Analysis of Sainsbury's Organisational Culture and Performance

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ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR: SAINSBURY
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ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR:
SAINSBURY
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
LO1: Analyse the influence of culture, politics and power on the behaviour of others in an
organisational context......................................................................................................................4
Organisational culture in Sainsbury's..........................................................................................4
Handy’s Typology of culture.......................................................................................................5
Organisational power in Sainsbury’s...........................................................................................6
Organisational political behaviour in Sainsbury's.......................................................................8
Organisational culture of Sainsbury's affecting the staffs...........................................................9
Organisational culture of Sainsbury's affecting performance......................................................9
LO2: Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal.....................................10
Motivation in organisation.........................................................................................................10
Content and process theories of motivation...............................................................................10
Applying motivation theories to Sainsbury’s............................................................................10
Motivation affecting individual and team performance and helping Sainsbury’s to succeed...12
LO3: Co-operating with others effectively....................................................................................14
Types of organisational teams...................................................................................................14
Groups and teams......................................................................................................................15
Tuckman and Jensen's team development model......................................................................16
Belbin's team development model.............................................................................................17
LO4: Organizational Behaviour and Implementing Proper Theories and Principles....................20
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................24
References......................................................................................................................................25
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Introduction
In this present situation globalisation is the trend due to which every organisation is trying to
expand business in foreign soils in an efficient way. The organizational behavior is very
important component because the holistic business performance and operation procedure of the
organisation is based on the organizational behavior. Psychology is the branch that affects the
behaviors of the employees and the top management of the organisation. Organisational
behavioral management helps the managers to effectively tackle the employees and enhance
work efficiency by almost 20 %. In this study, the focus will be given on analyzing the
organisational behavior of the Sainsbury, which is one of the largest retail supermarket chains of
Europe. Various organisational behavioral and cultural theories will be explained and related to
Sainsbury to analyse the different behavioral perspective.
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LO1: Analyse the influence of culture, politics and power on the behaviour of others in an
organisational context
Organisational culture in Sainsbury's
According to the current situation, globalisation is the present trend that has promoted the
multicultural concepts. The multi cultural concepts is best described by the use of the
Hofstadter’s cultural dimension theory that depicts in detail the cultural perspective and its
different components. In globalised work environment, it is seen that cultural conflict occurs in
multinational organisations. Moreover, the different components of Hofstadter cultural
dimension theory are as below
Power distance: It is one of the major factors that is mainly present in the corporate
organisation. The power hierarchy is the structure of the organisation and power that is
dissipated to the top managers of the company. In organisational behavior the employees in the
bottom or the line managers sometimes has to show tolerance to the concentration of the power
in the top due to improper distribution of the power (Mazanecet al.,2015). In Sainsbury, this
power distance is maintained in an effective way so that a flexible working culture may prevail
between the managers and the employees. On the other hand, the top administration has
concentrated power of decision-making that sometimes enhances power distance by almost 15%.
In the context of Sainsbury Mike Coupe is the CEO and power is vested with the board of
directors to take proper decision-making.
Individualism Vs Collectivism: Individualism and collectivism are the concept where
individualism is more one man oriented structure and collectivism represent the group effort to
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perform the job in a better way. However, the individualism helps in enhancing the personal
confidence and efficiency of an individual (Bakir et al ., 2015). It is argued that for
organisational behavior collectivism concept is more sustainable and helps to maintain
efficiency.
Uncertainty avoidance: This factor is important as it helps to depict the employee’s trends to
avoid any uncertain circumstances or face it boldly with proper presence of mind.
Long-term vs short term: The long term and short-term prospects are very important that helps
in developing the sustainable development from the organisation point of view. Long-term goals
are very important.
Indulgence vs Restraints : The indulgence and restraints are important according to that
component the flexibility in the organisational behavior is dependant in an efficient way.
Handy’s Typology of culture
The organisational culture in Sainsbury is explained by Handy ‘typology of cultures. The
components are present which are power culture, role culture and task culture (Huang, and
Crotts, 2019). In Sainsbury, the power culture is lineant as the managers keep a flexible relation
with the employees. However, decision-making is done by the CEO and board of directors. Role
culture depicts the, the roles and responsibility as Sainsbury is one of the largest supermarket
chain it has good method of delegation of work among the employees. The employees keep their
responsibility to depict to enhance cohesiveness in the team. Task culture is the delegation of
task made in Sainsbury like management, inventory sales and marketing according to the
strength. The people culture depicts the influence of the important people in shaping up the
organisation behaviors like CEO of Sainsbury.
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Organisational power in Sainsbury’s
The organisational power of a firm can be explained as the influence any of its employees have
on the others or the kind of influencing power the management and leaders of the organization
have on their subordinates. According to Aluko and Knight (2017), Sainsbury’s power can be
studied using French and Raven’s model. This model categorizes all forms of power into six
basic power types. The six bases of organisational power exercised by Sainsbury’s are as
follows:
 Legitimate power: The power of authorization possessed by a member or employee by
the virtue of their position in the hierarchy of the organisational structure is termed as
legitimate power. In the context of Sainsbury, the Chairman, David Tyler, the present
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mike Coupe and their Chief Financial Officer (CFO),
Kevin O’Bryne posses legitimate power and have direct authority to influence the board
members in the policy and strategy making process in the higher levels.
 Reward power: Raven (2017) suggested that the power of a member in the organisation
to encourage and motivate an employee by giving out rewards, promotions, desirable
projects, etc is known as reward power. Though only limited people in a firm have such
kind of power, this type of power seems be a catalyst when it comes to dedicated and
hard work among the masses of employees. At Sainsbury’s, the regional managers and
the Department Managers posses the reward power and often hands out bonuses as a
token of hard work or deliver promotions to honour experience and loyalty among
employees.
 Coercive power: Arshed and Pancholi (2016) argued that this is the kind of power often
criticized about. This type of power is exercised mainly by higher rank holders in the
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organisational hierarchy upon their subordinates. Some managers and higher level
employees have the power to rebuke, and deliver punishments to other employees to
instill fear to get their desired job done. Sainsbury’s has recently threatened the jobs of
thousands of employees mostly managers. The use of coercive power by Sainsbury’s
could be possible seen when they confirmed their intensions in 2018 to cut off jobs in
three years to save an estimated amount of 500 million Euros.
 Informational power: It is suggested that power is possessed by control over
information that employees need in order to perform. At Sainsbury’s, the regional
managers have information regarding marketing strategies and thus have informational
power over their root level employees.
 Expert power: Power is automatically imposed on a member or employee that is better
at technical expertise, while others tend to follow him and accepts his orders. Such power
is exerted in Sainsbury’s by senior regional managers that are promoted solely by their
performance skills.
 Referent power: referent power grows in employees by the amount of connections and
professional relationships they maintain and form within the organisation. This power
allows an employee to influence and lead others with their connections. In Sainsbury’s,
the department managers that are directly connected down the hierarchical tree to the
subordinates exert such type of power.
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Figure : French and Raven’s Five Bases of Power
(Source: Free-management-ebooks.com, 2019)
Organisational political behaviour in Sainsbury's
One of the most important theories that may help to explain the political behavior of Sainsbury
is Chanlat’s theory of political behavior. The political behavior in organization are divided into
three parts and they are features based on decision, feature based on organisational structure and
the personal mentality of the individuals of the organisation.
Organisational Structural feature: The politics of the organisation is related to the organogram
of the organisation. In Sainsbury, it is seen that after the CEO there are different executive
managers of respective department and under their line managers (Yerznkyan, Gassner, and
Kara, 2017). The inter departmental and intra department politics regarding performance and
appraisal is present in Sainsbury that affects the overall organisational culture and behaviour.
However sometimes politics are essential to shape up the organisational structure according to
business requirements.
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Features based on personal traits: The personal features of the employees are very much
important to formulate internal office politics. In Sainsbury, it has been seen that some of the
employees and managers shows manipulative tendencies to perform internal politics to achieve
their aims. Sometimes it affects the total working efficiency of Sainsbury
Features based on the decision: One of the major factors that influence the politics in
organisation is the decision made by the management (Shojaie, Federrath, and Saberi, 2015). For
example in Sainsbury, there is decision of implementation of digital technologies that may start
internal politics within the organisation as some people may oppose the decision due to in
competencies as well.
Organisational culture of Sainsbury's affecting the staffs
According to the situation in Sainsbury, the power culture is flexible and present in the top
management including the CEO. The line managers are flexible to the employees of the stores to
maintain efficiency in the store (Chandler, and Fuchs, 2019). The role culture is being
implemented in a proper way. Moreover, the tasks are based on strengths of employees and
delegated after building competencies of the employees.
Organisational culture of Sainsbury's affecting performance
The person culture is not focused in the Sainsbury as it decreases the main amount of work
efficiency among the organisation. Presence of task culture helps to enhance efficiency by almost
20 % (Singh, 2019).
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LO2: Evaluate how to motivate individuals and teams to achieve a goal
Motivation in organisation
Motivation in an organisation is defined by something that energizes and encourages an
employees’ behavior. Motivating employees can lead to better productivity in them and thus
ensuring higher output for the organisation. Motivation influences employees to ascertain their
choice of behavior in the organisation. Sainsbury’s serves as a prime example of how employees
could be encouraged motivated at lower levels to show loyal and dedicated behavior while
performing store management while satisfying customer needs.
Content and process theories of motivation
According to Sahito and Vaisanen (2017), the concept and process theories of motivation define
different aspects of motivation theories. While the concept theory deals with “what” motivates
people, the process theory deals with “how” the people could be motivated. Concept
management deals with the source of motivation and emphasizes on the internal and external
factors of an organisation that influences the motivation theory. On the other hand, process
theory deals with the process undertaken to impart motivation and focuses on the factors that
need to be considered while enhancing their motivation level.
Applying motivation theories to Sainsbury’s
McClelland’s need theory, one of the most popular content theories can be undertaken to explain
the motivation Sainsbury’s impart on their employees. The theory states that the need to gain
achievements fuels the motivation of an employee. At Sainsbury’s, a root level employee
working at a store may display his organisational skill at store management and could be eligible
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for a promotion. This may work as a motivational factor for him. An employee as such could
exercise expert power and attract the likeness of other employees. However, the need for power
to climb the ladder of the position hierarchy in the organisational structure at a retail giant like
Sainsbury’s is utmost important in the employees and could act as a factor for motivation for
their employees.
On the other hand, an important process theory such as Reinforcement theory can be cited to
demonstrate the development process of motivation at Sainsbury’s. Ensuring positive
reinforcements like raise in salary or promotion of desirable employees serve as an important
factor for motivation among their employees. This encourages them to work harder and enhance
their performance. But a negative reinforcements such as punishments, warnings, suspensions or
demotions need to be imposed in cases of improper behavior or lethargic activity. This would
prevent them from performing them anymore and correcting themselves following Sainsbury’s
employee policies. However, when it comes to minor problems or honest mistakes, the
management should show kindness and generosity to motivate their employees.
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Figure : Theories of Motivation
(Source: Expert Program Management, 2019)
Motivation affecting individual and team performance and helping Sainsbury’s to succeed
Karanika-Murray and Biron (2019) stated that motivational factors affect both individual and
team performances. In Sainsbury’s motivating their customer service agents would ensure proper
customer satisfaction by assistance. However, motivating the whole crew by utilizing the
motivational theories properly such as raising the payroll or promotions in departments like
storekeepers, managers, sweepers, etc would ensure the perfect working of each department and
thus promote the perfect working of the store and the organisation as a whole. Thus, Kanfer and
Chen (2016) argued that motivating employees and efficient use of the motivational theories
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