An overview of the Organizational Behavior in a company: Websolve

Organizational Behavior (OB) can be seen as the study and application of knowledge about the ways individuals, and groups of people act in their various organizations. This can be done by taking a systematic approach. That is, interpreting people-organization relationships in terms of whole groups, organizations, and whole social systems. “Its purpose is to build better relationships by achieving human objectives, organizational objectives, and social objectives.

” (http://www. nwlink. com/~donclark/leader/leadob. html).

Websolve relies on such a definition to positively influence its employees towards meeting company objectives.According to Websolve’s official website, “the company was created in May 2002, and is one of the newest companies in the Information Technology industry. ” Websolve is a software development company that specializes in the Network Management sector. The company also deals with software like e-MetRx.

Websolve's e-MetRx is an agentless monitoring solution that is designed to enhance performance and availability of VOIP IT and other distributed Web infrastructures like network devices, servers, network services, operating systems, applications, and application components.The company’s workforce is comprised of very dedicated personnel that work almost around the clock to deliver software packages that comply with requirements and meets customers’ expectations. The company’s line tag” Web solve: Verify, Perform, comply” is the perfect example of the company’s commitment to the customers’ satisfaction (http://www. websolve.

com/Default. aspx? base). Like many startup companies, Websolve is struggling with few of the Organizational Behavior concepts, although progress has been made over the past years.Now that we talk about introduction, let us look into an aspect of the Organizational Behavior: the Foundation of Competencies. Foundation of competencies Websolve is a company of about 25 people (Wesbsolve, Inc) .

Being a small size company, employees are involved in multitasking. According to Hellriegel D. ; Slocum J. in their book Organizational Behavior, the foundation of competencies for effectiveness include: • Self • Communication • Diversity • Ethics • Across cultures • Teams • Change. (Hellriegel D.

; Slocum J. 2007 p. 225) Let us look into some of the foundation competencies on the company’s perspective.Websolve invests in training personnel to sharpen their skills.

Communication is strongly encouraged, from face-to-face meeting, to email and conference calls. In fact, the company requires projects to be run in teams, to facilitate coordination, integration and better usage of the company’s assets. Websolve employs foreigners as well as US citizens, making the company culturally diverse. This diversity sometimes leads to signs of discrimination . Although, discrimination in terms of gender, race and ethnicity policy is forbidden and stated in the company’s policy, Websolve also emphasizes on the fact that it is a state law.

According to a release on the company website, “This is an even more serious matter given that some of the Websolve’s investors are members of the Department of Business and Economic Development (DED), a division of the State of Maryland that helps startups companies by providing office spaces and other resources. ” (http://websolve. com/Company/Investors/tabid/86/Default. aspx). At Websolve, there is no discrimination in the age of the company’s workers because employees’ ages range from the early twenties to the sixties.After foundation of competencies, there is another aspect of Organizational Behavior to be investigated here, which is reward.

Reward Various reward and incentive programs have been introduced in the company, in a bid to better motivate company employees. Since Websolve is seen as a startup company that has a limited amount of office space, the company rewards its employees by providing them with additional vacation time and also grants some cash awards from time to time. Managers and executives in this company are rewarded through this same reward program, and sometimes executives and managers are given first class tickets on business trips.There are also plans in place to implement some other forms of reward, such as giving offices equipped with windows to outstanding employees for doing good work.

These will be implemented once the company is able to acquire its own office space. Stress Another relevant aspect of Organizational Behavior is Stress. Like any other workplace, working at Websolve involves some level of stress, which results from excitement, feelings of anxiety, and/or physical tension, which can occur when the demands placed on working individuals might seem to exceed the workers’ ability to cope.In order to help reduce and manage stress at Websolve, the company’s top management allows employees to work on flexible schedules. This policy was put in place after one of the employees under pressure and stress from his family, responded with hostility to his coworkers who evidently could not understand some documentation he was trying to explain to him.

He yelled at the other employee: ‘This is a simple stuff, you can do it. It is so easy a fifth grader can do it’. The company’s internal evaluation proved later that the policy works. In fact, the company recorded a good level of retention, hence, minimizing Human Resource expenditure.In regards to the incident, the employee apologized to his coworker and admitted that he was under heavy pressure and stress: On one hand, his family, asking him to spend more time with them, and on the other hand, his work asking him to get things done on time.

The company also plans to install a health and fitness center within the working facility, which will enable employees to get regular exercise, and thus decrease the stress level among the employees. Moreover, Managers will be going on planned trips to Disneyworld and other fun destinations often, in a bid to reduce their stress levels.The Big five personality An additional aspect of Organizational Behavior besides stress, is the big five personality. According to authors Hellriegel and Slocum, “the big five personality includes factors like Emotional Stability, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness. ” (Hellriegel ; Slocum p.

46) Websolve encourages its employees to interact with one another. In doing so, it is possible to determine the employees’ state of mind and to ascertain when and why a co-worker is in a different mood than he/she is usually in.Managers are also encouraged to ask related questions, and sometimes, upon proper assessment, give the concerned individual some days off. Other techniques used by the management include meeting with employees to discuss any topic related to jobs. Furthermore, the company encourages employees to spend lunch time in groups, so as to facilitate interaction among the employees. However, no matter how hard the company tries to make things better, some employees resist change.

Websolve does not give up on those people and continues its efforts to help them.The company spends money into employees stress’ relief in order to increase personnel’s performance. To do so, Websolve organizes festivities, get-togethers, and group outings. Positive emotions are encouraged and negative emotions are discouraged.

“Good job” is usually used by managers to recognize employees for having a job well done. Harassment Harassment means “verbal or physical conduct that denigrates or shows hostility and aversion toward an individual because of that person’s race, skin color, religion, gender, national origin, age or disability. (Hellriegel, D. Slocum, J.

2007).One of the most common types of harassment in many companies is sexual harassment. At Websolve, sexual harassment is highly unwelcome and sexual advances made by superiors, especially when compliance is made a condition of continued employment or advancement, are frowned upon. Most of the employees at Websolve are men.

There is actually a lady who is a developer (programmer), but she works from home so as to be able to tend to her children. Being a foreigner, I have never experienced any type of harassment in this company.Leaders clearly state that harassment and discriminations are against the law. To comply with the law against discrimination, Websolve has been hiring foreigners from Africa, Asia and Europe, and treating them as equally as possible with the employees that are US residents.

Leadership and Leadership style According to Hellriegel and Slocum, the traits models for leadership include: • Intelligence • Maturity and breadth • Achievement drive • Integrity Intelligence: Websolve was able to enter the market by introducing software that many companies, especially engineers, needed in their daily activities.The executive team at Websolve knew that, as a software company, they had to design software that most companies will need in order to get their business going. That created a very good growth foundation for the company. Maturity and breadth: The leaders’ experience is making the company more mature. The latest statistics from the Small Business Administration (SBA) show that "about two-thirds of new employer establishments survive at lease two years, and 44 percent survive at least four years” (http://www. businessknowhow.

com/startup/business-failure. htm). Being in its sixth year, Websolve appears to have proven itself.The maturity of the leaders prevented the company from being bankrupt or going out of business.

This is an example of Websolve being created and managed by talented and mature leaders. Being a new company in the Information Technology environment, and having experienced and ambitious leaders to insure the company’s performance, have helped Websolve grow to operate more smoothly . The company is doing well, and its leaders are projecting major growth in the future. The success and the growth lead the company to compete against many software monitoring companies.Achievement drive: Websolve has customers and sales representative in the USA, in Canada, in Europe, and in Asia.

A lot more customers will soon be added. The company wants to go global. It has partnerships with many other companies to sell its software (http://www. websolve.

com/NewsEvents/PressReleases/tabid/58/Default. aspx). In order to increase productivity and maximize the use of resources, the company decided to go Virtual. That decision led the company into signing a partnership with VMWARE, one of the leading providers in virtualization.Integrity: Leaders are honest toward the subordinates, by updating them on the company growth.

Managers value feedback from employees on how to make the company perform at its best. To leaders, every single opinion counts in order to move the company forward. The leadership style is at two levels. The company consults individually and also in teams.

In fact, depending on the issue, Websolve may go with the individual consulting and/or the group consulting. Websolve’s employees work like a virtual team. As matter of fact, Websolve has teams and individuals employees working from New York, Texas, Virginia, and in many other states.Many of those workers are contacted through conference calls, e-mails, and other telecommuting technologies. Workers living in Virginia come often to the headquarters in Rockville, MD. Team members living in New York also come from time to time.

Most of the IT facilities connect employees across the country and across the globe to work as if they were onsite at the head quarters. The company, by doing so, saves a lot on travel expenses, on accommodations and, most of all the workers can work at their convenient time: no pressure.Websolve also has sales and technical support representatives in Asia, especially in Japan. Working with employees around the globe with different background, the company sometimes cannot communicate clearly with some of its employees. The time difference is another challenge the company faces.

The leadership is trying to find a common understanding to accommodate each employee. People resist changing and the next topic in the Organizational Behavior after leadership and leadership style is: resistance to change. Resistance to change Websolve is going through changes in the Information Technology design.Although many employees resist changes, leaders in the company are pushing towards it through a slow, and careful process . The company, as other major businesses wants to maximize profit and minimize cost. The change consists of using VMWare product suite for virtualization to save resources, and get many tasks done at one place bringing more reliability.

It is a difficult process for many engineers knowing that they are used to the old system. In fact, some engineers discouraged the idea of change because of how comfortable they feel in their fields of expertise.Websolve obviously, to comply with the change, is training its employees to familiarize them with the virtualization technology. The company is also sending employees to seminars to better understand the concept. The final aspect of the Organizational Behavior is limitation of goal settings. Limitations of goal setting Websolve projected many goals: some of them include acquiring more customers in North America, and Europe, but due to global competition and the company not having a large sales force, it has not reached this goal.

Efforts are being made by the company to bridge that gap.The use of contractors is one of such efforts. Moreover, the company has to keep up with the newest technologies and versions of applications and Operating System by modifying and developing software that are adaptable to the newer platforms. The company is located in the Maryland Technology and Development Center (MTDC) building in Rockville, MD, “and part of the company’s goal will be for it to acquire its own space. In addition to E-Metrx , Websolve developed other applications like E-Metrx manager. E-Metrx manager is software that manages the E-Metrx.

” (http://websolve. com/Products/eMetRxManager/tabid/105/Default. spx).The last product is the IPMEtrx, which is an excellent troubleshooting tool for most VOIP-related issues.

All the products (E-Metrx, E-Metrx manager, IPMetrx) have different prices depending on the complexity of the equipment. The company is also interested in merging different products into one single package, in order to give a discounted price to the customer, and get a better grip on the licensing program. Websolve plans on advertising its products in order to attract more customers. The advertising will include but not limited to commercial on radio, on television and online.Flyers might also be considered in the future.

Due to the company’s limited revenue, such advertisement plans have not yet been implemented. So far, Websolve has been targeting big companies like Verizon, and Bell Canada. Now, the company is also trying to target small companies in order to increase its profit. Conclusion In conclusion, the Organizational Behavior concepts applied in this business really reflected how Websolve’s employees interact with one another. As an emerging company, Websolve still faces many difficulties, despite major efforts deployed by its leaders on the subject matter.

Competitions being some of many challenges at Websolve, employees don’t look at them as threats. In fact, thanks to competition, Websolve’s employees realized that they have to work twice as hard to provide an outstanding product to the customers to help them confidently run their business. After taking this Organizational Behavior class, I realized that it takes a lot of patience, policies and good work for a company’s workers and from leaders to make a company work efficiently. Also, leaders at Websolve at the earliest stage understood that employees in order to make the company perform at its best should work as a team.Although misunderstandings and other behavioral incidents sometimes happen, the management and the leadership team try to limit effect by having firm policies into place, and taking proactive measures to minimize the chances of them occurring.

The company also conducts self and group evaluations among the personnel in order to learn on the individual and the team performance. Finally, all employees working at Websolve are strongly encouraged to report any misunderstandings or disputes in order for the company’s leaders to help resolve them.Only such a two-way system would allow everyone to be on the same page, and allow the company to mature in implementing Organizational Behavior principles. It certainly takes more than Foundation of Competencies, Reward, Stress , Five personalities, Harassment, Leadership and Leadership style, Resistance to change, and Limitation of goal settings to fully understand the Organizational Behavior in Websolve, however, the few concepts applied reflect some of the issues that the company faces.