Organization and behavior - Tổ chức và Hành vi

BTEC HND IN BUSINESS (MANAGEMENT)
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REGISTRATION NO.
UNIT TITLE
ASSIGNMENT TITLE
ASSIGNMENT NO
NAME OF ASSESSOR
SUBMISSION DEADLINE

Trần Quyết Thắng - Joe
F05-194
Organisations and Behaviour
Microsoft – Ford Motor Company
1 of 2 (individual report)
Mr. John Andre
21st November 2012

I, __________Trần Quyết Thắng - Joe_________ hereby confirm that this assignment is
my own work and not copied or plagiarized from any source. I have referenced the
sources from which information is obtained by me for this assignment.

________________________________
_________________________

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OB Assignment 1 Oct 2012

Date:


Unit Outcomes
Outcome

Evidence for the
criteria

Feedback

Assessor’s decision
First
attempt

Understand
the
relationship
between
organisation
al
structure
and culture

LO1

Understand
different
approaches
to
management
and
leadership

LO2

compare and
contrast different
organisational
structures and
culture

1.1

explain how the
relationship
between an
organisation’s
structure and
culture can
impact on the
performance of
the business

1.2

discuss the
factors which
influence
individual
behaviour at
work

1.3

compare the
effectiveness of
different
leadership styles
in different
organisations

2.1

explain how
organisational
theory underpins
the practice of
management

2.2

evaluate the
different

approaches to
management
used by different
organisations

2.3

Merit grades awarded

M1

M2

M3

Distinction grades awarded

D1

D2

D3

OB Assignment 1 Oct 2012

Rework

Internal
Verification

Outcome

Evidence for the
criteria

Feedback

Internal
Verification

Assessor’s decision
First
attempt

Rework

Assignment

( ) Well-structured; Reference is done properly / should be done (if any)

Overall, you’ve

Areas for improvement:

ASSESSOR SIGNATURE

NAME:...............................................................................

OB Assignment 1 Oct 2012

DATE

/

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Outcome

Evidence for the
criteria

Feedback

Assessor’s decision
First
attempt

Rework

(Oral feedback was also provided)

STUDENT SIGNATURE

DATE

NAME :..............................................................................

FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY

VERIFIED
DATE

YES

NO

: .................................................................

VERIFIED BY : .................................................................
NAME

: .................................................................

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Verification


Organizational and Behavior – Microsoft & Ford Motor Company
Title page

Prepare for: Professor John Andre
Organization and Behavior

BTEC HND in Business (Finance)
Banking Academy, Hanoi

Submitted on November 21st 2012

Prepared by: Trần Quyết Thắng – Joe
Class: F05 – B
Registration No.: ITP – F05 – 194

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Table of Contents

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Introduction
This report aims to find out the structure, culture, the influence of individual at work, the
theories of management and leadership style of two organizations: Microsoft and Ford Motor
Company. Microsoft and Ford Motor Company are the big companies in the world. One
produces the technological devices like tablets, PCs … and another company manufactures
and trades cars. Each company has a specific structure and culture which suit to company in
order to motivate the employees, maximize the productivity and increase the outputs. Both
companies are directly affected by the individual behaviour of the employees at work. There
are many factors which influence the workers; something can encourage them but something
is opposite. Besides, the management of working is very important. A lot of management
theories were invented and most of them are useful for managers of companies. Furthermore,

the leaders are the keys of running business of companies. There are several ways for the
leaders choose to control the companies. If they bring the right leadership style, the company
can gain profit easily and efficiently.

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Outcome 1.1: Using the facts of the company presented in the case above and that of
another company of your choosing compares and contrast different organizational
structures and cultures.

Microsoft used to be the biggest technology company in the world. Since 2000, Steve
Ballmer has been CEO of Microsoft Company. At this time (Microsoft) they have changed
too much compare with the period when Bill Gates was in charge. According to Charles Hill
and Gareth Jones in Essentials of Strategic Management, Microsoft has a relatively flat
structure (2008, p 217). This shows that Microsoft has controlled and allocated their work
with few levels of managers. Therefore between staffs and managers, there are no middle
managers and the decisions would be made directly and quickly from head of business.
Additionally, “Some say that Steve Sinofsky, credited with bringing order to the sometimeschaotic software development process at Microsoft — partly by cutting layers of
management, should be the man to replace Steve Ballmer.” (Hartung, 2012). It refers that
Microsoft can have a flatter structure than it had before. Ford Motor Company, which is one
of the biggest manufacturing cars, also has many troubles with the way leaders control work.
Bill Ford told Alan Mulally-current CEO of Ford Motor Company that: “Ford is a place
where they wait for the leader to tell them what to do." (Kiley, 2009). Nevertheless it has
changed under Mulally’s period. He flattened Ford’s structure and recentralized control (Hill
& Jones, 2009, p454). Mulally has speech up the communication from the top headers to
employees. It helps the work in Ford become quicker and more effective.
Moreover, each organization has different types of culture that make running business

efficiently. Microsoft and Ford Motor Company are not the exceptions. Under Ballmer,
Microsoft’s culture has changed. Now he does not pay much attention to designing, he has
only found out how to increase profit although Microsoft is an information technology
company. Vanity Fair about the Microsoft employees like that: “It leads to employees
focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.” with a
title “Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That
Felled a Tech Giant”. (2012). It was amazing with a company that needs the creativities like
Microsoft. Ballmer only cares about how employees get jobs done. He does not motivate
Microsoft workers to help them become more innovative so that the employees cannot bring
the new ideas to improve products or invent unique tech software and hardware. This shows
that Ballmer applied the non-innovative culture. In contrast with Microsoft; Alan Mulally
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had the best decisions to help Ford Motor Company turn over the difficulty. Author Bryce G.
Hoffman told National Public Radio: “He always saw one of his key roles as kind of being
the cheerleader-in-chief, keeping everybody motivated and focused.”(Garner-Davies, 2012)
This pointed out that Ford Motor Company used task culture to encourage their employees.
Mulally divided work into different groups to complete particular duties. In this case, he
empowered employees to help them make decisions quickly and make give them
responsibilities to complete jobs effectively. Mulally revived Ford Motor Company, he
realized the way to innovate and make products that customers need with high quality, saving
fuel, medium prices, etc.

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Outcome 1.2: Explain how the relationship between an organisation’s structure and
culture can impact on the performance of the business
The relationship between an organization’s structure and culture are very important, it
has a huge effect to organizations. Microsoft has a flat structure but they use non-innovative
culture. It seems not to match. Non-innovative culture means organizations do not provide
anything to make workers become more creative and try to do everything even mistakes.
While flat structure gives employees more opportunity delegation. Back to Microsoft’s
business performance, Microsoft peaked at $60/share in 2000, just as Mr. Ballmer took the
reins and 2002 it had fallen into the $20/share (Hartung, 2012). Additionally, the performance
showed on Wall Street; despite booming sales and profits from its flagship products, in the
last decade Microsoft’s stock barely budged from around $30 (Eichenwald, 2012)

(Source: />Ballmer has changed Microsoft culture that is not relevant with the structure. This is
the main reason to explain the bad business performance of Microsoft Corporation.
Compare with Microsoft, Ford Motor Co has reasonable changes since restructuring.
Alan Mulally has flattened Ford’s structure to make decision quicker, less time wasting and
communicate easier. Besides that, he has implemented the task culture to promote Ford’s
employees have more innovation, creativities. It has expressed through Ford’s business
performance. Within three months of his arrival, Mulally sold Wall Street on a $23 billion
recapitalization (Kiley, 2009). Furthermore, Ford stock that once sold for $1.96 a share in

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2009 goes for just over $12 a share today. (In case you were wondering, that’s a 500%
increase!) (Garner-Davies, 2012).

(Source: />The changes have worked efficiently and help Ford make more profit.
The two charts above illustrate the share prices of Microsoft and Ford Motor
Company in the last dedicate. The share prices has a significant fluctuation from
approximately 2$/share (2009) to over 18$/share (2011) while share prices of Microsoft is
quite stable around 25$ to 30$/share, except the last months in 2007 and in 2009. Both
Microsoft and Ford have the lowest share price in 2009. In the period from 2009 to 2012,
Microsoft’s share price increased from 15$ to nearly 30$ it means that the share price rose to
100%.

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Outcome 1.3: Discuss the factors which influence individual behaviour at work
In all companies, there are many factors that affect the individual behavior at work
and Microsoft is no exception. To motivate the employees, Microsoft gives all employees
new Surface tablets, Windows 8 phones and PCs. These are meaningful gifts, they make
employees innovate to have more new ideas in order to create improve and create new
technical products. Some employees tweeted and posted Facebook status updates after the
announcement, verifying these details and calling it the “Best. Company meeting. Ever.”
(Clay, 2012). This is a positive attitude that Microsoft bring to employees to encourage and
satisfy them. Besides, it is used to ensure that all employees can take more efforts to design
and create the intelligent technological devices in the future. It means that the productivity
and outputs can be increased. As the result, Microsoft can improve their performance and
increase profit.
Furthermore, Microsoft has several security disclosure policies and all employees are
compulsory to conduct them. Employees have to conduct the security policy carefully. One of
the security policies that the employees have to follow is the requirement when reporting
security vulnerabilities in third-party products. Policy states that: “Any vulnerability

information provided to the vendor is not intended for public use, but for the vendor's use to
identify and remediate the vulnerability” (Goodin, 2011). It means that employees warrant
that the information that they report to vendors secretively and vendors only use this to fix the
security hole of products. Microsoft wants to make sure that its products are safety to protect
the users. Employees have to remind their selves comply with the policy. Therefore,
sometime they have to keep the secrets; it can make them feel uncomfortable and disable
their thinking.

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Outcome 2.1: Compare the effectiveness of different leadership styles in different
organisations
Alan Mulally – the current CEO of Ford Motor Company since 2006, has changed
Ford very much. He made Ford become stronger and survived after the crisis. He is a
democratic leader. Importing a practice from Boeing, he introduced weekly meetings that
were mandatory for all senior managers. (Reed, 2012) He does that to find out what they need
and what they are going to do. Alan Mulally tries to look for the acquiescence through his
direct reports. He has to focus on the important problems and after that, he would provide
them to employees with small sections. By doing these, Alan Mulally could exploit the ideas
and experience from the workers and make decisions effectively. Additionally, Mulally wants
to makes employees understand and believe his decisions and take more efforts to do the
plans. This style also creates the favorable working conditions to help employees innovate
ideas; join to make the plan and find the ways to do it and bring the positive impact on
employees’ emotion. Under Mulally period, Ford was survived and had numerous success.
Besides, Steve Ballmer – the current CEO of Microsoft has the different leadership
style to control work and manage the employees. Steve Ballmer was criticized about the loss
of Microsoft share prices however he has changed very much. Today, Ballmer’s leadership

style is more diplomatic, and he’s more likely to delegate decision-making authority. One of
his goals is to do a better job of developing managers and leaders. (Reece & Brandt, 2006,
p82) It shows that Steve Ballmer is a coaching leader. Ballmer wants to develop the
Microsoft workers. In the nutshell, it is a method that leaders use to support, guide and
challenge the employees to maximize their performance and increase productivity and output.
Besides, the leaders can help the employees get the clear goals themselves and orient how
they achieve these goals. Steve Ballmer applies coaching style to recognize the strengths and
weaknesses of each individual to give them the aids so that employees could be developed.
Additionally, Ballmer wants to Microsoft staffs trusts and believes him. By doing this, he and
employees can have the good relationship; it helps employees achieve the individual goals
and organization meet objectives.
Moreover, it is the easy way for Ballmer to guide the employees and collect the
information about the troubles which workers have. After that, he could give them the
advices. In addition, Ballmer wants to motive Microsoft workers have more and more ideas
to produce the unique technological goods.

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Outcome 2.2: Explain how organisational theory underpins the practice of management

Ford Motor Co is a manufacturing car and it applied Taylor’s Scientific Management
early to make the work become easier. Henry Ford realized that each employee assembled all
parts of a car and the process was very slow and not efficient and he had divided the process
into small portions. After using this theory, Henry Ford could develop the performance of
workers; improve how they got job done well. Besides, the employees of each step can be
easily replaced if they do not have responsibilities to the job. For example, the flywheel
magneto assembly was divided into 29 separate steps and workers placed only one part in the

assembly before pushing the flywheel down the line to the next employee (Ford Motor Co,
n.d). As the result of applying scientific of manager, Ford Motor Company maximized the
manufacturing process and reducing the time to producing a car so that it could increase the
productivity and outputs and gained more profit. Furthermore, at this time, the Ford workers’
salaries went up significantly. In 1914, Ford introduced another innovation: the $5 workday.
This was about twice the going wage (Mankiw, 2008, p330). It shows that Ford paid salaries
for employees based on the result of work. The rise of productivity and outputs helped for
Ford workers have high salaries and it motivated and encouraged them work hard.
Besides dividing work, Ford also have many training programs and specialize their
employees like the organizational theory of Max Weber. There is a direct quote from
Organizational Behavior: Global and Southern African Perspectives, by Stephen P. Robbins
(2009, p402): “Every Ford worker was assigned a specific, repetitive task. Ford was able to
produce cars at the rate of one every ten second, while using employees who had relatively
limited skills.” This points out that the employees are specialized for different specific tasks
in the manufacturing process of building cars so they could have much experience and be
trained on a particular activity. In addition, the specialized employees are prospective to raise
the worker productivity and output. In this case, each worker assembles different parts of a
car, it makes the process efficiently and the productivity is higher than the singer worker
trying to complete a car. This would cut down the producer time and cost and took full
advantage of workers’ skills and experience.

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Outcome 2.3: Evaluate the different approaches to management used by different
organisations

It is not easy to choose a suitable leadership style for any organization because it

depends on some factors like the structure, culture of organizations or the personalities of the
followers. Steve Ballmer is an example about changing the leadership style to have a good fit.
During the early years at Microsoft, Ballmer had a domineering management style and was
unwilling to delegate the decision making: still, he accomplished a great deal (Reece &
Brandt, 2006, p82) however he changed. Microsoft has flat structure; it dedicates that the
employees need to be motivated and encouraged to have an effective work. Therefore, the
coerciveness which means the leaders make the decisions and employees have to get job done
is not suitable to the working style of Microsoft workers. Additionally, the easiest way to
have a reasonable match is to change leadership style because there are many followers and
to change them need a lot of time. As the result, Steve Ballmer has changed himself. By
changing from a coercive leader to a coaching leader, it has several better fits with the flat
structure of Microsoft. The employees are not only guided but also delegate to make
decisions. The work can become more effective.
In Ford Motor Company, CEO Alan Mulally also find the suitable leadership style for
own. Ford was in deep trouble in 2006, with a poisonous culture in which executives fought
turf wars and sat through endless meetings but made the real decisions elsewhere (Reed,
2012). When Mulally arrived, he became a democratic leader to make employees trust the
operation of the executive after these troubles. Besides, Ford is a manufacturing car so it
needs the creativities, innovation… By applying this leadership style, Mulally can inspire the
objectives of organization to specific staffs and encourage them bring more special ideas in
order to meet these objective, make Ford stronger and turn over the difficulty. In addition,
this leadership style seems to be suitable to the structure and culture of Ford. Mulally and
other managers discuss, create the plans and make decisions directly and quickly; it does not
need the middle management. Moreover, Ford has flat organizational structure; the leaders
and the employees can communicate easily and Ford workers could ask Mulally about their
opinions. After that, they can be unanimous in making decisions.

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Conclusion
All factors: structure, culture, individual behaviour, management theory and leadership styles
have the huge impact on the ways that companies run. There are some similar points between
two companies. Both Microsoft and Ford have flat structure because they need the creativities
and innovation of employees to develop the products and work effectively. However, each
company use the particular management theories to control the work. Additionally, the
companies apply the management theories to make the work become more efficient.
Furthermore, the leaders play an important role in the development of companies. They bring
the projects and decide the ways which the employees get the jobs done. For example, Alan
Mulally has a reasonable leadership style so he rescued Ford form bankrupt; opposite to
Steve Ballmer. He chose wrong style to control Microsoft but he is changing it to make
Microsoft take back the first position in the technological companies.
I believe my analysis is very through because this includes several evidently dividends which
are collected from the online newspapers and books. However, next time I will be better if I
spend more time doing the assignment.

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Reference
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Retrieved November 03, 2012, from time.com:
/>627,00.html
Brandt, B. R. (2006). Effective Human Relations: Personal and Organizational Applications.
In B. R. Brandt, Effective Human Relations: Personal and Organizational
Applications (p. 82). Cengage Learning.

Clay, K. (2012, September 13). All Microsoft Employees To Get New Surface Tablets,
Windows 8 Phones and PCs. Retrieved November 05, 2012, from Forbes:
/>Eichenwald, K. (2012, August). Microsoft’s Lost Decade. Retrieved October 13, 2012, from
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Culture That Felled a Tech Giant. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from VF Daily :
/>FordMotorCo. (n.d.). The Moving Assembly Line Debuted at the Highland Park Plant.
Retrieved November 03, 2012, from Corporate.ford.com:
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culture and transformed its business. Retrieved October 13, 2012, from
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/>Kiley, D. (2009, March 04). Alan Mulally: The Outsider at Ford. Retrieved October 13, 2012,
from BloombergBusinessweek: />
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Mankiw, N. G. (2008). Principles of Macroeconomics. In N. G. Mankiw, Principles of
Macroeconomics (p. 330). Cengage Learning.
Marcic, R. L. (2010). Understanding Management. In R. L. Marcic, Understanding
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R.Jones, C. W. (2008). Essentials of Strategic Management. In C. W. R.Jones, Essentials of
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R.Jones, C. W. (2009). Strategic Management Theory: An Integrated Approach. In C. W.
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from Los Angeles Times: />Robbins, S. P. (2009). Organisational Behaviour: Global and Southern African Perspectives.
In S. P. Robbins, Organisational Behaviour: Global and Southern African
Perspectives (p. 402). Pearson South Africa.

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