What constitutes the organisation’s general environment Essay

Question 1. What constitutes the organisation’s general environment? How would this impact on decisions made by a change agent?
Various external forces are able to make an impact on organization and that is called organisation’s general environment.
Among these external forces are technological, legal, political, economic, social and ecological elements, and they all influence organization. General environment may have a direct and indirect influence on the organization.
Person that makes a decision on changes should carefully take these external forces in account while creating change strategy. In order for a change to be successfully implemented, all mentioned external forces should be analysed. It should be indicated that there is always a risk, a possible force majeure and these external forces may change the situation for the company for better or for worse unexpectedly.
Question 2. Through what strategies do organisations gain ‘control’ over their environments? What implications does this have for how change is managed?
Strategies that help to establish a control over environments are usually managed by specialists responsible for corporate strategy issues.
Some popular methods of gaining control over environment forces include:
Forming the special company units responsible for each segment of environments, such as government relations, PR, etc.
Proactive strategies that enable organization to influence their environment forces and determine them in a favourable directions.
Establishing a good cooperation and coordination with other players on a certain market (such coordination may appear in a form of ventures, alliances, etc.). Such strategy helps to provide a large scale research, overcome different obstacles on the foreign markets, etc.)
Question 3. What is associated with a transorganisational system? Describe its stages and compare and contrast this with the OD process.
A common definition of a transorganisational system states that its a group of organizations, formed with a certain goal.
There are four stages of a transorganisational system: identification, convention, organisation, evaluation.
Identification stage’s main target is to identify the members of a transorganisational system and may be a complicated process dur to the different interests and relationship between possible members of such systems. Therefore, sometimes organizations may even hire a qualified external change agent in order to make a correct agreement for this group and help them with group leadership issues.
Second stage is convention and its about bringing together identified members of a transorganisational system.
The next stage is called organization. This stage means that members should start to interact with each other and develop rules, structure, and procedures.
And finally the last stage is evaluation, which is a process of assessment of system’s performance.
Comparing a transorganisational system functioning and organization development process we should note they have very much in common. Organization development is also aimed on implementation of effective change. In my opinion, the main difference in these processes is a leadership issue, because in a transorganisational system it’s quite a complicated thing and power in this group is often decentralised.
Question 4. Describe both downsizing and re-engineering, then compare and contrast them
In my opinion, downsizing and re-engineering are quite different approaches of restructuring, although they both deal with organizational redesign.
First approach, downsizing, is aimed to decrease the size of organization, to make it function in a more effective way.
Re-engineering is used in order to dramatically change the organization; it means a total transformation of company’s former rules and procedures.
Question 5. What are the approaches to work design? Give an example of each.
There are two approaches to work design can be named: the engineering approach and the motivational approach.
The engineering approach is a traditional method which uses lower-skilled people and therefore the wages are lower. It is used by big factories, for example in automobile industry.
On the contrary, motivational approach is focused on staff, on their satisfaction and motivation. This strategy is modern and provides a better productivity levels. As an example of companies that use motivational approach, we can mention advertising agencies, investing companies, etc.
Question 6 Why are the work design’ approaches more effective when integrated?
In an average organization there may be a need in usage of different approaches for the different groups of workers. Some staff may be more affected by motivational techniques; others may be much more effective under a traditional approach