Organizational Behavior in Hewlett Packard

Modern businesses make every effort to maintain and attract new customers in order to foster there growth and enhance the chances of profitability within there particular industries. Therefore firms like Hewlett Packard cannot achieve this objective unless they carry out there business operations in accepted culture in any of its chosen potential country. There is also the requirement for these companies to be comply with there social responsibilities and employ ethical values in there business undertakings (Ann, 2003).

Hewlett Packard Company also known as HP is a technological company that was established in1939; the company has its headquarters in Palo Alto in California. Currently it has operations in over 170 countries world wide. The company mainly deals in making of personal computers, business computer systems, workstations, and printers together with scans. The company is geared towards producing technological products and services that satisfy the desires and dreams of the people.

The company use new ideas to come up with simple, precious and trusted technology experiences, which has continued to improve the way customers’ lives and their works. Today HP is among the biggest companies in the world with a total of $97. 1 billions in revenues posted in the year 2006 making the company to be the biggest technology dealer as far as sales were concerned. (Hewlett-Packard, 2009) Hewlett Packard Key Elements of Organization Behavior

Order custom essay Organizational Behavior in Hewlett Packard with free plagiarism report

450+ experts on 30 subjects Starting from 3 hours delivery

Get Essay Help

Research indicates that for any organization that endeavors to succeed in its business operations organization behavior is very critical; there are four principle elements that guide this concept. The first element is that of is people; in essence, people in the organization comprises groups of individuals whether large or small ones and they form the company’s integral part of the whole organization. Research indicates that employees in HP work in small groups as well as in large groups; further there are official and informal groups in the workplace.

The other key element is that of structure and it is the element that clearly stipulates the organization way of doing things, for instance in HP, it is the official bond between individuals in the organization settings (Robbins, and Judge, 2007). Indeed HP has been efficient and successful in its business operations because of its structural ways that creates cordial relationship among senior, middle and lower class managers thus enhancing productivity through meaningful results from the entire employees of the company.

The third element of organization behavior in HP is that of technology which indeed has been the cornerstone of the success of HP in its business operations. In HP technology have played the crucial role of ensuring that business products meet the customer expectations as well as boosting the success of marketing strategies of the company for instance diversification of HP in to many markets (John and Keith, 1997). It is undoubtedly that technology in HP has made its employees to achieve better results as well as carry out excellent jobs that attract its customers.

However, such technology in HP has had both positive and negative impacts, for instance the high costs associated with the modern technology as well as the benefits that it brings about. The other crucial element of organization behavior is that of environment which actually entails the external public that HP deals with in its business operations. HP has taken this element to comprise external communities, families of the employees as well as the governments where the company operates among other systems.

Such units affect the way of doing business in one way or another in HP since they have diverse lifestyles and expectations from the company. Research indicates that HP has constantly been impacted by external public, family units within the organization setting and competition among other factors thus the company has been challenged to compete for the ever depleting resources. The following diagram illustrates how the four key elements of organization behavior are integrated in HP; Figure 1 Indicating the Key Elements of Organizational Behavior Organization Culture and Values in HP

The organization culture in HP is actually defined by how people conduct themselves during the normal business operations i. e. ethical considerations. Ethics is defined as the norms or standards of behavior that guide moral choices about the conduct of the personnel in a business organization and the relationship with its publics. The goal of ethics is to ensure that the interest, safety of the employees, management, and the external publics is protected from suffering the consequences from the business activities of the particular organization.

The p of business ethics is extensive and can be measured from different perspectives. Here the company has recorded that its success has come up as a result of its social responsibility in ensuring that its workforce is provided with a working environment that makes them and the customers and other members related to the company (Armstrong, 2006). According to research we find that in the Hewlett Packard Company, trust and respect among the workers prevail making them the core values to its success.

The company is also found to be passionate to its world wide customers; its performance is recorded to be of a high level of accomplishment and input and also working as a team whereby its workforce is encouraged to be honest and report what is found to strange happenings in the company whereby they are given an opportunity to communicate freely for them to have a clear information on the ethical concerns about the business (Dwyer, Richard, and Chadwick, 2003).

The company ensures better work force planning by proper selection and recruitment, offering orientation and induction to the new recruits, organizing trainings to develop and equip them with new skills. In addition the company is able to equip its employees with the latest technological tools which the employees use to achieve efficiency. This improves the technology of the company as more innovations are created (Robbins, and Judge, 2007).

Corporate communication is a process that is used to facilitate the exchange of information and knowledge of the enterprise with its internal and external publics or individuals that have a direct relationship with the organization. This practice is normally applied in the internal communications management as from the sharing of the knowledge to decision making with employees, suppliers, investors and the firms partners.

The corporate communication is normally used to build the firm’s reputation among its stakeholders. This communication involves the following: change management, issue management, corporate social responsibility, crisis communication and internal relations (Huselid, 1995). The objectives of corporate communications is to inform and influence other people, promote policy change, raise funds, to monitor progress and to revise plans and to leave experience documented for the future of the firm.

An enterprise needs a good internal communication system for it to build a consistent messages and analysis of its progress, to provide accurate and timely information to those who need it and to enable it develop an institutional memory and experience. in this case we find that Hewlett Packard company uses the HP Laboratories as its research arm which is meant to help in times of communication thus creating opportunities for the company globally an example of such laboratories of this company is the memory spot chip.

The firm should also design management structures which help in the flow of information, meaning it should avoid overloading managers and expecting them to be the providers of information and lastly the firm should have written records including the assumptions that they make about their work this point makes it clear that one should not assume that everyone else in the company thinks in the same way he does whereby one should make sure that key decisions are recorded such as points of agreement reached during project meetings Firms face stiff competition and Hewlett Packard Company faces such competition in its business undertakings.

With globalization businesses engage in unfair competition in order to increase there sales and in the process expand there business activities. Such practices are considered to be unethical for example in the process of this stiff competition firms may cut prices and sell there products way below there cost of production. This brings the aspect of unfair competition because firms with strong financial bases can withstand such strategies for considerable period of time unlike the young firms which does not have a lot of funds generated from there undertakings (Hewlett-Packard, 2009)

The structure of the Hewlett Packard Company has the following; an established compliance council that is usually chaired by the chief Ethics and compliance officers including the chief privacy officer and the other leaders from the company the council’s responsibility is to ensure that the operation of the business globally comply with the laws and regulations whereby, its core objective is to ensure the of the supply of the products to compliance areas in the company. It also carries a risk assessment in areas prone to business risks whereby, the company also comes up with an action plan to resolve such risks.

While the privacy officers in the company play an important rule including that of reviewing the company’s investigative processes which takes care of the privacy matters related to the business of the company. In this case we find that the person who is in charge of the data included in the business and its ethics which supervises protection of the company’s data, including the policies and regulations, laws processes that should be adhered to (Brewster, 1995). Corporate Compliance and Social responsibility in HP Business ethics along with social responsibility defines what the organization ought to do in the management of the business.

The social responsibility of a business organization towards the society merits considerations in all the faces of strategic management, whereby the organization must exercise strategic planning through environmental and organizational appraisal in order to provide answers to what an organization might do and what it can do. Another ethical issue in business is the social reaction of the organization that is the manager should create a positive work place that will have its employees engage and encouraged to attain high performances.

He may do this by setting the right expectations from each department of the organization; he should encourage the workers into productive work by rewarding the best performance through raising of the payment by recognition of the workforce applied by the employee. For the firm to maximize the individual performance the manager should have job security concerns for his employees, under which when an employee is confident of his or her job security at the workplace, his performance is far much better than a case where he or she is not sure of being retained in the next year (Robbins, and Judge, 2007).

Here we find that the Hewlett Packard Company carry the environmental responsibility with a strategy to produce products that are meant for the environment at large through this we find that the company ensures that its products are supplied and operated in a manner that won’t affect any part of the world. HP is recorded to have met the target of recycling one billion bounds of electronics including the toner and ink cartridges whereby in the year 2006 the company was able to recover more than 150 million pounds of electronics compared to its competitors in the market (Chevrier, 2003). Motivated Behavior in HP

There is need for a motivated workforce in any organization that wishes to succeed. HP management has indeed considered the theories behind motivation. In essence certain drivers like needs of HP employees have been critically looked in to in order to enhance productivity through a motivated workforce in the organization. To be more specific through better understanding of organizational behavior concept, the management of HP has utilized Maslow hierarchy of needs theory in order to meet the expectations of the employees thus a motivated workforce. Figure 2 Indicating Maslow Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow theory identifies five needs of human beings that have to be satisfied. Maslow involves the provision of protective clothing, medical cover, housing and transport allowances, pension schemes, job security and insurance scheme to meet these needs. HP reckons the fact that the main psychological needs that are basic to most human beings are food, shelter and clothing. We also have social needs that are provisioned to be social like family morals and feelings, intimacy and understanding of each other, sharing of social amenities or services like sports and entertainment.

Maslow theory also entails the esteem needs that entail education, rank and title symbols, fringe benefits like shares, bonus, size of work place and equipments. The other need is the self fulfillment needs that incorporate individuals need fro appreciating potentialities, feeling of achievement or success and continuous self development; all the above needs according to research have been catered for in the HP settings (Maslow, 1971). Management levels, Skills and the Upside Down Pyramid in HP The Managers are responsible for the success or failure of HP in meeting its objectives or goals.

There are three levels of management in HP that include the operational level, middle level and top level. This levels form a hierarchy or level of command within HP settings. Top level managers include the Chief Executive officer, Corporate Head or Administrators who hold the top ranks in the firm. They are responsible in setting up the main goals, objectives and policies of any organization. The top management level is responsible for the overall performance of the company and ensuring the HP accomplishes its underlying goals.

Middle level management includes the general manager, operations manager or human resource managers who are responsible in implementing the top level decisions to attain the set objectives of HP. They are involved in the day to day running of the organization’s activities and are therefore liaising with the top management on what’s going on within HP. The middle level management acts as a bridge between the top level and operational level management in the organization (DuBrin, 2003).

Operational level management is responsible for the day to day management of employees in the organization and they include team leaders or office managers in HP. They have a strong influence on the firm by streamlining the entire task undertaken by the employees. HP further has three skills that enhance organizational behavior that entail the technical, interpersonal skill and conceptual skill possessed by the three managerial level managers. Interpersonal skills relate to the way managers interact with the employees in HP, while conceptual skills allow the managers to view the organization as one.

Technical skills emphasize the need for the managers to have proficiency in some certain jobs within HP that are technical (Murray, 1989). Conclusion HP Company has managed to be where it is now because it has been able to effectively utilize the human resource and technology. For HP resource is an issue that the company gives great concern. Thus, the company has effectively and efficiently managed well the human resource, and technology issues through an excellent organizational behavior; and this can be ascertained by the factor that today HP is the world leader in technology beating big players like IBM.

Looking at the company objectives which states that; the company performance depends on motivated employees, an stimulating and exciting work environment is important for invention and that the company believes that each employee have something different to contribute to the company, it can therefore be deduced that the company has been able to follow its objective and produce highly innovative workforce that has kept coming up with new ideas (Hewlett-Packard, 2009) HP has continuously been able to grow and develop because of proper and good organization management.

It is clear that for any company to be successful it has to have structures that are well coordinated. Human resource management in HP is well done and also emphasizes is put on technology, as it leads to more new products being invented. Managers and leaders within HP have an obligation to further propel the company forward thus able to create and maintain a healthy organizational culture within itself if they stick to the above mentioned roles and strategies All the same as co-founder of HP Mr. Dave Packard says, it is important for people to work together to be efficient and achieve targets (Hewlett-Packard, 2009).

Reference Ann, P. B. (2003): Human Resource Management and Organizational Performance: Evidence from Retail Banking. Columbia Business School, Volume 57 (2003), Issue 2, Articles Armstrong. M. (2006): Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice, 10th Edition, London, Kogan Page Brewster. C (1995): Towards a European Model of Human Resource Management-Journal of International Business. Vol 26 Chevrier, S. (2003): Cross-cultural management in multinational project groups- Journal of World Business. Vol. 38 DuBrin, A. (2003): Essentials of Management.

6th Edition, Peterborough, Ontario, Thomson South-Western Dwyer, S. , Richard, O. C. and Chadwick, K. (2003): Gender diversity in management and firm performance: the influence of growth orientation and organizational culture: Journal of Business Research Vol. 56 John, W. and Keith, D. (1997): Organizational Behavior- Human Behavior at Work. 10th Edition, New York, McGraw-Hill, Hewlett-Packard, (2009): Development and Management in HP retrieved from; http://welcome. hp. com accessed on 23rd January, 2009 Huselid, M. A.

(1995): The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3, Maslow A. (1971): The Further Reaches of Human Nature; the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Murray, A. (1989): Top management group heterogeneity and firm performance. Strategic Management Journal Vol. 10, Special issue Robbins, S. , and Judge, T. (2007): Organizational Behavior: 12th Edition: - Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall Rue, L. and Lloyd, B. (2003): Management- Skills and Applications. 10th Edition, New York, McGraw-Hill Irwin

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Run a free check or have your essay done for you

Check my essay Hire Writer