Organiztional Behavior & Management Midterm Paper

North Greenville University
College of Business and Sport Professions

Date of Submission: Spetember-4-2017

Title of Assignment: OB Midterm

CERTIFICATION OF AUTHORSHIP: I certify that I am the author of this paper and that any assistance I received in its preparation is fully acknowledged and disclosed in the paper. I have also cited any sources from which I used data, ideas or words, either quoted directly or paraphrased. I also certify that this paper was prepared by me specifically for this course.

Student's Signature: Anthony Blair

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Instructor's Grade on Assignment:

MANAGING MISBEHAVIOR – Discuss Sexual Harassment and Substance Abuse

Every company comes across some type of misbehavior. There are many different types of misbehaviors that can be performed by an employee. Some common misbehavior seen within companies includes cheating, bullying, bribery, sabotage, theft, sexual harassment and substance abuse.  An understanding of managing workers is incomplete without study, discussing, anticipating and addressing the acts of employee misbehaviors (Ivancevich 205). A manager should have a clear understanding of how to handle these situations. Solid preparation and proactive protocols set in place for when these situations arise can save a company a lot of time and money when handling these misbehaviors. There are a few select misbehaviors that managers must face extensively. The most commonly publicized misbehaviors significant to know about are sexual harassment and substance abuse.

        Sexual harassment is a very important topic to go over and be aware of in the workforce. Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome advances, asking for sexual actions and favors with other types of verbal, physiological or physical abuse involved. More than 70 percent of female employees reported they have been the objects of sexually harassing behaviors at work (Invancevich 210). There are multiple types of sexual harassment including: Quid pro quo, which occurs when an employee is granted a request in return for completing sexual favors. For example, if “Sandy” asks “Bob” for a raise and Bob requires Sandy to sleep with him in order to receive her request. Another type of sexual harassment includes Hostile working environments. In this type of sexual harassment employees must deal with an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Lastly, there is physiological harassment, which usually occurs when an employee is harassed even if the sexual behavior is not illegal. Sexual harassment can occur because of lust, a disproportion of power or for unknown reasons like psychological imbalances. According to the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Department, there were 26,934 cases of sexual harassment filed in 2016 (EEOC Releases Fiscal Year 2016 Enforcement and Litigation Data, 2017). There have been tests created to help managers recognize sexual harassment in the workplace, which include The Family IQ Test, The Public Forum Test and the Dual Treatment. Managers should have a clear understanding of these tests to make sure they can recognize sexual harassment issues if they arise and hopefully be able to avoid them.

The next important misbehavior that needs to be addressed is substance abuse on the job. Substance abuse effects over 23 million people, with 19 million people dealing with the use of alcohol and the other 4 million using illicit drugs.  Using drugs impairs decision-making abilities and physically impairs people in the workforce. “In fact, 10-20% of American workers who die at work have a positive result when tested for drugs or alcohol, a study by OSHA states that the most dangerous occupations, such as mining and construction, also have the highest rates of drug use by their employees” (The Shields, 2017). Organizations are using new creative ways to help identify substance abuse before potential employees are hired on such as offering drug tests as part of the interview process. A lot of companies are also creating substance abuse programs to help troubled employees with their problem. For instance, my company is always doing random drug tests to keep everyone aware and accountable.

The key to managing these misbehaviors lies with the company. In order for these misbehaviors to come to an end the company is going to have to implement correct practices. Training the supervisors to be aware of employees coming to work drunk or to make sure someone is using or selling drugs, having a random drug test. These are just a few ways to manage and handle misbehaviors in the work place and possible save a life.

WAYS TO IMPROVE EFFECTIVENESS IN ORGANIZATIONS

Organizations create goals to promotes its overall performance. To be able to achieve all these goals, organizations implement different strategies that will help them achieve all these goals. A key factor in measuring a company success is with effectiveness. Managers use different organizational effectiveness techniques to be able to measure how effective their organizations are operating.  The whole concept of organizational effectiveness relies on the system theory, which considers the flow of inputs and outputs as the basic starting point of understanding an organization—with the input being that the company is taking the resources from the environment and the output processing the resources, and return them in changed form. Overall the organizational effectiveness is defined as an all-encompassing concept about how products or services are produced or provided ( Ivancevich 13). If a company is looking to improve its effectiveness there are six main areas it needs to focus on to do so: Quality, Productivity, Efficiency, Satisfaction, Adaptiveness and Development.

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