Business Management

1. How does the organization achieve “compliance” from its members?

As our organisation is unionised, it is harder for managers to receive positive compliance from it’s employees as the reward power is minimized. Due to the unionization, decisions about promotions and giving raises are not allowed to be made by supervisors and managers. This restricts the amount of control the managers have over the compliance of its employees. However, I believe that my organization still exploits some power over the interest of my team members.

One attempt of my supervisor’s to keep compliance amongst our ‘team’ is to reward hard work with a ‘party halfa’ once every month. This included half an hour out of one shift every month dedicated to “pigging out” on party food including lollies, chips, cake and coke etc. We did not receive the “party halfa” if we do not meet the packing standards. Everyone knew each individual had to perform to the standard and not have any one team member let the rest down and therefore increasing productivity and establishing compliance.

As shown above, my fellow employees are referred to by our supervisors and managers not as employees or staff, but a ‘team’ which symbolises this reality that we should operate not only for our own individual gain, but also the gain of the individuals in that team.

Another act of compliance can be implemented by coercive power. This example is a more subtle version of coercive power; the threat from the supervisor to stay back and finish our work if it is not completed by the end of our shift. The end of my shift is usually around 10.30pm, my fellow employees are young and my shifts include Wednesday nights and Friday nights and my young team members are usually planning to head out on the town after work so an extra half an hour to an hour is a threat to their social life. This usually creates an urgency to get the work done on time and therefore compliance from the team is established and there is an increase in productivity.

2. What are the characteristics of the “communications” in this organization?

The structure of the communication is a hierarchical framework with communication moving downward.

The regional manager usually communicates to the store manager problems with stock, budget and profits/losses. This is then filtered down through the ranks from management to supervisors and finally to us- the workers.