Nestle Organizational Behavior: Insights And Analysis

Overview of Nestle

Discuss about the Organizational Behaviour Of Nestle Ltd.

The organizational behaviour is the study of how people interact with each other within group. The organizational behaviour study is conducted to create more efficient business organisation. The organisational behaviour theories are used to maximise output from individual group members. It si concerned with understanding, predicting and inducing behaviour in organisation setting. The aim of organisational behaviour is to rejuvenate organizational theory and develop better conceptualisation of organisation (Rezaeegiglo, Sadouni, Aref,  Khotbesara & Eslam, 2014). The purpose of this report is to analyse organisational behaviour issues of Nestle.  The culture and structure of Nestle have been analysed and described. The organizational behaviour issues of Nestle are identified. The organizational behaviour theories are proven with the application of leadership with the identification of problem. Various alternatives are developed to address the issues identified in Nestle. Further the appropriate solution is identified to address the issues. Finally the recommendations are given for the implementation.

Nestle Ltd. manufactures and markets a range of food and beverage products. The product category of Nestle includes drinks, coffees, chocolates, confectionery products, snacks, baking ingredients, nutritional products as well as nutrition products. The company market it’s products in 130 countries. The mission of company is good food, good life. Nestle is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies. The company have more than 2000 brands which range from global to local favourites. It inspires people by inspiring people to eat healthy and stay healthy. The value of company is reflected in it’s way of conducting business. Nestle acts honestly and legally to conduct it’s business operations. The business practices of Nestle are governed by integrity and fair dealing and compliance with all the applicable laws of country. The employees at Nestle fulfil their commitment every day and undertake responsibilities. The reputation of company is it’s most important asset. The communication strategies have great role in the organisation behaviour of Nestle. It undertakes internal communication and external communication. The working environment is very informal from the perspective of organisational behaviour. The employees are encouraged to participate and communicate with co-workers. They are also encouraged to take part in the decision making process.

The culture of Nestle reflects from it’s logo that is ‘Good food good life’. It is always attached to the products of the company. The company believes that good food is the main source of good health so the company always put nutrition and health as the core of business (Balwant, 2018). Nestle has developed team focused culture and open door policy which has become the corporate strength of the company. It further focuses on collectivism and performance orientation attitude to encourage employees to work hard. The culture of Nestle can be described as:

• The culture of Nestle is devoted to a strong work ethic, reliability, honesty and quality.
• The personal relations in the company are based on trust and mutual respect. It indicates a social attitude to communicate openly.
• There is a personalised and direct way of dealing which implies a higher level of tolerance for the ideas, opinions and commitment to cooperate proactively.

Culture and Structure of Nestle

The organisation structure of Nestle consists of an executive board which mainly consists company executives and department heads. Both of the authorities are responsible to manage operations of the company. The executives implement policies and strategies which are defined by the Board of Directors (BOD). The organisational structure includes;

• Hierarchical
• Matrix
• Flat

Nestle is a decentralised organisation which follows matrix structure in it’s operations.

Nestle has an informal working environment which leads to people to communicate with each other directly. The employees are free to communicate with their superiors. The idea and suggestions of employees are given importance as downward communication takes place in the company. The employees are encouraged to participate in the decision-making process of the company. There is open communication in the company to interact with each other such as mail on phone calls. The behaviour issues faced by Nestle are:

Abusive behaviour: It is seen that managers and supervisors use their position to oppress or disrespect others. If the employees of the company are involved in the gender, race or ethics then the legal action is taken against the abusive behaviour at the workplace (Christina, Dainty, Daniels & Waterson, 2014).

Exhibiting insubordination: Insubordination refers to the intention of employees to refuse employer’s law and orders. Such response of employees underestimates the authority of supervisors.

Displaying insolence: It includes involvement in rude, insolent speech and physical intimidation such as making an inappropriate and disrespectful speech, using abusive words, using angry and hostile tone and throwing things when displeased (Wood, 2015). This behaviour is directed when the employee disagrees.

Illegal acts: Some behavioural issues can also result in illegal acts. For instance, the expert who has authority to maintain book and accounts could practice embezzling funds of the company (Sadia, Salleh, Kadir & Sanif, 2016). A person who has access to the personnel files can commit to using personal details of employees such as bank accounts and credit cards.

Aggressiveness and lack of credibility: Such behaviour of employees undermines the resources from productive work into apologetic operations (Hashim & Wok, 2014). It is overreaction which results in a fight. When employees do not accomplish the things told by them then it results in lack of credibility and promotes mistrust.

Resistance to change: The business environment keeps on changing. It requires continuous adaptation. The rigidity of employees towards resistance to change can cause obsolescence and failure.

The categories given below serve as a guide to the behaviour issues:

Behavioural Issues of Nestle

Individuals

At the level of individuals, the organisational behaviour includes motivation, the study of learning, personality, employee retention and job satisfaction. It is a professional approach towards each employee individually. The managers are not biased towards employees and treat equally and do not judge employees other than work. The individual issues can be resolved by:

• Motivation: Motivation helps individuals to perform at high levels. Motivation makes individuals make a positive contribution towards the organisation. It improves behavioural issues of individuals by making work transparent, recognition, awards, taking advice in big decisions, positive feedback and emphasizes progress. The behavioural issues can also be resolved by focusing on intrinsic rewards than the extrinsic awards. Creating inspiring work environment and friendly behaviour by employees can be helpful to improve behavioural issues of individuals. The motivation has also two aspects, positive and negative. When the positive motivation is not helpful to improve behavioural issues then individuals are enhanced by the negative motivation (Mamycheva, et. al. 2016). The negative motivation includes marking absent, deduction in salary or compromise in providing facilities. There are various theories as well which are used to improve behavioural issues such as Maslow’s theory, Herzberg’s hygiene model and Mc Gregor’s theory X and Y model.
• Job satisfaction: The job satisfaction is an important aspect to guide organisational behaviour issues of individuals. It is a level of satisfaction what an individual feels concerning his job. The perception of individuals has a great role in this. The job satisfaction improves various aspects related to individuals such as productivity, absenteeism and turnover. The job satisfaction leads to higher performance of employees and creates a better work environment. It has been considered that job satisfaction the greatest factor in improving behavioural issues (Boxall, Guthrie & Paauwe, 2016). The job satisfaction leads to individual’s engagement at work, fair compensation is a contributing factor in the performance of employees. It removes the behavioural issues like resistance to change and exhibiting insubordination.

Group

The behaviour considers the formation, structure and effectiveness of the group. It makes efforts to improve the behaviour of employees and achievement of organisation’s goals. Particularly, it is all about the way a group behaves. At the level of the group, organisational behaviour includes communication, leadership, conflict, power and politics and more (De Nobile, 2016).

• Leadership: Leadership is important in improving the behavioural issues of the group. The leader can make a group effective. It is a direct attempt to achieve objectives of the company. The leadership styles are illustrated by the theories of leadership. It identifies the way in which behavioural issue can be resolved. The different styles of leadership are autocratic, democratic and laissez fair leadership style. The autocratic leader does not take any suggestion from the group but takes a decision on the behalf of them (Mosey & Noke, 2017). It is a quick decision-making process as only one person is required to take a decision. The democratic leader divides the function of leadership among the group of individuals. The group have a role in the decision-making process, as suggestions are always welcome from groups. The laissez-fair style considers that all the persons will perform well. The leader provides freedom to the group. Such freedom helps to improve behavioural issues.
• Communication: The communication is helpful in improving behavioural issues such as abusive behaviour in a group. The communication includes various gestures like, listening, making clear statements, discussion, offering feedback and intervening conflicts. The organisational behaviour can be improved by listening properly and making sense of what is said by colleagues in a group. The clear statements and explanations clear the concept and issues what a group is facing (Salas-Vallina, Alegre & Fernandez, 2017). The group members clear the issues what is faced by them and helps to solve the behavioural issues. The discussion engages group by disagreeing the facts respectfully and offering reasons. The group keeps the organisation behaviour on task. The viewpoints of each other are considered in the communication process. The communication offers feedback and meditates If any disagreements are found then the group tries to satisfy everyone (Prabhakar, et.al. 2018).

Organisation

In the organizational behaviour, analysis of sociology and political science is made. It covers the aspect of both individual and group. The organisational behaviour includes organisational culture and organisation structure.

• Organisational culture: The organisational issues can be improved by maintaining a strong culture. The organisation culture is important because of improved quality of work, encouragement to teamwork and informal learning. An improved organisational culture reduces the behavioural issues. These issues can be improved by listening to employees carefully, communication, collaborating, transparent system, regular feedback and by providing a reward to employees. Listening to employees help to improve communication within the organisation (Carlos Pinho, Paula Rodrigues & Dibb, 2014). The transparency with employees leads to improved organizational culture. The regular feedback aligns the performance within the organisational culture.
• Organisational structure: A good organizational behaviour leads to the good organizational structure. The growth cannot be expected without the development of the organisation. The organizational structure determines the individuals to participate in the decision-making process which helps them to clear out their issues. The clarification of issues helps to shape the organisation’s actions (Horch, 2018). It facilitates sound base to the organisation and promotions to the personnel.

There are certain recommendations which address the behavioural issues:

Create a code of ethics

The behaviour of an organisation can be maintained by creating a code of ethics. A code of ethics creates the value which is important to organisation and forms framework to understand the boundaries of the organisation (Paull & Whitsed, 2018). The code of ethics should be should be presented in such a way that it communicates the ethical vision of the company. The employees should be involved in the process of formalising the code of ethics.

Empower employees

The employees should be empowered to categorize and handle ethics violations. The training programs should be conducted for the employees to increase the effectiveness of code. The ethical courses are available through written and online material. The organisation can solve behavioural issues by empowering ethical behaviour with compensation incentives (Coccia, 2014).

Legal Issues

The legal risks are also associated with behavioural issues. The employees are affected by the legal laws as it protects them from the discrimination based on age, gender, nationality, religion and disability (Närman, Johnson & Gingnell, 2016). There should be more applicability of legal laws so that behavioural issues can be tracked at the initial level and can be solved.

Set consequences

If the employees do not improve behaviour then the supervisors need to be aware and set consequences. The employees should be punished after crossing a certain limit. For instance, they can be terminating for 2 or 3 days if they violate any rule of organisation and leads to behavioural issues.

Categories of Behavioural Issues

There are certain recommendations which can influence an organisation and help in improving issues:

• Positive reinforcement is a well-known approach which rewards employees for the desired and best behaviour. These rewards motivate employees to do so in the long run. It also boosts the prospect of organization for the long run. The rewards reinforce the performance of employees and help the organisation to achieve desired goals (Clay-Williams & Braithwaite, 2015).
• Discipline depresses the unwanted behaviour of employees. The positive reinforcement helps in solving issues of employees. Certain issues are solved only at the time of implementation of discipline at work. As the discipline creates the positive work environment by taking required actions. These actions are avoided being late, maintain silence and more. It should be noted that the disciplinary actions are more effective than the positive reinforcement.
• Extinction leads to the eradication of procedures and policies. It constrains the ability to communicate and perform effectively. It is more relevant to the situations which involve organizational changes. In such a scenario, the behaviour and habit of employees may be disturbed to ensure progress of organisation towards it’s overall goals (Manzi & Darcy, 2017).
• The technology and innovations have a great role in the communication at the workplace. The communication influences the behaviour of employees. Although the technology brings efficiency, at the initial level old people do not prefer to adapt it and results in issues at organisations. The employees should be given training to employees for the new innovations and technology. Technology promotes communication at organization rather than discrimination (Diethert, Weisweiler, Frey & Kerschreiter, 2015).
• The workplace such as workspace, meeting areas and common areas should be monitored regularly so that employees feel comfortable and do not face any issues related to the workplace. The employees should be given all the requisite facilities like proper lighting, supply rooms, separate cabins, equipment and more. It leads to fewer issues and improvement in the performance of employees.

Conclusion

The above report reflects the organizational behaviour at Nestle. The culture and structure of Nestle have been defined. The behavioural issues have been discussed which are a barrier to the growth of the organisation. The laid-back attitude of employees leads to the issues in the organisation. The organisational behaviour theories are applied in three categories, individual, group and organisation. The alternatives are discussed to address the behavioural issues. Further, the recommendations are given for the implementation of efficient organisation behaviour.

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