Technological Processes and Organisational Change

#Organizations that #adopt #newcommunication #technologies marked by #increase in amount of #communication

Fancy  much?

Technology seems to be always taking bigger anf bigger bites in our everyday lives, but isn't it strange that is replacing people and reducing everyday. What are the negative and the positive sides of it? A restaurant in London is replacing waitresses with iPad's. What happened to the human interaction? Will this restaurant work better with the technology and will the saving of wages justify the loss of human contact and social interaction and a waiter/watress we can ask what something is made of or what the special's of the day are? 

"Valentines who can't stop fiddling with their phone, or swiping their iPad may just be distracted by the touch tables long enough for you to wow them.

While your sweetheart is ordering delicious black cod, or tasty duck California rolls, you can tweek the ambiance, patterns and colours on the table. Project a beach scene, a splash of bright red, or a swirling psychedelic spin of every pattern in the Inamo hard drive.

If your date is a little dull, there's a memory game, a menu of places to go on to (or escape to) and social media is being added soon (Pinterest for food shots would be ideal). When you're ready to leave, it's a matter of hitting the bill button"

The restaurant launched in 2009 - pre iPad era - and as with all tech, there are new and improved versions of touch tables coming onto the market each year.

In my opinion the communication with the consumer/customer has gone too far and although to some it may sound a cool idea in the beggining, with a little time it will definitely not be a favorite for consumers. People like human interaction no matter how much technology savvy they may be. Whilst doing a research on this, menupad.com popped up. 

MENUPAD.COM

WHAT'S MENUPAD?

MenuPad is an interactive menu. Designed specifically for the restaurant and catering industries, MenuPad uses the Apple iPad, in replacement of a paper-based menu. This allows diners to view images of menu items and customise their order in a simple, intuitive way. The menupad is as far as the ipad restaurant service should go, for the purpose of giving the customers the opportunity to be able to look at the meals and also more detailed information in case needed, however, iPads should not cut out the human contact and interaction  - the waiter/waitress.—

Emotion Processes

This week we learned about how emotions can affect the culture, outcomes, performance etc. in a workplace. What I'm going to focus this on week is workplace bullying. To talk about this, I found this article which is quite interesting and it shows us that besides the above mentioned  'damages', bullying cost companies millions of dollars. The worst thing for a company that hires a bully is not the billions of dollars in revenue but the trauma experienced in the company that this bully creates. If bullies are not dealt with appropriately, the company will suffer low productivity, absenteeism and even physical illness. Bullies, unlike bad managers deliberately repeat always-continued behavior, which is designed to make staff feel bad.  These people taint company’s names! Bullying is intentional and harmful, bullying is not cool and who does it, it is a criminal offence. For more click here

B U LL Y I N G     I S    NOT   C O O L

"Altogether 949 municipal employees answered a mailed questionnaire; 10.1% of them felt themselves bullied. Especially some features in the functioning of the work unit, e.g. poor information flow, an authoritative way of settling differences of opinion, lack of mutual conversations about the tasks and goals of the work unit, and insufficient possibilities to influence matters concerning oneself can all promote bullying. Both the victims and the observers of bullying perceived deficiencies in these aspects at their workplace. Gender and age did not explain bullying. The victims of bullying felt that envy, a weak superior, competition for tasks or advancement, and competition for the supervisor's favor and approval were the most common reasons for bullying". 

The sources of bullying - psychological work environment and organizational climate, 2003, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, vol. 5

Leadership Processes

Reactions to Organizational Change

—“Unplanned” Change: Organizational Crisis

Organizational crisis evolves in three stages:

1.—Precrisis
2.—Crisis
3. Postcrisis
4. Communication must deal with external and internal constituencies

Organizational changes can be a harsh crisis and can cause a lot of breakage within internal consituencies and caos with the external if good communication does not cover it. 
The move of the Coca Cola company from Greece to Switzerland, because of the crisis, is one of the examples how efficient communication can keep this media story cool from the overheated media. Mr Imellos, chief financial officer communicated to the media that "Greece should be happy about Coca Cola Hellenic’s move. “We don’t see it as a major blow to Greece. We see it as a day for Greece to be proud. We are a Greek multinational”. This is one of his statements that kept the coca cola company under the impression that this situation was kept under control and everything that was happening had been greatly planned and that it was not a fiasco. "The company’s market capitalisation stood at €5.7bn (£4.6bn) on Tuesday, putting it on course to enter the FTSE 100. Coca-Cola Hellenic, which already has secondary listings in London and New York, will relocate its headquarters from Greece to Switzerland at the same time". 

To avoid impending crisis managers would need to take a strategic approach. It is important to build a strategy which improves business processes and communication flow across the plants. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9602593/Greeces-Coca-Cola-Hellenic-called-Athens-Stock-Exchange-into-question.html

Conflict Management Process

Incompatible goals are what cause most conflicts at workplaces. This can be because each person has different views and perspectives and different ways of marching to success. Most conflicts are caused because of the way things are communicated, but there are times that people’s approaches are very different to the others. “Conflict is “the interaction of interdependent people who perceive opposition of goals, aims and values, and who see the other party as potentially interfering with the realisation of these goal. (Putnam & Poole 1987 in Miller p.183)

The levels of organizational conflict are:

Interpersonal level

Intergroup conflict

Interorganizational

A good example of the interorganizational conflict is the “ 4000 Foxonn workers on strike over iPhone5 quality control measures, inadequate training”.

This conflict is a Manifest conflict according to Pondy’s phases of conflict “conflict is enacted through communication, escalating and de-escalating through different strategies. This is where it’s really happening - confrontation occurs, even where there is an attempt at problem solving”

The workers of Foxonn are on strike because of the very high demanding quality standard from apple, without receiving a proper training.

http://www.bgr.com/2012/10/05/iphone-5-foxconn-workers-strike-quality-control-measures-cited/