Individual Self-reflective report:

Organizational practices in turbulent

environments
 Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................3
Environmental Turbulence.............................................................................................3
Organizational structure..........................................................................................3
Human resource management.................................................................................4
Employee flexibility................................................................................................4
Strategic planning:...................................................................................................5
Leadership...............................................................................................................5
Michigan Model of Leadership (MMoL).......................................................6
Organizational learning capability.................................................................................7
(1) Interaction with the external environment:........................................................7
(2) Experimentation.................................................................................................7
(3) Risk-taking.........................................................................................................8
(4) Communication..................................................................................................8
(5) Participative decision-making...........................................................................8
Conclusion......................................................................................................................9
References....................................................................................................................10
Individual Self-reflective report: Organizational practices in turbulent
environments

Introduction

Turbulent environment is a condition in which changes are taking place, making

predictions exceedingly improbable (Hamel, 1998). The market's stability is always
threatened by new goods, new competitors, and new technology. Turbulence adaption
is critical for survival in this environment. No firm appears to have a substantial
presence in this market. Yet it is doable if you can handle turbulence. Organizations
find it challenging to function in a volatile environment due to the frequent changes,
unpredictable nature, and erosion of stability (Groza and Ragland, 2016). While
developing strategies, organizational theories, or even new paradigms, researchers,
CEOs, and entrepreneurs focus on a range of aspects that are more or less critical.

Environmental Turbulence

Companies currently confront a wide range of challenging issues, such as the

financial crisis, issues with migration, terrorism, and political upheaval. They have a
variety of detrimental effects on businesses, such as low revenue, layoffs, decreased
productivity due to low demand, higher manufacturing costs, significant delays in
work flows, and more (Barrows and Neely, 2011). For instance, the unemployment
rate in the United Kingdom increased during the recession from 877,000 in April
2008 to 2.49 million in October 2009. Nonetheless, GDP fell by 5% in 2009,
industrial production fell by 14%, and the state debt increased to 178 billion pounds
(Rodríguez, 2015). As of June 2016, 16,269 men and women were jobless in EU
member states.

Organizational structure

Companies must be adaptable in order to remain competitive. Personal behaviors that

foster learning and adaptation, such as flexibility, openness to share information,
creativity, and independence, are the most acceptable (Miles and Snow, 2003). Since
turbulent environments need organizations to be unusually flexible and adaptive,
effective organizational learning has been seen as critical to successfully managing
environmental turbulence (Yang and Mirjam Goudsmit, 2022).

Human resource management

Storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis are just a few instances of natural disasters that
have a substantial impact on labour management. Natural disasters are sometimes
referred to as "acts of God" because they are unpredictable making it difficult for
organizations to anticipate or plan for their impacts. Natural disasters can have a
substantial influence on human resource management. The fall of the Soviet Union in
1991, the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and the global financial crisis in 2008 were
all major economic shocks that compelled many organizations to decrease workforce
numbers and reorganize HRM practices (Ba, 2019). Companies were forced to
implement rules and practices that would guarantee employees feel safe and secure
even in dangerous conditions caused by terrorism, civil wars, and international crises.
In this case, HR professionals should support businesses in both responding to
environmental disturbances and planning for prospective calamities. For example,
they may be successful as advocates for rules that require their organizations to
prioritize compliance and risk management (Entrekin and Scott-Ladd, 2013). To put it
another way, human resource professionals must play a significant role in creating
and implementing appropriate employee behaviour standards, as well as ensuring that
excellent behaviour is rewarded. Moreover, HR professionals are crucial in creating
and maintaining an appropriate corporate culture that encourages adaptability and
sensitivity to the outside world, especially in times of environmental change (Van
Vulpen, 2018). Human resource specialists may work with their top management to
develop and put into practise practices and policies that reward cooperation, trust, and
the willingness to cooperate when faced with a range of crises.

Employee flexibility

Employee flexibility, as assessed by the amount to which employees have the

abilities, aptitudes, and behavioral repertoires to provide a corporation with options
for pursuing strategic alternatives, may boost the effectiveness of strategic decisions
under difficult conditions (Reilly, 2001). Apart from the company's specific goals and
objectives, flexible employees may adopt a number of approaches to meet a variety of
competitive demands. the notion that adaptive employees perform better under
distress (Gladstone et al., 1992). Environmental turbulence is characterized by high
dynamism, complexity, and unpredictability. As a result, employee in-role behaviors
that demonstrate a willingness to change, learn new abilities, and take measured risks
can be considered as proof of exceptional individual performance in difficult
conditions(Islam and Tariq, 2018). To adequately handle environmental turbulence,
one must be change-driven, capable of dealing with complexity, risk-taking, and
dynamic. Individual performance is defined in this context as acts that are formally
recognized and follow the standards outlined in job descriptions (Williams and
Anderson, 1991). One of the most important characteristics of a workforce is its
capacity to do a range of tasks. Workers that are driven to uncover and learn new
methods to conduct their jobs and anticipate future skill requirements may
demonstrate flexibility.

Strategic planning:

Growing uncertainty made it impossible for the corporation to obtain reliable

information about its projected future operating environment, posing a substantial
barrier to rigorous and specified strategy formulation processes (Jonathan and Atandi,
2012). Since there is greater uncertainty, developing a plan is more difficult hence,
numerous tactics and approaches that are now extensively used across a range of
industries have been created and improved. Academics have developed forecasting
techniques to deal with uncertainty in innovation projects, capital budgeting, and
capital structure restrictions (Yang and Goudsmit, 2022). Among the most prevalent
tactics are environmental scanning, product and technology road maps, scenarios, and
actual alternatives.

Leadership

Every individual in an organization needs to have a good leadership, regardless of

rank or position within the organizational structure, whether at the top, middle, or
bottom. Every person has the capacity to act in a leadership capacity at any moment.
Effective leaders don't demand that others follow their orders (Manfred and Vries,
1998). On the other side, effective leaders motivate, direct, and help the team reach its
objectives. The key tenet of situational leadership theory is that leadership adapts to
context and circumstance. Although some people are born with it, leadership
development is a lifetime process that may be learnt and encouraged. It develops a
culture of leadership thinking by inviting corporate employees to take on leadership
responsibilities, making it more inclusive. Knowing civic and global leadership
components is critical for comprehending future responsibility, diversity, and people's
roles in resolving societal issues is also important (Taylor, 2014).

Michigan Model of Leadership (MMoL)

Businesses all around the world utilize the Michigan Model (MMoL) to teach leaders
how to recognize and effectively manage conflicting tensions in the workplace. With
bravery, tenacity, empathy, and integrity, this strategy shows how to successfully lead
in challenging and changing circumstances in order to develop the organization (Scott
et al., 2013) . The primary objectives of the MMoL are to leave the organization in a
stronger position and to have a substantial impact. The four ms measurable results,
strategic structures, and community collaboration are represented by the outer ring.
The main objective serves as the organizing principle for the values.. The following
traits must be displayed by effective leaders:
1. Committed to understanding people's perspectives and empathetic
2. Motivated and under constant pressure to complete challenging tasks
3. Honesty and a commitment to moral principles.
4.One requires courage and the capacity to learn from errors in order to be innovative.
 Figure 1 Michigan Model of Leadership

Organizational learning capability

Organizational learning capability (OLC) refers to organizational and management

traits or elements that permit or allow an organization to learn . OLC is a dynamic
capacity built on a learning culture that places a premium on knowledge development,
transfer, and acquisition as key principles (Jerez-Gómez et al., 2005). To successfully
address environmental turbulence, five OLC dimensions were created based on a
range of relevant research. These are:

(1) Interaction with the external environment:

Interaction with the outside world and environmental awareness appear to be

inextricably linked. The ability of a corporation to perceive and apply external
changes at work has a significant impact on its ability to adapt to its environment. The
management team's cognitive skills determine how accurate the information gained
from the scanning technique or from the environmental scanning equipment itself is
(Gnyawali and Stewart, 2013). A corporation's long-term success is dependent on its
ability to integrate internal operations with those of external stakeholders. As a result
of fostering entrepreneurial innovation, the scanning technique should give high-
quality anticipatory information that allows it to respond to forthcoming
environmental occurrences.

(2) Experimentation

The playing rules of a firm must be modified frequently. To survive, a company needs
to adapt. Because discontinuous changes come about at a geometric rate, businesses
are continuously under pressure to fulfil new expectations. Both slow and rapid stages
of change are possible. By asserting that compared to recent ideas, ongoing
advancements have little or no impact. Little adjustments can have big, unforeseen
effects since there is no real connection between cause and effect (Yeung et al, 1999).
They should keep experimenting new ways to generate more flexible strategies to deal
with turbulent environment.
(3) Risk-taking

Although it is widely understood that taking risks is an unavoidable part of doing

business, it is still unclear what motivates a company to do so. Organizational
behaviour experts have investigated risk-taking behaviour using two basic
methodologies. You can overcome your uncertainty by taking a risk. In the face of a
threat, decision-makers will restrict information flow, become rigid by sticking to
tried-and-true repertoires, and participate in centralized decision-making (Onag et al.,
2014). On the other hand, decision-makers who are presented with an opportunity are
more likely to be adaptable, open to new information, prepared to consider novel
approaches, and inclined to decentralize decision-making. The basis for taking risks is
the combination of internal and external networks. We shouldn't undervalue the
ability of organizational slack, a kind of internal resource, to lessen the severity of
turbulence when unforeseen hazards materialize.

(4) Communication

The idea that communication is necessary for the progress of change is not new.
Numerous authors have emphasized the significance of communication in the change
process, even going so far as to propose that change may be viewed as a
communication problem that can be handled by assisting individuals in understanding
the change and their role in putting it into action (Arnaout and Esposito, 2018).
Communication is viewed in this context as a way of teaching people about change,
informing them about its advantages and downsides, increasing acceptance of the
change and influencing others to embrace it, and lowering scepticism and
misunderstanding about it (Popoolaet al., 2008).Communication is also thought of as
a way to preserve the change, a way to reduce unhappiness with the current state to
persuade people to change, and a way to get feedback on what a change means to
people and how they think it will effect them (Vos, 2017).

(5) Participative decision-making

When dealing with complexity, it appears that participatory decision-making is

critical. To perform well, an organization must have excellent communication. This
truth is generally known since improving corporate performance and sustainability is
dependent on information flow inside company. Thus, employee decision-making and
information sharing are positively associated to sentiments of organizational support
and desire for time off (Camps et al., 2015). Despite the apparent benefits of sharing
information and including everyone in decision-making, many businesses are
concerned about how to win over their staff.

Conclusion

Due to the environment's rapid change and chaotic nature, it is necessary to develop
an organizational structure, leadership, human resource, and corporate culture where
the goal is always to create dynamics and instill an acceptance of change regardless of
whether changes are ongoing, emergent, small, big, or somewhere in
between.Successful leaders must be able to utilize what they've learned in order to
improve their existing skills and talents and prepare for unexpected, difficult
situations in the future. Reflection requires more than just responding to questions on
team performance and learning outcomes. Additional reflective practices that might
be applied include encouraging CEOs to describe their experience, explain their
sentiments, discuss “what if” scenarios by offering alternative possibilities, and
identify new behaviors and cultures that would increase future corporate success.
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