A1 OB is a multidisciplinary field and that is one of its great

strengths. Discuss.

Outline Answer -

The scope of OB is much wider than earlier human relations approaches

to understanding behaviour in organisations. OB recognises that behaviour
is subject to many influences and that this makes it a very complex
subject. Its wide scope enables OB to view human behaviour within
organisations from a number of perspectives:

a) changes in the behaviour of the individual and of groups of individuals;

b) the effect of these changes on the functioning of the
organisation and organisational structure;
c) the effect of changes in the external environment on both a) and b).

Psychology and organisational psychology contribute insights into what

influences individual behaviour; the motivating factors, aspects of
leadership etc. Sociology is more concerned with the social system and
the behaviour of groups, also highly relevant to understanding the
behavioural patterns that affect the functioning of the organisation.
Anthropology is concerned with culture - the values, beliefs and
customs accepted within the organisation, which often dictate behaviour.
Anthropology is also applied in the study of how organisations react, for
instance to the rapidly changing economic and competitive circumstances.
Political science, economics, engineering and medicine contribute towards
the understanding of power and conflict, productivity measurement, the
design of jobs, and human stress, respectively.
The individual strengths of all these disciplines are available to the
organisational behaviourist who also applies a rigorous, scientific
approach to testing and validating theories. Thus OB is an applied science
which aims to offer very practical solutions to managerial problems.
If OB were to become a truly interdisciplinary field, with social scientists
working together to resolve the issues of human behaviour in
organisations, it would be even more effective.

(Kahn 278)

A2 Compare and contrast charismatic and transformational

leadership in organisations, giving an account of their origin and
the reasons why they are being studied today.
Outline Answer -

The name charismatic comes from the Greek charisma which means a
divinely inspired gift. Many great religious, political and military
leaders have had this gift of charisma, for example Joan of Arc and
Winston Churchill. Similarly, the concept of transformational leadership
was identified through a study of political leaders. Thus both these
types of organisational leadership had their origins in the study of other
types of leaders. Although charismatic power is similar to referent
power, its influence on followers is stronger and more focused.
Charismatic traits have been identified, for example House identified high
confidence, dominance and a strong conviction in his or her beliefs and
Conger and Kanungo added that the fact that charismatic leaders are
agents of radical change and are perceived as unconventional. However,
most researchers now believe that a trait approach alone is inadequate
and that charismatic leadership involves an interaction between leaders
and followers in a particular situation. Such leaders create an appealing
vision of a better future for the organisation, propose high performance
goals for followers, convincing them that these goals can be achieved.
Charismatic leaders can also try to introduce new values. To ensure that
their vision is achieved, charismatic leaders will engage in impression
management, lead by word and example, make personal sacrifices and
show courage in implementing the vision. There is a strong correlation
between charismatic leadership and high follower performance and
satisfaction. It seems that, for charismatic leadership to emerge, the
right conditions must be met, including a combination of traits, leader
behaviours, situation and a vision which is shared by leaders and
followers. The Second World War provided a situation which gave
Churchill the opportunity to exercise charismatic leadership as Prime
Minister of Britain. After the war was won, Churchill was immediately voted
out of office as his leadership style was not considered appropriate in the
prevailing economic circumstances. In organisations, too, charismatic
leaders may be the best in exceptional circumstances, but be less effective
in other circumstances. As agents of radical change they are suited to the
present economic and organisational climate. However, they can be very
inflexible. This is not true of transformational leadership.
Transformational leadership includes charisma and is most appropriate
when organisations are facing the challenges of change. Both
charismatic and transformational leaders are outstanding persuaders. In
addition to charisma, Bass has identified the following characteristics of
transformational leaders: inspiration (e.g. expressing important purposes
in simple ways); intellectual stimulation (promoting careful problem
solving); and individualised consideration (treating each employee
individually, coaching and advising).
Charismatic leaders can be more concerned with personal loyalty than
the ultimate good of the organisations; thus, as in the case of cults,
they may enslave followers. Transformational leaders seek to encourage
their followers to think for themselves and develop the vision further. The
transformational approach involves building consensus, encouraging
participation and building up a sense of self-worth. Transformational leader
are flexible, able to switch to transactional leadership in appropriate
circumstances.
Thus both these types of leader would be expected to lourish in the age of
economic uncertainty and change though, in the long term,
transformational leaders will be the more effective.

(Kahn 300-301)

A3 What are the advantages and disadvantages of group decision-

making? How may the effect of groupthink be reduced?
Outline Answer
Groups have a greater store of knowledge, wisdom and experience
than individuals and are likely to formulate more approaches to any
problem. They are also more flexible, in that a group member who is
indisposed, or dies, can be replaced. Group members who have been
deeply involved in coming to a decision will be likely to understand it
thoroughly and support it strongly.
The disadvantages include the possibility of group pressure to conform
with the norms of the group, which may not enhance organisational
effectiveness and which may also deflect the individual from acting in
accordance with his or her own values and beliefs. There may also be a
temptation to settle for the first well-argued solution, rather than explore
a variety of alternatives. If inter-group conflict arises, the group may be
diverted from its main organisational objective to concentrate on winning
the argument. In some groups, a single individual may tend to dominate
the proceedings and impose a solution.
Some highly cohesive groups may suffer from groupthink, a mode of
thinking in which the desire to reach agreement prevails over the need for
a realistic assessment of all available courses of action. Symptoms of
groupthink include an illusion of invulnerability, where the group can do no
wrong, a tendency to explain away any information that contradicts the
group consensus, a sense of ethical superiority, negative stereotyping of
those outside the group, which leads to the ignoring of expert advice, the
strong exercise of pressure on individual group members to conform,
leading to self-censorship and an illusion of unanimity, and the emergence
of mindguards who police others thoughts and act against all
information and individuals threatening to undermine the groups
decision.
Other groups exhibit risky shift, where the group adopts a much more
risky course of action than individual group members would suggest on
their own. This has obvious dangers. However, the group may also swing
in the other direction (a cautious shift) and take a much more conservative
decision than their members would take individually. This tendency
towards taking extreme decisions within the group setting, or group
polarisation, has obvious dangers.
The effects of groupthink may be reduced by training the formal
leader against being over-directive or stating his or her position too early
and in the following techniques to counter groupthink: separating idea
generation from idea evaluation (as in brainstorming); encouraging an
open climate in which members criticisms are welcomed and heeded;
opening up the groups views and decisions to the scrutiny of outside
experts; appointing a devils advocate whose task is to challenge any
untested assumptions and rotating this role regularly; splitting the group,
periodically, into two or more sub-groups, each of which examines the
same issue and bringing them together again to explore and evaluate
proposed solutions; having a last-chance meeting after a solution has been
proposed at which reservations can be aired before commitment to action.

(Kahn 305-306)

Human Resource Management, June Diet, 2014 (Paper 1)

1. Explain why the concept of commitment is seen as central to the

successful implementation of Human Resource Management

A good answer should cover some or most of the following points:

According to soft HRM theories, a high level of employee commitment to the
organisations objectives and values is essential if high levels of performance and
the realisation of the individuals potential are to be achieved. One definition of
commitment describes it as a strong identification with the values of the
organisation and to support the objectives of the organisation. It can be
contrasted with compliance where the employee reluctantly accepts what
is required by management because there is little option other than to do
so. Thus the former is a positive reaction arising out of a genuine desire to
contribute, while the latter is a grudging acceptance of managements
control over the way things should be done. The former, it is argued,
harnesses the employees full potential while the latter does not.
Commitment is in fact only one of a series of overlapping concepts dealing
with aspects of a persons level of involvement at work including work
involvement, job involvement and professional commitment.
The student should note the differences between affective and continuance
commitment and state clearly what these terms mean.
If securing employee commitment to the organisation is one of the
cornerstones of HRM, then the organisation needs to translate this into
practice through the adoption of a range of HR policies. A central theme of
David Guests (1987) work is research on the development and
maintenance of commitment with the rationale that committed employees
are more satisfied, more productive, more adaptable and the development
of commitment is linked to another HRM concern, the management of
cultural change. Guest also highlighted a range of HR policies designed to
increase commitment and these include:
Provision of information to employees
Receiving information from the employee
Changes in work systems
Introduction of incentive schemes
Changes in employee relationships
Whilst there is little empirical evidence demonstrating a causal relationship
between these policies and employee commitment, HRM theories and
literature stress the centrality of commitment in HRM strategy. A good
answer would, however, avoid making any strong claims about the efficacy
of such policies. Students can use their own direct experience to illustrate
their answer but should not simply recycle the mood music of their
organisation.

2. You have been asked to conduct a training session for your

department. Outline how you would both identify the training needs and
evaluate the training.

(Based on Chapter 4, Selection, Performance Appraisal and Training (4.5)

A good answer could introduce the topic by way of an outline of the importance
of training and development to an organisation. It could also provide an
understanding of how training and development activities are linked with the
organisations overall HRM strategy. It should also note that the systematic
training cycle was developed to help organisations move away from ad -
hoc non-evaluated training and replace it with an orderly sequence of
training activities. An outline of the training cycle plan, design, deliver,
evaluate - should be included and a diagram showing it would be acceptable. A
good answer would also note where and how the training need is identified. This
can be done through activities such as performance reviews/ appraisals, critical
incident evaluation, quality audits, exit interviews, examination of business
plans, business strategies, problem identification, job analysis and job
descriptions/specifications/profiles, questionnaires to staff
groups/individuals, managers, customers/users, suppliers, team meetings
and direct observation from supervisors, amongst other things.
A good answer would note that the evaluation stage is considered the most
difficult and contentious. There are several models of evaluation with the
Kirkpatrick Model possibly the most widely adopted but others include
Ward, Bird and Rackham; and Birdi. Birdi identifies 5 outcomes that can be
assessed: (1) Individual-level outcomes (2) Knowledge outcomes (3)
Behavioural outcomes (4) Instrumental outcomes (5) Organisational-level
outcomes.

3. Account for the gap between the theory and practice of human
resource planning? (See 3.8 3.11 K&P)

A good answer will cover some or most of the following points:

The discussion should define what is meant by HR planning and provide an
outline some its aims. Keenan and Paterson (2008) state that it is the
systematic and continuing process of analyzing an organisations HR
requirements under changing conditions and developing resourcing strategies
appropriate to the longer term effectiveness of the organization. The aims of HR
planning are said by the same authors to be: anticipating the problems of
potential surpluses or deficits of human resources; developing a well trained and
flexible workforce and reducing the organisations dependence on external
recruitment.
A better answer will outline of the stages of HR planning e.g. analyzing the
current HR utilization; forecasting the demand for future human resources;
forecasting supply. The student could argue that while HR planning may provide
the senior management team with the data necessary for them to make
informed decisions about the stocks and flows of people in their organization, HR
planning fails on a number of counts. It is not and has not been taken seriously
by organizations. Many (Kerfoot and Knight; Rothwell) argue that it became
over-theoretical and divorced from organizational realities. Stronger students
might also consider the extent to which the model of the flexible firm could
overcome some of the difficulties involved in long-term HR planning through the
adoption of the various forms of flexibility, especially numerical and temporal
flexibility.