Management of Health Care Organizations: Week 3

Chapter 7: Managing Organizational

Dynamics

Objectives

• Understand the strength of informal groups.

• Appreciate the nature and structure of informal channels of communication.

• Know how to work with informal groups in occupational settings.

• Apply organizational theory to resolving conflict.

• Apply organizational politics to increase organizational effectiveness.

Outline

• Informal Groups

• Conflict

• Power and Politics

• Other Ways to Influence Organizational Dynamics

What Is an Informal Group?

• Informal groups are often peer groups that exist within most formal organizations.

• They have their own norms for status and prestige.

• Peer groups provide four benefits: 1. Satisfy complex needs

2. Offer emotional support

3. Help shape personal identities

4. Assist in meeting personal goals

How Informal Groups Are Formed

• Physical closeness and a chance to communicate must exist before people can form mutually satisfying groups.

• Groups begin with friendships based on contacts at work, equipment used, or common interests.

• Once these groups are established, they develop lives of their own.

• The process is dynamic and self-generating.

Group Identification

• Members of professional groups differentiate themselves with signs of group membership.

– Physicians display stethoscopes around their necks.

– Nurses wear nursing school pins.

– Members use professional jargon.

Status in Groups

• Two classes of factors are relevant to status:

• External: attributes brought from the outside

– Age, gender, race, education, and seniority

• Internal: created when senior management establishes and defines an organization

– Titles, job descriptions, perquisites, work schedules, and offices

Managing Informal Groups

• Managers experience difficulties when the goals or structures of the formal organization conflict with those of informal groups. – Occurs when management’s evaluation of

positions does not correspond with group member opinions.

• Managers must select between two positions. – Rearrange the formal organization to

accommodate the desires of an informal group.

– Change the composition of the informal group.

Types of Conflict

• Three distinct types of conflict are of interest to professional managers:

– Interpersonal

– Intergroup

– Specialist versus generalist

• Conflict can be constructive

Interpersonal Conflict

• Interpersonal conflict is the least important but most exaggerated type of friction.

• Managers often blame organizational problems on individual personalities or general worker incompetence.

• Poorly structured formal channels of communication frequently contribute to interpersonal conflict.

• Individuals resent communications that flow in only one direction.

Intergroup Conflict

• Intergroup conflict develops when clusters of employees belonging to different informal groups must interact with each other.

• Apathetic groups are least likely to exert concentrated pressure on management.

• Erratic groups display inconsistent behavior towards management.

• Strategic groups tend to be shrewd and calculating when applying pressure.

• Conservative groups are composed of elite members who are secure and powerful.

Pressure on Groups

• When organizations exert pressure on employees, lateral communication among peers tends to increase.

• Concurrently, vertical communications between different levels of management tend to decrease.

• Personal differences among group members are minimized when presented with the threat of a common danger such as a tough supervisor.

• Strong management policies toward workers may encourage the formation of strong informal groups to resist the pressure.

Specialist Versus Generalist

• Specialist: advanced skills and specific knowledge

• Generalist: knows something about many positions but not enough to displace a specialist

– Uses means other than technical knowledge to succeed, which results in relying on subordinates

– Subordinates are unable to go to their supervisor for assistance with technical problems, which leads to resentment and feelings that the boss is incompetent.

Constructive Conflict

• Conflict can be a constructive force in organizational life.

• Suppressing conflict can create a significant barrier to improvement.

• If employees (and managers) fear retribution for delivering bad news or correcting their superiors, opportunities will be missed.

5 Methods of Conflict Management

• Compromise requires each side to give up something for a solution that is not ideal for either party but is best for the organization.

• Collaboration is ideas that appeal to both parties.

• Competition is letting both sides battle to resolve a disagreement, with the most powerful winning.

• Accommodation is when one side surrenders.

• Avoidance is when both sides let conflict fester.

Power and Politics

• Organizational politics involves the use of power to get things done.

• Power derives from formal authority, control over resources, expertise, and certain personal characteristics and social networks of individuals.

Power from Formal Authority

• Authority is a system in which a small number of individuals make decisions for many people.

• Authority is deep seated, and often thought to be innate to individuals and organizations.

• Decisions are made using two guidelines: – Standing policies: long-lived and may affect many

people

– Ad hoc rules: either an interpretation of existing (standing) policies or is made because no explicit guidelines exist.

Power from Informal Authority

• Individuals emerge as informal leaders because group members accept their suggestions.

• Leaders may be accepted due to their charisma or their relationships with powerful others.

• Leaders can be accepted through wisdom or judgment acquired from previous successful decisions or leadership experiences (expertise).

Reward and Punishment

• Managers control rewards and punishments that can be dispensed to influence employees’ behavior in a positive manner.

• Positive rewards make individuals feel good

• Negative rewards (sanctions) tend to be given along a continuum of increasing degrees of coercion with repeated applications.

Constructive Politics

• Constructive politics can be used in organizations to move controversial issues to decision points and to advance the agenda of the organization.

• Constructive politics means using power in ways that are moral, open, and caring.

• Managers can use politics to help achieve organizational goals by setting agendas, anticipating resistance, networking and building coalitions, and bargaining and negotiating.

Other Ways to Influence Organizational Dynamics

• Behavioral changes can be achieved by taking direct action or working with political channels.

• Effective managers motivate employees to think about problems before they occur.

• Managers understand the dynamics of groups and their rules of behavior.

• Change may also involve altering the existing formal structure of an organization.

Other Ways to Influence Organizational Dynamics (continued)

• Effective managers spend a significant amount of time responding to subordinates.

• Planning and modifying the structure and flow of work to minimize stress or factors that deter effective performance is important.

• Managers do not to routinely expect levels of production they would be unwilling or unable to produce themselves.