Behavioural Issues in Strategy Implementation

It is vital to bear in mind that organizational change is not an intellectual process concerned with the design of ever-more-complex and elegant organization structures. It is to do with the human side of enterprise and is essentially about changing people’s attitudes, feelings and – above all else – their behavior. The behavioral of the employees affect the success of the organization. Strategic implementation requires support, discipline, motivation and hard work from all manager and employees.

Influence Tactics: The organizational leaders have to successfully implement the strategies and achieve the objectives. Therefore the leader has to change the behavior of superiors, peers or subordinates. For this they must develop and communicate the vision of the future and motivate organizational members to move into that direction.

Power: it is the potential ability to influence the behavior of others. Leaders often use their power to influence others and implement strategy. Formal authority that comes through leaders position in the organization (He cannot use the power to influence customers and government officials) the leaders have to exercise something more than that of the formal authority (Expertise, charisma, reward power, information power, legitimate power, coercive power).

Empowerment as a way of Influencing  Behavior: The top executives have to empower lower level employees. Training, self managed work groups eliminating whole levels of management in organization and aggressive use of automation are some of the ways to empower people at various places.

Political Implications of Power: Organization politics is defined as those set of activities engaged in by people in order to acquire, enhance and employ power and other resources to achieve preferred outcomes in organizational setting characterized by uncertainties.   Organization must try to manage political behavior while implementing strategies. They should;

  • Define job duties clearly.
  • Design job properly.
  • Demonstrate proper behaviors.
  • Promote understanding.
  • Allocate resources judiciously.

Leadership Style and Culture Change: Culture is the set of values, beliefs, behaviors that help its members understand what the organization stands for, how it does things and what it considers important. Firms culture must be appropriate and support their firm. The culture should have some value in it . To change the corporate culture involves persuading people to abandon many of their existing beliefs and values, and the behaviors that stem from them, and to adopt new ones. The first difficulty that arises in practice is to identify the principal characteristics of the existing culture. The process of understanding and gaining insight into the existing culture can be aided by using one of the standard and properly validated inventories or questionnaires that a number of consultants have developed to measure characteristics of corporate culture. These offer the advantage of being able to benchmark the culture against those of other, comparable firms that have used the same instruments. The weakness of this approach is that the information thus obtained tends to be more superficial and less rich than material from other sources such as interviews and group discussions and from study of the company’s history. In carrying out this diagnostic exercise, such instruments can be supplemented by surveys of employee opinions and attitudes and complementary information from surveys of customers and suppliers or the public at large.

Values and Culture: Value is something that has worth and importance to an individual. People should have shared values. This value keeps the every one from the top management down to factory persons on the factory floor pulling in the same direction.

Ethics and Strategy: Ethics are contemporary standards and a principle or conducts that govern the action and behavior of individuals within the organization. In order that the business system function successfully the organization has to avoid certain unethical practices and the organization has to bound by legal laws and government rules and regulations.

Managing Resistance to Change: To change is almost always unavoidable, but its strength can be minimized by careful advance. Top management tends to see change in its strategic context. Rank-and-file employees are most likely to be aware of its impact on important aspects of their working lives. Some resistance planning, which involves thinking about such issues as: Who will be affected by the proposed changes, both directly and indirectly? From their point of view, what aspects of their working lives will be affected? Who should communicate information about change, when and by what means? What management style is to be used?

Managing Conflict: Conflict is a process in which an effort is purposefully made by one person or unit to block another that results in frustrating the attainment of the others goals or the furthering of his interests. The organization has to resolve the conflicts.

Linking Performance and Pay to Strategies: In order to implement the strategies effectively the organization has to align salary increases, promotions, merit pay, bonuses etc., more closely to support the long term objectives of the organization.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *