T205A TMA

TMA PT3 FORM

Arab Open University - Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA)

Academic Year 2014 - 2015 Semester: First

Branch: Saudi Arabia Program: Faculty of Business – Systems

Course Title: Systems Thinking & Practice Course Code: T205A

Student Name: Maryum Kamran Ahmed Choudry Student ID: 601009215

Section Number: 6101 Tutor Name: Syeeda Unnisa

Mark Details

Allocated Marks

Questions Q1/A Q1/B Q1/CTotal

Weight 15 15 70

Student’s Marks

Mark Deduction CriteriaPresentation &

Word CountReferencing &

CitationE-Library Total

Weight Deduct up to 5 Marks

Deduct up to 10 Marks

Deduct up to 5 Marks

Deducted Marks

Student’s Total Mark

Notes on plagiarismA. According to the Arab Open University By-laws, “the following acts represent cases of cheating and

Plagiarism: Verbatim copying of printed material and submitting them as part of TMAs without proper

academic acknowledgement and documentation. Verbatim copying of material from the Internet, including tables and graphics. Copying other students’ notes or reports. Using paid or unpaid material prepared for the student by individuals or firms.

B. Penalties for plagiarism ranges from failure in the TMA to expulsion from the university. Declaration: I hereby declare that the submitted TMA is my own work and I have not copied any other person’s work or plagiarized in any other form as specified above.

Student Signature: Maryum Kamran Ahmed Choudry

4

Tutor’s Feedback

Tutor Name: Tutor Signature: Date returned:

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4ANSWER TO PART A:

SPRAY DIAGRAM OF STRATA O5

The spray diagram of Strata 05 reflects the relationships and link within the organization. Strata 05 are the aero structure manufacturer in Abu Dhabi. The organization has major partnerships with the Airbus and Boeing and they have agreement that ensure US $1 billion business to Airbus. They also made agreements with the Airbus to transfer their knowledge and support for designing and implementing the aero structures. Strata use their Human Resource to train and educate, recruit and select the potential employees. The human resource also focuses on making HR policies and strategies which can help improve the organizational performance.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4ANSWER TO PART B:

SYSTEMS MAPPING OF THE MAIN HUMAN RESOURCE CHALLENGES AT STRATA 05:

This diagram above is the system map for the main human resource challenges at Strata 5 mentioned in the case study. These challenges are divided into groups such as HR strategies and planning can face the challenges such as planning for the success of the organization, building strategies in a way that can effectively engage its people to work for the success of the organization, manage the talent they already possess in their organization, managing the performance of these people and also managing the talent through change. Some of the challenges that HR faces can be recruitment and selection process through finding/sourcing talent from the external resources, identifying the high potential in the candidates that apply for the job, selecting the best candidates for the internal moves and also assessing the best talent to join the organization. Training and Education is necessary to develop high potential and high performing teams.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4ANSWER TO PART C:

Systems’ thinking is the branch of holistic thinking which helps in solving complex problems as it avoids any loss of issues that might have any link or connection to the situation. Systems thinking helps to change the perspectives and the situation can be a mess or a difficulty. The systems’ approach tends to encourage managers to practice motivation and team work among the organization so that it can perform effectively. The team work helps employees make better relationships with each other and also helps them communicate effectively. The open communication between the managers and employees within the organization helps them stay focused on their goals. Anthony Howard (2012) quoted in his article that:

“In order to generate better results corporations need to adopt and foster a culture of continuous organisational learning (Senge, 1990/2006). But in order to be “learning organisations” they first need to become effective thinking organisations. And in order to become a thinking organisation, they need to become an organisation of thinkers, since organisational thinking is a compound of individual thinking.” [1]

An organization comprises of a basic unit which further comprises of several entities which can be broken down to sub-systems. People or organizations can face situations, such as difficulties or messes. These can vary from their complexity and seriousness. We can be trapped or stuck in our thinking when we face a situation. Situations are of two types; difficulty or mess. Difficulties and messes can be distinguished under two headings, scale of the situation and the level of uncertainty. There are clearly elements of rational and emotional complexity that must be considered when distinguishing between a mess and a difficulty but also that it can vary from person to person. Messes usually have more implications and need to be worried about them. More people are involved have a longer timescale, and can be difficult to tackle. Messes can also be uncertain or unsure. Whereas, difficulties are fairly clear, certain, can be treated as a less discrete matter, the situation is known and can be taken care of. When the problems are seen as a bundle of simple bounded problems they are difficulties and when the problems are complex unbounded problems they cannot be easily identifiable.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

unbounded

longer timescale priorities

called in question

greater implications

can't be disentangled from

its contextmore people

involved

don't know what needs to be

known

not sure what the problem is

no 'solutions'

bounded

limited timescale

priorities clear

limited applications

can be treated as a seperate

matterlimited number of people involved

know what needs to be

done

know what a problem is

know what would be a

solution

4

In systems thinking, the situations consist of different facets of complexities. The can arise from the different perspectives of the people in situations and also from the degree of emotional involvement. There are two aspects that can be used to differentiate complexities. Hard complexities being the first aspect involves rational factors that tend to involve computational complexity. For example, chess or applying chemical processes. Whereas, the other aspect of complexity is the ‘soft complexity’ which involves people views’ and is basically emotional factors being involved. For example, career choice. The two situations, difficulties or messes, can also be related to the two complexities mentioned. Difficulties being rational and well-defined can be treated as hard complexities and messes being ill-defined and involving emotional factors includes soft complexities. I classify Strata 05’s situation as a difficulty. This is the situation where the company already knows what the problem is, know how to solve it, and the priorities are clear. They already know that their biggest challenge presently is to find skilled workers in a country that is still in the process of creating its integrated aerospace industry. The measure to this complexity is their Oracle recruitment module which is used to find suitable candidates through simulations, interviews and psychometrics to measure their performance against their skills and behaviors for the job.

Systems’ thinking is a different way of analyzing a situation from that of the traditional ways. Traditional ways of analyzing basically focus on the analysis by dividing the system into pieces for fulfilling the purpose of analysis. Whereas the systems approach, focuses on the holistic way of analyzing. Holistic way is analyzing the whole system or the taking the broader view into account. This approach gives different results than the traditional way and is said to be effective for the complex problems as it contains great deal of feedback with it. How we see things can affect the way we approach different situations and undertake different tasks. These thoughts are heavily affected by our culture that we live in and also is affected by our education and training. The basic principle of systems thinking is to find the linkages or relationships between the parts that constitute a system. These relationships are responsible for how systems operate. Systems thinking and practicing it helps in finding the real source of problem and troubleshooting that problem.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4Systems’ thinking is effective in a way that it is a specialized branch of the holistic thinking. It helps in not losing issues that are associated with the situations. Systems’ thinking changes ones perspective which can lead to changes in the attitudes as well as the approach which makes it easier to identify the social components required to solve the complex issues. There are two types of thinking involved in the systems. Systematic thinking, being one of the types, is a clearly defined and organized way of thinking. This type consists of plans and is more like an orderly thinking. In other words, this type of thinking can also be said to be reductionist thinking as it reduces the overall situation to a set of steps or parts which rely on each other. Systemic thinking, being the second one, affects the whole organism and deals with the internal and external influences. It is also defined as the holistic/integrative approach that deals with the wholes.

Tomas Palaima, Aelita Skaržauskienė, (2010) quoted in their article that:

“The environment in organizations is becoming more complex and changes more often and suddenly, processes in organizations, society and other places have much more variables than can be covered together. Managers try to manage socio‐cultural systems in goal‐oriented way, but it is difficult to forecast results of their influence because of complexity of global systems.”[2]

The management at Strata 05 uses the interactions and linkages among its system, in order to make the entire system work together effectively. Management at Strata is mainly focusing on the open system perspective which is realistic and clearer. For the success of the whole system there has to be a performance management system on top of all the systems in order to bind people together for the success of the organization, for example: teamwork, development, rewards, communication etc. Collaboration between members of the organization and the top level managers has not resulted Strata 05 to experience failure. A system would fail only if the leadership fails at the whole system level.

The major goal of any organization is to get their people to do the best work in order to meet their organizational goals and this is the duty of the manager to motivate the people to get working even in the difficult times. Motivation is the force that drives people to adapt certain behavior in order to fulfill a need. The scientific management assumes that most people think of job as a source of money which makes them lazy at work, need incentives to motivate them and also that they need someone to direct them or persuade them to achieve the organizational goals. This is also one of the theories of motivation that McGregor named as the “Theory X”. Another theory of motivation is that focuses on social processes such as need for belongingness and the need to be recognized rather than money, which is named as the “Theory Y”.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4It is the organizations responsibility to use their human resource at maximum through providing an environment. One of the most popular need for hierarchy by Abraham Maslow focuses on the five levels of needs that motivate people with fulfilling the lowest to the highest. These five levels of needs are psychological, security, belongingness, esteem and self-actualization. A method to motivate employees to give their best is through teamwork. Team is a group of members of an organization working together under shared tasks, goals, and interests. Teamwork can fasten the task achievement as the workload is divided, it can lead to healthy competition within the team members, no chance of work being interrupted as if one members absence won’t make the whole organization suffer, it improves the relationships between the employees, different qualities within the team members can be gained as one would work harder to gain the appreciation and recognition.

Strata 05, is focused on providing its employees with the best environment that is emphasized on quality, enhancing the productivity with high level of satisfaction to their employees. Language and nationality is not a barrier they practice tolerance and mutual respect and also teambuilding within the organization. The remaining deficiencies are addressed through education and training to provide the necessary skills required to be part of this industry. Systems approach to management in Strata seems to be open and each part of the organization is working efficiently to achieve their organizational goals and also they are devising their social responsibility program which will enable the employees to collaborate with the local community and gain exposure from the external environment.

Communication skills are very crucial for an organization as it improves the work relationships and can make jobs easier, effective and more rewarding. An effective strategy to improve relationships at work would be to have a strong thinking about relationships, applying this framework to ourselves to robust the unsatisfactory feeling and also using this to self-understanding to relate with others situations. There is a theory called Transactional and structured analysis which is designed to help people describe and understand their way of interacting with people in a simple and clear way. This transaction is a single two-way communication exchange. The central features to this theory are three major sub-personalities that are the parent, the adult and the child’s personality. The four types of organizations are simple, complementary, crossed and ulterior transaction.

Active listening is listening to the speaker with full attention in order to grasp all the facts and feelings followed by the feedback of what the listener has understood of the speaker so that the speaker is sure that the listener was actively listening. Active listening brings about changes in people’s attitudes and how they perceive others. A listener should avoid trying to change how a person with a problem is seeing their situation, the listener should avoid faking feelings or passing judgment’s can be very discouraging. We should listen carefully to the speakers content and also feelings, sometimes content is less important than feelings so respond to them, note the expressions as sometimes they are much more important and also repeat back what you have understood.

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4The communication within the organization is very open for Strata. They believed in daily communication between the entire team and the CEO before they grew. Even after growing into unmanageable number their approach is that the managers are suppose to conduct daily or twice weekly information sharing sessions or meeting of the entire workforce weekly. They consider their workforce as the most important part of their organization as they think that the success is dependent on its people and believe in mutual benefits. This is practiced through effective communication between the employees and the management. In order to be successful it is very important for the organization to act as a whole which can be possible if the goals are mutual for both the employees and organization. Active listening helps in understanding the purpose of the whole organization and how to achieve the goals for the success of the organization.

Conflict is a central part of any organization as every person has their own views, interests and experiences which challenge the source of creativity and growth of any organization. Conflict is the result of disagreement or difference of opinion of people’s ideas or interests. The six sources of conflict are:

Misunderstanding

Difference of value which means that something is important to you but not to others

Difference of viewpoint

Difference of interest

Differences in style

Unconscious factors

Conflicts can be used in a constructive way through healthy arguments, openly discussing about each other’s viewpoints and experiences as a valuable source. Another type of conflict is a destructive conflict that are the unhealthy conflicts in which parties withhold information regarding their real intention. The resolution for conflict can be the “win-win resolution” which is only possible to be implemented where the people are more open, creative and imaginative together. This resolution is the result of collaboration and respect for one another’s needs. Win-Win is when both the parties get benefit from the scenario.

Quoted in the article by Jay T. Knippen, Thad B. Green, (1999) that:

“Handling conflicts means effectively resolving an existing disagreement between oneself and another person. Managers need to know how to handle conflicts because unresolved conflicts tend to grow into bigger conflicts, begin to generate other problems, and have a negative effect on performance. Also, rewards are often withheld from those people with several unresolved conflicts.”[3]

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013

4Strata 05 is well structured to deal with any conflicts that may occur with time as their strategy for managing these conflicts are very ideal. They manage conflicts by collaborations and teamwork. The communicative environment they have built within the organization which plays a major role in resolving any conflicts between the employees. The systems approach in Strata 05 encourages the employees to communicate which provides the feedback for whatever they know about the goals they are required to achieve as one whole system. Conflict resolution is very important as it can lead to diminishing the outputs that are supposed to be produced and can also create obstructions in the decision making process. Conflicts can be beneficial, on the other hand, as they call for change, giving stimulus to new resolutions and ideas and increase the group performance. This idea of systems approach pushes to a conclusion that every organization has to keep its staff motivated through team building and various other methods to keep them focused for the purpose they are working for. Any organization can lead to conflicts within it but these conflicts can be solved through open discussions with the managers and its employees. The communication and actively listening to the managers is crucial to avoid any conflicts and can add up to organizations performance. The organization is considered to be a system and the holistic approach of systems thinking methodology helps improve the organizational performance.

REFERENCES:

[1] Anthony Howard, (2012) "The thinking organisation", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 31 Iss: 6, pp.620 – 632 [Online]. Available from: http://proxy.aou-elibrary.com:9797/MuseSessionID=8291c961e7b7797549388aa93dd2/MuseProtocol=http/MuseHost=www.emeraldinsight.com/MusePath/doi/full/10.1108/02621711211230902 [Accessed on 30th November 2014]

[2] Tomas Palaima, Aelita Skaržauskienė, (2010) "Systems thinking as a platform for leadership performance in a complex world", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 5 Iss: 3, pp.330 – 355, [Online]. Available from: http://proxy.aou-elibrary.com:9797/MuseSessionID=b3254ed80a9ddd2898c32dddefdf8/MuseProtocol=http/MuseHost=www.emeraldinsight.com/MusePath/doi/full/10.1108/17465261011079749 [Accessed on 30th November 2014]

[3] Jay T. Knippen, Thad B. Green, (1999) "Handling conflicts", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 11 Iss: 1, pp.27 – 32 [Online]. Available from: http://proxy.aou-elibrary.com:9797/MuseSessionID=8291c961e7b7797549388aa93dd2/MuseProtocol=http/MuseHost=www.emeraldinsight.com/MusePath/doi/full/10.1108/13665629910250924 [Accessed on 30th November 2014]

T205A PT3 Form – AOU – FBS – Spring 2013