NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY

Report On
Artisan Ceramics Ltd.

Course Name: Orgaanizational Behavior (Mgt.321)

Semester: Fall 2013

Prepared For:

Shafquat Kabir (SqK)

Core Faculty,
School of Business

Section: 05
Group members:

Name

I.D.

Quazi Rezwana Shama

1210964030

Nazmul Hoque

1130709030

Sadhan Das

1130303030

MD. Iqbal Hossain

1130329030

Adit Kumar

1210685030

Nafi Binte Nasir

Rahatil Raihan

1120546030

Date Of Submission: 14.01.2014

Acknowledgement
This report has been a revelation for us & foremost would like to thank Almighty Allah
for His guidance in our lives.
We have been fortunate to have the support, assistance & encouragement of a number of
individuals while preparing this report, without their support, it would be hard to
complete this study.
We convey our sincere gratitude to our institutional supervisor, Shafquat Kabir,
Lecturer, School of Business, North South University; you are such a good instructor who
helped us in understanding the course materials. Besides this you gave us the opportunity
to present our own ideas regarding business management and organizational behavior,
which really helped us understanding how behavior of an organization established
throughout a proper culture.

Letter of Transmittal:
14.01 .2014
Shafquat Kabir
Lecturer, School of Business,
North South University.
Dhaka.
Dear Sir,
It is been a great pleasure for us to submit this Report. This Report has been prepared by
our group as a part of Mgt.321. It is prepared after takeing some interviews. All the
required information has been provided by respected manager and exicutive manager of
Artisan Ceramics ltd.
This Report gave us an opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge in real world. I
sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading this report.
Thank you,

________________________________________Quazi
rezwana shama 1210964030
__________________________________________
Nazmul hoque

1130709030

__________________________________________Iqbal
hossain

1130329030

__________________________________________Sadh
an das

1130303030

________________________________________Adit
kumur
1210685030
5

________________________________________Nafi
binte nasir
________________________________________Rahatil
raihan
1220546030

Table Of Content
Topic:

Page No:

1.Executive summary
2. Introduction
3. Company Information
4. Organizational Structure

5. Methodology
6. Interview with the Employees

7. Interview with managers

8. Analysis and discussion

skills of good manager

succesful VS effective manager

Factors affecting job satisfaction and job performance

measuring and managing job satisfaction

personality test and hiring decision

importance of team work

conflict and negotiation

9. Organizational Culture
10.Conclusion

Executive Summary
This report represents the findings of a four-week long research programme by our group
members on Artisan ceramics limited, with a specific focus on the behaviour of junior
employees and senior managers.
Artisan a global brand with absolute quality guarantee and consistency want
to continuously improve every phase of operation- to look into minute details to achieve
perfection, to ensure maximum safety and comfort for workforce, to safeguard
environment, and to serve a pool of highly satisfied customers.
The research explores the extent to which people in Artisan wish to stand with original
mission of the company and their job satisfaction and job performance, reaction to
conflict and adoption of organizaton culture.
Key points:
=> The HR department of Artisan ceramics ltd ensures job satisfaction of the
employees through in time salary, bonuses, incriments.
=> Employees in Ardisan do not tkink age as a major factor of job performance
rather they believe in experience and physical fitness for better job performance and
satisfaction.
=>

Promotion do depends on job performance and effectiveness in Artisan ceramics

ltd. So the Employees look for such performance that sets benchmark for others and
keep up their good work for considerable period of time gets promotion frequently.
=>To resolve conflict managers practice coercive power. Both parties regarding conflict
are asked to resolve the conflict themselves within agiven time.

=>Artison Ceramics Ltd. have its own organizational culture and managers are fully
document all decisions. they hold the dicisional power but he gives space to employees to
do their work effectively.

Introduction:
This report has been done on Artisan ceramics limited. This report helps us to understand
the behavior of employees in work organizations. We can also understand the following
factors:
a) Attitudes and their effect on job satisfaction
b) Emotions and moods, and their role in decision-making
c) Personality & values
d)
e)
f)
g)
h)

Motivating concept
Conflict resolution and negotiations
Power and politics: surviving in the corporate world
Organizational structure & organizational culture
Human resource policies and practices of Artisan ceramics limited.

Origin of the report

Our management faculty Mr. Shafquat Kabir has assigned this report as a part of
Organizational behavior course. We have worked on this report for about two months. We
were able to finish the report on the second week of this January.

Company Information
About Artisan
Artisan Ceramic Limited was established in 2005 to produce top of the range quality
porcelain tableware for global market. Within less than six months of its commercial
production, the company has succeeded in attracting a host of worlds renowned
tableware customers including the big retail name for household item, IKEA to start
sourcing chinaware from Artisan. Artisan Ceramics works in partnership with renowned
9

companies for manufacturing their global brand with absolute quality guarantee and
consistency.

Mission
Artisans mission is "to continuously improve every phase of operation- to look into
minute details to achieve perfection, to ensure maximum safety and comfort for
workforce, to safeguard environment, and to serve a pool of highly satisfied customers"
The management recognize individual lifestyle requirement of end users.

Social Obligation
Artisans management and co-workers are aware of its responsibility on social and
environmental issues and ensure full compliance of the requirement not only by
themselves but also by their suppliers. The company ensure good working environment,
non-engagement of child labor, equal gender opportunity, freedom of association,
compliance of standard relating to emissions into air & water and handling of waste and
chemicals.

10

Organizational structure:
An organizational structure defines how jobs and tasks are formally divided, grouped and
coordinated. Managers need to address six key elements when they design their
organizations structure:
-work specialization
-departmentalization
-chain of command
-span of control
-centralization and decentralization
-formalization
Artisan ceramics ltd is a manufacturing company that manufactures porcelain tableware.
However, the company has flat organization structure as they believe they believe that
efficiency lies in lesser bureaucracy and less relevance is given to authority and unity of
command. Artisan has high level of work specialization as it is a manufacturing company
where each group of employees is specialized at certain task. Thus, the work is
distributed accordingly. Artisan Ceramics believes in empowerment of employees and
they practice wide span of control in the Organization. This saves time and at the same
time it is cost efficient. Level of centralization is way lower at Artisan ceramics. In other
word it is a decentralized organization. This is because; decentralization yields a number
of benefits for the organization. It enables the organization to act more quickly to solve
problems, increases employees participation in decision making and makes employees
feel not being alienated. Thus, it enhances employees commitment towards the
organization. For certain projects Artisan Ceramics ltd make use of matrix organization
structure. The diagram below shows this:

11

The overall organization structure of Artisan Ceramics ltd is given below:

Methodology:
In order to make this project report a great deal of information was collected using two
types of data:
-

Primary data
Secondary data.

12

The primary data information is collected by interviewing 2 junior employees and 1

senior manager of Artisan Ceramics Ltd. The interview was made on a questionnaire
that covers information related to the practical application of Organization behavior
theories in the corporate world. It covers topics like attitude and satisfaction of
employees, conflicts and negotiations in the organization, the organization culture,
and importance of team work in the corporate world.
The secondary data includes certain books on Organization Behavior and websites
that contains such related information all of which can be found in the referencing
section at the end of the report.

Interview with the employees:

Profile of the employees:

Outcome of the interview:

The employees were asked the followings questions and they have given the following
responses:
Question for junior employee- do you at times have to act happy and smile when deep
inside you are unhappy? What effect does it have on you?
Sometimes it happens. But there is no pressure from the management that we
have to smile all the time while working. However, at certain situation its feels
that concentration at work is less.

From this response it can be concluded that when employees are not mentally fit
to work productivity is likely to fall and wastage and absenteeism rises.

Interview with the managers:

13

Profile of the managers:

Outcome of the interviews:

The manager was asked the following questions and his responses are given below:
What are the skills, in your opinion of a good manager?
A good manager requires a number of skills. But at the first place the HR department
has to be assured that they have recruited the right person in the right place. The most
important skills of a good manager include:
-

A good public relation skill also known as Human skill.

Crisis management skill also known as conceptual skill.
Technical skill includes degree and educational qualification in the respective
area. This is a basic requirement which has to be brought in account while
recruiting the employee but once the personnel has joined the organization the
former skills are more important and useful.
In your opinion, do you think that there are difference between a successful manager
and effective manager?

There is a wide difference between a successful and effective manager. In order to be

an effective manager a personnel has to be communicative and a good team player.
However, in order to be successful a manager should have some other qualities
despite these. He has to have a good networking links and modest political skills.
Do you think that getting promoted fast may not be related to job performance
and effectiveness?
Promotion do depends on job performance and effectiveness in Artisan ceramics ltd.
Employees whose performance sets benchmark for others and keep up their good
work for considerable period of time gets promotion frequently. Because, Artisan
Ceramics considers it important to keep up the employee satisfied.
Any opinion about age, duration of employment in the company affecting job
performance and job satisfaction? Why/ why not?
Age does not affect job performance of employees who are at managerial post.
However, experience matters a lot. An experienced manager performs better than an
14

amateur as he is use to with the task. In the same way employee who is working for
the company can perform more effectively as he already knows everything about
company, its resources, its culture and infrastructure. A new comer requires time to
adapt to the new environment.
Similarly what about physical and mental abilities? Do you think they affect
job performance and job satisfaction?

Artisan Ceramics Ltd prioritizes the physical fitness of every employees the most.
Because it believes that if personnel are not physically fit he is not mentally fit.
Physical abilities are very important for job performance and job satisfaction.
Physically less able person often have problems like absenteeism, accidents, etc.
This hampers the production activity.
Do you have any method of measuring job satisfaction in your company? If
yes how it is done and how frequently?

It is done once in a year and the method, summation of job facet is used to
Measure it.
Can you recommend some of your personal opinion on how to manage the
employees being absent and how to prevent valuable employees leaving the
organization?

In order to avoid these two problems keeping up the job satisfaction of the
employees is very important. For this the HR department of Artisan ceramics ltd
ensures:

15

Employees are paid their salary just in time

Employees are given sufficient bonus during occasions
Increments are given at a regular basis
A harmony between employees is prevalent in the organization.

Question for manager- are personality tests used for hiring decisions in your
organization? Do you have any opinions on certain personality traits that are
found in your best employees?

No personality test is used in hiring decisions. However, best employees are

always conscientious, emotionally stable, sensing, and judging. How
important is teamwork in your organization? Any suggestion on how to build
an effective team?

Every project is executed through team work. Before building a team you should
consider the followings:
-

Behavior of the members

Background of the members
Their family history
Relationship with other employees
What in your opinion are major sources of conflict in your Organization?
Can you give us two examples of such conflict?

Conflicts at Artisan ceramics mostly take place between Accounts department and
other departments.
For example:

16

Few days backs a huge conflict broke out between the Accounts department
and production department. A production machine broke down and the
production manager immediately required some money to repair the machine.
He rushed to the accounts manager and told him about the situation and asked
for some money. The Accounts manager disagreed and asked him to bring
certain paper works and documents firstly. This made the production manager
angry and a fight took place between both.
Recently, a conflict broke out between the Accounts department and the
marketing department for almost the same type of reason.
Can you give at least one example of how you personally helped to resolve
conflict?

In order to resolve conflict I practice coercive power. The conflict in no.1 was
resolved in this way. I asked both the accounts manager and production manager
to resolve the conflict themselves within half an hour or else both of them will be
fired. Hence, it took fifteen minutes for them to patch up.

Do you think your organization has some form of organization culture? If

yes, list some of the elements of the culture?

Yes, the organization has a culture. Every department should maintain a routine in
order to execute their regular activity. Every morning, each department should do
a meeting among them and submit a report to the head on the tasks to be
performed and review of the progress of the day be fores tasks.

Analysis and discussion:

Skills of a good manager:

17

Successful versus effective manager:

Factors affecting job satisfaction and job performance:

In the light of OB there are a number of factors that affect job satisfaction and job
performance. These include:
-age
-gender
-duration of employment
-tenure
-race and ethnicity
-disability
OB tells that the relationship between age and job performance is likely to be an issue of
increasing importance during the next decade for at least three reasons. These are:
1. Belief is widespread that job performance declines with increasing age.
2. The workforce is aging. Many employers recognize that older workers represent a
huge potential pool of quality applicants.
3. The third reason is, for all intents and purposes, outlaws mandatory retirement.
However, the scenario in the real life is quite different. The Country manager of Artisan
ceramics tells that age of employees has no relation to his work performance if he is
working at managerial pos, though physical fitness is given importance. Employees who
does the operational activities requires to vigilant, energetic and physically fit. Too old
people are not suitable for such job. For such workers, physical ability matters more than
mental ability.
Theory suggests that other factors mentioned above like gender, race and ethnicity, do
affect job performance and satisfaction. But, considering the responses of the employees
and managers of Artisan ceramics such factors have nothing to do with job performance
and satisfaction in the real world.
However, tenure and duration of employment is very important. This is because; Artisan
Ceramics Ltd has observed that an experienced manager performs way better than the
18

amateur fresher. In the same way a person who is working at the company for years
knows the culture of the company better. He knows how things work. So, if he is
assigned a task he will do it more efficiently than the new recruit. The probability of
making mistake for him is way lower.
In the end Artisan ceramics ltd concludes with the view point that.
A sound mind lives in a sound body.
So, all the employees are asked to take care of their physical fitness no matter what their
work is.

Measuring and managing job satisfaction:

In the light of OB theory, there are two popular approaches to measure job satisfaction.
-

The single global rating: It is a response to one question, such as All things
considered, how satisfied are u with your job? Respondent circle a number

between 1 and 5 on a scale from highly satisfied to highly dissatisfied.

The summation of job facet is the other method. It is more sophisticated. It
identifies the key elements in a job such as the nature of the work, supervision,
present pay promotion and opportunities, relation with co workers. Respondents
rate these on standardized scale; the researchers add the ratings to create an
overall job satisfaction score.

Artisan ceramics Ltd uses the summation of job facet method to measure the job
satisfaction of their employees. This is because, intuitively summing up responses to
a number of job factors seems likely to achieve more accurate evaluation of job
satisfaction. However, summation of Job facet may also leave out some important
data.
In order to manage the job satisfaction of the employees Artisan Ceramics Ltd does
the following things:
-

Employees are paid their salary just in time

Employees are given sufficient bonus during occasions
Increments are given at a regular basis
A harmony between employees is prevalent in the organization
These activities also work to prevent absenteeism and high rate of labor turnover.

19

Personality test and hiring decision:

According to theories we have seen that a number of organization go for personality test
of employees while making hiring decision. There are two popular assessment
instruments in the world to test personality of the candidate to be recruited. These are the:
-

Myer- Briggs type indicator (MBTI): It is a hundred question personality test that
ask people how they usually feel or act in particular situations. On the basis of
their answers, individuals are classified as extraverted or introverted ( E or I),
sensing or intuitive ( S or N), thinking or feeling ( T or F), and judging or

perceiving (J or P).
The Big five personality model: The MBTI may lack strong supporting evidence,
but the same cannot be said for the Big Five model. An impressive body of
research supports its thesis that the five basic dimensions underlie all others and
encompass most significant variation in human personality. The followings are the
big five factors:
-Extraversion
-Agreeableness
-Conscientiousness
-Emotional stability
- Openness to experience

However, Artisan ceramics Ltd do not go for any kind of personality test while
recruiting employees. They mostly gather information about the employees
performance from the organization where he/she has previously worked.

Importance of team work:

20

In the corporate world in order to execute any kinds of business project there is no
alternative to working in team. Working in team creates positive synergy through
co ordinate effort. The individual efforts results in a level of performance greater
than the sum of those individual inputs. Artisan ceramics Ltd is a company of
Bangladesh and the culture of the country is more collectivist than individualistic.
So, most of the projects are completed in group. However, they consider a number

of factors before building a group. The factors are:

Behavior of the members
Background of the members
Their family history
Relationship with other employees.

Conflicts and Negotiations:

Conflicts in between persons are the universally created psychological behaviors. It can
happen in various ways. Society encompasses with economy, interpersonal relations,
communities etc is main reason to create conflicts. Conflict term derived like this way, if
one party is negatively affected by something, which the first really cared. Conflicts can
be of various types, most importantly functional & dysfunctional conflicts. According to
the interview, Artisan Ceramics Ltd. is having conflicts between Accounts department
present in the company. One example was delivered by the executive on interview
relating to the conflicts between accounts department & production department which
lead the manager to fight amongst each other. There the conflicts held because of lacking
in following proper steps for demanding money. This is a result of process conflicts. The
production manager didnt follow legitimate procedures for demanding money for the
recovery of plant.
Another example was conflicts held in between accounts department & marketing
department. But there the executive could not say the raw reasons for the creation of
conflicts. This is a relationship conflict between accounts department & other
departments. It may be a consequence the account department might feel that they are the
superiors of the company as they handles all the monetary transactions of the company.
21

The conflicts between accounts departments manager & production manager might be
occurred for communication problem. New manger had been appointed to either of those
departments. For what didnt know the exact procedures or might be one had been
promoted from junior executive to manager who previously was his senior.
Second reason, may be the cause of structure, in which company does not follow any
policy where in such serious circumstances they need to submit any papers instantly.
Third reason may be personal variables where either production manager does not like
the accounts manager or vice-versa.
Fourth reason, may be the production manager personalized his own way to ask money or
he asked previously like this way got the money but from new account manager he didnt
get the response. Beside accounts manager may personalized things in his own way.
Accounts department of Artisan Ceramics had conflict with almost all departments but
we got examples of two specific conflicts aroused. Both the parties might have the
intentions to do such behaviors with the accounts departments manager or the production
departments manager might have same intentions. But the marketing departments
manager could do it intentionally because of the consequences occurred between
production & accounts department. This is a result of collaboration.
The best view can be seen in behavior of conflict stage which is visible from production
manager & accounts manager incident. One demanded for money & another argued on
his demand. As a result the conflicts continue to its peak stage & fight occurred. This is a
dysfunctional conflict.
If the accounts department continues relationship conflicts with other departments then it
would become dysfunctional conflicts. They are behaving roughly with their co-workers
and it would create flaws from attaining organizational goals. The functional conflicts
would be there if the accounts department is following the process for accomplishing the
company policies & they are adhere to the content & organizational goals of the
organization. But it may hinder the relationship between departments So the management
had to take corrective measures for bringing up a perfect solution, thus the conflicts or the
misunderstanding doesnt prevail between departments.
If conflicts prevail in any situation, there must be negotiation procedures. Negotiation the
term used to indicate that here one party is agreed with the works of another party.
22

The executive from Artisan Ceramics Ltd in the interview that the conflict created
amongst production & accounts departments, he solved that by utilizing coercive power
of negotiation It is a matter of integrative bargaining where both the employees &
organization were benefitted.
The negotiations took place because of moods & emotions of the employees. They could
feel that continuing with such culture is not acceptable. So they prefer to solve the
problems. Also scared about getting fired from the jobs was a major cause of negotiation.
Artisan Ceramics didnt need any specific third party like mediator, conciliator,
consultant or arbitrator to do the work of negotiation. Internal policies were enough to
come up with perfect solution.

Organization Culture:
organization culture refferes to a system of shared meaning held by members that
distinguishes the organization from other organizations. seven primary characteristics
seem to capture the essence of an organizations cultures.
1. Innovation and risk taking
2. Attention to details
3. Outcome orientation
4. people orientation
5. Team orientation
6. Aggressiveness
7. Stability

Organizational culture is concerned with how employees perseive the charectaristics of

an organizationals culture, not with whether they like the-that is, its a descriptive team.
this is important because it differentiates this concepts from job satisfactions.
Research on organizational culture has shoght to measure how employees see their
organization: It incourages team work, it rewards innovation or it stifle initative.
Incontrast job satisfaction seeks to measure how employees fell about the organizations
expectations, rewar practice and the like. Although the two terms undoubtedly have
overlapping charecteristics, keep in mind that organizational culture is descriptive,
whereas job satisfaction is evaluative.

23

Artison Ceramics Ltd. have its own organizational culture. As it is a manufacturing firm,
managers are fully document all decisions. He hold the dicisional power but he gives
space to employees to do their work effectively. Management encourage and reward risk
taking and change. There are extensive rules and regulations im this firm that employees
are required to follow. Employees have to report in office at morning 9:00-10:00 AM.
Before starting thier work, every department arrange a formal meeting and note down
what will do today and analyse work review about previous working day, this note is
reported to head of the department. Management is concerned with high productivity and
low deviation amoung the employees. Management is also very strick about coflict
amoung the employees. If it found any personal conflict amoung the employees which
can hamper productivity of the company, both of them will be fired from the company.

Job activities are designed around work

teams and different level, employees talk
positively about the different teams and
levels.

24