Transcending Borders and Cultures, Research Paper Example

Payless Stores Organizational Behavior

The below essay is designed to analyze the organizational behavior of Payless Stores. The company’s website states that the company’ culture is based on embracing uniqueness, diversity, and assumes that “no single thing at Payless defines our culture”(Payless, 2012), but the site emphasizes the importance of diversity and inclusion. According to Willcoxson & Millett (2000, p. 91), analyzing the behavior and culture of an organization can reveal whether the management is able to describe and communicate the vision and values of the brand. A “pattern of shared basic assumptions”, “invented, discovered, or developed by a given group” (p. 93) can create an effective organizational behavior. The author would like to analyze whether the culture of Payless can create these shared values and visions.

Thesis: The author of the current study would like to prove that diversity and inclusion creates a unique, competitive, and welcoming atmosphere in all Payless stores, due to the implementation of the company’s “Guiding Principles”, however, the lack of effective, two-way communication results in low employee involvement and motivation. This means that there is no shared vision within the organization, and employees are not feeling emotionally attached to the company.

Type of Culture

The culture of the company can be determined as pluralism. All individuals within Payless stores are able to maintain and express their cultural identity. Willcoxon & Millett (2000) describe pluralistic culture within organizations as a system where values and viewpoints are not standard, but various groups share different aspects of culture. Pointing back to the original description of the company’s culture, pulled from the company’s website (Payless, 2012), it is evident that the reason why the culture cannot be defined by one aspect is that the organization puts a great emphasis on diversity and inclusion. Willcoxon & Millett (2000, p. 95) further declare that “those who take a pluralist perspective and recognise the existence within organisations of diverse sub-cultures arising from factors such as professional affiliation, status, social or divisional interactions, argue that organisational success springs from the effective leadership and management of diversity, and that cultural change or maintenance efforts have to be undertaken through programs specifically designed for different segments of the organisation”. This description of pluralism fits the culture of Payless stores perfectly. Showing respect, being one of the core principles of Payless (2012), valuing difference, and inspiring individuals is the perfect manifestation of pluralism in organizational culture and behavior. The company has resource groups designed for supporting inclusion. Some of these groups are: Women’s Resource Group, Multi-cultural resource group, and Sustainability Resource Group. The company actively engages with diverse members of the organization in order to develop ideas together, improve the commitment level of employees, and create meaningful messages for all stakeholders.

Nature of Authority

With more than 4000 stores in 30 different countries, the leadership needs to successfully assign authority. Guiding principles are utilized and followed in all the stores, and the executive committee makes the most important decisions affecting all employees. The senior leadership team has seven members. Different business divisions are assigned to various executives in the company, and store managers of individual outlets have limited authority over immediate employees. Using the competing values framework (Quinn & Rohrbaugh, 1983) analyzes how the cultures within the organization match the goals of the company. From the reviews of the company’s communication, leadership, and management strategies and employee surveys, it is evident that Payless uses the “Create” or adhocracy approach towards authority (Tharp, 2009). While individuals in the organization are respected and welcomed, there is no single goal that is effectively communicated towards employees. This makes creating shared values and visions hard. And this results in the company’s negative reputation, claiming that it is unorganized, and “out of control” (GNS Consulting, 2011).

McFarlin & Sweeney (2012, p. 42) describe an organizational phenomenon, called: “power distance”. People without support from immediate managers can feel threatened and uncertain about the future. As the HR department is located at the headquarters of the company, while employees work in thousands of different stores, the effectiveness of communication is limited.

Motivational Techniques

One of the weaknesses identified by GNS Consulting (2011) within the company’s SWOT analysis is the lack of employee motivation. Indeed, this is an important development area for Payless. The company currently has a “Payless College Program”, which provides personal development opportunities for employees. According to the company’s website (2012), there are several motivational career development programs designed to empower employees; such as internships, business leadership, and corporate career opportunities. The company uses a career development system, and monthly reviews. Performance is monitored on a regular basis, however, one current employee of the organization has described the culture and his personal experience with working for the company: “Always alone, even at busy times (overwhelming and unsafe) which causes poor service and high pilferage”(Glassdoor, 2014).  He further states that the company recently took away tuition reimbursement, and that there is no room for growth. This makes the company rank very low in the employee motivation and engagement scale.

Areas of Emotional Quotient

The Payless Foundation is one of the major sustainability investments of the brand. It was started within the U.S., however, employee involvement is low, due to a lack of shared vision and emotional quotient (EQ). The foundation serves families with children who are disadvantaged financially. The company also supports Holiday Family Adoption program, and the Two Ten Footwear Foundation. The principle of “providing value and support for families” is not successfully implemented in the company’s corporate communication, vision, and mission, therefore, employees have limited insight into the programs’ development.

Najafi & Setareh analyzed the impact of emotional quotient on employee satisfaction and motivation. The authors found that when the emotional quotient is low, job performance and collaboration skills are impacted. This statement would explain why the manager, quoted above stated that he feels left alone all the time. The management’s limited ability to recognize stressors within the workplace and the lack of two-way communication reduces the motivation level of employees, through low EQ.

Modes of Communication

The upper management communicated with employees through newsletters and emails. Directives, objectives, targets, and priorities are sent out to store and regional managers, who pass on the information to every employee. Electronically delivered messages, according to McFarlin & Sweeney (2012, p. 100) are not equally effective for all generations. As one of the employees of the company confirmed (Glassdoor, 2014), the quality and effectiveness of communication from upper management is poor. This means that if middle management employees and team leaders are not receiving clear objectives, messages, and directives, they are unable to provide sufficient information for their workers. This creates confusion, incompetence, and finally reduces the motivation level of employees. The recommendation of the employee (management) for the leadership of Payless was to: “understand the demands you are asking of employees, communicate better, compensate for our hard work, better benefits”. (Glassdoor, 2014). This would certainly help creating a higher level of engagement with all employees of the organization. It is also stated above that there is little or no two-way communication between the leadership of the company and employees. Another employee has described verbal communication with immediate manager overwhelming. He stated: “Weekly coaching sessions with your manager are annoying and it’s a constant battle to stay positive” (Glassdoor, 2014). Indeed, weekly coaching sessions on the individual level, based on personal needs would be effective for motivating employees. However, from the above statement, it is clear that the employee does not understand the purpose of the meetings. This also indicates that she does not share the vision of her manager. Further, she does not share the company’s vision, stating that the company should “appreciate employees more”.

Virtual Elements of Culture

The Facebook page of the company does not successfully communicate the vision and mission  of the company. It targets customers mostly, and does not feature any community engagement programs. Employees are not featured in the company’s virtual communication. There is an internet site designed for employees around the world, called “My Payless”. It provides training resources, benefits information, and personal details, paycheck access. However, there is no specific newsletter designed for employees to stay informed about the company’s latest initiatives and results. The LinkedIn page of the company has an article about the Women’s Resource Group Mentor Training that took place this year. Still, it creates little engagement with stakeholders. The online press presence of the company, related to goals, mission, vision, and culture are limited, as well.

Conclusion

It is evident that the diversity and inclusion principles of the company’s Guiding Principles provide a freedom for employees to be “unique”. However, it has also been revealed that the poor communication infrastructure and systems, the ineffectiveness of employee engagement and motivation programs create a distance between workers and the management. The main development areas found through the above research are: meaningful messages, multicultural communication, two-way discussion, collaboration, recognition, and motivation. The reviews of the company by employees have also shown that many workers (even those in management position) feel overwhelmed, undervalued, and confused about the mission, vision, and principles. There are no clear guidelines for work, and messages do not deliver a shared value.

While the company offers college programs and basic training, there are limited career development opportunities within the organization. Communication of mission and vision within and outside of the workplace is not effective in delivering meaningful messages.

As a conclusion, the company has managed to embrace the idea of diversity and inclusion within its organizational culture, however, it is not implementing effective strategies to address culturally diverse workforce. Employees are not surveyed on a regular basis, and corporate communication strategies are designed for one-way only. While there are several resource groups created within the company to represent various diverse populations, these have little impact on the daily experience of employees. It is recommended that the company creates a multi-channel, effective communication strategy that works as an effective means of communicating organizational mission, vision, principles, and values. Until employees are able to see the vision of the company, and the leaders can adjust this vision to be meaningful for all workers, the culture of Payless will not be effective, and employees will remain demotivated and disengaged, with a low EQ.

References

Anon. (2014) “Unrealistic Expectations” Retrieved from http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Payless-ShoeSource-RVW4090105.htm

Anon. (2014) “I work for Payless” Retrieved from http://payless-shoesource.pissedconsumer.com/i-work-for-payless-an-im-pissed-20130714429254.html

GNS Consulting (2011) Company Focus: Payless ShoeSource. Retrieved from http://nateneal.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/gns-consulting.pdf

McFarlin, D. & Sweeney, D. (2012) International Organizational Behavior: Transcending Borders and Cultures Routledge.

Najafi, M. & Setareh, M. (2012) Studying the effect of emotional quotient on employee’s job satisfaction (the case of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences). Interdisciplinary Journal Of Contemporary Research In Business. June 2012 Vol 4, No 2

Payless. (2012) Website. Retrieved from http://www.paylesscorporate.com/

Tharp, B. (2009) Four Organizational Culture Types. Haworth.

Quinn, R.E. & Rohrbaugh, J. (1983). A spatial model of effectiveness criteria: Towards a competing values approach to organizational analysis. Management Science, 29, 363-377.

Willcoxson, L. & Millett, B. (2000) The management of organisational culture. Australian Journal of Management & Organisational Behaviour, 3(2), 91-99