Organizations Are Human Systems, Essay Example

Research Scenario Problem Statement

Organizations are human systems. As such, each member of the system brings to bear the full range of psychological and emotional behavior while also applying themselves to their work which is highly prescriptive and ostensibly rational. Because of this, human systems experience high levels of inefficiency as emotions, personality, and unconscious impulses interfere with the objectivity and logical processes at work. The question is, to what extent do individuals’ idiosyncrasies interfere with the expectations of their performance? A secondary question is, are there managerial tools to mitigate these forces among employees while they are in the workplace?

Introduction

Just as ethical and business theories are naturally diverse, idiosyncrasies are a fact of any workplace. Knowledge Management, as a field, seeks to optimize the benefits of utilizing what has been called knowledge (or intelligence) capital, an experiential acquaintance with knowledge gained from information. In order to realize the personal, social, and structural benefits of knowledge capital, explicit knowledge based in real-world experience must be converted as accurately as possible to tacit information through the scientific process of data input creation and analysis (Morey, Maybury, & Thuraisingham, 2002). This data has long been of interest to the managerial aspects of all business, as a way to increase output and- by extension- increase the individual’s ability to contribute to the community which contributes to the business (French, Thomas, Baker, Burton, Pennington, & Roddam, 2009, 2).

Research Questions

1. What are the current expectations for all employees in the specific field? (control variable)
2. To what extent do individuals’ idiosyncrasies interfere with the expectations of their performance? (independent variable)
3. Are there managerial tools to mitigate these forces among employees while they are in the workplace? (dependent variable)

The identification of performance expectations would be necessary to the study of the primary research question. This information has been extensively studied and will be reasonably easy to locate. However, specific qualities which contribute to performance, intelligence, common sense, initiative, and creativity, for example, are prioritized differently according to the career field. This necessitates a decision between the use of various quantitative case studies within a diverse range of career fields or generalized employer polls and complicates the definition of “idiosyncrasies”. Providing a precise definition of the term in the context of the research conducted will be central to the study’s credibility.

Theoretical Perspectives

The techniques of organizational learning- although often applied to systems now considered part of knowledge management- have often been excluded from discussions of integration and knowledge management (KM). These two perspectives have much potential, as separate and especially together, to become “fruitful sources for improving our understanding of dimensions of organizational absorptive and receptive capacity” (French et al., 2009, 2). This combined approach will be necessary to determine which idiosyncrasies are contrary to the workplace demands and which will decrease supervisory expectations.

Data Collection

The collection of data would follow the experimental method plan and thus include participants, materials, procedures, and measures. The testing locations would be coordinated in five locations in the North, South, East, West, and Central areas of America to produce a nationwide representative sample. However, the pre-test participation selection will be entirely random and will be facilitated as a response to advertisements in local and regional newspapers, colleges, and job fairs. The experiment will utilize a Pre-test Post-Test Control Group Design, which will use a survey ranking of idiosyncrasies and workplace perceptions for the pre-test and a simulated workplace scenario depicting each of the idiosyncrasies scored which will provide participants with tablature for score ranking during the experiment. There will be a pause of thirty seconds between each idiosyncratic reenactment- so as to ensure that proper time to record answers is allotted. One control group will simply be given a re-test in the same time increments without the influence of the reenactments.

Prior to beginning the pre-test, the advertisement and survey ranking sheet must be ready; prior to beginning the post-test, the reenactment scripts, score ranking tablatures (one per person), video recording equipment (to ensure performance consistency), and actor/ actress screening must be complete. The reenactment players should be volunteers, and coordination with local college theater departments is advisable.

After the procedural preparation is complete, the information should be gathered, labeled, and shipped to one location for processing. This processing will consist of organizing and calculating the statistical difference in the results of the pre-test and post-test in contrast to those of the control group and charting the results both according to general and career area-specific rankings. There are many possible threats to the validity of the true experiment- many of which can easily be addressed. After the pre-test is conducted, respondents with extreme scores should not be selected for fear that they would have a drastic effect on the averages.

References

French, B., Thomas, L., Baker, P., Burton, C., Pennington, L., & Roddam, H. (2009). What can   management theories offer evidence-based practice? A comparative analysis of   measurement tools for organizational context. Implementation Science, 28 (4). Retrieved   from Academic Search Complete database.

Morey, D., Maybury, M., & Thuraisingham, B. (2002). Knowledge Management: Classic and  Contemporary Works. Paperback ed. Massachusetts, U.S.A.: the MIT Press.