Description

MAN6714 ISSUES AND TRENDS ACTIVITY

WEEK 1

SECTION A TOPIC: Monitoring, Risk and Surveillance at work.

Describe a problem within this topic (What is it)

The problem that I want to discuss and investigate is the relation and importance of trust in monitoring practices within team members and its implication on the performance of a team in an organization. Studies has found that the trust in team and supervisor monitoring practices is positively related to team and organizational performance. The importance of trust has been correlated to global organizational developments such as in enhancing flexibility of organizational relations, growing the intensity of knowledge on job and continuous change.  While monitoring has become integral part of organizational governance, trust has become equally relevant factor in human resource management. Both monitoring and trust can promote performance of individuals, team and organizations.

However, some studies also found that the relation between trust in team members is negatively related to team performance as high trust can lead to reduction in team monitoring which ultimately leads to lower performance.

Why is it a problem?

Although most authors accept that trust lubricates organizational relations and enhance performance of teams, there is no clear findings done about it. It is a known fact that the trust between team members is of a paramount importance to work cohesively and to achieve common goal.   Lack of trust amongst the team members can hamper the shared directness towards common goal.

Who is affected by the problem? How does the problem affect an organisation/industry (i.e. problem, its affects and what does solving it look like?)

The problem can lead to more employee turnover which makes it difficult for an organization to retain its employee. Moreover, this problem can affect the performance of employees, team and organization. More turnover leads to more cost for an organization in recruiting and training.

Solving this problem can benefit HR in many folds. Trusting in each other can enhance openness in communication, team commitment and cooperation among team members.  The trust in supervisor can   monitoring can   

Who has researched this problem before? (Key researchers)

Quite a few numbers of researchers have studied on key word trust such as

-further understanding of trust and performance (Aubert  and Kelsey, 2003)

- Risk at work: Trust, Monitoring and Cooperation in temporary Project Teams (Bijlsma-Frankema and Van De Bunt, 2003)

-Trust Under Pressure: Trust and Trust Building (Bijlsma-Frankema and Klein Woolthuis, 2005).

- A Matter of Trust:Effects on the Performance and Effectiveness of Teams in Organizations (Costa, 2000)

-Heed, a missing link between Trust, Monitoring and Performance in knowledge intensive teams ( Bijlsma-Frankema  Bart de Jong and Gerhard Van De Bunt)

Who would be part of your sample and why?

I have changed my samples. I will try to find few samples from different work categories like 5 HR managers from different organization and survey 5 employees under each HR managers.I would also try to get 5 employees from remote team. In total I would get 35 samples for my study.

Which theories have been used by researchers to review the problem?

Researchers in above used theories such as psychological contract, social exchange theory, leader-manager theory to review the problem.

What theory will you use and why?

Social Exchange Theory

I would like to use social exchange theory to investigate and analyze the risk and benefit of trust within team members to evaluate the performance of an organization. The concept of Social exchange theory is based on nature of individuals and the relationship between people in with certain assumptions. Trusting one another is based on assumptions and reciprocity where people feel/assume that reward is equivalent to cost input. So, using exchange theory can give better reasoning to my findings.

Why would anyone in the organization/industry care about is this issue?

A simple word “trust” is important value that plays a major role in building relationship between coworkers, leaders or in employers.  Trust is a lubricant for smooth functioning of the organization and it also enhances the performance of employees’ performance which leads to better performance of an organization. The lack of trust among team members and supervisor can deter the monitoring practices. Hampering the monitoring processes can lose the focus on achieving the goal; team goal or organizational goals. Therefore, trust is something that has to be taken care of.

How does this matter affect HRM function? (e.g. recruitment and selection, job design, SHRM)

How are you going to investigate the problem(methodology)?

·       Quantitative or qualitative methods

·       Survey questionnaire

·       Key informants(interviews)

·       Focus group

I am going to investigate the problem by quantitative method using survey questionnaire. A survey questionnaire will be prepared with questions on demographics, monitoring, trust, retention, performance or achievements of goals. The Likert scale of 5 ratings would be used to rate the response of respondent. Then the relationship between the trust, monitoring and performance will be measured and determined. Mean, Median and mode will be calculated from the data collected for the assessment and analysis.

How will you analyze the data?

I am going to organize the raw data collected into refined frequency table to calculate mean, median and mode. Then I will use the measures of central tendency to analyze the data.