Brief History of the Organization:

Allied Worldwide is a growing small-medium sized enterprise(SME) which was founded

by Richard Skellett in 1992 who was a passionate entrepreneur looking for breakthroughs in the
IT world. Allied Worldwide’s website states that “[the company’s] vision is More partner than
provider, we are on a mission to enable your IT service to be delivered in the most cost-efficient
way possible, with a profit-sharing model designed to help towards IT being zero-cost for your
business” (Allied Worldwide, 2022). Moreover, they also mention that their mission is to “be the
independent IT services and business solutions partner of choice for our clients” (Allied
Worldwide, 2022).
Allied Worldwide provides IT related services to help their customers grow their
businesses. These include Allied Worldwide’s “Global IT Managed Services, IT Support and
Business Solutions” (Allied Worldwide, 2022). The company has over 250 certified experts and
emphasis is laid on efficiently providing quality services to their customers with their customer
reach expanding into 40 different countries. To cover all market groups in terms of demand of IT
related services, Allied Worldwide’s plan is to improve their services and add a new dimension
of IT related business solutions and expand their reach into even more developed areas,
particularly emerging economies. Furthermore, there are currently around 122 employees in the
organization and the IT experts and engineers account for over 54% of the total number of
employees. Allied Worldwide's organizational structure is hierarchical, with top management
and frontline managers in direct contact with IT experts and engineers, while middle managers
serve as a link between frontline managers and top management.

The Organizational Culture of the Company

An efficient and a healthy organizational culture is what drives an SME like Allied
Worldwide to success. The executives need to understand the importance of understanding
organizational behavior and the culture that forms the basis of an organization. As stated by
Mullins, organizational behavior “is concerned with the study of the behavior of people within
an organizational setting. It involves the understanding, prediction and control of human
behavior” (2013). To effectively understand how a company operates and how it will endure in
difficult times, a top analyst definitely looks at the organizational culture of a company as it is a
key indicator. We analyze Allied Worldwide’s organizational culture in detail in the following
sections.
Using Edward Hall’s Iceberg Model of Organizational Culture, we can divide Allied
Worldwide’s organizational culture into two parts – the surface culture and the deeper culture.

Surface Culture

Surface culture is what is perceived of the organizational culture of a company by a

bystander looking from the outside. These perceptions are based on what a person sees, hears, or
feels about the organizational culture and leadership of the company. Such outward aspects of an
organization's culture can reflect what the company values and how it functions. Luckily, for
Allied Worldwide, the surface culture is quite well perceived and ranks higher in the indexes for
companies in the same industry.
 1. Perks and benefits
Allied Worldwide aspires to create a workplace culture that helps employees to feel
comfortable in all aspects of their lives. Employee benefits and incentives are crucial in
making this possible. Allied Worldwide offers partial work-from-home services,
company retreats, flexible work hours, bonuses based on performance and paid maternity
leaves to all its employees, and this caters to a positive employee behavior and
engagement.
2. Attire and appearance
Employee attire and appearance can have a big influence on how a company's culture is
perceived. Allied Worldwide doesn’t have a specific dress code in its offices to
encourage employees to be casually dressed in the hope of increasing productivity.
3. Technology
A critical part of Allied Worldwide’s organizational culture is the technology used in the
offices. Being an IT service provider, the company has installed top-notch desktops and
other gadgets like smartboards and high-tech memo boards to aid the employees in
achieving routine tasks. These type of technological additions to the office reinforce the
culture amongst employees and reflects and shapes the values of the organization.
4. Language
An important part of a company’s organizational culture is the language used in the office
to communicate with each other. Allied Worldwide strictly focuses on using a formal
mode and language of communication to ensure all employees feel safe while
communicating with their colleagues and bosses.
5. Rewards and recognition
Employee satisfaction and organizational culture are greatly influenced by rewards and
recognitions. Allied Worldwide has plenty performance-based and loyalty-based rewards
and recognitions that represent the organization’s true values and culture but most
importantly to increase employee motivation.

Deeper Culture

Allied Worldwide has a prevalent hierarchical structure with established procedures and
strict levels of authority. The duties are strictly defined for each employee, and operations tend to
be streamlined. While the hierarchical structure at Allied Worldwide does enable them to
mitigate risks and be efficient operationally, it curtails them from having innovative ideas, being
ahead of the market and responding to any sudden changes in the industries or markets. The
following statement adds on to this point, “A major disadvantage to the hierarchical management
structure is that it doesn’t encourage people to collaborate and share information across the
vertical lines of the reporting structure. People working in hierarchical organizations are more
likely to develop into cliques, which in turn compete for power” (Bianca, 2019).
Although the surface culture at Allied Worldwide provides a decent layout for the
organization, at the deeper level the organization suffers from traditional organizational problems
that will not allow the company to sustain in difficult times or can cause high employee turnover
rates. While currently the employees are somewhat content about the organization’s goals and
vision towards future, many of the employees do not truly understand the organization’s mission
and business outcomes. Essentially, the employees do not feel that they are part of something
bigger and this is causing a hindrance in improving employee motivation.
 Another aspect that is of concern at Allied Worldwide is the internal communication.
While being an IT company it has several formal modes of communication like integrated
company sites, WhatsApp groups and email communication, the company lacks an informal
communication network for employees to communicate between themselves as the company
requires formality to be maintained in all communication that is work-related. Moreover, the
communication between frontline managers and top managers is also rigid as there are formal
procedures to go through before a meeting can be set between them. Adding on to the
communication issues, the employees at Allied Worldwide also feel that there are very less
opportunities to give feedback or to give suggestions.
Building on from the communication issues that disrupt a healthy organizational culture
at Allied Worldwide, another aspect that detriments the company is the lack of authority among
employees. The top executives at Allied Worldwide make unanimous decisions amongst
themselves and do not involve employees in the decision-making process. This results in
employees not feeling valued for the work they are contributing as they feel they have no sense
of authority whatsoever. The executives at Allied Worldwide believe they have this in order to
avoid a clash of opinions and referencing from an article that states, “…managers might shy
away from integrating their team into the process (of decision-making) to avoid additional
complexity or a potential clash of opinions” (Landry, 2020).
Another detrimental part of the organizational culture at Allied Worldwide is the lack of
training and professional development for employees. The employees the company hires are very
skilled by nature but there is no room for growth. Employees believe there are little prospects to
learn and be exposed to scenarios that will allow them to develop a multitude of skills. This can
cause high employee turnover rates for the company in the future and can cause the company to
not attract passionate skillful individuals.

Recommendations

To cater to the problem of employees being unaware of the organization’s goals and
mission, a special workshop should be held when employees first join the organization to
instigate into them what Allied Worldwide is all about and what it intends to grow into.
Moreover, a special company day should be held annually to review what the organization has
undergone and what are its plans for future growth that are aligned with the company’s vision
and values. In this way, the employees are more likely to feel a part of the company and keep
their interests and motivation intact to achieve the organizational tasks and improve further.
For internal communication amongst employees, an informal network, an intranet in
particular, should be set up where employees can communicate in an informal manner. This
grapevine network tends to boost productivity and allows the top managers to be more connected
to their employees. This is reinforced by Wudie in his article, “An active grapevine is indicative
of the company’s health and spirit, and executives can learn a great deal by listening to it”
(2018).
The lack of authority for employees at Allied Worldwide is a genuine problem for them
and to mitigate this, the executives at the company should adopt a wholistic decision-making
approach amongst managers and employees where both the managers and employees take part in
the decision-making process. Moreover, the employees should be involved in organizational
matters and have a say in it. Landry emphasizes the benefits of involving employees in the
decision-making process in her article: “By bringing employees into the conversation, you can
enhance creativity and gain a fresh perspective on the task or problem at hand” (2020).
To fulfill the self-actualization needs of the employees, according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs Theory, the company can conduct workshops, seminars and training that can expose the
employees to new skills within and out of their fields. These introductions can increase
workforce motivation. Most of the employees at Allied Worldwide have high task significance
and identity, but little skill variety and autonomy, according to the Job Characteristics Model.
This can cause low motivation so the top managers should view possible ways of job redesign,
for example, if someone is working in IT support, maybe they can try data analytics next, as their
job specifications are quite overlapping.
Putting the Relational Job Design into practice, the organization can conduct activities
whereby their employees and their clients who benefitted from their services get to interact. As a
result, the employees can recognize the impact of their services to the clients.

Motivation

McClelland’s Theory of Needs:

Need for Achievement

According to McClelland, the need for achievement is the individual’s desire to excel at
the tasks that one is performing. This need is highly important as when it’s expressed, people try
their level best to achieve whatever they are assigned. In short, people with a need for
achievement have a high achievement motive. In terms of organizational success, people with a
need for achievement are very important for jobs that require self-motivation. At Allied
Worldwide, there aren’t many layers of management to overlook the jobs of every single
employee, so the organization is quite dependent upon employees performing their jobs
efficiently with minimal supervision. This is where employees with high need for achievement
come and are beneficial to such organizations.

Need for Affiliation

The need for affiliation is the individual’s desire to have and maintain healthy
relationships with other people. People with a high need for affiliation are generally very social
in nature. In terms of organizational work, these people perform quite well in jobs that are group-
based or involves dealing with a lot of people. At Allied Worldwide, the customer services and
HR departments would benefit from people with a need for affiliation as such people would go to
great length to attain their teamwork goals.

Need for Power

The need for power is the individual’s desire to have control over other things, and in
organizational setting, control over people. Generally, people with a high need for power are
more talkative, tend to give more orders, and have a motivation to influence and be responsible
for other people. These type of people, if they channel their need for power in a positive way,
can be beneficial for organizations. Social power seekers tend to influence their group-mates and
influence them in order to achieve their group and organizational goals. At Allied Worldwide,
managers who are social power seekers have a higher efficiency and employee satisfaction rate
as compared to managers who are not.
Skinner’s Reinforcement Theory

According to Skinner, the reinforcement theory of motivation strives to motivate

employees through reinforcement, punishment and extinction. The desired employee experience
can be reinforced in the workplace, whether the reinforcement is positive or negative and
managers use their best judgement to achieve this as an article states, “Some companies issue
specific directives for how they want managers and supervisors to behave, while others allow
leaders to use their best judgement in how they maintain their staff and achieve their objectives
through reinforcement in organizational behavior” (McQuerrey, 2019).
Reinforcement theory is critical to attain the goals of the organization. Employees have a
tendency to be reinforced for their behaviors in order to move forward and grow. Positive
reinforcement allows employees to be rewarded for their desired performances as employees at
Allied Worldwide receive monetary benefits for achieving desired organizational goals. Negative
reinforcement involves reprimanding employees for below-average organizational performances.
Allied Worldwide has strict formal settings and policies and employees who do not follow those
are reprimanded. The benefit the company gains from negative reinforcement is that it ensures a
set standard of performance from the employees and maintains a professional decorum in the
workplace. Similarly, employees are punished for violating the company’s code of conduct or
leaking confidential information to third parties. Extinction is present in an organizational setting
to effectively reduce the occurrences of undesired behaviors from employees. For example,
managers at Allied Worldwide have been reportedly stopped paying overtime for brief periods to
discourage employees from working excessively and staying late in the offices.
All the aforementioned policies and theories, when put into practice, have statistically
made organizations develop and succeed as when applied, these policies and theories make the
organization vertically integrated from top to bottom to essentially attain organizational goals.

Modifying Behavior of Individuals in an Organization

Using McClelland’s Theory of Needs, the behavior of individuals can be modified to

increase one’s motivation to achieve organizational success. According to Rybnicek, Bergner
and Gutschelhofer, “Every employee is particularly motivated by a predominant need and
consequently experiences different stimuli as rewarding to a different extent” (2017). Managers
need to engage with their employees and essentially understand what their needs are and in what
areas are they lacking. If, for instance, an employee is lacking behind in a project working
individually and needs social interference to achieve the tasks, a manager can analyze this as a
need for affiliation and can assign a team to work with that individual. In this way, the
individual’s behavior can be modified from dissatisfaction to contention and consequently
achieving organizational success as well.

Recommendations to Motivate Individuals in Time of Crisis

Crisis times can come upon organizations at any instant and managers need to be
prepared and willing to handle tough situations. One such situation in times of crisis is the issue
of motivating other individuals, particularly their employees. Motivating employees in times of
crisis can be a critical situation for managers but they can pull through by applying a few
organizational tricks. Managers need to foster a collaborative environment in which each
department is helping other departments to cater to their needs. Organizations need to be
inclusive and cater to each employee’s problems. Moreover, managers need to praise and
acknowledge efforts of all the work that is being done in times of crisis to further instill
motivation amongst employees as stated by Williams in her article, “Gratitude allows leaders to
improve work culture and team performance, while transforming work itself” (2020). Lastly,
organizations need to enhance internal communication amongst executives, managers, and
employees in order to set clear objectives and ways to achieve so they can work collaboratively
to undergo the crisis and effectively putting the organization back to its successful phases.

Teamwork

Using Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Team Stages theory, the key to forming an effective
team has essentially four stages; forming, storming, norming, and performing.
In the forming stage, a group is tentatively made, and individuals are brought together. In
this stage, formal positions and roles are assigned to each individual. It is essential that a group is
made of those people who have tolerance for each other, have similar growth expectancies and
goals, and are confident about working with others. It is this stage that a strong foundation to an
effective team is made since members of the group create an impression of each other and tend
to discern their personal identities within the group.
In the storming stage, the members of the group get to know each other better and are
bound to share their views and ideas with each other more openly. There is bound for
disagreements and conflict to arise given the nature of the organizational tasks and
responsibilities. However, strong effective teams pass through this stage with ease by having
tolerance for each member and allowing healthy disagreements to take place. It is at this stage
that each member gets clarity on his roles and responsibilities and gets to know other team-
members’ strengths and weaknesses.
In the norming stage, the leader of the group assumes command and sets forth guidelines
and standards on how to go about the undersigned tasks. Effective teams undergo this phase and
realize the importance of it as it establishes the need for each member to collaborate and
cooperate with other and set standards of performance for every group member.
Finally in the performing stage, an effective team would have successfully progressed the
previous three stages and would have created cohesiveness and a set structure to work together
as a team. It will be this stage that the team comes together to work on the assigned tasks
efficiently without having any personal conflicts or reluctance to work as a group.

Behavior on the Improvement of Business Performance and Productivity

In the growing world today, organizational change is bound to happen, and companies
need to adapt to change. Leaders at top organizations tend for their companies to stay ahead of
the market and this leads them to implementing organizational changes at points. However,
organizational change initiatives are not always successful and have an estimated failure rate of
60-70% (Errida and Lotfi, 2021). This involves influencing the behavior of individuals which is
quite difficult in practicality. However, leaders at top companies influence and change the
behaviors of their subordinates in a positive way to improve business performance and
productivity. Leaders at many companies use Lewin’s Change Management Model to effectively
influence a positive change in the behaviors of their subordinates. A change in organizational
behavior can lead significant organizational outcomes in terms of enhanced performance,
productivity and effectiveness. This is reinforced in an article that states, “In the process of
organization change, employees will be able to acquire new skills, seek new opportunities and
exercise their creativity in ways that eventually favors the organization through extra ideas and
increased commitment” (MBA Knowledge Base, 2021).
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