Corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be defined as the “comprehensive approach organisations take to meet or exceed the expectations of stake-holders beyond such measures as revenue, profit and legal obligations. It covers community investment, human rights and employee relations, environmental practises and ethical conducts.”(Mullins,L,2010, Page 713).

An organisation within which there is a good example of CSR is tesco.  Examples of CSR within tesco are :

Creating jobs, building careers

Tesco says that their growth means that their will always be jobs.  They also state that their success has meant that their employees have a steady income and real security for themselves and their family.  Tesco’s aim is to create locals jobs that will allow local communities to also share in Tesco’s success.  Due to the size of tesco and their diverse range of jobs for employees, tesco state that they have in the last ten years created a job every 20 minutes.  Lots of jobs have been given to people that have been unemployed for a long time and are being given the benefits of being a tesco employee.  An example of this from tesco is that they state on their website that they have created 667 jobs for long term unemployed people through eight new registration schemes (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)

Healthy options, more choice

Tesco is always helping their customers to make healthy choices. They have done this by having new healthier ranges, and helping customers eat more fruit and vegetables and they provide better nutritional labelling on their products through which they encourage their customers to eat more healthily. Tesco is also encouraging people to do more exercise and have in the Last year got 7 million people active on an international scale though, aerobics in Thailand, football in China and charity runs in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. This shows that they are encouraging customers to make healthier choices and trying to get people to be more active. (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)

A little care for the environment

Tesco is taking making effort to cut back on their direct impact on the environment and are also encouraging suppliers and customers to do the same. Tesco has stated that they pledge to be a zero carbon business by 2050. Some of the things that tesco are aiming to do in order to achieve this that they want:

·         To halve carbon emissions from all new stores worldwide between before 2020 (compared with an equivalent store built in 2006)

·         To halve emissions from our existing stores and distribution centres worldwide by 2020

·         To halve the CO₂ created per case of goods delivered worldwide by 2012 (compared with 2006)

This year we diverted 100% of our waste in the UK directly away from landfill. We also gave 120 products a carbon-label, to help customers make environmental choices. (tesco-graduates.com, 2011)

References

Mullins, Laurie, 2010, Management and Organisational Behaviour, Ninth Edition, London,

Tesco .com (2012) Tesco Corporate Social Responsibility [online] Available from:http://www.tesco-graduates.com/home/about/social-responsibility [Accessed 30 January 2012].

Tesco-graduates.com (2012) A little care for the environment [online] Available from: http://cr2010.tescoplc.com/environmental.aspx [Accessed 30 January 2012].

Tesco-graduates.com (2012) Creating jobs, building careers [online] Available from: http://cr2010.tescoplc.com/buying-and-selling-our-products-responsibly.aspx [Accessed 30 January 2012].

Tesco-graduates.com (2012) Healthy options, choice [online] Available from: http://cr2010.tescoplc.com/healthy-choices.aspx [Accessed 30 January 2012].

Personality

The difference between the nurture and nature approach to personality is that:

The nature approach says that personality is inherited and that traits of personality can be passed down to people though genetics, for example if a person was a power and successful leader 200 years ago then their descendants would also be successful and powerful people. On the other hand the nurture approach explains that that personality is developed due to environmental conditions this means that dependant on where a individual is will have an impact on their personality. For example if a person works in an office and they had a happy personality before depending on the working environment they employ personality can change in contrast to eh work environment.  Below is explained the Nomothetic and ideographic approaches to personality .

Nomothetic

The Nomothetic approaches are primarily concerned with the collection of group data.  An example of a nomothetic approach is the nature approach to personality.

Nomothetic approaches tend to view environmental and social influences as not very important and view personality as inherited and that it does not change even in a different environment. It does not reduce the difficulty that personality brings but the , Nomothetic approach says that it is possible to measure and predict the ways in which personality types would behave in certain circumstances. (Mullins, 2008)

Eyesenck conducted an investigation of 700 servicemen and was able to use thorough statistical data to test his hypotheses, what  his findings showed was that it supported the notion that there were two major differences which could be measured these were extroversion and stability .

What Eysenck`s theory showed was that an individual could fit in to one of four main personality

types.  Eysenck’s theory and his subsequent Personality Inventory allowed identification of a personality type. From this description it was possible to predict likely behaviours. Eysenck had a clear view about the constancy of personality. He believed that personality was largely inherited and that introverts and extroverts are born with differing physiological tendencies. Furthermore, he argued that the personality we are born with is largely unalterable by environmental influences. Eyesenck`s approach to personality relates to managers in organisations which are concerned with predicting the future behaviour of employees, for Selection and promotion.  (Mullins, 2004)

Ideographic

The Idiographic approaches are concerned with understanding the individuality of people

and development.  An example of an ideographic approach is the nurture approach to personality They regard personality development as a process which is open to change. The measurement of traits is seen as inappropriate in that one person’s responses you may not be abler to compare to another persons. The ideographic approach suggests that personality assessment is not a valid method of understanding the unique

ways in which a person may understand the world. The depth of a person’s personality cannot be revealed in a way such as with paper-and-pencil questionnaires.

 Cattell and Eysenck both used similar  methods in studying personality. He used

Quantitative. He used objective techniques in order to analyse his data and followed traditional scientific procedures in order to understand personality. Cattell used three main sources for the collection of personality data. These are

1 L-data (life record data) – this is used in ratings by trained observers.

2 Q-data (self-rating questionnaire) –  these are responses to a questionnaire which measured

personality traits

3 T-data (test data) – these are observations collected in specific situation tests.

                                                                                                                                          (Mullins, 2004)

In my opinion the dominant influence between the nurture and nature is the nurture approach. The reason for this is that there is no guarantee that personality traits can or will be inherited by people . As times change, personality traits that may have been an advantage in the past will not be necessary in the present day, so if someone inherits some traits form a family member they will not be able to use these personality traits depending on their positions within a business.  Nurture personality approach is more dominant because what it shows is that someone’s personality is affected and can be changed due to their environment they are within , this is true as if someone hangs out with a certain type of people or works in a certain job a persons personality will change.  For example a student in the university personality would change and adapt to a new environment when they go to a job ,  the persons would be more serious and focused on doing their job on the other hand the personality of the student would be happy and wanting to have fun but due to the change in environment their personality would be affected.  For this reason the more dominant approach of personality is nurture.

References

Mullins. L (2004) management and organisational behaviour , 7^th edition : Ft Prentice Hall

Perception and communication

A situation within which my initial perception of someone was incorrect was in school. The situation was that a new person had joined the school and due to the dress code they had, what was perceived by the students was that he was weird. This was due to stereotypical view because the person used to wear a lot of dark clothing and did not try to interact with other people or make any contribution in class. What my initial perception was that this person was odd and that I would not like to be friends with this person. Then one day I was told by the teacher to work with the person in pairs on a project. Instead of being withdrawn and not wanting to speak to, the persons and I got along very well and he had said that he liked gothic music that was the reason for his dress code and that people thought that he was some depressed kid and stayed away from him. After getting to know the person I was able to realise my initial perception was incorrect and that he was the same as other but was more shy, as the project progressed we become good friends until we finished school. In order to avoid making this type of judgment and having an incorrect perception of an individual I would try to get to know the person first and not listen to stereotypes as this could lead to an incorrect perception of someone

After reading the article on “how to improve staff communication”

http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/articles/2010/07/how-to-improve-staff-communication.htm

 I have identified 3 ways in which the university can improve communication with students these are:

• 1.    The university could branch further into social networking and set up face book and twitter pages on which latest information regarding the university could be posted, in regard to any events taking place at the university or if they are taking place in the surrounding area around the university.  By doing this an improvement in communication between staff and students would be established as students and staff would be provided the same information as staff members regarding events.

• 2.       Instead of using the email system that is being used at present by the university, they could notify students by text messages, face book and twitter messages if lectures are cancelled or if the university will not be open on the day, this could be due to bad weather such as snow.

• 3.       Weekly tutorial meetings could take place in order. This would be very good as it would allow students to ask any questions or explaining any difficulties they may be facing in the course with their personal tutors.  the tutors could also sit down with each student in their group and talk to them about the current progress they are making on the course and how they could improve their progress in order to achieve higher grades and they could be told about essential deadline dates or work they need to have completed In order to make sure that all students are up to date on the course.  

Conflict

A conflict is when a issue arises in a group of two or more people about an issue that they both disagree about and by having different views and not accepting the others opinions or suggestions a conflict arises. An example to define conflict would be that while studying at Uxbridge college I was put into a group of three with two other people they where john and James, what we were asked to do was to present a slideshow presentation on airline business in front of the class. After some personality clashes we came to a conclusion and I was nominated to be leder of the group , by acting as leader of the group I assigned tasks for all members of the group to carry out. The members in our group were each given the task to do 3 slides each to describe the content within the presentation. John was meant to do the first three slides that was the introduction to the presentation and gave some background information on airlines. I did the main slides that went into detail about the airlines and included other important information and the James was to do the last slides with a conclusion. The conflict that arose within the group was that I and john felt that James was not contributing to the group presentation and so we confronted him, James was not willing to do the work and was expecting to be able to receive credit fro the work that I and James had done. The strategy that we used was to tell James that if he did not do his part and contribute to the presentation then we would leave the PowerPoint slides blank and he would have to explain to the lecturer why he had not done the work. In the end James did not contribute to the PowerPoint presentation and the group as a whole failed the task due to the work being incomplete.

French and ravens sources of power

Leadership and power are closely linked. People tend to follow those who are powerful. And because others follow, the person with power leads. Most effective leaders use mainly referent and expert power. (mindtools.com, 2011)

The different French and ravens sources of power that were identified in 1959 are:

Coercive power:  It is the belief that a person is entitled to punish others for not complying. (mindtools.com, 2011).  The problem that can be with this source of power is that it can be prone to abuse. Examples of coercive power is that, people in higher positions in a business threatening employees under their control  with being fired or demoting them to lower positions, giving them task that are undesirable and the managers knowing that an employee is not comfortable with  carrying out the tasks.  Most mangers will abuse this power although they may have to punish employees if they do not carry out the job they were assigned to do, the managers do not have the right to threaten their employees without any reasons. This type of power will cause lots of problems for the business, it could lead to employees not willing to work under the mangers and either leaving or asking to be moved to different departments within the business. An example of coercive power within a business is that a manger has assingemd employees a task to complete, an employ has refused to carry out the task because he does not feel comfortable doing the task. The employee objects to the manger and say that he would like to be assigned to another task because he is not comfortable carrying out the task because he may not have much experience in the certain filed. The manager not accepting to give the employee a different assignment they are more comfortable and feeling a sense of non compliance from the employee says to the employee if they do not carry out the task they will be fired. This would be a case of coercive power, in order for the leader to be a good leader he or she needs to make sure that they do not rely on coercive power alone and also instead of just punishing employees also reward them for jobs done well.

Reward power : This results from one person's ability to compensate another for compliance. . (mindtools.com, 2011).  People that have power are able to give rewards to employees these can range from promotions, desirable assignments training opportunities or a compliment.  All of these are rewards given by people that are in higher positions in power.  Although employees will expect to receive big rewards in return for getting assignments completed to the person in power for example a managers standards, they will expect to receive a reward for this. Although this can increase performance of staff and can benefit the business n a positive way , reward power can also be problematic. The reason behind this is that there is not much control in the business in ways to reward employees as even the CEO has to ask permission of the board of directors before handing out rewards to employees, also if the reward given is not of any perceived value by individuals then the power will weaken.  The reward should be used to motivate employees to work hard on getting assignments done and should not be given to employees very easily. An example of reward power in a business is if an employee completed to a high standard a task they were assigned to, the reward given to him or her by the mangers being impressed with the quality of work be a raise in salary or a promotion to a higher position.

Expert power: This is based on a person's superior skill and knowledge. (mindtools.com, 2011)  when a person in a higher position has advanced knowledge and skills to deal with task in the business,  employees will look up to them and try to learn from them new skills that would allow them to develop the skills as well. When expertise have been demonstrated then people tend to respect and trust their supervisors and mangers more. An expert in a specific subject matter, the ideals of the person in power will have more value and they will be looked up to for leadership in the certain subject area.  It is one of the best ways to improve leadership skills as the leaders can use their confidence and rational thinking and expand them to other subjects and issues. An example of expert power would be facing problems at work with a private issue or maybe unable to complete the tasks,  a member of the team or the manager would offer solutions to the problems that they would be facing, the employees would take the advice and apply it to the job at hand the reason for this is that the manger has more experience in the field of work.

Referent power: This is the result of a person's perceived attractiveness, worthiness, and right to respect from others (mindtools.com, 2011) this is thought of as charisma, charm, admiration, or appeal.  Referent power comes from a person liking and respecting another and identifies with the person in a similar manner. An example of referent manner is an employee with some charm and makes everyone around them feel good for this reason they normally have a lot of influence in decision making.  To have referent power is a big responsibility because work is not necessarily need to be done in order to earn it, for this reason people with this power can abuse it quite easily.  An example of this in business would be, if an employee was very likable in a business and hard working and able to make people happy but lacked honesty and would often lie could rise to power and use the power in ways to hurt and alienate fellow employees for personal gains or advantage in getting a promotion.  If a leader wanted to have a successful leadership position and be respected  it would not be a good strategy for him or her to  rely solely on referent power alone.  When combined with other sources of power, however, it can help you achieve great success (mindtools.com, 2011).

Legitimate power: This comes from the belief that a person has the right to make demands, and expect compliance and obedience from others. Social hierarchies, cultural norms, and organizational structure all provide the basis for legitimate power. (mindtools.com, 2011). Legitimate power is unpredictable and unstable, because if the title of position of a person is lost then legitimate power will disappear, the reason for this is that people where influence by the position the individual had and not by the person that position.  An example of this is that if the CEO of Microsoft was to be fired from his position by the board of directors then he would lose his legitimate power as people and employees were influenced not by who he was and what he did but the power and position he had in the business, suck as making important decisions that could lead to increased profits and a better reputation of the business.  In terms of legitimate power ,  the scope of power is limited to the time that people such as board of directors believe that the CEO has the right to control and if they believe they are making a loss then the CEO would instantly be removed form the position and legitimate power would be lost. Also relying on legitimate power as the only way to influence people is not enough, in order to be a good leader you need more and in some job roles legitimate power will not be needed at all in order to influence people.

What can be seen from the work related stress article is that, businesses should make sure that their staff members are not put under stress by giving them lots of work to do, they businesses should make sure that employees are given sufficient breaks and not required to work long hours.  By looking at the statistics mentioned in the article, what can be seen is that stress is slowly becoming a major risk to business; this will have a large impact on how employees work and the business performance.  If employees are under stress they will not be able to work to the best of their ability and as the article shows will take days of from work. This can lead to the business not being able to provide the same services or manufactures the same amount of products which will result in the business losing profits and could lead to employees leaving due to the large amount of work they are required to do and because of stress cannot handle. Work relates stress does not only affect an employee’s performance at work but also affect their home life and health. Business in order to decrease the stress that their employees are having should carry out surveys to find out what they feel is leading to them having too much stress and try to deal with the problems that employees are facing. Due to the recession many business have had to make their employees redundant and this has lead to employees who have been kept on by the business to take on extra work, this would also lead to stress for employees. The article shows that there are lots of different factors contributing to work related stress and that business are not doing anything to deal with it, what the article outlines is that if business do not make changes then employees will leave the business not being able to deal with stress and this will effect the business in the long run.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in order for person to be a successful leader and be an inspiration for their employees , it is essential that a good leader how at least two of French and ravens powers, the powers that would be best to have are referent power and expert , the reason for this is that both the powers go hand in hand and attributes of these powers allow a person within any type of business to be a good leader and get along with employees without problems, employees will also be more comfortable in a working environment if the leader has expertise in certain fields and is also rewarding and encourages employees when they do a good job. There will always be conflict in organisations especially when people with different personalities are required to work together, what can be done to avoid there being conflicts developing the business should know which employees work well together and have the same way of thinking as this will allow people with the same way of thinking to work together, this can be tricky though as in a group there will always be conflicts between members of a group.  As mentioned when at college working with others was very stressful and by confronting the person who there was conflict with a solution to the problem was found and the group although did not pass was able to work well together. 

References

mindtools.com, (2011) French and ravens source of power [online] Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_56.htm [Accessed 21 December 2011].

Leadership

The difference between management and leadership are that:

Leader are less bureaucratic and by the book people such as management. Leaders also take more risks and try to get the business to go into new ventures and expand the business to generate higher profits.  They also motivate and inspire employees to come up with ideas that they think the business should consider which could help generate more income, by listening to the employees ideas the employees are motivate and feel more accepted and look up to the leader.  They are also able to encourage people to follow a new vision or direction that a business is heading in.  leaders are also more personal and like to have a good relationship with employees and staff members as they have empathy for employees well being and care about how their employees are feeling at work and if there are any problems the employee is experiencing if so they leader aims to find a solution to this in order for the staff members to work better together.  The also communicate with all employees and like to know what employees think of the business they are working in and make suggestions in the way that the business could change in order to be more successful and the leaders encourage change and not sticking to one industry and expanding in to new ventures.

What management does on the other hand compared to leaders is that they are more by the book bureaucratic. Managers do not like to take risks and are not to concerned with expanding the business interests and are more focused on keeping control of situations and solving any problems within the business.  The managers also like to plan and budget when going into new ventures as opposed to leaders who would motivate employees and staff members to expand the business managers think that it can be a risk not worth taking that could lead to the business making a loss and overlook the potentials for making a profit.  Managers also like to organise things and like to assign roles to employees that are specific and just want employees to get on with the task they are carrying out and like to reputation in the business. On the other hand leaders would like to make changes mangers would not be as comfortable in changes being made in the business such as new ways of organising information and employees making suggestions for changes.  They also like to encourage order and predictability such as if the business thinks of making changes the mangers would be against this and say that they predict that the business would not generate more income and could lead to a loss being made such as, if a business that sells shoes starts to sell coffee the business would make a loss and not a profit from this change in the business is what a manger would think.  Where as if a  business that sells shoes was to sell coffee and have a sitting area for customers it could lead to increased profit or loss this is the type of risk that a leader would take and motivate employees to follow though with and mangers would be completely opposed to this type of idea.  The managers also like to be in control and want employees to follow their orders and not make suggestions and neither are they encourage to input any ideas , mangers compared to leaders have l low level of emotional involvement  and do not like to concern themselves with problems employees may be facing in their private life they just want employees to get on with their job while at wok . manager also like to see results and profit  being generated by a business and do not like excuses if they assign a job role to an employee the managers like the employees to get the job done just as they had planned.

 Some of the key leaders within my college in the business department were the head of the year and the course team leaders . within the college they had a large influence and impact on the way in which the business department operated and with out the leadership then the business department would not have been successful as was.  They reason for them being good leaders was because the head of year was a efficient and effective team leader was because she took into account any problems that students or staff members were having and helped find solutions to the problems, they head of year also set up lots of different projects and tried to introduce new ways of teaching that were not present in the college at that time.  the head of year was also very inspirational and helped to motivate the lectures as well as the students within the college.

The course team leaders were good leaders as well, the reason that they were effective in their role was that the groups of the students that they were assignment to were able to achieve the results we wanted due to the help that we received from the course leaders, any type of help that the students need was given to them by the course team leaders. The were also very effective in listening to the lectures and the opinions of the students and staff themselves, they were also very relaxed and had empathy for their lectures and the students , for example when a lecturer received bad news and left the class , the team course leader was quick to leave his class and look after his staff member.  The team leaders can be linked back to the theory trait of cutlers leadership jigsaw.

Vision –  The leaders within the college have a vision and their vision is to be able to expand their business department, help their students to be able to achieve high results and be able to receive more funding for them to continue improving their ways of teaching.

Motivation –  course team leaders were able to motivate me and my fellow students by  telling us that if we were able to complete our coursework and pass the course before the  deadline date then we would be taken to Thorpe park for the day, this was a very good sign of the team leaders motivating the students by telling that they would receive a reward or an incentive for completing the task of completing work on time and the students made sure to complete their work before the deadlines and were able to achieve good results.

Empowerment – This means that the leaders help their students to become more independent make decisions by themselves that can lead to what they will do in the future. By empowering employees and students the lead will show that they are able to take into account suggestions and opinions on the way in which e business department in the college operates and changes that could be made to improve the teaching .

Example –  By being an example towards the lectures and the students, they would be able to present themselves as good motivators and leaders, the students would also listen to what the head of year had to say and take it into account and the staff members would also take into account any suggestions that the leaders had for them in order to be able to better teach a specific subject area or take risks with the college with new projects that would show lectures and students that by taking risks the results could be very beneficial

Communications – There was good communication between staff members and students and this showed the team leaders that they were able to in the role of leadership communicate ideas and task to their employees and through good communication in a polite manner be able to encourage the student sot be able to achieve the results the course team leaders want on their students to gain. By communicating their ideas to their  staff members they could be able to make innovations in to the teaching style that are currently present within the college.

Relationships –  There was very good communion between the leaders and the students , this was essential the reasons being that if they was a bad relationship between the team leaders and students the course leader and head of year may have been good leaders but due to the relationship they had with the students the students would not pay attention and look up to the leaders as inspirational or motivational.

In conclusion what can be seen is that in order for any type of organisation to functional mangers and leader are very important to have within the business if the business does not have good leadership then  the business will not be able to expand the business and if it tries to could lead to failure, the leaders need to be able to take risks and not have lack of passion and confidence as this could have an impact on the staff members with a business. The leaders also need to be very organised and not act like a manager would , they have to interact with employees, take suggestions and receive constructive criticism about their leadership. They should also be able to show empathy towards their staff members as this will mean that they will receive more respect and recognition from their employees and the business in a whole.

Organisational Culture

Some of the visible aspects of culture in Primark are:

The language and jargon that is used by employees and managers in Primark is formal, when communicating to each other managers will often use other words to describe what they want the employees to do instead of plain English. Examples of jargon that is used by managers in Primark includes deep dive which means getting into detail, joined up thinking which means to discusses view points of employees and come to an agreement or compromise, win solution that means to provide a product or service that makes everyone happy, moving forward meaning to progress on an idea and USP that means the unique selling point. All of this jargon is used most often by the managers when speaking to the employees.  The language that employees use when dealing with customers at Primark is more laid back and less formal so that they are able to communicate on the same level as the customers to provide a good service. Managers will use jargon in place of other words in order to get a point across in a swift manner and expect the employees to understand what they mean by using these words.  It also displays a sense of authority as  when a manager uses jargon to talk to an employee is that it puts them in a higher position as they are using formal language whereas an employee would use more informal language even when communicating with their managers in Primark.

Another visible aspect of culture in Primark is their motto, which is `uptown clothes down right prices`.  This shows that Primark is promoting to its customers that it is able to provide its customers good quality clothes for a price that is reasonably cheap and that they believe that customers would be willing to pay for the products

Unwritten rules and expectations that Primark has form its staff members and managers is for them to always be dressed in their uniform and be present themselves in a professional manner when dealing with customers.

The way in which managers dress in Primark is that managers generally wear white shirts and trousers for men and white blouses and either skirts or trousers for women which is more formal and presets the managers as having more responsibility and be more professional. The uniform for sales employees is all black clothes and black shoes. The difference between the clothing shows that managers have higher authority and a higher rank within the organisations than the sales employees.  The dress code of the managers looks more for an office environment but the dress code of Primark sales employees is although unique does not look good and can give customers the idea that Primark does not take into consideration their employees dress code and how this can impact whether customers would feel comfortable dealing with people wear all black or not.

A power culture

What handy meant by the power culture, was that in an organisations driven by power there would be a lot of employees that would be aiming to reach certain positions in the business and that there would be a central powerful figure in the business. The central powerful figure in a business such as Pirmark would be either a CEO or a chairman of the business, as it is the highest position within the business and the CEO or chairman has influence and power  over decisions made in the business and ultimately has the final say about what changes or improvements need to be made in the business. The power culture also shows that the employees within this environment are able to make fast decision it is ideal for the head of a business to be in this culture because based on their decision a business can expand or fail .  there is more faith in one person in the power culture and it does not have faith in comities as the individual in power needs to be able to change very rapidly and adapt new strategy of business or can die due to the person in power.

A role culture

The role culture portrays what happens in an organisation that does not need to constantly change. In which employees are assignment jobs to carry out by higher up managers and staff within the organisations. The work that is given to the employees is decided by certain rules or regulations that have to be adhered to. There is not much co-ordinations within the organisation and the work is all paper based. The power within the culture of a bank is based on the hierarchy with senior staff having a lot of power and junior staff not having much objexction and carrying out the jobs at hand.  The job description is more important within these types of organisations such as banks and building societies as opposed to skill and personalities of people who control the culture. Employees in the organisation are not advised or encouraged to performance better as what they are doing following their job description is sufficient enough

A task culture

A task culture organisation focuses on getting projects done, it also relies on team work between staff, the task that is at hand is the key for the organisation to be able to generate a profit by completing it. It relies heavily on research development actives.  Lots of different task are carried out by employees in order to accomplish future goals. An example of a task  culture based organisation would be tesco , the reason for this is that tesco relies heavily on information and research data that it  collects , this research data is used to see how tesco is performing and if it is doing well enough to expand their business interests. The are lots of different teams in tesco that deal with different task and they are costly changing the task in Tesco . Within a task based organisation it is very important for their to be information and expertise because their needs to be information for the business to use in order to operate and assignment task to employees to carry out. The expertise is very important because if the organisation such as tesco has people who have a lot of expertise and are expertise in their field of work within tesco then the business will be able to carry out the task and feel comfortable that they will be able to succeed in completion of the tasks.  The culture is also  flexible as it offers their to be changes for example if employees need to be able to leave at a certain time or someone is not comfortable doing the task they are assignment to tesco gives them these options. In contrast to power role culture task culture is much more relaxed and less bureaucratic. If there is lack of information or the information is not up to date with restrictions on resources the culture can become a more power based or role based culture.

A person culture

Person culture focuses on single induviduals as they are central top priority in a person culture organisation. The self emplyed organisation revloves ajd depeds on these people and it only exists to serve the interest to the people within the organisation. Examples of a people Culture is architects, barristers and stockbrokers. The whole business in these fields of work relies upon the employees a lot and so there is more communication and interaction between the employee and managers in the business. In the power culture there is athority and employees are told what  to do and in a person cultue the person is able to choose what projects they will work on as it will generate alot of income for the business and the employee will feel more comefortable when working on projects this would wllow.for them to perform.much more productivly. The perdob culture is more sutible for a self emplyed induvidual and is not appropriate for a business organisation as it only deals with the best interest and performance of an induvidual and not a group of people for which a role or task organisation would be best suited to.

The problem with classifying culture into one of the four types described above is that culture is made up of all four of the types mentioned by Handy. Without the classification of one type then culture would not be appropriately categorised. It is difficult to define culture due to the many definitions it has, culture has different meanings depending on the way a business operates. The way in which employees work in a business has a large impact on the culture within the business and not all types o of culture can be classified in the four different types of culture. If culture is classified into one of the culture types then it puts restrictions on the business organisational structure because they would not be able to make changes in the organisation in order to improve the business as when employees would have adjusted to a type of culture environment then the would face difficulty and it could lead t employees leaving the businesses. The employees for example in the role culture are very different form the person culture, the reason for this is that in a person culture it revolves around a single individual to be able to keep the business running and the person culture allows for the person such as an architect and take on different roles in the business and make suggestions for changes. Whereas in the role culture all decisions and work assigned is based on as hierarchy system , employees do not have much say and have to complete task up to the rules and regulations that have been set out by the organisation.

In conclusion the organisation culture in an organisations is very important as it allows the organisations to function properly, there is no business that is not able to be categories in one of the types of culture mentioned  above . The reasons is that structure of a business relies on the culture to be able to operate a business in a good manner and make sure that its employees are able to know what they are required to do within the business. The culture in a business is very important to be analysed as put into practice because it will allow the employees to be more comfortable in carrying out their tasks. The organisation culture that Primark would be best categories is the task culture, the reason is that as Primark has lots of different teams in their stores all the teams are assigned a certain amount of task to be completed by a certain date. This falls under the task culture as the business relies on employees to carry out different tasks at the same time to be able to provide their customers with the service. The employees of Primark are in a comfortable laid back culture as each employee in a team is assigned tasks that are not difficult to carry out and team members help each other to carry out the assigned tasks. 

motivation: Improving Staff Performance

The difference between the process and content theories is that, the content theory assume that people have a set of needs that they pursue and it is what motivates employees and process theories assume that an individual is able to select their own goals and choose how to achieve them through a process of calculation and it deals with how does something motivate employees. An example of a process theory is Victor Vrooms theory of expectancy. The expectancy theory is made up of three steps these are effort, performance and reward. An organisation would use this theory as it shows that if employees put in effort at their performance will show this and they would be rewarded with incentives and their wages.

  

Tesco motivate their employees by many different ways these include :

•         Tesco give their employees the chance to all of their employees that have worked for Tesco for more than a year the chance to save up to £50 every 4 weeks for either 3 or 5 years and receive a tax-free bonus at the end. Employees can use your savings and bonus to buy Tesco shares at up to 20% less than the market price, or take their earnings.(Tesco- Careers share our success,2011)
•         Tesco employees are also given a staff privilege card, this allows them to be able to receive 10% discount in store and extra club card points. (Tesco - Careers staff privilege card ,2011)
•         Tesco give their employees give their employees incentives in order to keep them working hard and motivated, the employees are given discounts on theme parks, holidays and gym memberships which are available all year round.  As Tesco likes to reward hard work from employees they also have special offers throughout the year in order to make sure all employees receive their reward. (Tesco- Careers childcare vouchers,2011)

The expectancy theory relates to tesco in the way that due to employees putting in effort at work it relates to their performance and helps to portray a good image of tesco to their customers. As Tesco employees work hard they are given different types of rewards such as discounts and this motivates the employees to work harder due to this way of motivating the employees performance is even greater and employees gain more rewards.

In conclusion what can be seen form the data shown is that tesco is able to improve their staff performance very effectively by offering their employees lots of incentives and rewards they are able to motivate their employees to work harder in order to gain their rewards. This leads to an improvement in staff performance as they would all want to receive rewards, this leads to the working environment being more comfortable and Vroom’s expectancy theory shows that employees want different rewards and that by companies motivating their staff members the employees will be able to reach to reach their goals and work harder in the process.