Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad

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Communication barriers are one of the human behavior theories that are poorly aligned in the Engstrom study. According to Newstrom (2015) how one receives a communicated message can depend on a variety of barriers and the intended message could be misconstrued. This is what is happening in the plant because clearly the employees are not receiving the intended messages. Another human behavior communication issue that is occurring is the grapevine communication method. Newstrom (2015) describes this as informal communication that is communicated between employees. This has adds to the employee’s frustrations because they are talking about their grievances to one another and some information is not necessarily correct. Poor communication leads to low morale and production rates and is one of the larger causes for issues at Engstrom.

The three main root causes for the organizational issues in “Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant” are lack of trust, fear of job loss and poor communication. Lack of trust due to wage issues was a leading topic throughout the article (Insert something about human behavior theories). It is also clear that the employees, after seeing co-workers laid off from their jobs, had a fear of losing their own jobs. In order to avoid this, good reinforcement that they would not be losing their jobs would be important and an attitude of theory y would have to be adopted (Newstrom 2015). In addition, poor communication in a sense that the employees did not understand what they were being told by management was a large root cause of organizational issues. This shows personal communication barriers and these would have to be broken down for better understanding and success. In conclusion, Michael Beer and Elizabeth Collins’ “Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant: Motivating in Good Times and Bad” sheds great light on the issues within the company being studied and give insight into how human behavior and organization directly translate to the work place.

References

Newstrom, J. (2015). Organizational Behavior; Human Behavior at Work. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill.

Beer, M., & Collins, E. (2008). HBS NO. 2175. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.