Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani

Case Study 1- Organizational Culture (Open book)

Course: Principles of Management Date: 03/03/2022

Course No: MGTS F211 Time: 50 minutes
Max Marks: 20 Weightage: 10%

Group name-
Group member name Student id
Krish Vora 2019B3A70819P
Rohan Kunwar 2019B3A70666P
Tripti Verma 2020D2TS1291P
Nisha Singh 2020D2TS1294P
Suryakant Singh Chouhan 2020D2TS1298P

Questions-

1. Identify any four characteristics of the organizational culture of Synapsez. Give supporting
evidence from the case to justify your answer. (2*4=8)
Characteristics Supporting evidence (in brief)
Drive for innovation The company’s cultural features focus on maintaining a high level of
and risk taking innovation that involves creativity and a mindset that challenges conventions
and standards. The business depends on cultural support and coherence,
which are determinants of competitiveness and industry leadership, especially
in addressing aggressive and rapid technological innovation and product
development.
Also, the company trains and motivates its employees to innovate in terms of
individual work performance and contributions to product development
processes. The corporate culture facilitates rapid innovation, which is at the
heart of Synapsez Inc.’s business. Rapid innovation ensures that the company
continues to introduce new products that are profitable and attractive to target
customers.

Mild aggressiveness Synapsez’s corporate culture exhibits a moderate degree of combativeness

and moderate degree that presents challenges that aim to enhance employees’ output.
of combativeness
Secrecy The company's approach to prevent the theft of private information or
intellectual property includes maintaining secrecy. It's also a strategic
management method that helps Synapsez Inc. maintain its competitive
advantage. Employees are encouraged and expected to maintain
business information within the organisation due to the corporate
 culture. The company's policies, rules, and employee contracts support
this cultural feature.
Top-notch Synapsez's corporate culture includes a philosophy of only hiring the
Excellence and finest of the best in the labour market. Employees who failed to satisfy
Attention to Detail Phil Bruce's demands were fired, and Jurgan Klopp has continued this
pattern. A company culture that promotes, rewards, and demands
top-notch excellence among employees is maintained and reinforced
by such a tradition. The importance of excellence in the business is
highlighted, particularly in product creation and development, which is
a primary growth strategy.
Creativity Synapsez's management encourages people to be creative with their
knowledge, skills, and abilities. This aspect of the corporate culture allows the
organisation to assure enough creativity, particularly among staff involved in
product creation and development. The design and features of Synapsez's
goods, which are part of the marketing mix or 4Ps, demonstrate this
inventiveness. In this way, the company's organisational culture contributes to
the company's ability to meet client expectations and preferences.

2. Mention one difference in the organizational culture of Synapsez under Phil Bruce and Jurgan
Klopp. What may be the positive effect of change in culture due to the new leadership under
Klopp? (2+4=6)

One difference in the organizational culture of Synapsez under Phil Bruce and Jurgan Klopp is
with regards to the combative approach of leadership. Phil Bruce as mentioned had made the
atmosphere of Synapsez quite competitive and combative. He used to challenge employees at
random to complete some tasks as a measure of whether the employees had the mettle required to
work in the company. However, Jurgan Klopp had worked towards making the culture more
sociable and reducing the combativeness to a level that enhanced the employees output.

A positive impact of this could be that the aggressiveness and combativeness in the culture of Phil
Bruce could have led to immense toxicity and competitiveness in the employees. While it could
have acted as a test for the employees capabilities, failing to do the task could have reduced the
employees morale and in turn have had the adverse effect of reducing the output. Jurgans sociable
environment had aimed to reduce this combativeness. Hence, employees could work more freely
without the psychological pressure of being challenged at random at any point they were working.
Thus it could improve efficiency and output of the employees. Reducing the combativeness could
also relieve some of the constant stress of performing well that the employees could have, which
research has shown to make the workplace more productive. One more positive effect could be
that there would be a reduction in moral lapses. As we have studied, one of the determinants of
moral ethics is the structural variables and structural design of the organization. Since the
punishment and reward system under Phil Bruce was so stringent, employees could have resorted
to unethical behaviour to save their jobs. However, the increase in the sociable environment under
Klopp would have reduced such variables and hence employees would make much more moral
 decisions. Also the competitiveness in the company could have grown to toxic levels which could
have caused internal strifes. Under Klopp, employees would much better focus on their tasks
instead of finding a way to do better than their fellow employees. Thus under Klopp’s
management, employees would be empowered without the constant fear of losing their jobs.

3. Discuss any three cultural challenges employees of Synapsez may face, after the takeover from
ABC Ltd. (2*3=6)

Challenge Description
Lack of flexibility Since Neville Ltd. has very little flexibility, employees may not
leading to limited be able to try out new ideas and hence this may hinder their
innovation and risk personal growth as well as have an adverse impact on the
taking that may hinder company's growth. Companies can sustain themselves in the
growth market via continuous innovation and limiting the creativity of
employees may cause them to be at a disadvantage. Even if there
could be some ideas that could be very beneficial to the
company, since the culture itself revolves around strictly defining
the roles of every employee, it does not promote new ideas, and
that would be detrimental to the company’s growth. Thus
employees coming from an open innovative environment could
face challenges adapting to an inflexible one.

Rigid Culture that The rigidity of culture leaves little room for creativity. It would
limits creativity make the company relatively slow to adapt to the changing
marketplace as the company takes precedence over the
individual employees, which doesn’t necessarily encourage
employee feedback. The reverse was true for Synapsez’s
employees where innovation in individual’s work and creativity
was promoted which gave employees more freedom.
Hierarchical culture can Sometimes lower levels of organization may have a better idea of
cause loss of expertise some challenges faced by the organization. However due to the
and new ideas hierarchical structure, this expertise of lower levels cannot reach
the top levels of organization. Hence in some situations, the ideas
and capabilities that lower level employees bring to the company
tend to go ignored. Also since lower employees cannot give their
feedback to the higher levels, this limit to employee participation
could lead to a decision bias and group think, wherein the
decisions of the management could wrongly represent that of the
whole organization and stakeholders.
Intermingling of As two organizations merge, there will be two new set of
Organizational cultures employees and that could create many problems. Firstly, it is
may affect employee very important that there is no feeling of inferiority or superiority
morale to work among employees. Secondly, a feeling of uncertainty can also
efficiently and prevail as mergers and acquisitions often result in many
effectively. employees losing their jobs. Lastly, changes in operational
patterns may also create daily changes for the employees of
Synapsez and they will have to adapt quickly.