Quinn Four Quadrants of Competing Values Framework Within Organisation - Authoritative Account of Management Practice in Organisation

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Methodology

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Interview

The interviewed manager is currently working in Melbourne based fitness apparel industry for 2 years and managing 6 employees. Prior to his current career, he has an extensive experience as investment consultant leading a team of 7 people for 2 years back in San Diego, United States of America. In addition, He also had an opportunity to work in Indonesian real estate for about 1 year in transition of his careers.

His broad experience in managing across globe, industries and cultures was the main reason why authors decided to interview him. In this century of globalisation, multinational companies rise across the globe. Henceforth insight of understanding managing people in organisation across cultures is mandatory.

Face to face interview was taken place at RMIT Library group study room on Friday, March 25th 2015. There were 12 questions asked to lead a discussion, 3 questions for each Quinn Competing Values Framework (CVF) quadrants, everything was recorded and key points were summarised as detailed in Appendix A.

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Theories

This report is written and categorised based on Quinn CVF. However not limited to CVF, this report incorporates and backed up by numbers of management theories such as Bass’s Transformational leadership, Path-Goal theory, Transactional leadership theory, Activity theory, General theory of collaboration, Nohria’s 4+2, Theory Y and Z.

Insights from the interview are captured in accordance to relevant CVF quadrants and further analysed which management theories are relevant or applicable. Furthermore, we exercise our management understanding to uncover the reasons behind manager action and which theory explains them.

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Analysis Factors

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Internal Process Model

This section examines manager’s behaviour in the workplace and the way that he manages and controls his employees to further establish stability in the organisation. The relevant theories based on the Transformational and Transactional Leadership by Bass (1985) and Path-Goal theory of Leader Effectiveness, a contingency-based theory, which was first given by Evans (1970) and then was further developed by House (1996). The chosen theories will be used to analyse the way that a manager monitor and control his subordinates and the effectiveness of this method to manage them.

A leader’s influence depends on a psychological match with the company, and subordinates (Lord & Brown, 2001; Turner & Haslam 2001). According to Haslam, when leaders and followers share common ideals and objectives, the motivation to achieve the company goals and objectives increase and the necessity of punishments and monitoring actions decrease (2004).

Transactional Leadership theory (Avolio & Bass, 1991) states that leaders control and influence their followers’ performance by rewarding and sanctioning certain behaviours depending on the situation. Transformational Leadership theory (Bass, 1985) states that a leader interacts, changes and creates valuable and positive things on his employees and is able to build a connection between them that will increase the motivation in both parts. There are four fundamental characteristics that define this theory, which are: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration (Bass 1985).

Path-Goal Theory of Leader Effectiveness (Evan, 1970) focuses on the Leaders behaviour that best suits his employees in a working environment to reach goals (House & Mitchell, 1974). According to this theory, there are four kinds of leadership styles, which are: Directive, Supportive, Participative and Achievement-oriented. The main objective of this theory is to increase the employee’s motivation and satisfaction to become an effective part of the company

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Employee Behaviour

In relation to the interview, the first observation was to determine the employees and environmental characteristics, which are related to the monitor and control employees’ behaviours (Appendix A, Q1).

The following analysis of the manager is based on the interview relating to the work of Subašić et al. (2011) on power and surveillance strategies, on monitoring employee

[pic 5]The implementation of surveillance strategies can create a negative effect in the relationship between workers and managers. Therefore, in many organisations it is necessary that leaders create and implement supervision strategies such as training, feedback, policies, quality control and performance evaluation, to control and monitor subordinates’ performance, in order to reach and ensure the company goals. This is an example of the Transactional Leadership theory (Bass, 1985), as the manager is using sanctions and rewards as motivational factors to encourage his employees to improve their performance. It is clear that the Path-Goal theory (Evans, 1970) plays an important role in the manager’s behaviour.

According to the interview, the manager adopted a Directive leadership style, because he specified targets and expectations, as well as coordinating and distributing the tasks according to previous performance of the employees. He also established reward and sanction policies in order to increase the employees work standards and avoid confusions.

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Gain control and trust over employees

The second observation of the manager’s behaviour was related to gain control and trust over employees (Appendix A, Q2). The following analysis of the manager is based on the interview related to the work of Bass & Steidlmeier (1999), on ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behaviour on gaining control over employees. Bass & Steidlmeier (1999) stated “Authentic transformational leadership provides a more reasonable and realistic concept of self—a self that is connected to friends, family, and community whose welfare may be more important to oneself than one’s own. One’s moral obligations to them are grounded in a broader conception of individuals within community and related social norms and cultural beliefs”. We therefore analysed this section of the interview:

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