Report on "OB Practices in Grameenphone"

Course Title: Organizational Behavior

Course Code: MGT321

Submitted to:
Rumana Huk Luva
Faculty, MGT 321
School of Business
North South University

Submitted by:
Md. Alamin 1320068030

Md. Farqud Shunjy 1321401030

Asaduzzaman Monir 1320673030

Sheikh Tariqul Islam 1511386030

Md. Ibrahim Hussain 1330967630

Date of submission 18 April, 2018

Grameenphone
 Letter of Transmittal
April 18, 2018
Rumana Huq Luva
Faculty, MGT 321
School of Business
North South University

Subject: Submission of report on “OB practices in Reckitt Benckiser”

Dear Ma’am,

This is the group project of MGT 321 course on “OB practices in Reckitt Benckiser”. We
have tried to implement our learning from this course as much as possible and as per our
capacity. We would like to thank you for offering the opportunity to work on this educating
topic. Despite many limitations that we had to face, we have tried our best to make this report
as accurate and reliable as possible.

It would be pleasure for us if this report can serve its purposes and we will be available to
explain your queries if you feel necessary.

Sincerely,

Md. Al amin

ID: 1320068030

On behalf of the group

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our first acknowledgment goes to almighty Allah who has given us the strength and patience
to finish the task within the deadline.
With profound regard we gratefully acknowledge our respected course instructor Rumana
Huq Luva, honorable faculty, school of business, north south university, for her generous help
and day to day suggestion about our course and the report. She was very serious with us from
the very beginning of our course. Her guidance and encouragement have inspired us to finish
the project on time.
Last but not the least we would like to convey our gratefulness to our family members for
their emotional support and encouragement.
 EXECUTIVE SUMMERY

This report is prepared on the organizational behavior practice of the most prominent
company in the telecommunication field of Bangladesh. Grameenphone has been in the
market for a very long time and it has maintained the top position very well. The organization
is also very popular among the employees and students, as a great number of people find the
jobs in this organization much fascinating. Grameenphone has a different process of
employee recruitment, selection, training, compensation and a very unique working
atmosphere to maintain the standard quality of the employee’s work. Overall the
organizational behavior practice in Grameenphone makes it different and interesting to the
people. The OB concepts practiced in Grameenphone along with the corporate culture in the
organization definitely holds some credits for their success along with the technological
advancements.
 OBJECTIVES & SCOPES

Objectives of the Report:

i. To know the concept of OB and prospects by covering an organization.

ii. To understand the effectiveness of OB in success of an organization.
iii. To practically evaluate the OB concepts and recommend for the organization.

Scope of the Report:

The report can help us to create a new structure like this organization. During making the
report we came to know about many different aspects and sectors of a company like officers,
employers, labors and their works what can help us to make ourselves an entrepreneur to set a
new business. While observing the organization, we knew about professional life that will
help us to go ahead & of course that can be the turning point of our carrier.
 Table of Contents

Content Page No.

Letter of Transmittal ii
Acknowledgement iii
Executive Summary iv
Objectives & Scopes v
Table of Content vi-vii
1. Introduction 1
2. Methodology 2
3. Company Profile 3-6
4. Organizational Behavior 6
5. Leadership model in GP 6-7
6. Motivational Factors 8-10
7. Communication 10-12
8. Organizational Culture 12-14
9. Employee Participation Process 14-15
10. Empowerment Process 16
11. Conflict Management 16-17
12. Power & Politics 17-18
13. Change Management 18
14. SWOT Ananlysis 19
15. Conclusion 20
16. Recommendation 21
17. Reference 22
 Section 1

Commencement

1. Introduction

Grameenphone Limited is the number one and leading mobile company in the area of
telecommunication in Bangladesh.

Grameenphone has been famous for its conducive and safe working environment. Besides
focusing on customers and communities, Grameenphone is committed to treating their
employees with Integrity, dignity and proper respect. The Company’s intent is to establish
good working relationship through a mutual understanding of
expectations.

They believe in working in a team and demonstrate team spirit to maximize and excel in
standard quality service to their valued subscribers in the area of telecommunication.
Employees work in an environment where they feel valued, responsible and supported by the
authority as well as by their colleagues.

The organizational culture and behavior practice makes the environment in GP different from
other workplaces. Along with the corporate culture a friendly, participatory environment is
created among the employees to pertain the most productive outcome from them.

2. Methodology

Type of research:
The research conducted, is an academic study but the study was based on an overview of the
organization. Some informal interviews along with a formal interview of a manager at
Grameenphone Limited was taken to collect information.
Time period of the study:
The research was conducted on April 12, 2018 and submission of the research paper was
April 15, 2018.

Place of the study:

We visited the Grameenphone corporate office GPHOUSE in Dhaka to collect more

information about the organization and it’s inner structure.

Data sources:
Primary data sources are interview, questions and discussions. Secondary
data sources are internet, magazine, articles and papers.

Limitations:

Just few limitations we faced when preparing the report. Timing was one of them, otherwise
everything was good enough to research.

Contact person:

For this project we contacted with Mohammad Imtiaz Jahangir. He is the current Manager of
Customer System Management at Grameenphone.

Section2

Overview of

Grameenphone

3. Company Profile:
Grameenphone
The idea of providing wider mobile phone access to rural areas was originally conceived by
Iqbal Quadir, the founder director of the Legatum Center for Development and
Entrepreneurship at MIT. He was inspired by the Grameen Bank microcredit model and got
New York based investor and philanthropist Joshua Mailman. Later he worked for three years
gaining support from various organizations including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad
Yunus of Grameen Bank and the Norwegian telephone company, Telenor. Finally, a
consortium with Telenor and Grameen Bank was formed to establish Grameenphone. It is a
joint venture enterprise between Telenor (55.8%), the largest telecommunications service
provider in Norway, and Grameen Telecom Corporation (34.2%), a non-profit sister concern
of Grameen Bank. The other 10% shares belong to general retail and institutional investors.

Grameenphone received the nationwide digital cellular license on 28 November 1996 and
launched its services in Bangladesh on 26 March 1997, the Independence Day. The basic
strategy of GP is to get the coverage of both urban and rural areas. With the slogan ‘Stay
Close’, the goal of Grameenphone is to provide affordable telephony to the entire
population of Bangladesh.
GP took lease of 1800-kilometer fiber optic backbone network from
Bangladesh Railway for 20 years in September 1997. The GP network now has coverage in
almost all areas of Bangladesh. It is the leading mobile phone operator in the country in
terms of both coverage and number of subscribers. Grameenphone is the first company
to introduce GSM technology and 24-hour Call Center to support its subscribers.
The Journey of GP in Bangladesh can be portrayed as below;
1996: received cellular License.
1997: Launched on the Independence Day.
1998: Started in Chittagong, the port city.
1999: Started in Khulna, the Industrial city.
2000: Started in Rajshahi, Sylhet, Barishal. Became the first operator to cover six
divisional districts.
2003: became the first operator in Bangladesh to reach million subscribers.
2005: gained 5 million subscribers.
2006: crossed the 10 million subscribers’ milestone.
By 2018 Grameenphone has 60.5 Million Subscribers with the Best 3G connectivity in
Bangladesh and moving fast to the 4G connectivity.

VISION, MISSION, OBJECTIVES AND VALUES

Vision

Empower societies.

Provide the power of digital communication

Enabling everyone to improve their lives

Build societies and secure a better future for all.

Mission

 We’re here to help our customers.

 We exist to help our customers get the full benefit of being connected.

 Our success is measured by how passionately they promote us.

Four Core Vlues of Grameenphone:
1. Keep Promises

2 Make It Easy

3. Be Inspiring

4. Be Respectful

Grameenphone has taken these four belives as foundation of their organization.

Grameenphone encourages all the employees to keep in mind and practice it their everyday
activities. Grameenphone also belives that there is nothing impossible so, inspiration and
respect can make everything easier.

4. Organizational Behavior

Organizational Behavior(OB) is a field of study that investigates the impact that individuals,
groups and structure have on behavior within organizations, for the purpose of applying such
knowledge toward improving an organization’s effectives. Organizational Behavior is an
applied science built on contributions from a number of behavior disciplines including
Psychology, Social Psychology and Sociology. The OB practice in an organization should be
maintained properly to effectively run the organization and make it successful. The
employees’ productivity is highly linked with the OB concepts practiced within the
organization.

5. Leadership Model in GP

Grameenphone follows both democratic and autocratic leadership. The authority, policy
makers of the company use democratic leadership model to take decisions in the
organization. For every decision taken in the company the approval of the board of Governors
is needed to imply new decisions in the company. Employee service evaluation, product
pricing, marketing & management policies etc decisions are made through the meetings held
with the members and higher employees such as the Managing Director and others. The
authoritative sector of the company allows democratic pattern for all the members to express
in their ways and formulate policies with the support of the majority.

Autocratic leadership is rather implied on the employees who have no or less access to
decision making in the organizations. They are treated as guided workers who imply the
decisions taken by the authority. These emploees have very less opportunity to contribute to
the company in a broader sense. The low level employees are given orders and structural
bindings and they have to work according to that. They don’t have any effective influence in
the leadership and decision amking process in Grameenphone.

Grameenphone works via team. All employees are segmented by team. 20-40 team members
are supervised by a team leader named manager. 8-10 managers are supervised by a service
manager. 3-4 service managers’ report to DGM to respective department.

Grameenphone follows few different types of leadership including initial structure,

consideration, Employee oriented and Vroom Leader Model.

Different models of leadership

Initial Structure: The role of the leader is defining his/ her role and the role of the group
members.
Employee Oriented: GP people emphasize personal relationships and they are employee
oriented. They are strongly associated with high group of productivity and high job
satisfaction.

Consideration: The leader’s mutual trust and respect for group members’ idea and feelings.

Vroom Leader Participation Model: The Vroom leader participation model practiced in
Grameenphone includes the following stages: -

Decide: Leader makes the decision alone either announce or sells it to group. It mostly
happens in Grameenphone top management.

Consult Individually: leaders present the problem to the group members individually and
takes decision by getting their individual ideas.

Consult group: Leaders present the problem to the group members in a meeting, gets their
suggestion and then make decision.

Facilitate: Leaders present the problem to the group in a meeting acting as facilitator, defines
the problems and boundaries, within which a decision must be made.

Delegate: Leader permits the group to make the decision within prescribed limits.

Leaders also follow the transaction leadership.

6. Motivational Factors

Employee motivation can be provided by:

Profit Sharing: The most significant employee benefit offered by Grameenphone Ltd is
Profit Sharing. The profit sharing takes place once a year: July. Only the senior employees
who are around two or more years get 20% share of the profit earned. Out of this 20% profit,
75% is distributed in terms of seniority & designation & the rest 25% is distributed on
performance in that period.
Performance Bonuses: Performance bonuses are given on the basis of
performance in a given year. This happens after the yearly appraisal. The reviewer (usually
the immediate boss) notes down the performance of the employee on a given set of
characteristics & sends it to the MD. The MD then takes the decision on the performance
bonus. However, all decisions regarding performance bonuses by the MD needs to be
approved by the Board of Governors.

Reward: This reward system does not have any fixed criteria. This is basically an additional
reward system, which provides financial incentives to employees for extraordinary
performance in any area of their job.

Services Benefits: Grameenphone has a number of service benefits which is typically not
found in other companies. Among the benefits are flexible working hour: one can start their
office on 8am in the morning & leave by 4pm. GP provides daily transport for the employees
from far area. It also provides quality food as lunch at a commissioned price and snacks for
free of charge.

Yearly Picnic/Tours: Grameenphone Ltd bears the expense of one tour/picnic per year for
each employee. The company covers all transport, hotel & food expenses. This usually
refreshes the employees a lot and makes room for them to interact & know each other
better.

Compensation

Compensation does not represent only salary but a wide range of benefits and services as the
total compensation package. Grameenphone pays rewarding and competitive compensation to
attract, intercept and motivate compatible and efficient employees of the Company.
Grameenphone wishes to design a compensation system that has strong positive impact on
employees and ultimately on the Company's performance. The two types of compensation in
Grameenphone are:
 Monthly
pays

A. Basic Payment

B. House rent

C. Medical (Discounted Medical Service at ‘Medinova’)

D. Utility

E. LFA

F. Transport Cost

Benifits
 A. Performance Bonous

B. Festival Bonous

C. Mobile Bill

D. Insurance

E. Food Subsidy

F. Day care Facilities

G. Child Education Allowances

H. Parents Insurance

I. Spare Insurance

J. Handset Allowances

H. Employees Share

L. Employee Offer

7. Communication

The communication skill of Grameenphone is really overwhelming. The effectiveness in

communication helps the company in a large way to achieve its organizational goal. The
Communication process of Grameenphone helps the organization to enlarge its business by
balancing employee integration. It’s undoubtedly true to say that “Business communication
skill is important for a business to achieve its organizational goal”.
Communication Flow in the GP

The flows of communication within the organization may be upward, downward, or

horizontally directed.

Grameen Phone Limited has downward and upward communication flows which are
following:

Downward Communication:

Downward Communication is that from superior to subscriber-from boss to employee, and

from policy maker to operating personnel. Five elements of downward communication are
following:

Job instruction: Teaching new or current employees how to do a particular task.

Rationale: The justification for the organization and its goals; how a particular function fits
into the total organization.

Information: Orientation to the company - its rules, practices, procedures, and history.

Feedback about job performance: Supervisors evaluation or appraisal of employee

performance.

Ideology: The effort to convey to and install in employees a degree of enthusiasm, loyalty, or
support for the organization.

This flows, of course, related to the hierarchical structure of the organization.

Upward communication:

When management requests information from lower organizational levels, the resulting
information becomes feedback to the request. This is called upward communication. This
communication keeps management informed about the feelings of subordinates, helps
management identity both difficult and potentially promotable employees, and paves the way
for even more effective downward communication.

Basically these two types of communication flow are used by the Grameen Phone that helps
this huge organization to run smoothly.

Communication System in GP
Every organization has two types of communication system. Grameen
Phone is no except from them. It has also two types of communication system which are
following:

External System: This system is typified by the formal organization chart. This system is
used to control individual and group behavior and to achieve organizational goals. Some
elements of external system are –

i. Business letter
ii. Report writing
iii. Business proposal
iv. Memorandum report etc.

Internal System: The internal system develops as people interact within the formal, external
system and certain behavior patterns emerge, patterns which accommodate social and
psychological needs. In internal system, both formal and informal elements of
communication are used which are –

i. Grapevine
ii. Face to face communication
iii. PABX
iv. Mobile
v. Letter etc.

8. Organizational Culture

The working environment in GP offices is way different from corporate offices normally
seen. They have no bossy culture and seniors by rank or age are simply called as brothers or
sisters. The office provides no separate fixed places for employees, so they can sit altogether
and however they feel comfortable. GP people have buffet lunch together and many often
they go for picnic with their team. GP arranges GPPL and best employee rewards to
improve the relations and quality of work. The best thing to be noticed in interpersonal
relationship in GP is no one is discriminated here for gender, race, rank or income.
Food festivals and cultural practice:
GP CS Night: An amazing Cultural program for GP customer managers for their
refreshment.
 9. Employee Participation Process

The people of GrameenPhone are young, dedicated and much energetic. All employees are
well educated at home or abroad from renowned universities, with an even distribution of
males and females and social groups in Bangladesh. The employees believe in their hearts
that Grameenphone is more than telecommunication. This sense of purpose gives them the
dedication and the drive, producing the biggest coverage and subscriber‐base in the country.
GrameenPhone provides equal employment opportunities and recognizes the talents and
energy of its employees.

Grameenphone believe in working in a team and demonstrate team spirit to maximize and
excel in standard quality service to their valued subscribers in the area of telecommunication
service. Employees work in an environment where they feel valued, responsible and
supported by the authority as well as by their colleagues.

Grameenphone (GP) also takes preventive and safety measures to avoid all sorts of hazardous
situation that might take place in some areas of technical functions. Every month
Grameenphone makes the fire drill practice. All employees have to participate in the drill and
practice lifesaving structure. The drill is another way of employee participation process as it
enables the employees to participate in a task without any hesitation or discrimination.

As Grameenphone use democratic style leadership model mostly all employees have ability
to participate on work as well as decision making.

Upper level Employee participation: In top or upper level management they democratic
leadership is followed. Employees have the opportunity to share thoughts and participate
model creation

Lower lever: in lower level decision making autocratic system followed mostly. Employee
has to follow the upper management’s decision and action.
 10. Empowerment
Process
Talent Hunt (EDP) – Every year Grameenphone arranges for a program where the best
employee from every team takes part. The best employee from the program gets the
opportunity to participate into the leadership. The part timer employee becomes full timer
while the full time employee gets promoted to a superior post. The program enables
employees to actively participate in the process of getting integrated to the leadership
management opportunities.

Training programs – Grameenphone often holds training programs for its employees which
help to enrich their knowledge, skill, power and involvement.

Case Study – Grameenphone assigns the employees with case studies which improves their
analytical ability. GP provides arrangements to grow and enrich the employee’s carrier with
care. Employees in Grameenphone becomes more experienced and skilled and
knowledgeable with technology.

GPPL & Cultural Programs – Grameenphone arranges for cricket tournament GPPL every
year which gives the employees a chance to grow their interest in sports. Employees can
realize and find their talent in games and extracurricular activities through the GPPL and
cultural programs held by GP. The practice of the activities also helps to empower the
employees in their real life.

11. Conflict Management

Traditional view of conflict refers to the view that all conflicts should be avoided. But the
view has changed and differentiated between various types of conflict. Functional conflicts
help a team to achieve the goal. While dysfunctional conflicts are sure to make hindrance in
achieving success. In an organization conflicts may occur both in vertical and horizontal
hierarchical zone.

In case of dysfunctional conflicts that affect in a small range, the manager or leader in charge
is expected to handle and manage the situation. If two or more employees of a team in GP
gets into conflict, the team leader manages the conflict and tries to flow it toward the
betterment of the company. In case of conflicts that affect the organization or employees in a
broader sense the management forms a board with more than one member to discuss, inquire
and decide how to manage the conflict.

12. Power & Politics

12.1 Power Practice in GP

Power is the capacity that a person who possess it can use to influence the behavior of other
person. There are five bases of power which are coercive power, reward power, legitimate
power, expert power and referent power. The power bases are differentiated in to types of
power; formal power and personal power.

In Grameenphone the bases of power generally practiced are legitimate power as professional
power source and expert power and referent power as personal power source. Legitimately
given power of a person within the company forms his power over the fellow employees.

Expert power comes from a person’s personal specification or skillfulness which enables
him/her to influence others. Grameenphone has many skilled employees who with their skill,
experience and talent can influence others beyond his/her professional power. Referent power
is based on the identification of the person who has a desirable resource or personal traits.
though the practice rate of referent power is very low in GP, it’s not completely invisible.

Power tactics in GP

There is two-way flow of power which is explained below,

Upward Influence: the upper authority can be influenced through Rational Persuasion which
refers to Presenting Logical arguments and evidence to demonstrate a request.

is reasonable.

Downward influence: the upper authority can influence the employees through

 Rational Persuasion
 Inspirational Appeals
 Pressure
  Consultation
 Ingratiation
 Exchange
 Legitimacy

In Grameenphone women are equally treated and given respect and equal rights. So the
power of inequality is not practiced in Grameenphone.

12.2 Political Behavior

Political behavior in an organization refers to activities that are not required as part of a
person’s formal role in the organization but that influence or attempt to influence the
distribution of advantages and disadvantages within the organization. Many managers think
that political behavior and effective management are pretty equivalent but labeled differently.

In Grameenphone office politics is neither allowed nor practiced.

13. Change Management

Gp management has recently changed few thinks

Customer service:

Grameenphone operates their customer service by third party named digicon technologies
and genex. The managers of customer service are shifted to another department

Golden hand shake: Grameenphone is offering golden handshake for worker pruning.
 14. SWOT Analysis

SWOT Analysis of the Manager’s personality & Managerial Style –

Strengths Weakness
• New Technology Adaption time
• Leadership
• No diversity of work
• Communication Skill
• Inspirational and motivating
• Patience
• Technical Skill
• Analytical Skill
Opportunity Threats
• Experience to work with • Growing Competition
different types of people • Unskilled teammates
• Improve Carrier Skill • Worker pruning
• Personal Development

Section 3

Conclusion and
Recommendation
 15. Conclusion

Among the four mobile operators in Bangladesh, GP has managed to grab 57% of the market
share only by providing cost-effective packages & the best network service available in the
market of Mobile Telecommunication.

Over the past years, Grameenphone has been a pioneer in introducing new products and
services in the local market. GP first introduced GSM technology in Bangladesh when it
launched its services in March 1997. The technological and managerial expertise of Telenor
has been helpful in setting up an international standard mobile phone operation in the
country.

Grameenphone’s basic strategy is to provide coverage of both urban and rural areas, in
contrast to the “island” strategy followed by some of the other telecommunicating companies.
The intensity of coverage may vary from area to area depending on market conditions,
network setups, but the basic strategy of cell-to-cell coverage is applied throughout
Grameenphone’s network in Bangladesh.

16. Recommendation

Many of GP’s employees are frustrated about their work overload. There is always a pressure
about their service which lasts more than work hour. The workload and stress are some
prominent causes of the high turnover rate in Gp which increases the recruitment rate as well.
  Preserve Employee satisfaction through less pressure.
 Maintain international working hours and facilities for late night employees.
 Improve the employee participation procedure to extract the best from the employees.
 Arrange regular sessions to improve the interpersonal bonds & respect.

17. Reference

Internal:
i. MD. Ahsanul Kabir , Team Leader
ii. Tanima Ali , Service Manager
iii. Benazir Yousuf , Senior Executive
iv. Mohammad Kawshik Ahmed, Manager, Recruitment
External:
i. Organizational Behaviour

ii. www.grameenphone.com

iii. www.telenor.com

iv. www.telenor.com/about-us/global-presence/bangladesh

v. www.scribd.com

vi. www.citeman.com/8022-hris-in-action.html

vii. smallbusiness.chron.com/five-components-human-resource-management-system-

64231.html

viii. www.contactcenterworld.com/company/grameenphone.aspx

ix. http://www.lawyersnjurists.com/articles-reports-journals/telecommunication/grameen-

phone-ltd-company-profile

x. www.insideview.com/directory/grameenphone-ltd

xi. www.bangla2000.com/BusinessWorld/Company_Profile/grameenphone/grameenphon

e.shtm

xii. http://edupedia.educarnival.com/grameen-phone-report

xiii. www.sb.iub.edu.bd/internship/Summer2012/0821214.pdf

xiv. www.sb.iub.edu.bd/internship/Summer2012/0821214.pdf