Analysing Waitrose: Organisational Behaviour and Performance Report

This report provides an in-depth analysis of organisational behaviour within Waitrose & Partners, a British supermarket chain. It explores the influence of organisational culture, power dynamics, and workplace politics on individual and team performance. The report examines different types of organisational culture according to the Handy model (power, task, role, and person) and discusses various sources of power (legitimate, reward, expert, referent, coercive, and informational) used within the company. It also investigates the impact of organisational politics, including factors like dissatisfied workers, environmental issues, and reduced productivity. Furthermore, the report delves into motivational theories, including content theories (Maslow's hierarchy, Alderfer's ERG theory) and process theories (Vroom's expectancy theory, goal-setting theory), evaluating their suitability for Waitrose. The report concludes by offering recommendations for improving employee motivation, team effectiveness, and overall organisational performance within Waitrose.

Organisational
Behaviour

INTRODUCTION
Individual behaviour in an organisation refers to the administrative activities and
functions that are useful for the benefits of humans in an organization. As it helps in
understanding and utilisation of knowledge as well as informations that re related to the people
as how they react and perform at a company's workplace. This also leads in proper
understanding of individual nature which are complex and different from each others that assists
in provide motivation, improve the employees relation as well as effective controlling of human
behaviour. In this report Waitrose & Partners is chosen which is a chain of British supermarkets.
It was founded in 1904 in Bracknell, England, UK and it has a royal warrant to supply groceries,
wine and spirits to Queen Elizabeth. In this report discussed about the powers, politics as well as
culture of businesses that influence person's behaviour as well as performance. Moreover,
describe some motivational theories and effective and ineffective team concepts or theories that
are required to encourage people and bring team effectiveness. Also, study some philosophies of
organisational behaviour in order to shows person's attitudes as well as provide recommendation.
TASK 1
P1
Every organisations are different with each other and have a unique culture towards
organising group of persons. An organisational culture defines as a unique sets of assumptions
and values that directing and controlling the person's behaviour as well as clearly display
individual's working quality, expectations, connections as well as real image (Balwant, 2018).
The management of Waitrose needs to be perform better and leads improved productivity as well
as profitability. There are four types of culture according to the Handy model that can be
considered as follows:
1. Power: This type of culture is presented in that kind of working environment where only
few persons have power to formulate the rules and regulations towards the accomplishing
the objectives of an organisation. That is more suitable while decisions needed to shuffle
to make a strong culture at workplace.
2. Task: This is related to complete the tasks so a company design a group of persons in
order to solving a typical issues that are presently faced by an organisation. This will
assist in taking appropriate skills, personality, behaviour, leadership as well as attitudes
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of a person who are capable to solve these problems effectively and achieve
organisational objectives.
3. Role: In this kind of culture basically manager or management decides roles and
responsibilities of each members and have fully controlled over them in order to achieve
effective end results. This is more suitable as it clearly defines the tasks and everyone
knows their roles and judge their performance.
4. Person: It defines as a group of persons that are formulated for working together in order
to achieve a common objectives as well as all they are trained in a same way.
Organisational power is related to the person's ability to determine the activity and
behaviour of workers in order to utilised them appropriately and monitor their performance.
Waitrose can exercise adequate power which helps in increasing the efficiency level in work
performance as well as smooth functioning of an organisational activities to attain the objectives
appropriately (Chang, 2016). Numerous powers that are used by a company to manage, monitor
and control the staff performance as well as behaviour. There are several sources for using power
in order to achieving the objectives in an effective manner that can be shown as follows:1. Legitimate: This type of power shows the positional power which is related to the
positions of a person that are holds in Waitrose organisational structure. This power is
generally held by the company's chief executive officers.2. Reward: This kind of power refers to the individual's ability to determine the Waitrose's
incentive allocation mechanism. It includes the positive appraisals, salary, incentives as
well as promotion. When a company use this power without any biasses then this will
highly motivate their employees.3. Expert: It is refers to the basic principle of Knowledge is power that is related to the
having expertness and specialist in a specific workplace. Experts power is held by the
Waitrose senior manager and used to influence workers actions and performance through
their ideas, opinions and decisions as well.4. Referent: It is described as an interpersonal relation which an individual working with
other persons in Waitrose culture. This is closely related to the personal interactions with
a key people of hierarchical structure as CEO and MD as well as it is from charismatic
feature to encourage others through trust and respects.
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5. Coercive: This kind of power is concentrate on the individual's capability to determine
others and assists to encourage others as well as monitor and control the workers
behaviour by insuring that they adhere Waitrose's rules and regulations.
6. Informational: This kind of power is derived from the having a good and unique
information’s that are not available by all person's which is used to influence the changes
in effective manner. This power is used by Waitrose company to influence the strategies,
processes as well as tasks for the purpose of improved it.
Organisational politics define as a behaviour of a person which involved in the political
affairs of an organisation workplace. It builds a group of socialism in that they attain and accept
changes towards the accomplishment of organisational objectives which considered beneficial
for the company (Whelan, 2016). The manager of Waitrose requires to formulate effective
decisions in order to control and monitor working environment and their staff positively. There
are several factors of politics at workplace that can be described as follows:
 Dissatisfied workers: At workplace of an organisations play politics results in negative
motivation as politics leads in giving credit of hard works to those people who played
politics and involved in that kind of environment. As this will result in impacts of hard
worker’s behaviour and performance because they feel demotivated and dissatisfied.
 Environment spoilage: Organisational politics leads the negative environment at
company's workplace and injured surroundings through negative thoughts and activities.
This will result in increasing disputes among colleagues and they are less familiar with
that environment.
 Reduce productivity: Organisational politics results in decrease employee’s potentiality
and productivity as they distract towards the work performance and includes themselves
in noticing others. So, ultimately the employee’s performance reduced and this will
impacts on overall productivity of company.
Impact of organisational culture, power and politics on the performance and
behaviour of individual as well as team members:
Impacts on individual behaviour and
performance
Impact on team behaviour and
performance
When manager of Waitrose not delegate the work
in an proper way and assigned piece of work
If power is exercised more on person's either
individual or group of member by the
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without determining skills and capabilities of
employees that effects negatively on the
behaviour of workers as well as performance as
they are unable to accomplished those duty in a
specified period of time and incompetent to
exercise skills effectively.
Waitrose manager this will determine the
behaviour and decrease their performances.
When individual performance is declined
then entire team is effected and outcomes in
low performance and workers
dissatisfaction.
TASK 2
P2
Motivation means sequentially, wishes and neediness on the basis for the individuals. It is
derived form of Motive word. It can helps to get your aim, score etc. it force you to do difficult
work (Corfield, 2016). This motivation learn you enthusiastic energy to wakeup and for personal
growth and acquire a new ideas. and Waitrose contain new concept related to this theory such as
content and process by focusing on the individuals needs and behaviours that is describe below:
Content Theory:
On the basis of this concept it recognises that how people fulfil their needs. In some
other language it can say that they wants to try their needs associate with motivation. It can be
considered as follows:1. Maslow's Hierarchy of needs: From “lower to higher” every individual have a series of
needs in some ranges. In lower needs they fulfil their attitude to others, As in Higher
needs it will appear. For motivation Maslow's Hierarchy show some requirement as
follows-
 Physiological Motivation: They allow for employees to fulfil their important needs by
giving their payment and also provide lunch.
 Safety Needs: They save from danger by giving a good surrounding, safety and
immunity.
 Social Needs: Related by strength for team work and mechanism they create a opinion for
acceptance.
 Esteem Motivators: They gives state of condition to feel valuable and satisfying and they
identify new projects and their achievements.
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 Self- Actualization: They gives new purposeful projects which can be modify, creativity
and progress.2. Alderfer ERG Theory: It comprises five needs into three classes by Clayton P.
Alderfer's ERG theory which is developed in 1969 e.g. Existence, Relatedness, Growth.
 Existence Needs: The characteristic of people is physiological and safety feature and
essential for aliveness these are related for needs of existence.
 Relatedness Needs: A person desire to launch relationship for care to each other and they
mention to their social needs.
 Growth Needs: This includes the self actualisation need of Maslow need hierarchical
theory as it is based on the high rate of growth as well as potential level of workers.
From the above description of motivational theory, it can be considered that Maslow need
hierarchical theory of content motivation is more suitable for Waitrose company in order to
satisfy the individual's by fulfilling their requirements from basic level to top level. This is to be
considered as a simple and easy to adopt because it focuses on the human behaviour as well as
applicable at all type of businesses. Although, it has a big disadvantage that all people aren't
thinking same as they all are belongs to different cultures.
Process theory
This concept related to the physiological features and pre-existent that for motivation
and the way they are link with each other.1. Vroom's Expectancy Theory: In this concept people get some goal to execute activities
and hope that positive actions on their part which they could help to achieve
organisational goal. This belief is made-up about the ides of valence, instrumentality, and
Expectancy (Pereira, 2017). It is also called VIE theory.
 Expectancy- If a person do work hard and it turn into better performance by more effort
then they will get success.
 Instrumentality- They mention the connection between activity and goal. Perform well
and will get prize.
 Valence- The results of success person value the reward to degree.2. Goal Setting Theory: Rational and Intentional behaviour is the result of motivation. on a
regular basis it advice to the managers and subordinates must launch and set their goals
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(Goal Setting Theory of Motivation, 2019). Content should be fairly difficult and specific
as well as various goal setting principals are as follows- Clarity- Measurable goal is getting more as compare to poorly. Challenge- In order to motivate employees they seek toward their goal but it should have
a decent level of difficulty. Commitment- For the meet up their goal they set knowing effort for this content. Feedback- Set up a method and they receive information to setup a method on your
development towards the goal.
 Task complexity- Workers have to cushioning to get a best chance for success if the goal
is hard.
From the above discussion of process theory of motivation, Vroom expectancy theory is
best for Waitrose company as the employee’s performance are based on their efforts in order to
produce effective results. This will help in increasing employee engagement as they are willing
to take participate in business activity and leads to improved performance. Moreover, a company
facilitates more rewards and encouragement but workers would not value them or considered
that (Laforet, 2016).
Whereas, the organisational politics, power as well as culture impacts on the people
behaviour and performances either individual or in group. It will help in determining the
employees feelings, interest, motivation level as well as satisfaction towards their job role and
developing and maintaining positive workplace environment that shows high level of
performance. Some recommendations are to be needed for Waitrose such as:
 Company should have emphasised on fair rewards mechanism and encourage workers for
increase their performance and retain for a long time with loyalty.
 A company should conduct timely appraisal of employee’s performance to know actual
performance level and monitor their actions by facilitating feedbacks towards the
improvement.
TASK 3
P3
Group is a unit of persons that are formed to resolve a critical issue as well as achieve a
common objective related to the specific tasks of an organisation. Waitrose company can
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develop proper group of person's to assist the long term growth and survival and also increase
the company's productivity and profitability (Salas-Vallina, 2017). Team effective is essential to
work in an effective manner as there are the contrast of effective as well as ineffective group of
persons which are described below:
Effective team Ineffective team
Effective team encourage the precious and
open communication towards present creative
thinking and mental object. They centred on
accomplishing common goals, whoever is
directing it and efforts to give results in broad
level of profitability, potentiality, efficiency
and productivity (Kitchin, 2017).
Ineffective team of persons results in disagreed
objectives as all are not agree on one objective
and make stress full atmosphere at company's
workplace. The decisions are not to be clear
that are seized from voting mechanism as well
as they don't hear to each other or sometimes
effective ideas are disregard.
To influence team development theory a company i.e. Waitrose can apply Belbin theory
which focused on the effectiveness of team and increase the productivity and performance of an
organisation.
Team and group development theory:
Belbin theory: This concept is focused on the different 9 roles of persons who is the
member of a group in order to make effective team as well as it ensure the accomplishment of
organisational goals within a specified period of time (Belbin Team Role Model Management,
2019). It further categorised into mainly three terms such as people, action and thought that are
shown as:
Action oriented:
 Shaper: An person who have a role to drive whole project and take more responsibilities
towards the takes completion on time.
 Implementer: This role is considering for a whole team member as they all are
responsible to complete tasks and implement strategies appropriately in order to drive the
growth and success.
 Complete finisher: This role play of a person is most effective as they are liable for
improving the skills of other members of a group to ensure about their work quality.
People oriented:
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 Co-ordinator: This kind of role is totally based on the employees or team members as
this role player is liable for coordinating work and assigning separate job responsibility
for align their efforts to attain objectives. Team worker: This kind of role player is required to increasing the employees morale and
develop the overall team spirit among team members.
 Resource investigator: This is liable for assigning the available resources among team
members in order to having a unique sets of skills. In other words, it is used to optimum
utilisation of resources.
Thought oriented:
 Plant: It is the one of the key role that provides to the person who have desire and skill to
create a healthy and long term relations between the organisation and its users.
 Monitor evaluator: It is given to that person of group who have a ability to develop an
unbiased environment at organisational workplace that helps in facilitating team equality
sense.
 Specialist: This is related to delivering and developing related information towards the
teams in order to make sure that tasks and objectives are accomplished effectively.
This considered as a most appropriate theory of team development as it is used by
Waitrose company to display roles and responsibilities of every members of a team. It can have
applied in order to know strengths and develop weak areas in strong ways as it will help in
achieving the company's goals effectively and increase productivity and profitability. In addition,
if a team has small size then it will result in lack of performance and communication is not
effective in team members.
TASK 4
P4
The owner of Waitrose company needs to design a plan in order to develop their
organisational structure through presenting innovative ideas and thoughts to take changes. For
this a company requires to sets appropriate rules, regulations and assign job responsibilities to
their staff members for better utilisation their skills and capabilities to accomplish organisational
objectives (Darcy, 2017). There is also a requirement to create a positive workplace environment
to encourage and motivate workforce to complete work on time as well as give effective
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outcomes. Waitrose can apply path goal theory for choosing best leadership style as well as
develop effective culture.
Path goal theory: This concept is used by a firm as it facilitates the satisfaction,
encouragement as well as motivation through focusing on leadership styles for their workers in
order to maintain a positive work place. To become a productive employees Waitrose can apply
best leadership approach as it is based on their determinations which is required for better growth
and success of a company (Ruck, 2017). The company's manager can achieve goals by applied
several concepts at organisational workplace that will helps in resolve the challenges and
complete work within the time-frame.
Business situation of Waitrose:
The company Waitrose face a critical situation which is related to the increasing turnover
of their staff's productivity. In order to face this particular situation a company plans appropriate
strategies in a strategic way and adopts effective theories as well as philosophies in order to bring
changes in current practices.
Concepts and philosophies based on specific business situation:
 By applying the Maslow's need hierarchy theory of motivation a company Waitrose able
to satisfy all employee's from basic needs. As they encourage workers by facilitating
attractive benefits as well as rewards that will assist in improving their motivational level.
Also, employees contributes their best which directly helps in minimising the staff
productivity turnover.
 As the company Waitrose needs to apply Belbin theory for the development of effective
teams because it may be helpful in improving the potentiality as well as performance of
workers. As Waitrose need to focus on employee engagement in a team oriented tasks
that leads effective decisions, problem solving as well as creation of new thoughts that
provides high level of satisfaction along with the better attainment of objectives. This will
help in reducing staff productivity and improve productivity and profitability as well.
 Waitrose may adopt different approaches of leadership to tackle the different situations
but in case of increasing turnover of staff's productivity the manager may adopt
participative style of leadership which assists in raising in the level of participation which
gives more satisfaction and helps in reducing this problem which a company currently
face.
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Leadership approaches are as follows: Directive leadership: This kind of approach, leaders design a specific sets of guidelines
that are communicate to its followers with a expectation of performing accordance with
this. This involves scheduling, coordinating etc. that is useful for Waitrose's cultural
environment stability and certainty. Participative leadership: In this style, leaders mainly focused on the team member’s
involvement in decision making procedures which helps to Waitrose in increasing the
employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation level towards the achieving targets. Supportive leadership: This kind of leadership approach, a leader may have focused on
creating friendly environment at their workplace as in order to face challenging situations
and supports them (Elsmore, 2017). Waitrose can apply this theory to develop a open
interactive environment in which followers shares their problems with leaders.
 Achievement leadership: In this style, a leader sets some specific objectives for their
followers that are expected from them in order to fulfil properly. Waitrose can use this
style as leaders make rules for the purpose of accomplish the challenging and strategic
goals.
Leaders of Waitrose company can adopts participative style of leadership approach as it
helps in innovating new thoughts and ideas for the success and survival of company. In a
dynamic business activity participative approach is more suitable as it assists in improve
company's profits and productivity by achieving the targets within a specified time period
(Gkorezis, 2017). In addition, this approach leads I more time consuming to resolve some critical
issues as well as not suitable for large business organisations as the company unable to satisfied
all by implementing all thoughts.
Path goal theory defined as an important concept that emphasised on motivational aspects
of workers as well as define clear roles and responsibilities of everyone. This will impact the
behaviour as well as performance of persons and its followers as well as for developing better
team a company apply Belbin team development theory. Whereas, it considered as a complex in
nature and challenging to examine elements as it has various components to considered (Goh,
2017).
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