Organisational Behaviour ORGB02-7

Assignment (ORGB02-7 /S1 04/2025)

Important please read this section before starting with your assignment.

The purpose of the assignment is to test your competence and mastery of the applicable module outcomes. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we see your answers/thoughts/ideas expressed in your own words. You will be penalised for simply copying theory without explanation or application to the scenario/s provided. You should use the theory in support of your own answer. No marks will be awarded for theory copied from any source.

Any sources used when researching and drafting your answers must be referenced correctly, as stipulated in the Milpark Reference Guide. You must work through the reference guide to ensure your assignment complies with the referencing requirements. Note also that even if you reference a source correctly, you cannot simply copy reams of information directly from it. As stated previously, answers should be drafted in your own words.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for this assignment: the Milpark Good Conduct and Disciplinary Policy provides that using AI tools when drafting an assessment is academic misconduct, unless express written instructions are issued by Milpark permitting the use of such tools in specific circumstances. For the purposes of this assignment, only the use of AI language and/or writing tools is permitted. You may only use Grammarly, QuillBot or Copilot for this purpose. The use of any generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT or Google Gemini) is prohibited. Failure to comply with this prohibition will result in sanctions being imposed.

If you are unsure whether you are permitted to use a specific application or tool, please reach out to your module tutor or academic owner for confirmation before simply proceeding.

AI use declaration

Important: ALL assignments must include this declaration, regardless of whether or not you used AI tools.

The AI use declaration is a personal acknowledgement that describes how you used AI tools/technologies to prepare your assignment. The declaration aims to create clarity and transparency regarding the following:

• The name and version of the AI tool/s with the URL used

• The prompt/s you used in the AI tool/s

• A brief explanation (no longer than two sentences) of how the output from the AI tools/technologies was used in the process of completing your assignment.

Please include the declaration in the following format at the end of your assignment before your Reference List:

Declaration of AI use

I acknowledge the use of [AI tool/technology name] and [URL/link] to generate

Prompt/s: I entered the following prompt/s

Use: I used the output to .../I modified the output to

OR

I have not used any AI tools or technologies to prepare this assignment.

Example 1

I acknowledge using Google Gemini [https://gemini.google.com/] to generate an outline for my assignment.

I entered the following prompt:

Provide an outline for a 500-word essay on the impact of climate change on

rural communities in South Africa.

I used the output at the initial stage of the assignment process to help plan my answer structure. I modified the outline generated, discarding several suggested paragraphs and replacing them with my own ideas based on the additional research and reading I completed and referenced below.

Use of AI language or writing tools is allowed

For this question, you may use AI language or writing tools when finalising your answer/s. Once you have drafted your own answers, you may, therefore, use a language or writing tool during the editing phase. Remember that while AI can assist you with language correction, it cannot replace thorough manual proofreading.

Only the following AI language or writing tools may be used: GrammarlyGo, QuillBot or Copilot.

Ensure that you complete the AI use declaration correctly.

SECTION A (50 MARKS) PARAGRAPH QUESTIONS

Answer the following questions: Question 1 (25 marks)

To match the applicant with a prospective company, you have been provided with a background to the company and the job description. We have given you the name of the shortlisted applicant. Take all this information into account when conducting your analysis. Read the scenario below relating to personality job fit and answer the questions that follow:

Personality and job fit

Company background

Company ABC is in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, a dynamic and competitive industry. It is a highly competitive sector with ever-changing consumer preferences, and companies in this sector need to keep up with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive. The FMCG sector is characterised by high turnover, low employee engagement and a need for rapid innovation. As such, it is important for companies in the sector to focus on employee training and development to improve employee performance.

Job title: Learning and Development Manager

Job description

A Learning and Development (L&D) Manager develops and executes learning strategies, designs and delivers training programmes, assesses development needs, and tracks learning effectiveness. They collaborate with employees and managers to support career development and manage budgets and vendor relationships

Responsibilities

• Create and execute learning strategies and

• Evaluate individual and organisational development

• Implement various learning methods companywide (e.g. coaching, job- shadowing, online training).

• Design and deliver e-learning courses, workshops and other

• Assess the success of development plans and help employees make the most of learning opportunities.

• Help managers develop their team members through career

• Track budgets and negotiate

• Hire and oversee training and L&D

Requirements and skills

• Proven experience as an L&D Manager, Training Manager or similar

• Current knowledge of effective L&D methods

• Familiarity with e-learning platforms and practices

• Experience in project management and budgeting

• Proficient in Microsoft Office and Learning Management Systems (LMS)

• Excellent communication and negotiation skills; sharp business acumen

• Ability to build rapport with employees and vendors

• BSc/BA in Business, Psychology or a related field

• Professional

Tebogo, the applicant, is 27 years old. She is an outgoing, confident, experienced L&D Manager with five years of experience with the Pick n Pay group, where she was recruited as a graduate. Her solid work record and expertise make her a top candidate for the position at Company ABC.

After conducting a thorough personality assessment using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment, Tebogos results indicated that her personality type is Extroversion, Intuitive, Thinking, and Perceiving (ENTP).

Source: Workable. 2023. Learning and Development Manager. [Online] Available from: https://resources.workable.com/learning-development-manager-job-description. [Accessed: 2024-10-

07].

• Is Tebogo a suitable candidate for the L&D Manager role (2 marks)? Substantiate your answer by applying each dimension of the MBTI personality model to the above scenario to evaluate Tebogos personality fit in terms of this (8 marks). (10)

• What conclusions can you make about Tebogos generational cohort in terms of her work values to guide a future employer on effective ways to manage her? (5)

• How do the five core dimensions of the Job Characteristics Model provide a motivational work setting to motivate Tebogo. Assumptions can be made to substantiate your answer to Question3. (10)

Question 2 (25 marks)

Read the information below, which provides an analogy to creating effective leadership teams, and answer the questions that follow.

Why leadership teams fail an analogy

Many of the leaders told us that their teams had so many internal problems that they were often unable to work together effectively. When I arrived as CEO, there was an extremely dysfunctional team. There was almost no communication within the team, the communication with the board didnt reflect reality, and communication with the management levels below was completely absent. The people on the team simply didnt like working with each other.

For good reason, most CEOs do not like to talk publicly about problems in their leadership teams. However, our research suggests that dysfunction is quite common. Instead of working together to advance their companys interests, many teams procrastinate, engage in political infighting, get caught up in unproductive debates, let themselves be overtaken by complacency, and more. The companies they are supposed to be leading suffer as a result.

Every senior leadership team will have its own unique dynamic, of course, but our research revealed some recurring patterns.

Shark tanks, petting zoos and mediocracies

Leadership teams tend to exhibit one of three main patterns of dysfunction. The first, characterised by infighting and political manoeuvring, we call a shark tank. The second, characterised by conflict avoidance and an overemphasis on collaboration, we call a petting zoo. And the third, characterised by complacency, a lack of competence, and an unhealthy focus on past success, we call a mediocracy. All three negatively affect team and corporate performance and can be equally disruptive.

The shark tank

Only highly ambitious leaders make it to the top team, and it is inevitable that they will compete with one anotherto promote their ideas, gain access to scarce resources, or win promotions. Within limits, this is healthy and important because competition fosters innovation and drives results. But unconstrained, it can lead to a self-serving, destructive feeding frenzy in which meetings become battlegrounds for personal agendas, decisions are made through power struggles rather than open discussion, and teams have difficulty coming to consensus and executing on strategic initiatives. Such is life in the shark tank.

The petting zoo

The second pattern of dysfunction involves a misguidedly deferential approach to cooperation. Like competition, cooperation is essential to a healthy teambut when members of a leadership team sacrifice vigorous debate for a facade of harmony, organisational performance suffers.

The mediocracy

While the first two patterns of dysfunction emerge from an overemphasis on either competition or collaboration, the third pattern emerges when neither competition nor collaboration is emphasised enough. Team members lack the skills or motivation needed to drive individual unit performance; at the same time, there is little collaborative spirit in the team. The executives operate in silos, hindering synergy and leading to duplicated efforts and missed opportunities.

• Consult the theory relating to processes and states of the Team Effectiveness Model (TEM) (Robbins & Judge, 2024:339) and analyse the information above in terms of team (15)

2.2 Apply Lewins three-step model as a method to implement organisational change. Explain how you would implement organisational change in the context of a petting zoo that aims to improve visitor experience and animal (5)

2.3 Provide any five recommendations on how to optimise team (5)

SECTION B (50 MARKS) CASE STUDY

Question 1 (50 marks)

Read the case study below and answer the questions that follow.

Changing company culture requires a movement, not a mandate

Culture is like the wind. It is invisible, yet its effect can be seen and felt. When it is blowing in your direction, it makes for smooth sailing. When it is blowing against you, everything is more difficult.

For organisations seeking to become more adaptive and innovative, culture change is often the most challenging part of the transformation. Innovation demands new behaviours from leaders and employees that are often incompatible with corporate cultures, which are historically focused on operational excellence and efficiency.

However, culture change cannot be achieved through a top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of how things are done around here. Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they cannot dictate optimism, trust, conviction or creativity.

Dr Reddys: a movement-minded case study

One leader who understands this well is G.V. Prasad, CEO of Dr Reddys, a 33- year-old global pharmaceutical company headquartered in India that produces affordable generic medication. With the companys more than seven distinct business units operating in 27 countries and more than 20 000 employees, decision-making had grown more complex, and branches of the organisation had become misaligned. Over the years, Dr Reddys had built in lots of procedures for many good reasons. But those procedures had also slowed the company down.

Prasad sought to evolve Dr Reddys culture to be nimble, innovative and patient- centred. He knew it required a journey to align and galvanise all employees. His leadership team began with a search for purpose. Over the course of several months, the Dr Reddys team worked with IDEO to learn about the needs of everyone, from shop floor workers to scientists, external partners and investors. Together they defined and distilled the purpose of the company, paring it down to four simple words that centre on the patient: Good health cant wait.

But instead of plastering this new slogan on motivational posters and repeating it in all-hands meetings, the leadership team began by quietly using it to start guiding their own decisions. The goal was to demonstrate this idea in action, not talk about it. Projects were selected across channels to highlight agility, innovation, and customer centricity. Product packaging was redesigned to be more user-friendly and increase adherence. The role of sales representatives in Russia was recast to act as knowledge hubs for physicians, since better physicians lead to healthier patients. A comprehensive internal data platform was developed to help Dr Reddys employees be proactive with their customer requests and solve any problems in an agile way.

At this point, it was time to more broadly share the stated purpose first internally with all employees and then externally with the world. At the internal launch event, Dr Reddys employees learned about their purpose and were invited to be part of realising it. Everyone was asked to make a personal promise about how they, in their current role, would contribute to good health cant wait. The following day, Dr Reddys unveiled a new brand identity and website that publicly stated its purpose. Soon after, the company established two new innovation studios in Hyderabad and Mumbai to offer additional structural support to creativity within the company.

Prasad saw a change in the company culture right away:

After we introduced the idea of good health cant wait, one of the scientists told me he developed a product in 15 days and broke every rule there was in the company. He was proudly stating that! Normally, just getting the raw materials would take him months, not to mention the rest of the process of making the medication. But he was acting on that urgency. Now, he is taking this lesson of being lean and applying it to all our procedures.

What does a movement look like?

To draw parallels between the journey of Dr Reddys and a movement, we need to better understand movements.

We often think of movements as starting with a call to action. However, movement research suggests that they actually start with emotion a diffuse dissatisfaction with the status quo and a broad sense that the current institutions and power structures of the society will not address the problem. This brewing discontent turns into a movement when a voice arises that provides a positive vision and a path forward thats within the power of the crowd.

Moreover, social movements typically start small. They begin with a group of passionate enthusiasts who deliver a few modest wins. While these wins are small, they are powerful in demonstrating efficacy to nonparticipants, and they help the movement gain steam. The movement really gathers force and scale once this group successfully co-opts existing networks and influencers. Eventually, in successful movements, leaders leverage their momentum and influence to institutionalise the change in the formal power structures and rules of society.

Practices for leading a cultural movement

Leaders should not be too quick or simplistic in their translation of social movement dynamics into change management plans. That said, leaders can learn a lot from the practices of skilful movement makers.

Frame the issue

Successful leaders of movements are often masters of framing situations in terms that stir emotion and incite action. Framing can also apply social pressure to conform. For example, Second-hand smoking kills. So shame on you for smoking around others.

In terms of organisational culture change, simply explaining the need for change will not cut it. Creating a sense of urgency is helpful, but can be short-lived. To harness peoples full, lasting commitment, they must feel a deep desire, and even responsibility, to change. A leader can do this by framing change within the organisations purpose the why we exist question. A good organisational purpose calls for the pursuit of greatness in service of others. It asks employees to be driven by more than personal gain. It gives meaning to work, conjures individual emotion, and incites collective action. Prasad framed Dr Reddys transformation as the pursuit of good health cant wait.

Demonstrate quick wins

Movement makers are very good at recognising the power of celebrating small wins. Research has shown that demonstrating efficacy is one way that movements bring in people who are sympathetic but not yet mobilised to join.

When it comes to organisational culture change, leaders too often fall into the trap of declaring the culture shifts they hope to see. Instead, they need to spotlight examples of actions they hope to see more of within the culture. Sometimes, these examples already exist within the culture, but at a limited scale. Other times, they need to be created. When Prasad and his leadership team launched projects across key divisions, those projects served to demonstrate the efficacy of a nimble, innovative, and customer-centred way of working and of how pursuit of purpose could deliver outcomes the business cared about. Once these projects were far enough along, the Dr Reddys leadership used them to help communicate their purpose and culture change ambitions.

Harness networks

Effective movement makers are extremely good at building coalitions, bridging disparate groups to form a larger and more diverse network that shares a common purpose. Effective movement makers know how to activate existing networks for their purposes.

Leadership at Dr Reddys did not hide in a backroom and come up with their purpose. Over the course of several months, people from across the organisation were engaged in the process. The approach was built on the belief that people are more apt to support what they have a stake in creating. During the organisation-wide launch event, Prasad invited all employees to make the purpose their own by defining how they personally would help deliver good health cant wait.

Create safe havens

Movement makers are experts at creating or identifying spaces within which movement members can craft strategy and discuss tactics.

Source: Adapted from: Walker,B & Soule, S.A. 2017. Changing company culture requires a movement not a mandate. [Online] Available from: https://hbr.org/2017/06/changing-company-culture-requires-a- movement-not-a-mandate [Accessed: 2024-09-23].

Required:

Based on the case study, write an essay of between 1 000 and 1 500 words (excluding the reference list). The following aspects must be included:

• Evaluate the case study in order to assess the process that the new leadership team used in order to create an innovative organisational culture at Dr Reddys.

• Recommend five ways in which a leadership team can develop an innovative culture.

Note to student: a maximum of 1 500 words is allowed. Please refer to and follow the requirements outlined in the marking rubric applicable to your assignment on the pages below. Provide word count in brackets at the end of the essay; e.g. [1 459 words].

It is important that you base your evaluation on a theoretical framework regarding the abovementioned concepts (i.e. theory first then application).

A minimum of five sources is required to support the theoretical base of the essay. Research is required.

TOTAL MARKS: 100