In this extensive case study report entitled "Unit 12 BTEC Level 4 Organizational Behavior Assignment: Mitsubishi Case Study," we embark on a profound exploration of the intricate landscape of organizational behavior within the context of Mitsubishi, a globally renowned conglomerate known for its diverse range of businesses. This assignment offers a meticulous examination of crucial elements such as politics, culture, motivation, and leadership, all of which wield significant influence over the operations and dynamics of this iconic corporation. As a fundamental component of the HND program, this case study report serves as a crucial assessment tool for students striving to enrich their comprehension and expertise in the domains of management and business. Our journey through this Mitsubishi case study report commences with a comprehensive analysis of organizational behavior (OB), a multifaceted discipline that constitutes the bedrock of understanding human interactions and dynamics within the corporate arena. We embark on a captivating exploration of OB theories, incorporating Hofstede's Cultural Dimension Theory, which illuminates the profound impact of culture on the intricacies of organizational life. Through an in-depth examination of behavioral theories, we unearth the psychology behind employee conduct, revealing how it fundamentally shapes the overall performance of the organization. Motivation, a cornerstone of productivity and success, occupies a central role within this case study report. We delve into seminal theories such as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory, dissecting the layers of motivation that underlie employee behavior and performance. Additionally, we explore the Hawthorne Studies, shedding light on the influence of social and environmental factors on workforce motivation within Mitsubishi. A critical dimension of Mitsubishi's organizational behavior is its emphasis on team dynamics. We meticulously analyze the concept of teams, unveiling how they function within the company's complex hierarchical structure. This exploration provides invaluable insights into how Mitsubishi harnesses collective efforts to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and realize strategic objectives. Leadership, a linchpin of organizational success, emerges as a focal point in this case study report. We scrutinize Mitsubishi's leadership styles and strategies, uncovering the methodologies employed by the company's top executives to navigate the organization toward sustainable growth and global prominence. Through rigorous research and comprehensive analysis, this case study report delivers a profound understanding of Mitsubishi's organizational behavior. It stands as an indispensable resource for students seeking to deepen their knowledge of management and business practices. By conscientiously incorporating vital keywords such as "Assignments," "Assessments," "HND," "Case Study Report," "Management," "Business," "Organizational Behavior," "OB," "Hofstede's Cultural Dimension Theory," "Behavioral Theories," "Motivation," "Maslow's," "Herzberg's," "Hawthorne," "Teams," "Leadership," and "Mitsubishi," we ensure that this report is not only educational but also optimized for discoverability, making it readily accessible to a diverse audience eager to gain valuable insights into the realm of organizational behavior within the context of a corporate giant like Mitsubishi.
Table of Contents
1.1. Classification of Culture (Power, Role, Task and Person)
1.1.1. Importance of Cultural-difference Awareness:
1.1.2. Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory:
1.1.3. Influence of Globalization and Digital Technology on organizational Culture:
1.1.4. Network Theory and Systems Theory:
1.1.5. Organizational psychology:
2.1. Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation
2.2. Motivational Theories and their implications:
2.2.1. Hertzberg’s Two-Factor Theory:
2.2.2. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:
2.2.5. Three-Dimensional Theory of Attribution:
3.1. Types of Organizational Teams:
3.1.5. Cross-functional Teams:
Impact of Technology on Teams:
3.2. Team Dynamics and Teamwork:
3.2.2. Tuckman’s Team Development Model:
3.2.3. Belbin’s Typology of Managing Effective Teams:
4.1. Path Goal Leadership Theory:
The organizations are always full of different behaviors. The behaviors may be good or bad. Virtually the organizations are full of politics where different decisions are made and the goals are set by different people after coalition of different thoughts. Different writers say that the study of organization is incomplete without political perspectives (Mayes & Allen, 1977). Every person working in any organization knows politics but the things which are political for one person may not be for other person. The political behaviors were well described by Mitzberg (1977) in his article “Policy as a field of management theory”.
The other thing besides politics is power. Power is also considered as a very important and integral part of an organization. On the other hand culture also plays a considerable role in an organization. The culture, politics and power are the three things which have a great impact over the organizational behaviors. The behaviors of people are mainly affected by these three factors. We will discuss the effects of these three factors on individuals and teams.
We will also assess different motivational theories and their impacts on organizations. We will consider Mitsubishi Corporation as an example case to get good understanding about these factors and the motivational theories. Mitsubishi is a big organization which has over 200 offices in 90 countries including Pakistan and is a group of 1300 networks. The company has 70,000 people working as employees. The employees in Mitsubishi come from different cultures and the company has shear diversity in employees. This is a good test case to study these factors and organizational behaviors due to its diversity of operations.
We study in the influences of culture, politics and power on the organizational behavior. We will also have a discussion on the behavioral psychology and then will assess it in context to Mitsubishi. We will also have a look at the cooperation between employees and its importance with context to Mitsubishi. The different organizational teams will also be discussed in this assignment and Mitsubishi is a good discussion as it is a good mixture of traditional teams as well as high technology teams. At the end as a final objective we will discuss the organizational behavior philosophies in context to Mitsubishi.
Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) develops and operates businesses across virtually every industry, including industrial finance, energy, metals, machinery, chemicals, and daily living essentials. MC's current activities have expanded far beyond its traditional trading operations to include investments and business management in diverse fields including natural resources development, manufacturing of industrial goods, retail, new energy, infrastructure, finance and new technology-related businesses.
The culture has great impacts over the organizational behavior so we need to consider this factor first. The part of environment made by human is called culture (Herskowits, 1955). According to Sathe (1985) a series of values which are important and the beliefs of different members which are basic pillars of a society make culture. Hofstede (1997) had a bit different opinion according to him the mind software is culture which is quite similar to the computer programs that control the behaviors of a computer. The same thing is with the culture it controls the behaviors of a person.
After considering all the different definitions we can say that the culture is basically the man-made environment and that environment molds the minds of different human beings accordingly. The values and beliefs make up a complete environment and then these things make up a complete mind. We see diverse differences in different people all over the world. These differences in culture are also seen at Mitsubishi. The cultural differences also affect drastically the behaviors of employees working at Mitsubishi. The company has to be well aware of all these cultural differences.
Due to the globalization different cultures have now started accepting each other. Even people from different cultures fancy about the other cultures. The companies are now easier in merging the different cultures from all around the world. Mitsubishi has also worked very well in bringing the employees from 90 different countries and they are working like the best part of the company.
The companies must be completely aware about the cultural differences of different workers working in a team or a company. The same thing applies to Mitsubishi. The managers and directors at Mitsubishi are well aware of the fact that the awareness of cultural differences is very important for every employee working in the organization. The mix up of different cultures has different impacts on business too. The organizations keep these negativities in mind and make sure that the integration of different cultures in one place doesn’t affect much. Mitsubishi is also working in this regard and is very successful in doing so.
The culture is always are very important part of a person. The culture is what makes a person the complete dressing, behavior, beliefs, the customs and values of person are made up of a culture. The culture is what makes a complete personality and the difference in cultures make up different personality and it’s always very difficult to combine different poles at one place. A person from eastern culture where the people are more reserved may not be able to work with a lady from western culture who is quite open regarding the behaviors. The problem in interaction may arise in this case. So, the company needs to keep these differences in mind and the people from different cultures are integrated in such a way that they can work together more effectively. We can see the great policy and its impacts at Mitsubishi which has combined the employees from 90 different countries having hundreds of different cultures.
The company morale is also very important for a company. If the morale of employees is high they perform well while the low morale may result in under performance and the employees may not be able to work well. The combination of different cultures may decrease the productivity and collaboration. To increase the productivity and collaboration between employees we must be able to combine the different cultures in such a way that the people are able to interact and work together in a good way. The business owners must be aware of the diversities of cultures and should realize the better ways to integrate different cultures in a business. At Mitsubishi we have seen different cultures being combined as a result of embracement of cultural diversity by the upper administration of the company.
The lack of cultural awareness may also offer some legal implications. The owners of a business must be aware of the legal problems that may arise due to diverse cultures. The unawareness of the cultural differences may result in the lawsuits for company. The business owners must avoid the offensive language during different interactions. At Mitsubishi we have seen 70,000 employees are working in the company and we have seen very rare cases of discrimination lawsuits, this is evident that the company is doing well in understanding the cultural differences.
To make the acceptance of cultural differences smooth in a company, the companies make a diversity policy which is written in clear words and is distributed to all the employees working in a company. These policies are strictly implemented in workplace and all the employees are clearly directed to avoid any sort of offensive language. To make all this more effective the companies conduct different cultural diversity trainings and the employees are trained to understand different cultures in a company.
To understand the cultural dimensions we must know the Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory. This theory offers a good framework for understanding of cross-cultural communication. This theory was designed and presented by Geert Hofstede. In this theory the author has described the effect of culture on personality of different members and how the different values of a society directly relate to the behavior of a person. The results of this theory were driven from a survey conducted by IBM between 1967 and 1973. The company conducted this survey worldwide. This model is under refining process till now and is made better day by day. The four dimensions discussed in original theory were individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity-feminity. The fifth dimension was added in 2010 which is long-term orientation.
The interaction between different people and civilizations has increased drastically due to globalization. Different people from all over the world now have a good knowledge about the people from the other parts of the world. The people are now accepting the integration of societies, cultures, politics and businesses across the world. The integration of any market to global economy is also globalization. The businesses now have no borders and the businesses are now facing across border competitions. The multinational companies are spread all over the world now. The workforces are much bigger than they were in past.
The organizations today are more global as they have employees from different nations and different cultures and the organizational behaviors have changed drastically. The people from diverse cultures come together in the global organizations and share their work with each other. The management of different people from diverse cultures has become a bigger challenge for the companies and the companies are adapting advance levels of integration policies to make the smooth integration of different cultures possible in their companies.
When people from different cultures come together at a workplace they feel much pressure due to the difference in culture, behaviors and beliefs. This pressure and its magnitude are measured using the Network Theory. The term social network was introduced about 50 years ago. Barnes (1954) earned the credit of doing so during his study of a Norwegian island in 1950s. The basic rule of the Network Theory is consideration of every aspect in investigation.
Statements: Rogers characterizes a communication network as consisting of “interconnected individuals who are linked by patterned communication flows” (1986). A communication network analysis studies “the interpersonal linkages created by the sharing of information in the interpersonal communication structure” (1986), that is, the network.
In this analysis we do not consider the relation between characteristics of different people instead we consider the direct relations between different people in a company. These relations often consist of money, goods, feelings and information which is exchanged during the work. The network of people is described as the place where different people communicate and influence the information and its exposure (Burt, 1992; Haythornthwaite, 1996). These relationships also help in studying the different attitudes developed due to the relationships between different people being established during contact of different attitudes and behaviors (cf. Ibarra & Andrws, 1993; Burkhardt, 1994; Meyer, 1994; Feeley & Barnett, 1996; Pollock, Whitbred & Contractor, 2000).
According to (Capra, 1997) the systems theory is a theory which describes a system in its nature and the society which is investigated in holistic approach. The thinking of systems comes when we shift the attention from a part to the whole (Checkland, 1997; Weinberg, 2001; Jackson, 2003). In contrast, the relationships between the parts themselves and the events they produce through their interaction become much more important, with the result that “system elements are rationally connected” (Luhmann, 1990) towards a shared purpose (Golinelli, 2009). The systemic perspective argues that we are not able to fully comprehend a phenomenon simply by breaking it up into elementaryparts and then reforming it; we instead need to apply a global vision to underline its functioning. Although we can start from the analysis of the elementary components of a phenomenon, in order to fully comprehend the phenomenon in its entirety we have to observe it also from a higher level: a holistic perspective (von Bertalanffy, 1968). Systems theory encompasses a wide field of research with different conceptualizations and areas of focus (e.g. Boulding, 1956; Maturana and Varela, 1975; Senge, 1990). Specifically, within management and marketing, a number of authors and scholars have adopted – implicitly or explicitly – a vision of organizations as systems with the aim of analyzing the relationship between organizations and their environment (e.g. Burns and Stalker, 1961; Lawrence and Lorsch, 1967; Aldrich, 1979).
If we study the human behavior in context to the work and psychology the organizational psychology arises. The organizational psychology is improved by implementing different psychological phenomena. In this way the employees are motivated, satisfied in both the safety and health aspects. The psychologists work to conduct researches on employees to implement different practices for improvement in behavior of employees in diverse cultural environments. The psychologists are playing a vital role at Mitsubishi Corporation. The company is spread all over the world having thousands of psychologists working for better integration of employees coming from diverse cultures and parts of the world. The psychologists are continuously suggesting different policies to improve the morale of employees. In this way the company is getting best results even from the people coming from different backgrounds but working together.
The politics may ruin a company or its reputation if it’s used in negative way. On the other hand it proves to be very good for a company if it is used as a healthy tool. If the interests of a company are well lined up towards a better way the positive politics prevails. The main success events of a company occur due to good politics (Gandz & Murray). The politics is often considered only in a negative aspect but the positivity of politics is quite prominent in a company. It helps the company a lot in improvement. Many researchers have suggested that the positivity in organizational politics is a very good thing for any organization. A person working for his own sack is often considered as involved in politics (Ferris et al., 1996; Valle & Perrewe, 2000; Harris James, & Boonthanom, 2005; Randall et al., 1999). We can consider the lobbying for promotions as a good example of this type of politics which is considered as negative politics. This type of politics influence the employees in a quite negative way as the jealousy prevails due to unfair distribution regarding resources, recognition or rewards (Parker, Dipboye & Jackson, 1995). When the politics in an organization is increased the people of a company loose interest in organization and often start thinking about their own interests (Maslyn & Fedor, 1998; Nye & Wit, 1993). The job satisfaction is decreased due to increase in politics (Ferris et al., 1996; Hochwarter et al., Kacmar et al., 1999).
Mitsubishi has also faced some negative politics as well as positive politics. The negative politics is often copped by the management in an efficient way and they make sure to eradicate this problem in future. The positive politics is what helps the company in improvement in different aspects. The job satisfaction and organizational interest is high amongst the employees in the company and they enjoy working for the company due to positivity in politics on the company. The employees are more often rewarded, recognized only due to their work for the company and no special treatments or favors are given to the employees. So, the employees in the company know that the only way to prosper at Mitsubishi is to work for the company and its betterment.
The distribution of power is very important for a company. If the power is well distributed over different roles in a company the company gets good results regarding the work. We can see often the managers are allotted the power to punish or reward an employee. The reward is offered on good performance while punishment is given for bad or under performance. The power roles get powers from six sources named as reward, coercive, legitimate, expert, information and referent (French & Raven, 1960). If the powers are used in a good manner the companies always increase their productivity. The wide spreading operations of Mitsubishi are due to the good use powers by the leaders and managers at the company. The company makes sure that the powers of different roles are used in a very good manner by different people and avoid any sort of favoritism or victimizations.
