Notesale: Turn your study into money

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Culture management requires managers to manage what employees
think and feel and not just how they behave
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It was the first time
that the idea of being able to manage aspects of employees’ personal lives
came about
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Managers will try to influence this by creating
better relations in the workplace and encouraging shared values between
employees and between employees and the manager
...


It can be argued that it is possible to manage the way employees think and
feel by putting a huge emphasis on teamwork and down-playing the
superiority of managers to make employees feel more comfortable in the work
place, therefore feeling more at home
...
Managers will
also influence the employees’ opinions of the company they are working for
through stories and rituals, which are quite informal and make staff feel happy
about the purpose of the work they are carrying out
...
In
addition to this, its upper management has been described as being so hands

on that it is difficult to put them in a different category to employees who are
lower down in the company
...
As a
result, Google is often considered to be the best company to work for in the
world, therefore showing the great success of its culture and its ability to
influence how its employees think and feel
...
Culture management is supposed to be sold to employees as a win
win situation for all involved, meaning that employees enjoy their time at work,
and in return will be more likely to willingly work longer hours and work harder,
however if this is not handled correctly by managers, employees may be
unhappy with the idea that management are trying to influence their thoughts
and feelings towards the company
...
An example of this
is British Airways; employees were asked to sit in a circle, taking it in turns to
be in the centre, and everyone around the outside must say something
complimentary about the person in the middle
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British Airways also introduced the idea of check-in desk staff being selfmanaged
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This can lead to
demotivation, and definitely will not encourage employees to be flexible and
work longer hours as managers would’ve hoped
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Overall, it is clear that culture management has had both successes and
failures and the way in which managers attempt to change the thoughts and
feelings of their employees is highly significant
...
For this to occur it is essential that employees feel valued by
their employers and that employers are very involved and hands-on with
everything that is going on, this ensures that employees do not feel like they
are being treated as though they are ‘beneath’ their managers
...
Lastly, as proven by Google, working environment
is also a very important factor
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It is important to mention, however, that in
low-paid repetitive jobs, it is still possible to change the way employees think
and feel and make them happier at work through the use of team-building
exercises for example, but this will not change the fact that their job is still
boring and menial, which is likely to prevent them from wanting to work longer
hours
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Outline the way in which a concern for ‘the human’ was
brought into the management of organisations
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Elton Mayo introduced the idea that this

was not the case, in fact he believed workers were motivated by working in a
team, being supervised and in general just by interaction with others
...
This
was the first time anyone had tried to manage using normative control, which
can be described as managing employees thoughts and emotions, not just
their behaviour
...
Throughout this period he
studied the workers at the factory and how changing different factors such as
lighting levels affected their performance
...
One particular part of the study in the Relay Assembly Room took
place to assess six women who were friendly towards each other and were of
similar skill sets
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Several working conditions were altered to
determine how productivity would be affected, such as: the introduction,
elimination and varying length of breaks, increased pay, elimination of
saturday work, changing of drinks and refreshments and the shortening of the
working day
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He concluded that they
‘became a team and gave themselves wholeheartedly and spontaneously to
cooperation in the experiment’
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It is believed that is was not obvious to the men who the observer in
the room was
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It was found that the men
put pressure on each other to carry out tasks in a certain way and if a
particular man moved away from the normal way of doing things, then he was
slowly pushed out of the group
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All of these
factors demonstrate Mayo’s concern for ‘the human’ as they are all related to
human interactions with one another, whether it be between employees or
between the employee and the manager
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He was enthusiastic
about the creation of a ‘managerial elite’ who ‘would be trained in techniques
of listening and counselling’ (O’Connor, 1999)
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He regarded technical skills as the
ability to manipulate objects and forces, and social skills as the ability to
communicate with others and to communicate his feelings with others
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Mayo’s concept of Human Relations was appealing to managers because
it meant increasing production by making workers feel happier without the
need to compromise on any of their power or increase rates of pay
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He introduced the idea that to be
motivated and efficient, workers need to be content, not just being paid well,
and that the best way to make them feel this way was to encourage team
work
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His experiment showed that ‘the human’ is all that is really important with
regards to increasing productivity, as eliminating breaks and other negative
changes made no difference and productivity still increased as long as the
group were working together
...
In fact, all other normative management styles
include factors from Human Relations management that were introduced by
Elton Mayo

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