Organizational Behaviors and Work Alienation Essay

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Work Alienation

Alienation and Organization behavior

Objective viewpoint

Solutions to Alienation

Results and effectiveness of solutions

The management of the employment relationship has become an area of priority for the managers in organizations as companies and organizations strive to gain better output and productivity. This enhanced output and productivity is now focused on being obtained from increased engagement of the human resources in a company as organizations worldwide understand the need to maximize the potential of an organization's human resources to attain the goals and objectives.

This focus on the extreme utilization of the human resources often entails the situations where a limited workforce is stressed to perform as companies strive to gain maximum profits and often resort to downsizing of workforce. This stress and strain leaves a mental impact on some or a large section of the employees which results in negative mental environment at the workplace. This condition is often regarded as the alienation of the workforce at work which tends to strain the relation between the employee employer relationships. Thus the situations of alienation of the employees at work not only have a social and economic impact on business as well as the wider community within which the employees function, it also impacts the overall environment of the company and sometimes even the organizational behavior.

Alienation and Organization behavior

Organizational behavior is termed as the collective attitude that persists among the people in within the organization that is developed through regulations in the organization and is affected by the decisions taken by the organization authorities. It is also defined as the study of human behavior when the subjects are in an organizational set up (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995). It is essentially a condition where the human behavior and the organization's behavior tend to overlap. There are three aspects of organizational behavior- between the individual and the organization, between groups in and the organization or outside and the behavior of an organization itself (Wanger and Hollenbeck, 2010). In this study we restrict ourselves to the relations between the employees and the organization and groups within the organization and look into the aspect of alienation of employee with respect to the combined behavior of the organization.

Alienation of workers is referred to the detachment of the workers from the affairs of an organization on a personal basis as well as with the others in the organization. In cases where this alienation continues for a sufficiently long duration of time, such workers also develops disconnect with the organization.

This directly affects and gets reflected in the organizational behavior in a negative way. Since the alienated workers find themselves not being able to fulfill their social needs a gap develops between the perceptions of an objective work situation and the values, ideals and desires of the workers (Jesus Suarez-Mendoza & Zoghbi-Manrique-de-Lara, 2008). The negative elements that are developed within an individual also get reflected in the behavior of the workers. When a large section of the workers in an organization go through the similar phase, their negative attitude manifests in a negative manner throughout the organization (Armstrong-Stassen, 2006).

There can be several manifestations of alienation from work that can include instances like decreased job involvement and a general deficiency to identify with the organization. Other problems that can arise due to alienation of workers at work can be instances of reduced decision making ability and minimal usage of skills (Berger, Sedivy, Cisler & Dilley, 2008). Workers who are suffering from alienation tend to be disengaged from their work and have a general lack of involvement in the work role and responsibilities. The motivation of the workers is considerably reduced when they suffer from alienation. This is very detrimental for any organization and has a direct impact on the overall organizational behavior in a negative way (Banai, Reisel & Probst, 2004).

Alienated workers also manifest their frustrations that they go through by becoming increasingly detached with the organizational goals, tend to avoid autonomy, responsibility and higher status and instead engage in work and interests that are non-productive. Another important fall out of employees who are alienated id that they generally remain uninvolved in the organization activities and they work only to earn money.

Therefore the above attributes clearly indicate that if a majority of employees are alienated from the organization, their actions and attitudes are generally negative. If this is the generally trend among the majority of the employees then it is obvious that he negative attitude and actions would have a collective negative manifestation.

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Since the collective manifestation of the employees of an organization is known as organizational behavior, therefore alienated employees would have a negative impact on the organizational behavior.

Objective viewpoint

Alienation of employees has been an issue of study for quite some time. For example, Marx defined tree forms of alienation among the workers that tend to be caused by labor process in an organization (Maidan, 2011). These forms of alienation are related primarily to the attitude of the worker to the work environment and the organizations and the work that the workers does. Marx claims that alienation happens when workers get into a feeling of being dispossessed of the product or what they produce (Robbins & Judge, 2013). Marx clams that in these cases that produce is owned by the capitalist. Workers are also alienation from oneself and they thus find themselves from their true selves in terms of their work. Alienated workers are self-distanced people from not only their work environment but also in general from both their own humanity and that of the others.

These are termed as objective reality or viewpoint by Marx and are imposed as external forces that create alienation and were formed under severe criticism of capitalism. These aspects were not subjective according to Marx. Therefore Marx's claim is that alienation is caused by the factors that are external to the worker in a capitalist society.

Nathaniel Hawthorne also framed his stories on the theme of alienation of the characters. In most of his writings, the central characters of the writer were victims of alienation. According to Hawthorne, alienation happens when one is emotionally isolated and dissociated from others around him or her. The characters in the writings of Hawthorne consistently alienated constantly face rebuke and remain isolated from the society. The characters in his novels are alienated from their close ones both mentally and physically (Robbins & Judge, 2013). The cause of the isolation of the characters of Hawthorne is primarily the harsh judgmental nature and the conditions of the Puritan society of the time and the settings of the writings. There is a cause however a reason for the alienation of the characters as they seek truth and the different standards and thinking of the people result in the alienation.

Solutions to Alienation

In business and organizations however there are a number of ways that organizations and companies can tackle the risks that are generated from alienation of the workers.

Alienation can be reduced at the workplace by reviewing the organizational structure related to size, formalization and centralization of companies and removal of tensions that are related to the job. This can also be achieved by bringing in behavioral changes in the organization so that the alienated workers' reservations are resolved. Alienation can also tackled by the introduction of performance management system that would comprise of the generalized work activity in the work context.

Addressing the issues of the workers that are related to the work environment in the organizational context, the abilities of the workers, the occupational interests and the values of the workers can help solve the problems related to alienation. Employers need to create job families through the generalization of skills and the classification of occupations and cross domain analysis (Robbins & Judge, 2013).

One of the primary causes of alienation is the lack of communication of the company directives and pro-worker policies. This can be eliminated by undertaking of organizational audit that should include the organizational communication that is done and the satisfaction of the workers from the communication, the management of conflicts in the organization and communication to groups.

Results and effectiveness of solutions

The solutions that have been talked in the above section have the potential to reduce the risk of alienation of workers. The addressing of the problems of the workers would enable the organizations to reduce the causes of alienation of the workers. The measures enable the equal distribution of every resource of the organization or the company so that the workers do not feel deprived. The solutions mentioned above can therefore increase the motivation of the employees of the companies and thus create sustainability for the companies.

The primary concepts that are used for the solutions include interpersonal communications between employees and organization, the identification and rectification of structural problems, creating a clear line of communication in the organization, justice based activities of the organization and the concept of equality of human resources of an organization.

Conclusion

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