IPS 215 – Social behaviour & social processes in organisation Assignment

Assignment 1:

Introduction:

As part of the module, the elements of personal and organisational communication, personal and work-related stress, and changing roles of men and women at work were discussed will chapters 2, 14 and 16 respectively.

Amongst various other elements, the chapters discussed amongst other items the following:

• Improvingcommunication
• Majorcauses of stress
• Stressmanagement strategies
• Genderbased glass ceiling

Objective:

New Belgium Brewing Company, based in Colorado, was founded by a husband and a wife team who met over a beer at a friend’s house. A year later they founded their own brewery, which has grown to become America’s third largest craft brewery.

After they toured several European villages famous for beer, the plan for New Belgium Brewing Company started to take shape. The new entrepreneurs wanted to create an outstanding beer and minimise the company’s footprint on the planet. They prepared a vision statement and a list of core values before they ever sold a bottle of beer. One of the core values reads “Environmental stewardship: Honouring nature at every turn of the business”. This core value reflects their strong belief in sustainability. They created a high involvement employee culture where the consult their employees in all decision-making process that will impact them.

The company employed more than 1000 employees. 32 years after the company was founded, the economic challenges started to hit it hard. The two founders had to communicate to the employees about the effect this has had and announce possible downsizing the business and what it would mean to them. After this announcement, the business started to see a decline in attendance and reduced productivity levels. The employee’s response was that the announcement came in as a shock and it was not only affecting their work but their personal lives as well.

The company further announced that because most of the type of work they do, the target for the downsizing is to retain a ratio of 70/30, 70 percent being male employees and 30 percent females.

Structure & Questions:

Study the case study above and answer the questions that follow. These are long discussion questions and I expect long discussion answers.

1. Explain the major personal and work-related causes of stress with particular reference to what some of thosecauses might be as it relates to the case study
2. Explain the importance and benefits of communication and why it was important for the organisation toengage and communicate to its employees about the challenges it was facing
3. Discusseffective stress management strategies can be implemented in this case?
4. Discuss the challenges facing women as a result of gender bias and discrimination in the workplace.Furthermore, explain what the implication of gender discrimination are based on 

Lay-out:

• The“assignment” should not be longer than 5 pages excluding 
• TheAssignment MUST include  If no references are supplied 10% will be deducted.
• Thesubmission MUST be mailed my UFH e-mail (smapete@ufh.ac.za)

• Thefile MUST be named as follows: IPS 215 – Ass1 – (Initials, Surname – Student number).doc
• Thefile MUST be ONLY in Ms Word format (.doc / .docx). No .pdf will be accepted
• No excuses of lack of data or load shedding will be accepted, as the submission dates will be communicatedto you well in 
• Deadlinesare strictly at 17:00 on the day of submission.
• Theassignment must be Ariel; 10; 5 Line spacing, justified
• Pleasetake a good look at the rubric that will be sent with the assignment as it will guide the allocation of marks