Elements of Organizational Behaviour

Group and Teamwork.

In Tim Horton's company, the organizational behavior of groups and teams is based on Taylor’s Scientific Management Theory. In this theory, published in 1909, Frederick Winslow Taylor argued that encouraging people to work as hard as possible is not an efficient means of boosting productivity and optimizing human resources. Instead, the argument was that businesses would benefit more by breaking tasks up into simpler ones and bringing up the idea of managers and workers working together instead of against each other – and this is the main element of teamwork in today’s businesses (Tanneberg et al., 2019; Tafvelin et al., 2019).

In Tim Horton's company, this theory shapes groups and teams. For instance, the UI/UX design team charged with making the company’s website and apps more friendly to the customers has the different tasks broken down into different individuals, where people are expected to meet set targets as individuals in order to advance the overall objectives of the team. While they are working individually, the team leader (manager) is always monitoring their performance (physically and virtually) to ensure that all members of the team are meeting set targets. The manager also builds trust by empowering them to make decisions on their designated tasks, as the main principle is built mainly on the principle of innovation and creativity. Ideas and knowledge sharing are also encouraged because, at the end of the day, the team will be judged by their performance as a group and not individually.

Communication

In order to avert the Hawthorne Effect, which is a situation where the behavior of an individual changes if the person is being monitored closely, the helical model of communication is adopted in the company. This form of communication is thought to follow the helix structure, where the team leader (manager) does not closely monitor the team members as they are all empowered to take decisions on issues bordering their designated tasks (Vanstraelen, 2019).

Instead, the manager has a centralized communication channel, via Whatsapp, phone calls, or SMS, where the team members can reach him at any time of the day to address issues that they face in the course of undertaking their designated tasks. Additionally, there is a Telegram group where all members of the team are also required to participate in. Through this group, they can share challenges they face and get answers to such issues instantly. It must be pointed out that while the company has fixed working hours, the UI and UX design teams can also work outside these working hours (remotely), and that is why they use these communication mediums to share and address issues when they are not in the office.

Power and politics

Transformation leadership is the order of the day, with managers influencing employees through exemplary actions (Khan et al., 2020; Udin, 2020). They don’t just talk, they also walk their tasks. In this form of leadership, the working system sees all employees as equals and family, with the central goal of making the company better and attaining set objectives. Therefore, the managers are easily approachable.

Under McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, their managers fall into the Theory Y category, based on the understanding that they believe the employees are inherently keen to work. They believe that it is pivotal to assist the employees with the intent of thriving in helping the team develop opportunities and trusting them to get on with certain tasks independently. Theory Y managers are also keen to foster a welcoming work environment that is capable of promoting cooperation and cohesion in the system. This is the main reason why managers are able to produce more positive results, as they combine a positive team environment with individualized opportunities for growth to produce a working environment capable of boosting the morale of employees and ultimately helping the company attain set objectives.

References

Khan, H., Rehmat, M., Butt, T.H., Farooqi, S., & Asim, J. (2020) Impact of transformational leadership on work performance, burnout and social loafing: a mediation model. Future Business Journal, 6(40). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43093-020-00043-8

Tafvelin, S., Nielsen, K., von Thiele Schwarz, U., & Stenling, A. (2019). Leading well is a matter of resources: Leader vigour and peer support augments the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout. Work & Stress, 33(2), 156-172.

Tanneberg, D., Peters, J., & Rueckert, E. (2019). Intrinsic motivation and mental replay enable efficient online adaptation in stochastic recurrent networks. Neural networks, 109, 67-80.

Udin U (2020) Transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: an empirical investigation. Revista ESPACIOS 41(01)

Vanstraelen, A. (2019). Discussion of “how does intrinsic motivation improve auditor judgment in complex audit tasks?”. Contemporary Accounting Research, 36(1), 132-138.