Improving Team Performance and Productivity at Ryanair

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ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................. 3
Task 1: Organisational culture, politics and power......................................................4
Task 2: Motivating teams and individuals....................................................................9
Task 3: Effective cooperation within teams and concepts and theories of
organisational behaviour...........................................................................................11
Conclusion................................................................................................................ 15
References................................................................................................................16
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Introduction
Presence of organisational behaviour results in smooth running of business and
achieving success throughout the year. Organisational behaviour is the study of
individual behaviour within a firm. Further, it is a subset of management activities
that are concerned with understanding influencing and predicting behaviour in a
working firm. Knowledge of organisational behaviour is necessary to have within
managers as they are responsible for managing the overall business of a firm. Here,
the organisational behaviour of Ryanair Company has been taken into consideration.
Ryanair is an Airline Company providing quality services to its customers in Europe.
The company has been found in the year 1948, and in the initial stage, it was not
much successful as now. Ryanair developed their business through the application
of low price strategy and building of organisational culture within a firm. Presently,
Ryanair has become one of the leading airline companies in Europe for carrying over
1 billion customers in the year 2017 (corporate.ryanair.com, 2019).
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Task 1: Organisational culture, politics and power
a. Its organisational culture and the nature of power and political
behaviour of its management
The organisational culture of Ryanair is poor as the conflicts among working
members, and improper management is always seen there. Lack of respect and
poor customer service has been increasing in the company. Due to the roistering
problems with pilots, the company had to cancel their flights in September 2017
(Topham, 2018). Thus, this gives a view that the organisational culture of Ryanair is
miserable due to which their reputation before 2017 was very poor. However, the
company can improve organisational behaviour by applying the application of
Hofstede Model of Cultural Dimensions.
As per the view of Zigarmi et al. (2015), organisational culture is defined as an
understanding of various ideologies, practices and beliefs of an organisation that
bring difference within the workplace. Geert Hofstede mentioned in the model that
national and regional factors influence the behaviour of employees and contribute
towards the culture of an organisation. Hofstede included five factors to major the
organisational culture within a firm.
Figure 1: Hofstede Model
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(Source: Shier and Handy, 2016)
Power distance
Power distance within a firm occurs due to improper distribution of power within a
firm (Shier and Handy, 2016). For example, employees of Ryanair was provided with
their specified role. However they were not given respect as like other superior
members including pilots, managers and CEO. Due to this, the conflicts also used to
have among members. Hence, this caused to make the organisational culture
miserable. in that case, Ryanair company needs to focus on providing specific roles
to their members, but equal respect and dignity to every individual connected with
the firm.
Masculine and feminist
The difference within a firm between male and female also present a bad culture of
the firm. For example, a gender pay gap has been observed in the Ryanair. In the
survey of the Guardian Newspaper, it has been observed that hourly pay of women
is 71.8% lower than men (Topham, 2018). Due to which the controversy among men
and women employees always occurred within the firm. Most of the women
employees perceived to be giving resignation. Hence, Ryanair needs to mitigate this
issue of masculine and feminist from their workplace by paying equal wages as well
as respect voiding the gender gap.
Individualism
Survey of Irish Times show that the conflicts between pilots and management always
occurs due to which the company had to cancel their flights. As well, employee’s
retention has been increasing as employees feel de-motivated while working in the
firm (Power, 2017). With this view, it can be opined that Ryanair has been working
under the factor of individualism due to which they have been facing issues. They
should instead work all together to achieve the success of the organisation.
Uncertainty Avoidance index
It has been observed that the employees of Ryanair have been resigning the job
position due to clashes between management and pilots. This gives a perception
that they did not have the knowledge of avoiding uncertain situations and overcome
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the problems or risks. In that case, they need to build upthe uncertainty avoidance
index within the firm to tackle issues in future (Zhen, 2017).
Long term orientation
Ryanair needs to develop a long term orientation to void the issues of conflicts, de-
motivation and resignation of employees on a large scale. This can be done through
building policies of equality and respect, regular payment voiding gender gap and
training and motivation.
French and Raven’s power types
Understanding of power comes from the workplace when powers are divided
according to job position within an organisation. John French and Bertram Raven
have developed five forms of power that are followed within an organisation (Saito
and Ruhanen, 2017). These are as follows:
Figure 2: French and Raven’s power types
(Source: Davies, 2017)
Coercive Power
This power is related to coercion in which people are forced to perform against their
will. Presence of this power results in the framing of unhealthy behaviour and
dissatisfaction of employees at the workplace (Montuori and Donnelly, 2018).
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Employees of Ryanair have been facing these issues of working against their will
due to which they are resigning from the company.
Reward Power
This is the power that acts upon giving the same respect and appreciation as
employees give their best performance. However, a lack of motivation in staff
members has been observed in the airline company (Killen et al. 2016). The reason
is that Ryanair has an autocratic approach of leadership due to which employees
have to work in a strict environment and case of any fault; they are fired from the
workplace.
Legitimate Power
This is the power especially given to the managers or other higher authority based
on their job position. The CEO and Managers of Ryanair have legitimate power
which they have been using negatively on employees. This is because, a survey of
The Guardian News portal has shown that, managers voided to the negotiation of
employment by 1 January 2018 (Davies, 2017).
Referent Power
This power relates to the identifying of the ability for administering someone with a
sense of appreciation. Leaders mostly hold this power and manage their team
properly and provide the proper guidance. Ryanair leaders did not observe to be
appreciable as they are not able to solve the conflict among employees and pilots.
Expert Power
This is the power delegated to the one having in-depth capabilities to understand the
business environment and intelligent enough to solve the risks of the organisation by
applying appropriate negotiation skills. Ryanair CEO diverted the mind of their
employees by increasing their wages and lowering the termination on a single fault.
Political Behaviour of managers
It has been observed that managers in Ryanair Company void to hear their staff
members due to which strike has become common. In the year 2018, mostly the
flights of Ryanair remained cancelled due to strike of pilots and cabin crew members
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(Baker, 2019). This gives a view that managers holding a position do not have good
political behaviour that should be there. Political behaviour of Chalant's signifies that
an individual carrying political behaviour needs to keep wide and elaborative thinking
towards their employees. They are responsible for handling staff members by
meeting their expectation (Farhan, 2018).
b. How the culture you identified in (a) have affected the feelings
and behaviour of staff and ultimately the performance of Ryanair
From the above discussion, it has been observed that Ryanair does not have proper
organisational culture due to which issues among staff members always occur, the
expert and coercion power observed to be highest at the workplace. This has led to
de-motivate employees to work in the firm. With the help of Deal and Kennedy’s
Cultural Framework, the feelings and behaviour of employees have been shown. As
per the view of do Carmo Silva and Gomes (2015), Deal and Kennedy signified that
the corporate culture is interlocked with six cultural components.
Deal and Kennedy's Cultural Framework
Figure 3: Deal and Kennedy's Cultural Framework
(Source: do Carmo Silva and Gomes, 2015)
History
Experiences lay towards the foundation for corporate culture and the tradition of past
influences organisations to form culture at the workplace. The organisational culture
of Ryanair observed to be miserable since it has been found. This shows that since
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the founder self has a lack of proper knowledge of culture, and then it is not possible
to maintain a good culture. Improper salary to employees and the gender pay gap
have de-motivated the employees due to which they have conducted the strike and
cancelled approximately 40 flights in the end month of the year 2017. This ultimately
impacted the reputation of Ryanair as their reputation fell from 76% to 68% in the
year 2018 (Baker, 2019).
Values and beliefs
In terms of values and beliefs, Ryanair observed to be worst as they did not value
their staff members. It has been noticed that the company is liable to pay proper
wages in the firm, yet they do not provide proper wages. Moreover, they pay less to
women as compared to my employees. In addition to this, the company found to be
keeping autocratic leadership where staffs are forced to work in a strict environment
without any flexibility. All these have been affecting the feelings of employees and
they finally been decided to give resignation. This has ultimately affected the profit of
Ryanair as they lost their reputation in the market, on the other hand, it has been
observed that customers complained that the company is not punctual due to which
customers have to wait for hours to travel (do Carmo Silva and Gomes, 2015).
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Task 2: Motivating teams and individuals
Evaluate how content and process theories of motivation could be
used to enable individual and team performance and help Ryanair
to succeed
Ryanair Airline Company has been facing excessive issues due to poor
organisational culture. However, they can mitigate their problems by taking small
steps towards change. Concerning Herzberg Two Factor Theory, the company might
understand the basic factors to satisfy their working members. Huo et al. 2017)
stated in their study that Herzberg explained that there are two basic factors that
motivate staff members at workplace.
Figure 4: Herzberg Two factor theory
(Source: Huo et al. 2017)
These factors are an achievement, reward, recognition, responsibility and
advancements that motivate employees. The other factors related to de-motivation of
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staffs namely supervision, salary, environment, interpersonal relationship and
company policies and administration.
Ryanair perceived to be paying much low salary to their employees in spite of
having capabilities to pay. This is the main factor of de-motivating employees, and
this can only be mitigated through either increasing the salary or keeping incentives
that keep them motivated even with low salary. These incentives can be paid
medical leave, bonus on best performance and many others (from the viewpoint of
Mckenzie and Love, 2019).
The information has been gathered through a press release that Ryanair has
decided to modify their leadership structure and group structure with the motive of
increasing capital allocation and cost reduction which would benefit both employees
and customers. Employees can get a better salary with this change as well feel
motivated with the change (corporate.ryanair.com, 2019). With a continuation of this,
in the survey of The Irish Times has been noticed that Ryanair have strict policies for
employees that results in insecurity of job (Power, 2019).
They need to change this policy so that employees feel motivated while working
within a firm and give their best output. Furthermore, it has been observed that
Group strategy is being planned to be formed for renewing the five year contract that
would help in securing the services of employees until 2024. Along with this, Ryanair
has decided to develop leadership skill for the development of employee’s skill and
knowledge for career development (corporate.ryanair.com, 2019)
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Task 3: Effective cooperation within teams and concepts
and theories of organisational behaviour
a. Identify and explain the different types of teams which operate
within Ryanair and why this range of teams is important to the
success of the organisation
Functional
In this team, employees work together with different departments to achieve the
objectives of the business. Ryanair has been benefitting from using this team at their
workplace as this help in the management of cost properly and provide the best
services to customers.
Problem Solving
These types of the team are formed temporarily to solve the issues of organisation.
For example, Ryanair has also formed a problem-solving team including CEO,
Government and other shareholders to find mitigation strategy of improving services
in the year 2019 (corporate.ryanair.com, 2019).
Project
This type of team is formed for completing the project of business as like Ryanair
has developed a project team. They have made a team of CEO namely Michael
O’Leary, Chairman namely David Bonderman and SID namely Kyran McLaughlin for
developing succession plan as it would help in mitigating the issues of poor working
in the firm (corporate.ryanair.com, 2019).
Virtual Team
This team deal with communicating using digital platform rather than in person. This
makes communication easy and thus managers of Ryanair can present their
perspective of improvement as well hear others strategies to improve the services.
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