Organizational Behavior Procedures and Policies

Question: Discuss about theOrganizational Behaviorfor Procedures and Policies. Answer: Introduction Organization behavior involves the way people behave in their respective workplaces. Each organization has a distinct behavior influenced by varying organizational processes, procedures, and policies. Employees behavior in the organization depends on the organization culture and the set code of conduct in the organization. Varying organizations has different procedures and core values that guide the organizations activities aimed towards achieving the set goals and objectives. Today the workforce in our organization constitutes of both the millennials and the baby boomers. To manage such a workforce is tough and it needs a lot of technical expertise for organizational success. The millennials consist of Generation Y the echo boomers and the Generation Me (Alsop, 2011). The millennials were born in the early 1980s to the mid-1990s and early 200s. The millennials are a generation born in the advent of high technological advancement and globalization. Meanwhile, the baby boomers consist of post-world war, two babies. The group consists of people born between 1946 and 1964 (Becton, Walker and Jones, 2014). The two generations behave differently in the workplace. The purpose of this essay is to determine the different types of leadership styles and appropriate for millennials and baby boomers. Each generation needs a suitable leadership style and approach for the success of the organization. It is critical for the human resource managers to learn and train to be equipped with the different leadership styles. The baby boomers have different characteristics from the millennials. The baby boomers are associated with upholding the traditional values (Pisarski, Polzin and Murakami, 2016). They have a preference for maintaining the societal values. The baby boomers prefer using a designated or standard procedure to achieve a set target. The baby boomers were the first people to genuinely initiated change in the workplace. The behavior of baby boomers in the workplace is respectable and carry themselves with the utmost respect to the managers. The gap between baby boomers and the management is bigger than that of millennials and management (Arvey and Zhang, 2015). The millennials are a lot more aware of the trends and issues in the world. The millennials work towards reducing the gap between management and employees. They need to bridge this gap and make the employees and employers to work together for greater productivity. The millennials attitudes and expectations at the workplace are high. They vision a workplace offering the quality of work life balance. The millennials attitude towards work is thus different from the baby boomers. The millennials are aware of what an ideal workplace should resemble thus the need for managers to offer the needed resources to assist the millennials. They have an expectation of being in a challenging work environment where the tasks they do are not often as repetitive as what baby boomers are used to. The millennials believe in change and technological advancement (Sudheimer, 2009). They expect the leaders in the organizations to offer advanced technological equipment to help in completing the tasks. Unlike the baby boomers who are resistant to change, the millennials believe change is vital, and the organization has to involve them in the process of implementing change. Leadership Styles There are several leadership styles that leaders apply in organizations. Though some leaders use only one, it is important to apply different styles for both millennials and baby boomers. For the purpose of this essay the leadership styles that we will focus on include; transformational, authoritarian, democratic, paternalistic, transactional and Laissez-faire (Hussain and Hassan, 2016). Some of these styles such as democratic leadership style may suit both the millennials and the baby boomers while some of the styles may only suit a distinct group. It is thus up to the managers to identify the best style to use when leading both these groups inside the organization. Effective leadership is key to the accomplishment of organization goals. The leaders thus need to apply the best leadership styles to achieve success. Effective Leadership Styles for Baby Boomers Authoritarian Leadership Style The authoritarian leadership style is associated with dictatorship. The leader dictates organizational policies, processes, and procedures. The leader solely decides on the types of goals to be achieved and coordinates as well as directs all the activities aimed at helping the organization to achieve set goals and targets. In addition to dictating all the activities of the organization, the leader only forms a professional relationship. This leadership style is associated with result-oriented leaders who do not care about the methods used to get to the objectives. The leaders view employees as tools to use to attain their set targets and thus cannot create any form of relationship with the employees. Authoritarian leaders believe in direct supervision that is suitable to the baby boomers. The baby boomers believe in a single leader who is believed to have the required knowledge and expertise. The baby boomers believe that leaders are often right and they should not be questioned. Aut horitarian leadership style would thus suit the baby boomers who are ignorant of weak leadership approaches (Yu-Mi and Yang, 2015). To a baby boomer, planning is not essential as that is the leaders task. An authoritarian leader would thus influence baby boomers, control and coordinate all their efforts effectively towards the achievement of a set goal and objective. Transactional Leadership A transactional leader uses contingent reward and management by exception to influence the activities of their followers (employees) towards the attainment of organizational objectives. These type of leadership focuses on motivating employees by establishing reward and punishment systems (Schrobsdorff, 2015). The contingent rewards are for recognizing the best-performing employees in the organization. The reward system encompasses of factors such as material rewards and psychological rewards. The best performers in an organization are awarded and given incentives to improve even further in their performance. On the other hand, poor performers are punished to improve their individual performances. Transactional leadership tends to aim at direct actions to achieve their set targets. Transactional leadership suits baby boomers in that the leaders will work with the existing structure to achieve the set goals and objectives. These types of leaders are not change oriented and can be compa red to theory X managers (Worth, 2016). This leadership style is mainly focused on maintaining the status quo. Baby boomers fear the unknown and are no risk takers. They are comfortable of repeating the same tasks all their professional life provided they get their pay packages they are very comfortable. Transactional leaders thrive by making employees fear them; hence, the employees have easily bossed around for the company to make profits in the end. Paternalistic Leadership Style In this leadership style, a single individual (leader) influences the activities of every employee in the company just like a parent does to the child. The leader thrives through gaining the complete trust and loyalty of the employees. The leader brainwashes the employees by supplying complete concern for his workers to gain their trust and loyalty. In this leadership style, no member of the group is allowed to work independently without the knowledge or consent of the leader. The leader strives to establish a solid relationship with the employees to be able to influence their activities and thoughts. The behavior of employees in such a firm is uniform with every distinct issue passing through the leader. This type of leadership is suitable to the baby boomers who do not need control over their tasks. The leader represents a fatherly figure to all the employees (Di Gennaro et al., 2016). Baby boomers are not very inventive and do not seek the power to have control over their assigned tasks. Also, baby boomers thrive in close or strict supervision thus have no issues with a dominant leader. The paternalistic leadership style is efficient in firms that have a more formal plus hierarchical organization structure where innovation and creativity of the employees are not required. Effective Leadership Styles for Millennials Transformational Leadership Transformational leaders are a source of inspiration to their employees thus the suitability of the leadership style to the millennials. Transformational leadership style is the complete opposite of transactional leadership. The leaders are not limited by the perception of their followers. Transformational leaders initiate and support a positive change of the organizational processes, policies, and procedures. Under this type of leadership, an employee has the flexibility and the necessary incentives for a good performance. A transformational leader is charismatic (Zehir et al., 2014). The leader has a self-promoting personality that encourages the right behavior amongst employees to become innovative. The leader has a great energy level that is transformed to the employees who are encouraged and motivated to perform better. Transformational leadership style is closely associated with risk taking. A good and efficient leader have to be a risk-taker, someone who thinks out of the box and is ready to step out of the comfort zone to ensure the growth of the company. One important behavior of millennials is the need to take risks and become innovative. A transformational leader influences the behavior of millennials positively, creating a positive atmosphere in the workplace and giving employees job control (Bodenhausen and Curtis, 2016). Employees are influenced to be great team members and support each other positively. The organization moves forward as a single unit with each employee involved at every critical stage aimed towards achieving a set goal and target. Laissez-Faire Leadership Style Initiated in the year 1939, the laissez-faire leadership style is employee oriented. In this leadership style, the staff is given the power to make decisions in the organization concerning their work. The employee is not supervised or often influenced by the actions of their leaders when it comes to their tasks. This leadership style is particularly useful in companies that have extremely talented and ethical professionals. Such employees would know how to handle their respective tasks with a common aim of achieving the set objectives. In laissez-faire leadership, the management has total trust in the judgments of the employees. Though the employees are guaranteed freedom when it concerns their work, they can always seek assistance whenever they want. The millennials would thrive in such an environment (Gavatorta, 2012). Such an environment encourages innovative behavior and high team spirit levels. The belief that management shows to the employees creates a good environment for crea tivity. The employees have a good rapport with the management who their task is to provide regular feedback to their employees. This leadership style brings out the best out of the employees. One big advantage associated with this leadership style is the ability to positively contribute to the quality of work life of the employees. The millennials are particularly critical of work life balance; thus this leadership style suits them (Chuan et al., 2015). Leadership Style Effective for Both Millennials and Baby-Boomers Democratic Leadership Style Democratic leadership style constitutes of the leadership of the people, by the people and for the people. The leadership style is mainly used by leaders who love to share decision-making abilities. This particular style is suitable for both baby boomers and millennials. Though the two generations have notable differences between them, the democratic leadership style would suit them both. Though it would suit both the generations, it is more effective to the millennials than the baby boomers. The baby boomers would have the opportunity to make family choices that are beneficial to all of them. The baby boomers prefer moving together in a single unit, and democratic leadership style would strengthen the cohesion of the team (Patterson, 2007). Meanwhile, millennials would enjoy the leadership style more. Millennials prefer to be involved in the decision-making process especially when it concerns their tasks. For millennials democracy is very critical in change implementation; thus a de mocratic leadership style suits the generation Y more than baby boomers. Democratic leaders are intelligent and have the ability to make better decisions for all stakeholders involved with the business. Conclusion In conclusion, the millennials and baby boomers have distinct characteristics, behavior, and attitude at the workplace. It is challenging for managers to efficiently manage these two generations and achieve a set goal for the business. Leaders have to strike the right balance between which leadership styles can bring better results (LaPorte, 2016). For example, the baby boomers would be more productive under a transactional leader while the millennials would be highly productive under a laissez-faire leadership style. References Alsop, R. J. (2011). Mindful of millennials.Workforce Management,90(10), 5 Arvey, R. D., Zhang, Z. (2015). Biological Factors in Organizational Behavior and I/ O Psychology: An Introduction to the Special Section.Applied Psychology: An International Review,64(2), 281-285. Becton, J. B., Walker, H. J., Jones-Farmer, A. (2014). Generational differences in workplace behavior.Journal Of Applied Social Psychology,44(3), 175-189. Bodenhausen, C., Curtis, C. (2016). Transformational Leadership and Employee Involvement: Perspectives from Millennial Workforce Entrants.Journal Of Quality Assurance In Hospitality Tourism,17(3), 371-387. Chuan, L., Shu, W., Xue, S., Mengyao, L., Lie, W. (2015). The association between organizational behavior factors and health-related quality of life among college teachers: a cross-sectional study.Health Quality Of Life Outcomes,13(1), 1-12. DiGennaro Reed, F. D., Henley, A. J., Rueb, S., Crabbs, B., Giacalone, L. (2016). Discussion of Behavioral Principles in Journal of Organizational Behavior Management : An Update.Journal Of Organizational Behavior Management,36(2/3), 202-209. Gavatorta, S. (2012). It's a Millennial Thing.T+D,66(3), 58-65 Hussain, M., Hassan, H. (2016). Leader's Self-Efficacy and Effectiveness of Leadership Styles.Abasyn University Journal Of Social Sciences,9(1), 86-102. LaPorte, C., Wright, P. (2016). Managing in the Legal Workplace Millennials.Law Practice: The Business Of Practicing Law,42(4), 60-61. Patterson, C. K. (2007). The Impact of Generational Diversity in the Workplace.Diversity Factor,15(3), 17-22. Pisarski, A., Polzin, S., Murakami, E. (2016). Commuting in a Post-Baby Boomer World.Public Roads,79(4), 18-25. Schrobsdorff, S. (2015). The Millennial Beard: Why Boomers Need Their Younger Counterparts. And Vice Versa.Time,186(24), 90. Sudheimer, E. E. (2009). Stories Appreciating Both Sides of the Generation Gap: Baby Boomer and GenerationX Nurses Working Together.Nursing Forum,44(1), 57-63. Worth, N. (2016). Who we are at work: millennial women, everyday inequalities and insecure work.Gender, Place Culture: A Journal Of Feminist Geography,23(9), 1302-1314. Yu-Mi, J., Yang-Hee, K. (2015). Work Satisfaction and Quality of Life in Baby Boomer: Focused on Retirement Preparation as Mediator Effect.Journal Of The Korea Academia-Industrial Cooperation Society,16(2), 1084-1091 ZEHIR, C., MCELDILI, B., ALTINDA?, E., ?EHITO?LU, Y., ZEHIR, S. (2014). Charismatic Leadership and Organizatioal Citizenship Behaviour: The Mediating Role of Ethical Climate.Social Behavior Personality: An International Journal,42(8), 1365-1375.