Name: Subject:

Barnali Chakraborty Human Resource Management

Roll No.: Assignment No.:

520924936 MB0027 – Set 2

Study Centre: Date of Submission:

Cybertech Info (1626) November, 2009

Q1. Define Morale. Write importance of Morale.

Ans. Definition of Morale: Morale is a widely used term in organizations. But in

general, it refers to espirt de corps, a feeling of enthusiasm, zeal,
confidence in individuals or groups that they will be able to cope with the
tasks assigned to them. Morale is said to be the ability of a group to work
together for a common objective. The result of high morale generally
results in the high efficiency of the organization.

Morale has been variously defined by different authors. Professor Ralph C.

Davis says, "Good organizational morale is a condition in which individuals
and groups voluntarily make a reasonable subordination of their personal
objectives of their organization". According to Dale Yoder and Paul D.
Standohar, "Morale means evident commitment, that is, demonstrated
spirit, enthusiasm, and confidence in the organization's policies,
programmes, and accomplishments. Morale is revealed by what individuals
and groups say and do to show an interest in, understanding of, and
personal identification with work-team survival and success." Edwin B.
Filippo has described morale as "a mental condition or attitude of
individuals and groups which determines their willingness to co-operate.
Good morale is evidenced by employee enthusiasm, voluntary conformance
with regulations and orders, and a willingness to co-operate with others in
the accomplishment of an organization's objectives. Poor morale is evinced
by surliness, insubordination, a feeling of discouragement and dislike of the
job, company and associates."
According to Haimann, "It is a state of mind and emotions affecting the
attitude and willingness to work, which in turn, affect individual and
organizational objectives." Joseph D. Mooney describes morale as "the sum
total of several psychological qualities which include courage, fortitude,
resolution, and above all, confidence."

Importance of Morale: Morale refers directly to the working of an

individual in a team towards the realization of common objectives. The
building of morale is not a mechanical problem that could be solved by
either rewards or punishments or by issuing orders regarding morale. The
content of morale i.e., a specific issue that operates as pressures or
separates could be broadly divided into three groups: the first concerns,
off-the job satisfaction that is expected from work such as income, security,
and stature in the community, the second concerns on-the-job satisfaction
for example-job interest, opportunity for advancement and prestige within
the organization, and the third group concern highly personal satisfaction
 as derived from the job such as growth, achievement powers, job expertise
etc. Each group is important in its own way and any dissatisfaction in one
will have adverse effect on other groups.

Morale depends upon the relations between expectations and reality. The
closer the individual's environment comes to providing the kinds of rewards
he expects; the better will be his morale.
Morale might also be described as the spirit and confidence with which the
employee performs his job. It is a complex psychological quality that is
impossible to force on someone, different to measures, and easily
destroyed. The level of morale is a result of the degree to which the
overall needs of the individual are fulfilled.
The important factors which have a bearing on employee's morale can be
classified as relating to:

1. The employee's background-which includes his levels of indigence and

education and his type of personality-largely determines the way in which
he seeks to fulfill his needs for belonging, esteem, and self-realization.
High morale hinges on the satisfaction of these needs.
2. An employee's personal environment encompasses his relations with his
family, friends, and neighbors. The employee brings his thoughts of his
home and social life with him when he goes to work and they influence his
thinking and attitudes while on the job.

Management practices influencing morale include policies on procedures with

respect to wages, promotion methods employee services and benefits, working
conditions, handling grievances, disciplinary actions.

Q2. Elaborate on Principles for Maintenance of Discipline.

Ans. Disciplinary measures have serious repercussions on employees; they should,

therefore, be based on certain principles so that they must be fair, just and
acceptable to employees and their union; the most important principles to
be observed in the maintenance of discipline have been outlined by Yoder.
Heneman, Turnball and Harold Stone. These are:

a) As far as possible, all the rules should be framed in co-operation and

collaboration with the representatives of employees. If the latter have a
share in formulating them, will be much more likely to observe them.

b) All the rules should be appraised at frequent and regular intervals to ensure
that they, are, and continue to be, appropriate sensible and useful.

c) Rules should vary with changes in the working conditions of employees.

Those framed for office employees, for example, may very well be different
 from those that are formulated for workers in an industrial concern.

d) Rules should be uniformly enforced if they are to be effective. They must be

applied without exception and without bending them or ignoring them in
favour of any one worker.

e) Penalties for any violation of any rule should be clearly stated in advance.
Employees have the right to know what to expect in the event of any
infringement of a rule or regulation. For this purpose, it is better to publish
them in the employees' handbook.

f) A disciplinary policy should have as its objective the prevention of any

infringement rather than the simple administration of penalties, however
just: it should be preventive rather than punitive.

g) Extreme caution should be exercised to ensure that infringements are not

encouraged. This should be done as a matter of policy.

h) If violations of a particular rule are fairly frequent, the circumstances

surrounding them should be carefully investigated and studied in order to
discover the cause or causes of such violations.

i) Recidivism must be expected. Some offenders would almost certainly

violate rules more often than others. These cases should be carefully
considered so that their causes may be discovered.

j) Definite and precise provisions for appeal and review of all disciplinary
actions should be expressly mentioned in the employee’s handbook or
collective agreements.

Q3. Enumerate the Grievance Handling Procedure.

Ans. Principles suggested by the Indian Institute of Personnel

management for addressing the grievance are as follows:-

a) A grievance should be dealt within the limits of the first line supervisor.
b) The appellate authority should be made clear to the employee so
that if he cannot get satisfaction from his immediate supervisor, he
should know the next step.
c) The grievance should be dealt with speedily.
d) In establishing a grievance procedure, if the grievance is against an
instruction given by a superior in the interest of order and discipline,
the instructions must be carried out first and then only employee
can register his protest.
There should be no recourse to official machinery of conciliation unless the
procedure has been carried out without reaching any solution.

Grievance Machinery: A grievance machinery is usually thought of in connection

with a company that deals with a labour union. Though the union must be given
some credit for stimulating the installation of such procedures, all companies,
whether unionized or not, should have established and known methods of
processing grievances.
To establish new grievance machinery, workers in each department and each shift
shall select, from among themselves and for a period of not less than one year at
a time, departmental representatives, and forward the list of persons so selected
to the management. Where the unions in the undertaking are in a position to
submit an agreed list of names, recourse to election may not be necessary. Nor
will this be necessary when a Works Committee is functioning satisfactorily, for
the Works Committee's member of a particular constituency shall act as the
departmental representative.

Grievance Handling: The details of the grievance procedure vary from industry to
industry and from trade union to trade union because of the variations in the size
of organizations, trade union strength, the management philosophy, the
company traditions, industrial practices and in the cost factor. An important
aspect of the grievance machinery is the reassurance given to an individual
employee by the mere fact that there is a mechanism available to him which
will consider his grievance in a dispassionate and detailed manner, and that his
point of view will be-heard and given due consideration. An employee's conception
of his problem(s) may be quite biased. Venting his grievance and being heard gives
him a feeling of being cared for. He gets it "off his chest:, so to say and it does a
lot of good for his morale as revealed by the famous Hawthorne Studies.
 ARBITRATION

TOP UNION
TOP MANAGEMENT
LEADERSHIP

COMPANY UNION
MIDDLE
GRIEVANCE
MANAGEMENT
COMMITTEE

SUPERVISOR UNION STEWARD

AGGRIEVED
EMPLOYEE

Grievance Handling Procedure

Initial step: The greatest opportunity for the settlement of a complaint or
grievance lies in the initial step of the procedure. If there is no formal procedure
and the firm announces an open-door policy, then it is possible that the supervisor
or may get bypassed by the worker who would take his grievance directly to the
higher levels of management. But such bypassing not merely undermines the
supervisor's authority, who loses face, but also creates an atmosphere of win-or-
loose in which both the worker and supervisor will try to prove the other wrong.

Intermediate step: As the figure indicates, the next step on the management side
of the procedure is to submit the dispute to middle management. Involving the
supervisor's middle and senior-line managers in the grievance process helps in two
ways. Initially, the social barriers between the various categories are, to some
extent, broken by personal contact and mutual understanding. Secondly, the problem-
solving approach integrates the various levels in the organization into a team to
jointly overcome the problem which concerns not only the worker but the manager as
well. However, it is important to ensure that the line management assumes prime
responsibility for the settlement of a grievance. In many organizations, the Personnel
Department is injected into the procedure as a decision-making power. On the union
side, intermediate levels are represented by higher personnel in the union hierarchy. In
most of the organizations, the business agent, a full-time negotiations specialist of the
union, takes over the intermediate and sometimes the final step. The presence of a
business agent may explain why management is often outmaneuvered by the union.
Business agents are specialists in union-management negotiations, and it is also their full-
time job. The line manager often considers grievance processing a minor,
incidental, and distasteful duty. This lack of specialization and interest on the part of
line management has led to the situation in which the staff personnel department is
given authority to make decisions about grievances.

Final Company-union step: Usually, the final step to be undertaken by the company and
union is a discussion of the grievance between representatives of top management and
top union officials. For management, it may be the President in important
grievances, a Vice-president, or a high-level Industrial Relations Executive but, for the
union, it may be the President of the local union, the Union Executive Committee, or a
representative of the International Union. It is difficult to secure an integration of
interests at this high level.

Q4. Interpret the various aspects of Charismatic Leadership.

Ans. Charismatic Leaders exhibit charismatic authority. Defined as “resting on

devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an
individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by
him”. Charismatic authority is one of three forms of authority laid out in Weber's
.tripartite classification of authority, the other two being traditional authority and
rational-legal authority. The concept has acquired wide usage among sociologists.

Characteristics of Charismatic Leaders

The term charisma means "a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue
of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with
supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.
These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of
divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is
treated as a leader. How the quality in question would be ultimately judged from
an ethical, aesthetic, or other such point of view is naturally indifferent for the
purpose of definition."

Charismatic authority is "power legitimized on the basis of a leader's exceptional

personal qualities or the demonstration of extraordinary insight and
accomplishment, which inspire loyalty and obedience from followers." As such, it
rests almost entirely on the leader; the absence of that leader for any reason can
lead to the authority's power dissolving. However, due to its idiosyncratic nature
and lack of formal organization, charismatic authority depends much more strongly
on the perceived legitimacy of the authority than other forms of authority. For
instance, a charismatic leader in a religious context might require an unchallenged
belief that the leader has been touched by God, in the sense of a Guru or Prophet.
Should the strength of this belief fade, the power of the charismatic leader can
fade quickly, which is one of the ways in which this form of authority shows itself
to be unstable. In contrast to the current popular use of the term charismatic
leader, charismatic authority is not so much as character traits of the charismatic
leader but as a relationship between the leader and his followers - much in the
same way that Freud would transform Gustave Le Bon's crowd psychology through
the notion of identification and of an Ideal of the Ego. The validity of charisma is
founded on its "recognition" by the leader's followers. This recognition "is not (in
authentic charisma) the grounds of legitimacy, but a duty, for those who are
chosen, in virtue of this call and of its confirmation, to recognize this quality.
"Recognition" is psychologically, a completely personal abandon, full of faith, born
either from enthusiasm or from necessity and hope. No prophet has seen his
quality as depending from the crowd's opinion towards himself, although his
charisma risks disappearing if he is "abandoned by God" or if "his government
doesn't provide any prosperity to those whom he dominates.

Routinizing Charisma

Charismatic authority almost always evolves in the context of boundaries set by

traditional or rational (legal) authority, but by its nature tends to challenge this
authority and is thus often seen as revolutionary. However, the constant challenge
that charismatic authority presents to a particular society will eventually subside
as it is incorporated into that society. The way in which this happens is called
routinization.

Realization is the process by which 'charismatic authority' is succeeded by a

'bureaucracy' controlled by a rationally established authority or by a combination
of traditional and bureaucratic authority'.

Some leaders may employ various tools to create and extend their charismatic
authority; for example utilizing the science of public relations.
In politics, charismatic rule is often found in various authoritarian states,
autocracies, dictatorships and theocracies. In order to help to maintain their,
charismatic authority, such regimes will often establish a vast personality cult,
which can be seen as an attempt to gain legitimacy by an appeal to other forms of
authority. When the leader of such a State dies or leaves office and a new
charismatic leader does not appear, such a regime is likely to fall shortly
thereafter unless it has become fully reutilized.

Note that, a charismatic leader does not have to be a positive force thus, Benito
Mussolini and Adolf Hitler could be reasonably considered charismatic leaders.
Furthermore, Sociology is axiological neutral towards various forms of charismatic
domination: it does not make difference between the charismas of a Borserker, of
a shaman, of the founder of Mormonism of the one displayed by Kurt Eisner.
Sociology ^considers these types of charismatic domination in "an identical manner
than the charisma of heroes, prophets, the "greatest" saviours according to
common appreciation."

Whenever problems seem intractable, there comes a call for MORE LEADERSHIP.
This usually means a call for better leadership and for many, it is a call for
charismatic leadership, something that we think we know when we see it but is
very hard to define. We can't seem to get enough of movies like Rocky, Patton, or
Godfather that centre on charismatic leadership; we seem to think that if only we
had better leaders, we could solve our problems.

Case Study

1. As Ivan’s manager, what should your strategy be in handling the

performance evaluation interview with Ivan?

Ans: Performance evaluation is the personnel activity by means of which the

enterprise determines the extent to which the employee is performing the
job effectively. The personnel specialists design the performance evaluation
system, train the line managers in the use of the systems and maintain the
records. The line mangers do the evaluation of the employees and in many
cases communicate the results to their employees. The three categories
used for the evaluation are; individual evaluation methods, multiple person
evaluation methods and other methods.

Under Individual evaluation method, there are five ways to evaluate an

employee individually. In these systems, employees are evaluated one at a
time without directly comparing them with other employee.

Being Ivan’s manager, I will evaluate him through Critical incident

technique, which is one of the Individual evaluation method. In this
technique, I will prepare a list of statement of very effective and
ineffective behaviour of Ivan. Then I will combine these statements into
categories, and once the categories are developed and statements of
effective and ineffective behaviour are provided a log will be prepared.
Then from the log I will finally evaluate the performance of Ivan.

2. What remedial measures do you suggest to tackle the situation?

Ans: As remedial measure I would like to send Ivan in a training program because
training moulds the employee’s attitude and helps them to achieve a better
co-operation with the company and the co-workers.

Being a HR manager is a huge responsibility because I have the task of

bringing out the best in our employee. I have to work extra hard to
encourage employee performance improvement. As a HR manager my goal is
to change an employee’s behavior, for that may be I have to make some
adjustments in the manner of dealing with some employees.
 For instance, when you place someone on disciplinary action, managers
frequently make the mistake of concentrating only on documenting negative
employee behavior rather than focusing more on guiding the employee.
Although documentation is important when the behavior is not amended and
additional steps in the discipline process are necessary, managers should
also hope that their employee can successfully improve rather than expect
the worst.

As a manager I should be able to identify the specific work attitude or

behavior that needs to be changed. Usually, the problems with an
employee’s performance is identified as a need for improvement of work-
related abilities like communication, or a task-related skill like data entry,
written communication, and public speaking.

I will also provide a record of an employee's poor performances in the past,

and assess how these can be improved in the future. Another important
thing to keep in mind is that you as a manager I will focus on the goals on
hand to be able to retain the good relationship with your employee.

Frustration and anger can sometimes affect the working relationship

between the manager and the employee. So I suggest staying calm and
increasing feedback to boost improvement in behavior. It will also help me
to succeed if I use a performance improvement plan that has a set of
specific goals given to the employees in question.

For employee who may receive a performance improvement plan (PIP), this
may a Lear warning for them to shape up and follow established procedures.
Not doing so could lead them to dire consequences; in worst cases –
termination.

3. As an appraiser do you suggest with holding Ivan’s increment? Give

reasons.

Ans: As an appraiser I don’t think that holding Ivan’s increment would be a better
idea to make him understand what his shortcomings are. Instead of that as I
have said above that I would send Ivan for a training.

As we know that he is an asset for the company his performance is good, he

is hard working also but the only problem with him is his behaviour with the
subordinate employees. As an appraiser I will make him understand his pros
and cons and tell him that for this he has to undergo for training.

According to me sending Ivan for training and also by holding his increment
can make the situation worst because his performance towards company
and after going through the training he will be able to makeup his mistakes.