Notas para después de la instalación en Linu

7.1.1 Organisational Structure – Study on “Group Effects”

Studies have shown that Organisational Structure has a profound impact on individual workers’ behaviour which subsequently affects small team’s cohesiveness as mentioned in the dissertation. The very obvious answer is that individual worker’s behaviour and its effects are inevitably going to cascade or “spill over” to his small working team. Be it positive or negative effects, the resultant consequences and reactions from other team members will drastically affect the team’s performance. Such small teams’ performance will consequently impact on the overall performance of the whole organisation. According to Stephen Robbins (2001),

“Organisational Structure contributes to explaining and predicting behaviour.” Research done by Drucker (1989)also shows that “Good Organisational Structure does not by itself produce good performance. But a poor organisation structure certainly makes good performance impossible, no matter how good the individual managers may be. Hence to improve group dynamics will therefore always improve performance.” It is therefore of utmost importance to also study in detail the effects of Organisational Structure changes on working teams or groups because ultimately these teams/groups are going to affect the companies’ overall performance (Sundstrom, De Meuse & Futrell 1990). Due to the short time frame for this dissertation, this aspect of the topic was left out. More detailed studies should be done on such working

teams/groups. “Group Effects”, group performance affecting companies’ performance should be the next phase of this dissertation.

7.1.2 Further works on Culture

We have covered a lot of grounds on Culture but there are more areas which can be further explored;

- Can Culture be Manipulated? Martin (1985)

More in-depth studies can be conducted on this interesting area.

- Can Culture be Managed? YES or NO?

More in-depth studies in this area so as to assist management teams to better manage Organisational Cutlure.

- Can Culture be Controlled?

Explore further the “Strategies of Control” by Edwards (1979) and Culture of “Concertive Control” on the studies done by Barker (1993). Further studies done on Control being “exploitative” and “emasculative” by Sewell and Wilkinson (1992) &

Willmott (1993) can be pursued in this area.

- A model of “Culture Traits” by Denison and Mishra (1995) can be studied in detail because this model shows the different culture traits likely to be displayed by employees and such tools can be very useful in explaining why workers behave as such.

- Industry Cultural Practices done by Christensen and Gordon (1999) is also another very useful reference to further study the actual cultural practices being practiced in the different industries. Just like different Organisational Structures cultivate different company Cultures, so does different industries.

- Studies on the relationship between “Culture and Employee Turnover” can also be studied to further determine the true relationship between these two (O’Reilly, Chatman & Caldwell, 1996 and Sheridan, 1992).

- Last but not least, the very important study on “National Cultures Effects – due to Globalisation” must be carried out in the next phase. So far we have been only dealing with the Dominant companies’ Cultures as mentioned in Chapter 1 of this dissertation but we do not forget that due to “Globalisation”, different nationalities are working together more often! National Cultures are a very strong influence on the workers’ behaviour and we cannot ignore this aspect of the study.

7.1.3 Organisational Change and Development & “How to Overcome Resistance to Changes?” We have studied briefly on the “Resistance to Changes” shown by the employees but the next phase of the study should focus on “How to Overcome Resistance to Changes?” The findings from this study will be able to help management to adopt the appropriate strategies to carry out the Organistional Changes and to put in place future Development plans more effectively with minimum resistance from the workers.

7.1.4 Literature Reviews on Other Factors Affecting Organisational Sturctures

Background literature reviews were done only on certain areas of this topic due to the constraints of time. Further studies can be done on these classic research works mainly because many important factors like Organisational Size, type of technology used, the environment, power and perception within the company and management strategies affects Organisational Structures and therefore more in-depth reviews can be carried out in these specific areas. - Organisatinal Size and Structre (Child 1988)

- Technology and Structure (Woodward 1958)

- Environment and Structure (Burns and Stalker 1961) - Power, Perception and Structure (Fligstein 1990) - Structure fo llows Strategy (Chandler 1962)

7.1.5 Future works on VIRTUAL ORGANISATIONS

With the on surge of Internet companies, there are as many Virtual Organisations as there are physical companies! Therefore it is worthwhile looking at this aspect of the study and explore the Organisational Structure and Culture of Virtual companies. Do they have Structures and most interestingly; since it’s a virtual company, “Do they have Organisational Culture?”

7.1.6 Surveys & Structured Interviews

There are many areas which can be improved and explored for further future works;

- Survey a wider group of companies’ employees (besides just PowerSeraya Ltd & its vendors/contractors). Gathering feedbacks from a wider pool of respondents will make the survey and its respective results more comprehensive and more representative of the wider population.

- More Structured Interviews to be conducted on more interviewees. We have found that the interviews were very useful, practical and fruitful. Much more quantitative & qualitative information can be obtained from the interviews.

- Improvement and refinement of the survey questionnaires to include other areas of investigation such as actual time frame for a company to recover after a major Retrenchment and Restructuring exercise (6 mo nths, 1 year, 1 ½ years or 2 years), quantify the actual intangible loss due to Retrenchment and Restructuring exercises to make the research survey even more comprehensive and complete. These areas of interest were left out due to the constraints of time and also not to make the survey questionnaires too long.

Survey & Structured Interview Questions – tough to design! One of the findings from the

Pilot and Pre-Testing of the questionnaires was not to make the questionnaires too long and laborious to fill up. Refinement should be make to strike a balance between producing a thorough questionnaire and not making it too time consuming for respondents to fill up. The same principle goes for the Structured Interview questions. The “Design of Questions” was very challenging and it is recommended that consultants and experts in this field be engaged to check the questions thoroughly to ensure that useful information can be retrieved and that the

APPENDIX

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