Reflection Paper on Organization Behavior

Self-reflection paper Motivation

Motivation represents psychological processes that cause arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed. There are substantial positive relations between job characteristics, satisfaction, and motivation. Job characteristics of Variety and Task Significance were found to be particularly important to employee satisfaction and motivation.

These are examples that almost everyone will encounter in real life: Job design and job enrichment My work experience when I was in Shanghai was with the Taxation Bureau. Initially I was assigned general work in the department such as doing tax registration for the new companies and I wasn’t motivated. The job was simple, just checking and cataloging all of the documents that the company representatives provided, and giving them the application forms. I also answered related questions and followed up after the companies with the tax license were sanctioned.

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Job position

At this job position, the skill varieties were very limited. The routine work was just following the rules and did not need any professional judgment. After a month or so, I felt bored. Besides the skill variety, the job also lacked autonomy. Sometimes I just went out for some reason, probably there were several company representatives were waiting for me, while other time there is nobody show up in a whole day. As a young woman, I can’t further myself in the job, anyone can do it. I had no progress, no satisfaction about the job and no intrinsic motivation.

Although the tasks were significant to the whole bureau, it is hard to see our bigger function of the organization. In the end, after I pleased the human resources department several times, I was allowed to join another department. A lot of young people did not like to be fixed on a general position which would not allow them to accumulate the professional experience and explore the deep side of the field, and that often makes a problem in the hierarchical organization. Equity theory The Shanghai Taxation Bureau in which I had worked for more than 10 years is a hierarchical organization including a lot of levels.

Administrative and management body

It is the administrative and management body that carries out the state’s taxation activities within the administrative jurisdiction of Shanghai Municipality. Its main functions and responsibilities include implementing state taxation laws, regulations and codes, researching and formulating tax development plans and annual work plans for local taxation. The administrative position involves supervising every month’s tax declaration and collection and making sure the money will be transferred into the state treasury according to the related laws, regulations and codes.

There are 26 branches attached to the taxation bureau, and over 10000 employees working in the shanghai taxation bureau. Big organizations necessitate more comparison between people, or between branches. People from every section seek to get equal benefits out of their input. There are a lot of couples in Shanghai taxation bureau. So if some branches gave the bonus to their employees, everyone in the whole system knew it. And afterwards other departments will mimic the policy to motivate theirs. That reflected the equity theory.

From the equity theory, an individual’s motivation level is correlated to his perception of equity, fairness and justice practiced by the management. The higher an individual’s perception of fairness is, the greater their motivation level and vice versa. In the above context, I remembered that the branch leader who first gave the bonus will emphasize the special task they have completed, in order to stimulate his employees who have experienced high level hardship or difficulties. But other branches will spotlight their own achievements in the assignment, ultimately got the same bonus to protect or comfort their own morale in the workplace.

Projects and achievements

In the year-end evaluation, every branch or individual will assess their own projects and achievements in the whole year and the human resource management would make overall balances and give different levels of reward. While some job positions comparatively have more opportunities to make achievements, others have less. Under that kind of situation, the management carried out the policy of job position rotation, therefore, almost every qualified employee with education history of financial and accounting would have the opportunities to rotate their positions. This policy is motivational, Extrinsic motivation and intrinsic otivation At my department people were driven by extrinsic motivation. We compared the bonus income, the benefit to others and calculated the upcoming income or vacation. We also expected to be promoted and got high level benefits. As if that is the core of our daily tasks. Sometimes we did some project according to superior’s will rather than the real information to avoid offending the leader. We even did not consider whether the result was meaningful or not. Although the department management wanted to motivate the employees and gave the gift cards to everyone before the festivals, we were not satisfied.

Hygiene factors which would not make people satisfied

We wanted to get more benefits comparing with employees at other branches. From the theoretic framework, these are hygiene factors which would not make people satisfied. Sometimes we got into research projects and worked with the other teammates. These were independent projects. The person in charge the project totally explained the purpose of the project and we felt we got involved and engaged. We were empowered to use our own way to collect data, analyze it, and draw the conclusion. We felt very satisfied in these projects.

We cooperated with each other, attracted by the task, and we can focus solely on the project without complicated interpersonal relationships inside of this kind of temporary group. Further more, it was different from our routine job, which gave us the opportunity to widen our view, enrich the job content, therefore satisfying all the teammates. This arrangement is like intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on external pressures or a desire for reward.

Leadership From my experience, people want to motivate each other. He should build up himself first, has a long-term vision about the organizations, sets a goal for himself, matches the big environment and has the necessary ability or expertise in some area. Then he should also be authorized to be a leader. He may use his social skill and other ability and management resources to motivate people, and bring them together to a higher level. In my personal experience, I met good leaders as well as bad leaders.

Organization at Chicago

When I was a volunteer in a nonprofit organization at Chicago, I was elected as a member of the board of trustees. In this setting, the president is our board leader and he displayed a typical bad leader profile. First of all, he is not a role model. He should have a positive attitude, and be supportive to every volunteer, but unfortunately he always escaped working hard and treated other volunteers like slaves. Secondly, he did not consider the opinions of other board members, he liked to be self-centered and lack of empathy. This character embodied in his schedule and his arrangement.

He had no expert power, his personality is awful and he even played tricks in the nonprofit organization, which made everybody astonished. Now he had lost in the election for the board members. Admittedly, the situation above is very unique. Generally most authorized leaders have some attractive traits such as self-awareness, self-confidence, social skills and persuasive abilities. At the same time, they fully understand the organization goals. But different leaders have their own personal features. My friend Fan is a director of the audit department.

I had been in his department for 3 years, and we became friends in the end. Fan is a veteran, he had little professional knowledge in auditing, but he knew management well. His job is to motivate all the auditing group leaders and auditors. He used his legitimate power at first to assign tasks to every group. After the tasks were finished, he gave all the evaluation report to every group with the help of his assistant. At the same time, he used his reward and referent power. He always kept the department on the way of organizational goal, showed his positive attitude, gave everybody most extent of autonomy.

Conclusion

He also used his personal relationship to strive for the best interest of our department. That is why he got everyone’s respect. In his department, morale is very high. Nobody wanted to leave. Ahthough Fan is a good leader in most aspects except his professional knowledge, he can’t exert his expert power in his leadership. A great leader is a natural leader, who can exert his idealized influence power to his followers, and help to set common goals for the whole organization, incorporate, motivate followers, have them a clear picture of the future, make them active beyond the call of the duty.

Bibliography:

1. Kreitner, Robert and Angelo Kinicki. Organizational Behavior. Boston, MA: Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 1998. Print.
2. "Equity Theory of Motivation." Equity Theory of Motivation. n.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2013.
3. "Welcome to Shanghai Municipal Office of State Administration of Taxation." Shanghai Municipal Office of State Administration of Taxation. n.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2013.
4. Kim, W. Chan. "Fair Process Managing in the Knowledge Economy." n.d.: n. pag. Web.

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