PHILIPPINE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

1648 Taft Avenue cor. Pedro Gil Street, Malate, Manila, Metro
Manila

Discussions in

XI. Communication in Organizations

XII. Managing Groups and Teams
XIII. Motivating Employees
VI. The Essentials of Control
VII. Strategic Human Resource Management

COMPILED by:
LOU MARVIN C. SANTOS

DEFINITION OF MANAGEMENT
COMMUNICATION IN ORGANIZATIONS
Organizational communication’ is the process of sending and receiving of messages among interrelated
individuals within a particular environment or setting to achieve individual and common goals.
Organizational communication is highly contextual and culturally dependent. Individuals in organizations
transmit messages through face-to face, written, and mediated channels.

Importance of Organizational Communication

1. Accomplish tasks relating to specific roles and responsibilities

2. Acclimate to changes through individual and organizational creativity and adaptation
3. Develop relationships where “human messages are directed at people within the organization-
their attitudes, morale, satisfaction, and fulfillment” (Goldhaber 20)
4. Coordinate, plan, and control the operations of the organization through management

Organizational communication is how organizations represent, present, and constitute their organizational
climate and culture—the attitudes, values and goals that characterize the organization and its members.

Types of Organization Communication

1. Verbal (In-Person) Communication. Whenever possible, use face-to-face communication in the

workplace to eliminate many of the misunderstandings that can occur.
2. Body Language & Facial Expressions. Body language and facial expressions play a vital role in
how effective or ineffective you are at communicating with staff members.
3. Phone Conversations. Use of the phone is a common part of most every business day.
4. Written Communication. Emails, memos and notes are common forms of written
communication. Of all four communication styles, this is the one that can lead to the most
misunderstandings.

Channels of Communication

1. Top-Down Communication. This occurs whenever those who are in the top of the
organizational chain sends message to those who are below them. Top-Down Communication is critical
for keeping employees aligned and on-track with strategic goals.
2. Bottom-Up Communication. This occurs whenever those who are in the bottom of the
organizational chain sends message to those who are above them. Bottom-Up Communication is crucial
in giving the employees a voice and determining operational risks in the firm.

The HR manager, along to those who are in governance must be able to balance the two so the employees
are properly oriented in reaching the organizational goals.

MANAGING GROUPS AND TEAMS

What is a Group?

A group is a collection of individuals who interact with each other such that one person’s actions have an
impact on the others. In organizations, most work is done within groups.
In organizations, there are different types of groups. Informal work groups are made up of two or more
individuals who are associated with one another in ways not prescribed by the formal organization. A
formal work group is made up of managers, subordinates, or both with close associations among group
members that influence the behavior of individuals in the group. We will discuss many different types of
formal work groups later on in this chapter.

How do Groups form?

Groups from in these stages:

1. Forming – members come together for the first time.

2. Storming – as members lose their façade, conflicts arise. Many organizations get stuck in this
phase.
3. Norming – compromises arise and group members are now able to handle conflicts within.
4. Performing – with shared vision, the group is now ready to reach desired goals.
5. Adjourning – for businesses, this means the purpose of the group has been established and it is
now dissolved.

Groups versus Teams

Groups is a collection of individuals with different values, while teams are those who have members that
have collective vision. More often than not, these teams have roles to fulfill for the greater whole. A
group member can be a contractor (one that organizes the team), creator (the one who frames the team’s
goals), contributor (the one who has knowledge and expertise), completer (they translate visions to
action) and critic (the one that goes against the team’s assumptions).

Teams can also be traditional or self-managed, depending on the set-up of the organization.

How Do You Manage Groups and Teams?

Developing a team contract will allow everyone to have a roadmap in obtaining organizational goals. A
contract is not a guarantee for success – but serves as a guideline to everyone. This also helps to conquer
the problem of where to begin as most teams tend to get lost in the tasks. A team must also be able to
handle dominating members, members who perform poorly and how a leader can help improve their
performance and those heated conflicts.

MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES
Motivation is defined as the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, leading to goal-
directed behavior. When it is referred that someone is being motivated, it means that the person is trying
hard to accomplish a certain task. Ability and environmental factors affect employee motivation.

How Do You Motivate Employees?

Needs-Based Theories

Abraham Maslow created a hierarchy of needs which goes as follows – physiological, safety, social,
esteem and self-actualization. It is important to note that most jobs fulfill the physiological needs of the
employee but other needs must be satisfied as well.
On the other hand, David McClelland’s acquired-needs theory is the one that has received the greatest
amount of support. According to this theory, individuals acquire three types of needs as a result of their
life experiences. These needs are the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for
power.

Process-Based Theories

Equity theory states that individuals are motivated by a sense of fairness in their interactions. Moreover,
the sense of fairness is a result of the social comparisons people make. It is usually based on a referent, or
someone who is similar to the employee who makes the comparison. If people encounter unfairness, it is
responded by altering our perceptions of our own or the referent’s inputs and outcomes.

On the other hand, expectancy theory assumes that individual motivation to put forth more or less effort
is determined by a rational calculation in which individuals evaluate their situation. Here, employees tend
to ask three questions about their expectancy (if efforts result to higher performance), instrumentality (if
higher performance leads to results) and valence (if outcomes produced are desirable).

Reinforcement theories states that people respond to a certain stimuli. This describes four interventions
to change behavior via rewards and punishments (negative or positive).

Motivating Employees in Action

No single theory explains employee motivation but the above theories are used in combination to attain
the maximum results. Each theory provides a framework people can use to analyze, interpret, and manage
employee behaviors in the workplace.

THE ESSENTIALS OF CONTROL

Control is installing processes to guide the team towards goals and monitoring performance towards
goals. The purpose of the control function is to ensure that the organization makes progress towards the
established goals.

The Control Process

1. Set the standard

2. Measuring Performance
3. Comparing Performance against the Standards
4. Make adjustments as necessary

Timing of Control

Control mechanisms can be planned prior to implementation, during the implementation, and afterwards
as a means to help future progress.

1. Feedforward control is putting in guiding rails prior to implementation of the game plan.
 2. Concurrent control is a change you make during the implementation of the game plan. In many
ways, concurrent control is a mini version of the control process itself, done in a much shorter
timeframe.
3. Feedback control uses information from previous results to make adjustments as you plan for
future game plans.

Types of Control

1. Bureaucratic control is an official policy or rule implemented in the organization that is derived
from the legitimate authority of the manager. Bureaucratic controls would include examples such
as requiring daily reports on progress or inventory reconciliations.
2. Market control is the use of external information to serve as a standard or metric against which
to measure internal progress.
3. Clan control consists of any form of informal influence that an organization has on an individual
that directs them toward the goals of the organization. Clan control can derive from the cultural
values and beliefs of the organization that influence behavior.

Balancing Control

A manager has to appropriately balance the use of too much control and not enough control. There is a
gray area that managers might consider a reasonable level of control. Managers exert the most control to
those who are new to the job or those who perform extremely unique tasks. On the most extreme side,
tasks with routinary tasks are not controlled as these have low consequences.

At the end, a leader needs to balance the control.

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE

MANAGEMENT
WHAT IS STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT?

Strategic human resource management (SHRM) refers to a managerial process requiring human resource
(HR) policies and practices to be linked with the strategic objectives of the organization. Strategic
management is considered to be a continuous activity that requires a constant adjustment of three major
interdependent poles: the values of senior management, the environment, and the resources available.

ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN STRATEGIC PLANNING

From a ‘constituency-based’ perspective, it is argued that HR academics and HR practitioners have

embraced SHRM as a means of securing greater respect for HRM as a field of study and, in the case of
HR managers, of appearing more ‘strategic’, thereby enhancing their status within organizations.

CONCEPTS AND MODELS

Some view ‘strategic HRM’ is an outcome: ‘as organizational systems designed to achieve sustainable
competitive advantage through people’. For others, however, SHRM is viewed as a process, ‘the process
of linking HR practices to business strategy’. Similarly, others describe SHRM as ‘the process by which
organizations seek to link the human, social, and intellectual capital of their members to the strategic
needs of the firm’.

The discussion of SHRM and HR strategy begins with a focus on the link between organizational strategy
formulation and strategic HR formulation. In the ‘proactive’ orientation, the HR professional has a seat at
the strategic table and is actively engaged in strategy formulation. At the other end of the continuum is
the ‘reactive’ orientation, which sees the HR function as being fully subservient to corporate and
business-level strategy, and organizational-level strategies as ultimately determining HR policies and
practices.

Another part of the strategic HRM debate has focused on the integration or ‘fit’ of business strategy with
HR strategy. This shift in managerial thought, calling for the HR function to be ‘strategically integrated’,
is depicted in some models of HRM. Not surprisingly, this approach to SHRM has been referred to as the
‘matching’ model.

THE MATCHING MODELS

Control Based Model

The first approach to modelling different types of HR strategy is based on the nature of workplace control
and more specifically on managerial behavior to direct and monitor employee role performance.
According to this perspective, management structures and HR strategy are instruments and techniques to
control all aspects of work to secure a high level of labor productivity and a corresponding level of
profitability. This focus on monitoring and controlling employee behavior as a basis for distinguishing
different HR strategies has its roots in the study of ‘labor process’ by industrial sociologists.

Resource Based Model

This second approach to developing typologies of HR strategy is grounded in the nature of the reward–
effort exchange and, more specifically, the degree to which managers view their human resources as an
asset as opposed to a variable cost.

Integrative Model

The main models of HR strategy can be integrated, one focusing on the strategy’s underlying logic of
managerial control, the other focusing on the reward–effort exchange. Arguing that neither of the two
dichotomous approaches (control- and resource-based models) provides a framework able to encompass
the ebb and flow of the intensity and direction of HR strategy, they build a model that characterizes the
two main dimensions of HR strategy as involving ‘acquisition and development’ and the ‘locus of
control’.