Behavioural Issues in Strategy
Implementation
It is vital to bear in mind that organizational change is not an intellectual process
concerned with the design of ever-more-complex and elegant organization
structures. It is to do with the human side of enterprise and is essentially about
changing people’s attitudes, feelings and – above all else – their behavior. The
behavioral of the employees affect the success of the organization. Strategic
implementation requires support, discipline, motivation and hard work from all
manager and employees.
Influence Tactics: The organizational leaders have to successfully implement the
strategies and achieve the objectives. Therefore the leader has to change the
behavior of superiors, peers or subordinates. For this they must develop and
communicate the vision of the future and motivate organizational members to move
into that direction.
Power: it is the potential ability to influence the behavior of others. Leaders often
use their power to influence others and implement strategy. Formal authority that
comes through leaders position in the organization (He cannot use the power to
influence customers and government officials) the leaders have to exercise
something more than that of the formal authority (Expertise, charisma, reward power,
information power, legitimate power, coercive power).
Empowerment as a way of Influencing Behavior: The top executives have to
empower lower level employees. Training, self managed work groups eliminating
whole levels of management in organization and aggressive use of automation are
some of the ways to empower people at various places.
Political Implications of Power: Organization politics is defined as those set of
activities engaged in by people in order to acquire, enhance and employ power and
other resources to achieve preferred outcomes in organizational setting
characterized by uncertainties. Organization must try to manage political behavior
while implementing strategies. They should;
Define job duties clearly.
Design job properly.
Demonstrate proper behaviors.
Promote understanding.
Allocate resources judiciously.
Leadership Style and Culture Change: Culture is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors
that help its members understand what the organization stands for, how it does
things and what it considers important. Firms culture must be appropriate and
support their firm. The culture should have some value in it . To change
the corporate culture involves persuading people to abandon many of their existing
beliefs and values, and the behaviors that stem from them, and to adopt new ones.
The first difficulty that arises in practice is to identify the principal characteristics of
the existing culture. The process of understanding and gaining insight into the
existing culture can be aided by using one of the standard and properly validated
inventories or questionnaires that a number of consultants have developed to
measure characteristics of corporate culture. These offer the advantage of being able
to benchmark the culture against those of other, comparable firms that have used
the same instruments. The weakness of this approach is that the information thus
obtained tends to be more superficial and less rich than material from other sources
such as interviews and group discussions and from study of the company’s history. In
carrying out this diagnostic exercise, such instruments can be supplemented by
surveys of employee opinions and attitudes and complementary information from
surveys of customers and suppliers or the public at large.
Values and Culture: Value is something that has worth and importance to an
individual. People should have shared values. This value keeps the every one from
the top management down to factory persons on the factory floor pulling in the
same direction.
Ethics and Strategy: Ethics are contemporary standards and a principle or conducts
that govern the action and behavior of individuals within the organization. In order
that the business system function successfully the organization has to avoid certain
unethical practices and the organization has to bound by legal laws and government
rules and regulations.
Managing Resistance to Change: To change is almost always unavoidable, but its
strength can be minimized by careful advance. Top management tends to see
change in its strategic context. Rank-and-file employees are most likely to be aware
of its impact on important aspects of their working lives. Some resistance planning,
which involves thinking about such issues as: Who will be affected by the proposed
changes, both directly and indirectly? From their point of view, what aspects of their
working lives will be affected? Who should communicate information about
change, when and by what means? What management style is to be used?
Managing Conflict: Conflict is a process in which an effort is purposefully made by
one person or unit to block another that results in frustrating the attainment of the
others goals or the furthering of his interests. The organization has to resolve the
conflicts.
Linking Performance and Pay to Strategies: In order to implement the strategies
effectively the organization has to align salary increases, promotions, merit pay,
bonuses etc., more closely to support the long term objectives of the organization.
