
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TASK–2
CONTENT AND PROCESS MOTIVATION THEORIES
The employee motivation level is considered to be a primary driving influence on
their performance and productivity. It can be defined as the internal and external
factors that drive a person towards an objective or goal. Every organisation strives to
attain its organisational aims and objectives with a focus on improving organisational
productivity and profitability. In this regard, employee motivation levels become a key
factor. The low levels of motivation can hamper the efforts of the organisation in
achieving their goals. In the long run, every organisation needs to focus on improving
and maintaining employee motivation levels to succeed (Miner, 2015a).
Figure 3: Types of Motivation and Motivation Theories (Wordpress, 2013)
The motivation theories can be a useful tool in this regard. There are two types of
motivation theories that are content and process motivation theories (Miner, 2015a).
The content motivation Theories are focused on the “What” of Motivation or it
involves the determination of factors/aspects that can positively influence the
employee motivation levels (Miner, 2015a). On the other hand, the Process
Motivation Theories are focused on the "How and Why" of the employee motivation.
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It means that they are focused on the determination of the process of acquiring a
positive change in motivation levels (Miner, 2015a).
THE PROCESS MOTIVATIONAL THEORIES
The Process Motivational Theory being considered is Porter and Lawler’s
Expectancy Model that’s considered to be an improvement over the highly regarded
Vrooms Expectancy Theory (Kanfer et al., 2017).
PORTER AND LAWLER’S EXPECTANCY MODEL
Porter and Lawler’s Expectancy Model was proposed by Edward Lawler and Lyman
Porter (Miner, 2015). It stipulates the interrelationship of work performance and
works attitude. In this theory, the various aspects of Vroom motivation theory are
used as a basis and additional aspects are applied to gain a complete motivation
model. This theory concludes that the motivation of an individual regarding task
completion is influenced by their perception and expectation of the reward to be
gained at the end of the task (Miner, 2015).
Figure 4: Porter and Lawler’s Expectancy Model (Slideplayer, 2015)
Porter and Lawler further categorised the rewards into two categories that are
extrinsic and intrinsic (Dinibutun, 2012). Extrinsic Rewards are the rewards with an
external point of origin like incentives, bonuses, salary increase, etc. On the other
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hand, the intrinsic rewards are the feelings experienced by the employee on task
completion such as a sense of content, achievement, satisfaction, etc. The employee
motivation is strongly influenced by the perception and belief of the employees
regarding the fairness and attractiveness of reward. Also, another factor that
influences motivation is the employee's ability in the context of performing the task
along with how they perceive the task. The theory further suggests that if the reward
is found to be unsatisfactory by the employee, their motivation level reduces
(Dinibutun, 2012).
The managers at Ryanair can use this model to design their task based-rewards.
This will involve understanding the employee perception regarding the rewards both
extrinsic and intrinsic. When the rewards will be perceived satisfactory by the
employees their efforts towards performing well in order to gain rewards will lead to
an increase in their individual performance as well as the team performance levels
contributing towards organisational performance and productivity (Miner, 2015).
THE CONTENT MOTIVATIONAL THEORIES
The Content Motivational Theory being considered in regard to Ryanair is the
Herzberg's Two Factor Theory. The use of this theory can be highly beneficial for the
motivation levels of employees at Ryanair (Kanfer et al., 2017).
HERZBERG'S TWO-FACTOR THEORY
Frederick Herzberg propagated the Two-Factor Theory as a medium for identifying
the inherent factors of the work environment that can lead to employee satisfaction
and dissatisfaction. According to the theory, the Motivation Factors or Motivators are
factors that positively affect the employee motivation levels while the Hygiene
Factors that need to be maintained at satisfactory levels otherwise it can lead to
employee dissatisfaction and low motivation levels (Pegler, 2012).
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