NHRD Journal - National HRD Network

edesigning of the organization. When this
starts to happen the existing employees feel
bereft of personal contact with the roles in the
higher authority and ownership. As there is an
increasing sense of urgency in the
organizations, collectives and individuals to
reach the mileposts and destinations of growth
the human values to govern the organization
are often marginalized. In such a process of
dramatic change organizations require a pause
to explore and ask many a difficult question as
to the nature of change, directionality of change
and shaping of change.
Organization Identity
Many organizations at such a point of time like
to ask themselves the questions as to what is
their identity. Organizational identity consists
of the history of growth, the evolution of
underlying philosophy, the individuals in
leadership roles, the values of governance, the
existing and new employees and the overall
work culture of the organization. Over time this
work culture gets stabilized and then becomes
frozen. A comfort zone gets created where
organizations tend to hold on its created
meanings and work roles. It is at this point of
time the organization's identity with its deeply
embedded meanings finds it difficult to respond
to change by adding new dimensions and new
ways of working. Organizations get caught with
the anxiety of losing the techniques of success
and fail to find freedom to discover their internal
strengths to ever renew it.
Organization Structure
Structure designs and determines the
directionality, degree of autonomy of each task,
role and function, boundary and the interlinkage
space in the organization; so that an
order, clarity and a policy frame for results get
created. The structure also allocates
responsibilities, authority and accountability at
all levels of the organization. Individuals,
groups, organization structure and their interplay
with each other create its own dynamics.
In the designed structure of the organization
and its operationalization, some tasks and
functions get centralised, acquire significance
and visibility and are perceived as having more
favoured and strategic status with the top or
the senior management. While some other tasks
and functions are marginalised and feel a "taken
for granted" status. How this dynamics is
translated into managerial behaviour
determines the quality of energy available to the
organization through using the spaces to
interlink and take functional and
organizational responsibility and decisions.
Simultaneously, the leader needs to foster
membership and belonging of the employees.
The institutional a sense of culture may or may
not receive energy from an organization
structure depending upon the role played by
the leadership and the internal dynamics of the
organization. Similarly, the organization
structure gets operationalized through direction
from the leader or multiple pulls and pushes
from the various groups in the organization.
The non emergence and operationalization of a
formal organization structure generates stress
and power and politics in the organization
leading to dissipation of energy across all levels
of management and employees. In such a
situation the role of the leader is to initiate those
processes which will mobilise the
organizational structural energy for the
organization and its employees. This change is
brought about through inclusive processes
where employees experience openness and
accessibility and fair and just systems.
Organization Culture
The organization culture evolves over a period
of time and is connected with the history of
growth of the organization and the interplay of
various internal and external dynamics of
interfaces across the organization. The roles, the
membership and leaders and their inter-play
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November 2007 NHRD Journal