Corporations and other businesses should try- Review Please
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24 May 2012, 17:58
Analysis of Issue:
“Corporations and other businesses should try to eliminate the many ranks and salary grades that classify employees according to their experience and expertise. A ‘flat’ organizational structure is more likely to
encourage collegiality and cooperation among employees.”
--------------------------ESSAY----------
The issue of defferentiation, ranking and paying employees based on experience and expertise, in the corporate and business world is controversial. On the one hand, a "flat" organization promises uniform responsibility and encourages employees to work with co-operation among induviduals and groups.On the other hand, it posses many critical draw backs that would undermind the performance of the organizations. In my final analysis, I believe that it is not only necessary but also very important to differentiate people based on their experience and expertise.
The first reason for by belief is that differentiation encourages performance in an organization at induvidual and group level. Recognition and reward for the expertise and the performace is considered a vitail gain for most of the induviduals. For example, the surveys conducted by several employment agencies to measure the employee satisfaction clearly indicates that employees who gets the perks for their special achievement are most satisfied employees and their by they are willing to be more loyal to the organization.
Another important financial reason where the "flat" organization will cause serious damage is that in order to maintain an effective "flat" organization, the employer should maintain a balanced payment system throught the organization, which will cause more expenses in terms of employee salary and benefits. Differentiation would help the organization to determine which percentage of the employees can be paid less and which can be paid more based on the performance and their by reduce the cost of wages.
Moreover, flat organization causes confusion about the responsibility of the employees. For example, it lacks the delegation of work based on the expertise and experience level. A manager who knows the specific skills of the team members would know who to delegate what task and what area of work in order to carry out the projects within the scope of the budget and expected quality levels.
The issue above also claims that a "flat organization" would cause cooperation among employees. This argument is flawed that it exactly says the opposite of the truth. Flat organizations are much more likely to cause non coperation among employees than those which are differentiated based on the experience and expertise.Clearly, an experienced employee who perfors much better than a less experienced employee, is less likely to cooperate with the other. He will be dissatisfied and discouraged as he gains no better than the other employee who did not meet his result.
Result oriented employees would see rewards and recognition as their key earnings for the work well done. Absence of any of this will cause poor morale and hence non coperation.
For all this reasons, I believe that the corporations and businesses should not eliminate the ranks and salary grades based on the experience and expertise level. After all, this differentiation would also help the organization in removing the poor performing employees as they will naturally be paid and rewarded less and hence more likely to find another job causing a more healthy employee strength for the organization.