Stephanie Wander
MBA 230
Fall 2012
Humans and Organizations

An organization is a social division of people that is managed and structured to meet a need or to pursue collective objectives. While the management structure from organization to organization differs, all organizations have some form of a management structure that determines relationships between the different activities and members. This structure also sub-divides and assigns roles, responsibilities, and authority to accomplish different tasks. Organizations are “open systems” in that they are affected by their environment – both macro and micro. As far as the role organizations play in society, the detailed role varies geographically, but overall, organizations greatly influence the culture of the surrounding society. My experience and observations throughout my life have shown that organizations with similar missions tend to geographically cluster together. I believe that the mentality and personalities of the people working at these organizations hold significant weight in the formation of the environment and attitudes of the surrounding society. For example, San Francisco is approximately 49 square-miles, but it has several very diverse societies that are broken up into districts. People who are interested in finance will most likely gravitate towards Market Street and the Financial District because the organizations in that area are of that “personality.” Through investigation and analysis of many different case studies, it seems that the “silo-ing” of departments within an organization is the most significant human issue facing organizations today. There is a serious lack of common goals and lack of communication between departments within an organization. The lack of communication has the potential to suppress a company’s growth or even ruin the company. As a result of a lack of communication, the company as a whole is slowed down in terms of innovation because the departments are not sharing their ideas with one another. Beyond the lack of communication, when departments don’t have one common goal, priorities are not matching up and the overall company suffers. Obviously departments have different job roles and functions that they need to achieve, but overall, each department’s end goal needs to be uniform. An example of the detrimental results of the silo effect can be seen in the TerraCog case study. Executive VP, Emma Richardson, brought the VPs of each department together to discuss how to proceed with TerraCog’s new product that they referred to as Project Aerial. None of the meetings resulted in the overall company getting anywhere with how to proceed (when to release the product, how to price the product, etc). This lack of productivity was a direct result of the fact that the departments were so silo-ed that it was almost like five or six different companies trying to work on one project. Each department had its own motives and goals, which resulted in several different proposals with respect to moving forward (or not moving forward) with the product. These motives and goals ranged from the sales department saying that there is no way they will be successful putting Aerial on the market for the price that the CFO said is needed so that the financial margins are not tight, to the production department not really having much interest in doing this product in the first place and claims that they have done all that they can to reduce the cost of production for Aerial. Had all the departments had more communication in the beginning and sat down to talk about what the main goal of partaking in this project is and touched base frequently all along, they would have been able to see and, hopefully, understand why each department needed certain tasks done certain ways and compromise between the departments could have taken place. This compromise would allow the departments to work together more effectively and at least be able to come to some conclusion – even if it meant nixing the project. The prevalence of the silo effect that we see in organizations today appears to be a result of greed, ego and biases. As seen in the TerraCog case, certain VPs had self-interested biases (the Sales Department) for making certain suggestions. These self-interested biases, in general, lead to silo-ing of departments because each department is working towards its own goal, not one uniform goal of the company. Left unsupervised, humans will create their own society of some sort. As we read about in “Analyze This: Can Personality Theory Help You Lead Your Unit?” by Kathleen Jordan, we learned that there are several different combinations of personality types and, while some are polar opposites from one another, these differences can complement each other if used effectively. Out of any group of people, a leader or leaders is/are bound to arise. These leaders are usually extroverted people, however there could be *silent* leaders who are more introverted, but over time, people in the group have grown to look to him or her for guidance because of respect. Then there will be those people who are sensing or intuitive, and thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving – all of which can be used positively and I believe that because of the broad range of combinations of these personality types that we see in a group of people, humans will fashion some sort of functioning society even without supervision. As Abraham Maslow proposed, humans have many primal needs and are organized hierarchically. Level 1 deals with the need to “reduce physical discomfort” – this includes pain, thirst, hunger, temperature, balance, smells, noise, rest, and light. Level 2 describes the need to “feel safe.” This safety results from trusting that our level 1 needs will be consistently met for at least the near future. Level 3 describes the need for “companionship”. Level 4 describes the need to be “recognized as special and valuable by our group.” These needs are the driving forces behind human decisions and, therefore, greatly impact behavior in organizations. As Nitin Nohria, Boris Groysberg, and Linda-Eling Lee explain in their article “Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model,” there are four basic drives that underlie motivation – the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to comprehend and the drive to defend. While these are labeled as drives, not needs, they do seem to have similar characteristics as the needs listed by Maslow. Because these drives are hard-wired into humans, it is only natural for humans to act according to these drives. These humanly universal drives also impact behavior in organizations in the sense of how upper-management can, to a certain degree, control how their employees act. Upper management can appeal to the employees’ drive to acquire by implementing a reward system. There are methods and approaches to fulfilling all of these human drives and when these drives are satisfied, employees tend to be more productive and work together better and are, in general, happier people.

REFERENCES 1. Beer, Michael and Yong, Sunru. April 11, 2008. TerraCog Global Positioning Systems: Conflict and Communication on Project Aerial. 2. Groysberg, Boris; Lee, Linda-Eling; Nohria, Nitin. Employee Motivation: A Powerful New Model. 3. Jordan, Kathleen. Analyze This: Can Personality Theory Help You Lead Your Unit?