My Current Organization Research Paper

Research Paper
Gena Cummings
American Public University
June 19, 2015
Within my current organization, where my duties were as an Assistant Practice Manager for more than one year, there have been many challenges. One of the biggest issues found out as a result of the feedback from employees, is job dissatisfaction. These result from lack of pay raises, benefits, and job advancement.
Job satisfaction is a rudimentary ingredient for organizational productivity. The term job satisfaction could be explained as the extent to which an employee likes or dislikes his/her job. Apparently, job satisfaction defines how employees feel about their organizational duties, which in turn determines their productivity. It is the reason why scholars developed theories such as the hierarchy of needs, the motivator hygiene theory, the job characteristics model, and the dispositional approach (Hadi and Adil, 2010). Critical to the discussion is the fact that all the four theories explain job satisfaction from different perspectives. However, empirical research tends to support the job characteristics model implying the theory is widely recommended by scholars and practitioners in human resources. Consequently, this paper proposes the use of the job satisfaction model to correct employee satisfaction problems within my organization.
The job characteristic model was developed based on the assumption that jobs can make employees feel they are involved in meaningful and valuable tasks as well as make them enjoy their jobs (Lunenburg, 2011). As a result, the model relies on five elements that define the level of job satisfaction. These elements include skill variety, task identity, autonomy, task significance, and job feedback. It is notable that skill variety element requires that employees maximize all their skills at work while the task identity requires employees to feel the impact of their work on the product produced by the organization (Mukul, et al., 2013). Comparable, the identity element requires that employees feel how their jobs influence people directly while the self-rule element defines the capacity of an employee’s ability to work under minimal supervision. Ultimately, feedback evaluates how well employees perform their duties and ascertains that employees learn about their performance. According to Greenberg (2013) the dispositional model of job satisfaction "is a relatively stable characteristic that stays with people through various situations".
A strong organizational culture can go along way in helping the solve this problem o job satisfaction. Organizations pride their existence and reputation upon a strong organizational culture, the general goodwill and image of any organization can easily be noted from the manner in which the organization itself is organized and operates. Organizational culture is the manner in which all the stakeholders, such as staff and employees, relate to each other in the workplace, and also the way they feel about their jobs and the organization in general. Organizational culture, just like any other culture, is supposed to be nurtured and guarded jealously in order to protect the company’s heritage as well as the general progress of the organization. However, challenges to organizational culture are a norm, and almost inevitable for any company, including my current workplace.
The first challenge to organizational culture is diversity .This takes place in form of both cultural as well as ethnic diversity. Considering that the organization employs individuals from diverse backgrounds and walks of life, it is expected that there is going to be a clash of cultures within the workplace. The differences in the beliefs and practices of different employees is bound to be on a collision course among them at the workplace, and this can sometimes be very problematic for the general culture of the organization. Sometimes, these differences can have a very negative effect on the productivity of the employees since it directly results to less work done, or slow rate of doing things (Nelson & Quick, 2013).
The second challenge facing organizational culture is demotivation of employees. Employees usually get demotivated as a result of a number of reasons. Poor leadership can be lead employees to being demotivated .When the boss or employer becomes excessively demanding and nagging, the staff can get tired and lose morale. Lack of recognition can be another aspect. Employees are very sensitive to feedback. As a result, if their endeavors and hard work goes unnoticed by the top echelons of management, they might as well decide to give up and sit back. This is what can generally be summed up as the feeling of being undervalued.
Another cause for demotivation can arise from failure of the organization to provide a conducive environment for career growth of the employees. Career development opportunities can be offered through regular training and also promotion of the employees. Therefore, failure to do this can easily result to an employee viewing the organization as lacking progress. An organization that displays lack of progress spells doom for any employee focused on advancing and developing in his career. Demotivation also comes about as a result of lack of balance between the pay and the amount of work done by an employee (Nelson & Quick, 2013).
The third challenge to organizational behavior emanates from the lack of matching between the type of employee the company needs, and those employed. This brings into sharp focus the difference between compatibility and competence. An employee might be very much qualified, based on the interview done. An employee might have the necessary skills and papers to assume duties within the company. However, there is usually that added factor that never really shows on the papers. For example, if the management of an organization is not focused on development or innovation, it might find it really unbearable to have employees who are highly innovative and progressive (Nelson & Quick, 2013).
There are various ways in which challenges to organizational behavior can be addressed. The first method is through developing a system that provides a smooth integration of new employees into the culture of the company. This is through some training program that can help them value the importance of diversity at the workplace. This is also called diversity training. Through such trainings and regular workshops, the employees can gradually learn to appreciate the importance of a cosmopolitan society. They can learn to acknowledge what each of them brings to the table, and thereby the importance of their colleagues.
Secondly, introduction of methods of motivation for these employees is also fundamental. Motivation can take two forms; monetary and non monetary. Monetary motivation is in the form of cash, such as salary increment, stock options, and profit sharing, while non monetary motivation includes all the other incentives apart from cash, which can help in employee motivation. These include recognition and job security. Motivation can be well encompassed through the motivational theories as advanced by Herzberg and Maslow (Miner, 2005).
Herzberg advanced the two factor theory, which essentially stated that there are two components of motivation within the workplace; hygiene and motivators. Hygiene factors, from the theory, are simply those aspects that are fundamental to motivation, but aren’t visible, they can only be felt. As a result, withdrawal of such a factor results to the employees fighting to get the factor back. In a nutshell, these are those invisible factors that affect the morale at the workplace. Maslow developed the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, which generally stated that for an individual to get motivated, there were those basic needs that were very important .These basic needs need to be totally satisfied in order for the higher needs to get fulfilled(Miner,2005).
The basic concept of organizational behavior is to enable indiv...