Managing People in Organizations

This essay reviews theoretical concepts to assess the proposition that the ways in which people are managed affects the performance of the organisations within which they function. The implications of this proposition are that (a) effective management is associated with higher levels of organisational performance, while ineffective management practices are associated with inferior organisational performance.

The theoretical framework within which this assessment is performed is "Managing People in Organisations" (MPIO). MPIO is an umbrella concept that encompasses both organizational behaviour (OR) and human resource management (HRM). The concepts of leadership and its effects on organisational performance also are included in MPIO (Beech, Cairns, Livingstone, Lockyer, and Tsoukas, 2002).

MPIO includes a wide array of concepts and theories. To assess the proposition that the ways in which people are managed affects the performance of the organisations within which they function, however, this essay focused on two crucial aspects of MPIO in the contemporary period. These crucial aspects of MPIO are the responses by management to the globalised business environment and the effects of cultural diversity on management's communications with employees, each of which is crucial to the devel

. . .
perate on a global scale. The formal systems alone are not able to satisfy the enormous information needs necessary to coordinate such a complex configuration (Sussland, 2001). The roles and tasks of management also change noticeably in these contexts. When several different cultural backgrounds are present within a company at any one time, management cannot assume that all values are common. Often the shared understanding of the role of management becomes an instrument of integration that is more powerful than formal structures and systems. The manager, therefore, becomes a vehicle of integration. Internationalization and cosmopolitanism are the new characteristics required of this person. The task of the top manager is not that of submitting the activities of a national organization to a central control, but rather that of co-opting abilities and obtaining the involvement of the national organizations; paradoxically, attention shifts from control of the strategic content to management of the organizational process. Evaluation and reward systems must favour the free exchange of information and commitment to global objectives over the above local interests to obtain a positive attitude to integration and thus favour a clim
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Edelman Greene, IC United, Roehl Standifird, According Hofstede, Lewis Harris, Uncertainty Avoidance, Geert Hofstede's, Lockyer Tsoukas, Individualism-Collectivism Individualism, United Kingdom, hofstede 1994, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, value chain, competitive advantages, edelman greene 2002, greene 2002, manolova brush, dimension scores, brush edelman, manolova brush edelman, edelman greene, brush edelman greene, operation value chain, power distance cultures,
Approximate Word count = 4056
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Managing People in Organizations