英国留学作业:决策模型探讨

Q1.“在某些决策制定情况下通过协商来决策会浪费时间并且没有多大价值”。本文参照Vroom and Jetton’s (1973)的决策模型以及其他管理决策样式的文献对这个观点进行了探讨。

在他们提出的模型中，影响决策风格的情境因素是决策接受度和决策质量。如果决策质量是重要的，下属有可能接受专制的决策，那么专制和信息寻求就是合适的。其优点是能迅速作出决策，领导人对结果承担个人责任。但是，如果下属不喜欢领导人作出的决策，群组有可能士气更加低落，如果决策被证明是错误的，领导人将遭受批评。下放型的风格在决策质量并不重要的时候是最好的，但决策接受度非常重要，或者由下属提供作出决定所需的信息。由于决定是在群组大多数成员的帮助下做出的，其优势包括群体参与，下属更多的投入，大家都会对结果感到满意。但缺点是结果责任无人承担。咨询和协商型介于上述两者之间，决策质量和决策接受度同样重要。其优点也是相结合的;一些参与决策的下属可能会更投入，如果领导收集的信息正确和精准的，他会做出更好的决定。但其缺点是耗时，因为参与人数众多，决策可能不太安全。

Q1. “In some decision making situations going through the process of consultation will waste time and add little value”. Discuss this statement with reference to Vroom and Jetton’s (1973) decision model and other styles of managerial decision making.

 

Vroom and Yetton’s (1973) decision model discussed the different decision procedures. They see leadership and decision-making as a contingency, which decision should be made according to the situation, and each situation has a best fitting solution. Vroom and Yetton defined five different decision procedures according to their research; they are classified as autocratic, consultative and group based. They are described as follow:

 

专制型：领导人仍然完全控制着决策过程。——Autocratic: leaders remain total control over the decision making process.

 

A1 (autocratic)- Leader takes known information and makes the decision.

 

A1（专制型） - 领导根据已知信息做出决定。

 

A2 (information seeking)- Leader gets information from subordinates, and then makes the decision.

 

A2（信息搜寻型） - 领导从下属获取信息，然后做出决定。

 

咨询型：领导将掌控风格和基于群组的风格结合在一起。——Consultative: leaders combine control style and group based style together.

 

C1 (consulting)- Leader shares problem with the subordinates individually, consider their ideas then decides alone.

 

C1（咨询型） - 领导单独和下属分享问题，在考虑他们的想法后独自作出决定。

 

C2 (negotiating)- Leader shares problem with subordinates as a group, consider their ideas and then decides alone.

 

C2（协商型） - 领导与下属作为一组分享问题，在考虑他们的想法后独自作出决定。

 

群组型：领导放弃对决策的所有权和控制权，从群组征求意见。——Group based: leaders give up ownership and control of the decision-making, and ask for opinions from the group.

 

G（下放型） - 领导与下属作为一组分享问题，并寻求达成共识协议。——G (delegating)- Leader shares problems with subordinates as a group and seeks consensus agreement.

 

In their model, the situational factors that influence the decision styles are decision acceptance and decision quality. If the decision quality is important and subordinates are likely to accept autocratic decisions, then autocratic and information seeking are appropriate. The advantages are the decisions are made fast, and the leaders will posses personal responsibility for the outcome. However if the subordinates did not like the decisions made by the leader, the group may have lower morale, and if the decisions turned out to be wrong, the leader has to take the criticism. Delegating style is best when decision quality is not important, but decision acceptance is critical, or when the subordinates posses needed information for making the decision. With the majority of the group help makes the decision, advantages include group participation, more commitment from the subordinates, and everyone will be satisfied with the result. But disadvantages are no responsibility for the outcome. As consulting and negotiating are in between the two categories mentioned above, decision quality and decision acceptance is equally important. Advantages are also combined; with some participation subordinates may be more committed, leader would make a better decision if he or she collects the information right and accurate. But the disadvantages are it is time-consuming, as many people are involved, decisions may be less security.

 

As Vroom and Yetton concludes, no style is better that another, and in some situations, consultation will waste time and add little value. Referring to the review above, the consultation style is more time-consuming; the statement is true under certain conditions, as it is in between autocratic and shared decision, the pros and cons are mixed. The consultation style will be less effective depending on the nature of the group. With more unskilled or less educated workers, such as in manufacturing companies, this style will not be applicable. Further, when a group of subordinates need to come up with a decision, they must learn about the problem and able to deliberate possible strategies first, some guidance should be given by the leader, and the process would take time and effort. As for the value added from this style, it will not be feasible for making emergency decisions, and with a labour force that doesn’t have the information, skills, education or experience to contribute to high quality decisions. It will have higher value when it’s with a smaller, more skilled labour force, when they share the same goals or objectives, and with a known time constraint that the leader can be able to handle the whole process.

 

Q2. Identify the potential difference in human resource management (HRM) policies between two organisations where one follows a low-cost strategy and the other follows a differentiated, quality enhancement strategy.

Strategic management often categorise strategies in different organisational levels: corporate, business and functional level. Strategy is defined as an organisation’s framework of critical ends and means or strategic paradigm (Boxall, 1996). To gain competitive advantage, an organisation should choose the suitable strategy, aiming to establish a profitable and sustainable position in the industry. Porter (1985) defines the competitive strategy as the positioning of a company in its competitive environment, and he proposed three basic competitive strategies, they are low cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategy. Schuler and Jackson (2003) made use of Porter’s competitive advantages and linked it with human resource practices. Innovation strategy is to differentiate the product from other companies in the industry; quality enhancement strategy is to enhance the product and service quality; and cost reduction strategy is to gain competitive advantage by being the lowest-cost producer. As different organisations will have to choose the strategy to better fit their needs, low-cost strategy and quality enhancement strategy are often being compared. Due to differences in the industry and organisational culture, they will also have different human resource management policies.

 

A low-cost strategy focuses on increasing productivity, with reducing the number of employees or their wage level. The manufacturing industries, organisations are more likely to pursue this strategy. For example, if it’s a production line and workers doesn't need to have specialised expertise, organisations may consider to move the production line to a location with lower labour cost. These organisations will have tighter control over their employees and the working process, with fixed working schedule and wage, and work behaviours are relatively repetitive and predictable. For other industries, organisations may seek part-time employees or even subcontract the work to other parties to reduce the training and staffing costs. The HR strategies are rather short-term oriented, aiming to finish a particular work; the job scopes are small, and do not require employee training and retention plans.

 

On the other hand, quality enhancement strategy, organisations focus more on greater employee commitment and utilisation, in order to increase their quality output. Organisations that take this strategy will be more people-focused. In order to improve the quality output, more creative and flexible work are required, so organisations will have to hunt down the right talent. Also quality enhancement often involves greater employee commitment, therefore job training and retention is important. The HR department should put more emphasise on different functions of HR, for example recruitment to find the right talent for the job; training them to grow and develop in the position, and align their personal goals to the organisation goals; compensation should be given according to the contribution, rather than just trying to lower the cost. This strategy is more long-term oriented; job designs are more flexible and adaptable according to needs.#p#分页标题#e#

 

To decide which strategy is better for an organisation, HR managers can consider certain factor affecting the organisational outcome. If the customer demands higher quality product or service, or the product is unique that requires higher quality, then cost reduction will not be good for the organisation. If the product or service is common in the market, then a cost reduction strategy may be the best way to gain competitive advantage over the others. HR policies for cost reduction strategy will be mainly focusing on personnel and compensation, by recruiting the employees to get the work done efficiently. As for quality enhancement strategy, the HR department will focus more on talent management, with more detailed plans on developing talent. Although it seems more complicated to implement, once the employees are committed to their work and satisfied, they will produce better results.

 

Q3. Use the job enrichment model of Hackman and Oldman (1980) to explain what steps you might take as a Manager to evaluate and increase the motivating potential of a job.

Job enrichment is a way to increase employee motivation by making the job more meaningful, interesting and challenging to employees. Hackman and Oldman’s (1980) job enrichment model focuses on specific factors that are an integral part of the job, and they identified five factors of job design that typically contribute to people’s enjoyment of a job.

 

技能多样性：提高工作时的技能，能力和才干的数量。——Skill variety: increasing the number of skills, abilities and talents while performing work.

 

工作身份：让一个员工从工作的开始干到结束，而不只是干其中一部分。

——Task identity: enable a person to do the job from beginning to end, rather than just a part of it.

 

工作意义：提供具有深远影响和重要的工作。——Task significance: providing a job that has meaningful impact and importance.

 

 

自主性：增加员工的工作自由度。包括调度，决策以及完成这项工作的手段。——Autonomy: increase the degree of freedom to do their job. Including scheduling, decision-making and means for completing the job.

 

反馈：展示对出色工作的肯定，并对结果成果和绩效信息进行交流。——Feedback: showing recognition for doing a job well, and communicate information about the results, outcome and performance.

 

Given these five factors, the job’s core dimension will be enhanced, and the employee’s sense of fulfilment will also increase. It is also a process of empowering the employees to do their jobs in the way they prefer and see best. To implement job enrichment in a company, some steps and suggestions are as following.

 

轮岗——Job Rotation

 

Employees may switch from one job to another, according to a schedule or to their abilities. It is good for jobs that are repetitive and routine, since some changes in employee’s job scope will give them more opportunity to experience difference tasks and learn new skills. Employees will be more motivated according to the skill variety.

 

扩大工作范围——Job Enlargement

 

Increasing the number of tasks performed by an employee. The tasks are usually the same level of responsibility, but cover more responsibilities from a process, which will not only increase skill variety, but also task identity and significance. When there is a group of people taking care of different roles and specific tasks, managers can consider combine these scattered tasks to one person, employee will also gain task identity and autonomy, since they will cover the entire process.

 

项目团队——Project Teams

 

Breaking the functional units into project-focused teams. For example, if a company is developing a product, a project team can be formed by developers, customer service, marketing and sales, instead of letting them work separately, project team members work closer together, provides their personal expertise to the team and gain more decision power, which increases autonomy, task identity and feedback.

 

参与式管理——Participative Management

 

On making strategic plans for the team, managers can involve team members to make the decisions together. This is a way to communicate to teams about the expectations, and showing their contribution is important. Increasing job significance and providing feedback is what motivates employees with this method.

 

自我导向式团队——Self-Directed Teams

 

To implement job enrichment and autonomy at a group level, having a self-directed team is solution. Self-directed teams do not apply to traditional managerial functions; they make their own decisions. By providing a clear mission statement, self-directed teams come up with their own strategy and method to reach the goal. This will increase skill variety, task identity, task significance and autonomy; also team members can gain management skills.

 

To sum up, there are many ways and opportunities to enrich employees’ jobs, managers should first consider the organisational structure of the team, identify what factors are needed to better motivate the employees, then provide with the suitable job enrichment options. The implementation of job enrichment strategies must be communicated clearly to the employees, accompanying with a feedback system, so employees will learn how they perform, and learn to solve problems, take initiative and make decisions. Job enrichment provides the opportunity for employee development, with more involvement in their work, they will be more likely to enjoy and increase the sense of responsibility at work.

 

Q4. Buchanan and Huczynski (2010) argue that ‘reducing the resisting forces against change is preferable to increasing the organisational forces driving change’. Analyse this statement with reference to force field analysis.

Organisational change refers to any alternations in the people, structure, process or technology in an organisation. In today’s fast changing business environment, organisations must adapt to new trends in order to keep up with the market, therefore it is often the case that organisations has to go through some changes. However, changes varies in degree and direction, and may cause uncertainty in the organisation, managing change is a critical part in an organisation. As Buchanan and Huczynski (2010) mentioned that there are forces for change and resistant forces. Forces for change may be external forces, such as forces coming from the marketplace, government laws and regulations, technology, labour markets, economic changes; internal forces include administrative process and problems from the organisation, employee attitudes and so on. Resistance to change includes: uncertainty, concern over personal loss, group resistance, dependence, trust in administration, and awareness of weaknesses in the proposed change.

 

As a change agent, managers who are responsible for the changing process will be faced with difficulties between these two forces. Force field analysis (Lewin, 1951) is a diagnosis tool that analyses the variables involved in determining organisational change. According to Lewin, a change issue is held in balance by the interaction of two opposite sets of forces- driving forces and restraining forces. The driving forces are those that impact a situation, and are seeking to promote change. Restraining forces are acting to restrain or decrease the driving forces, and trying to maintain the status quo. As the figure depicts, a line in between the two forces are the current status, change results when an imbalance occurs between the ratios of both driving forces. When a desired condition is reached, the opposite force may bring changes to the equilibrium again, the forces are dynamic and changes with time.

 

Figure: Force Field Diagram

 

Change Issues

Driving Forces Resistant Forces

 

Weak

Weak

Strong

Medium

Change

No Change

Equilibrium

 

Upon a deeper examination of the two forces in the system, to make changes, managers need to maximise driving forces and minimise resisting forces. Lewin suggests this process typically requires three steps: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Although there are two choices to move the equilibrium: reduce the resisting force, or increase the changing force. Simply by adding strength to the changing force may sound more promising, but trying to force change through all employees may cause more problems. It is worth notice that increasing the driving forced will also result in increasing the resisting forces, which brings tension to the situation. To unfreeze the status and to move the equilibrium, reducing the resisting forces is preferable, because it allows the equilibrium to move towards change.#p#分页标题#e#

 

There are several ways to help reduce the resisting force. Communicate and explain the reasons behind the organisational change, accompanied with providing knowledge training to the employees. For example training them to work with new technologies will reduce the fear for change. Apply the changes gradually instead of drastically implement the change. This would help employees to adapt to the change with time, slowly accept the change and reduce resistance. Also, some incentives can be provided, so the employees from the resisting force may have more motivation to adapt to the change. From the perspectives of the changing force, moving towards the chance is their desired outcome, so they will be satisfied with the change, regardless of the outcome. But for the resisting side, when they are already against the change, forcing them to change will have negative effects on morale, satisfaction, commitment and even productivity. Ways to reduce their resistance will not only help the changing force, but also help change their attitudes towards change. Therefore, reducing the resisting forces against change is preferable to increasing the organisational forces driving change.