Organizational Culture and Structure of Sun Microsystems
Innovation and innovation management has a key role to play in the business world. These are the key elements that need to be considered in order to establish leadership in the business market. In order to remain a leader in the competitive market, innovation is one of the greatest devices. Innovation aims towards enhancement of the organizational business and brings in significant changes in the business organization. This assignment highlights a case study of Sun Microsystems. Many authors are of the opinion that the trauma for innovation, in the business organization, contributes largely for the failure of the Sun Ray product of Sun Microsystems. This assignment highlights the organizational culture of Sun Microsystems, along with the organizational structure. The general management and their capabilities are also highlighted, along with the management of the innovation. The literature review presented in this assignment highlights the HR and the talent management capabilities, along with the importance of motivation among the employees to take up the innovation challenge successfully.
Innovation is essential in any business organization. Hover, in order to bring in innovations successfully, Sun Microsystems have to prepare the employees as well as the infrastructure, to take the crucial step of innovation. Failures are an essential part of the business, while taking up an innovation challenge. However, it is essential that the management of the Business organization have the capabilities of overcoming the failure, with strategic decision –making. Most of the authors are of the opinion, that the failure of Sun ray product owes its failure mostly to the lack of effective management and confidence for innovation. The technical failure could not be effectively overcome due to the lack of effective recovery business strategies. This assignment focuses on the critical appraisal of a journal article based on innovation and its effective management, along with the adverse effects of the innovation trauma, that hinders success in the innovation challenge.
Employee motivation can be described as a set of forces that directs an employee to the behavior that results in better job performance. According to Lazaroiu, (2015), a motivated employee will work harder and will proactively find a way to enhance eminence and effectiveness of the work environment. Two major motivational factors are intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation.
Intrinsic motivation: This type of motivation mostly focuses on factors that are already inside an individual and depends on personal requirements Porter et al. (2016). Based on this type motivation, one of the most classical and effective theory is Herzberg theory which is hereby mentioned below.
General Management and Leadership at Sun Microsystems
This theory is also known as two factor theory as it attempts to categorize the factors of a job into hygiene factors and motivators. According to Malik and Naeem (2013), the hygiene factors are the requirements that the employees seek for their satisfaction. Absence of these factors will result in lack of motivation. However, hygiene factors are not directly related to the nature of the job. It is mostly related to its derivatives, for example salary, job security, HR policies, physical work environment, paid leaves and interpersonal relationships. On the other hand, the motivation factors are intrinsic to the content of the job to (Malik and Naeem 2013). These factors are accountable for adding meaning to the work. Some examples of such factors are career growth, rewards, recognitions, increased responsibility and promotions. According to Sihombing et al. (2014), absence of such factors will not foster dissatisfaction; however presence of these factors will foster motivation among the employees.
Frustration: When a job of an employee cannot meet the general provisions and cannot offer any future growth, then the employees will feel de-motivated and disheartened (Herzer and Pronovost 2015).
Dissatisfaction: When a job initially promises a lot however later fails to provide competitive salary or good working environment, then the employees will be disenchanted and dissatisfied with the job (Herzer and Pronovost 2015).
Satisfaction: When a job will provide only basic necessities of an employee such as salary and only delivers minor stability, then an employee will be satisfied but will fee motivated to perform better (Herzer and Pronovost 2015).
Motivation: When both the hygiene factors and motivational factors will be present in the workplace, the employees will feel motivated (Herzer and Pronovost 2015).
According to Malik and Naeem (2013), extrinsic motivation is extremely important under a number of situations such as routine & non-challenging tasks, stagnation in the company and inadequate career development opportunities (Taghizadeh et al. 2014). One of the effective theories on this motivational factor is Expectancy theory which hereby described below (Miner 2015).
Victor Vroom developed this theory that states motivation depends on amount of effort required, the consequences along with the rewards of the effort and the significance that an individual gives to those consequences and rewards (Malik and Naeem 2013). Four major components of this theory are,
Outcome: It is considered as the outcome of the job related actions such as working for extra hours which is an action can result if early completion of a task which is n outcome. According to Lazaroiu (2015), these outcomes are divided into two parts which is job related (that unswervingly impacts on the operations of an association) and employee related (outcomes that are rewards or punishments of the job) (Pepper and Gore 2015).
Innovation Management at Sun Microsystems
Valence: It is considered as the preference of an employee for the rewards or punishments. It shows how much an employee cares for the results of the job related outcomes (Miner 2015).
Instrumentality: It is known as the perception of the employees. It allows the employees to think that job related results will lead to employee related results (Dörnyei and Ushioda 2013).
Expectancy: It is the likelihood of accomplishing the task result with positive amount of effect (Sihombing et al. 2014). It also determines the perceived effort-outcome relationship.
This expectancy theory formulates the motivation of a specific task outcome by using three important mechanisms in the following form (Martins et al. 2015).
In order to enhance innovation, it is important to display the method of transforming ideas into commercial outputs as an integrated flow (Gereffi and Fernandez 2016). The significant steps of this concept are,
Idea conversion: It is easy to generate number of idea at a time. However, the most important thing is to find out the proper ways to handle them. It is evident that new idea will not cultivate better results unless there is powerful screening and funding mechanism (Nasiripour et al. 2013). Absence of such things will only create problems across an organization. Besides, even after properly screening and funding, it is important that ideas are turned into revenue-generating products or services (Beelaerts et al. 2017).
Idea generation: It is important to generate new ideas. However, the question is from where these ideas will come from. Managers of an organization must look inside the organization pr functional groups for new ideas (Markides 2013). Cross-unit collaboration is also required to gather knowledge from different parts of an organization. Organizations that are de-centralized will face difficulties while making people to work across units. (Gereffi and Fernandez 2016) Managers and leaders of Bertelsmann which is a large German media organization took three years to deal with the popularity of Amazon in launching an online bookstore as it had a decentralized structure. On the other hand, organizations also need to evaluate whether they are producing ample amount of good ideas from outside the company and from outside of the industry (Markides 2013). They can tap into the knowledge of the consumers, users, competitors, universities and suppliers to find out fresh and new ideas about the business.
Idea diffusion: Ideas and concepts that are already sourced, funded and developed will require receiving buy in. Organizations will have to gather proper constituencies in order to assist and promote new products and practices in targeted geographical areas, channels and consumer groups (Markides 2013). For example, in Procter and Gamble in Europe, the management focused on extensive product and market testing in order to prove better total value (Gereffi and Fernandez 2016). The management of the organization placed the authority of spreading a new product on the shoulders of local brand managers. These decisions resulted into show roll outs. On the other hand, Colgate noticed the P & G’s initial success in Germany and launched a new product which was a me-too line of diapers in France which helped them to have market share (Markides 2013).
Employee Motivation
Sun Ray has faced failure to shine due to the innovation trauma. The issues that the organization faced are poor organizational culture, poor organizational structure, and poor general management and leadership. The Sun Java system is the main contributor to the weak performance of the company. Hence, it is necessary to solve the issues of the company to overcome the problems. According to Chen and Zhang (2015), the organization structure helps to build the competitive and advance structure for the organization. The management and leadership are also the part of the organizational structure. As Sun Ray has the poor organizational structure, it does not provide benefits to the organization. Hence, it is necessary to improve the organizational structure so that Sun Ray can overcome the problems. Another issue that the organization faces is the poor organizational culture. Powell et al. (2013) mentioned that In case of an organization, the organizational culture plays the significant role. On the other hand, Agarwal (2016) stated that the the organizational culture represents the significant aspects to exist of the employees, which allows to improve the strong sense of the belonging. This can represent the lifestyle of Sun Ray by developing the healthy culture in the organization. This can involve the overall lifestyle of the organization and include varieties of internal and external factors.
In view of Collings (2014), the internal and external factors include the beliefs of Sun Ray, the working methods of the company, the history, ethics, level of the social engagement and others. However, one of the main reason of the failure of the company is that they have the poor talent management. Hence, they need to develop the talent management structure of the organization. From a report, it is seen that the company has faced failure in previous time also. However, they did not take the failure seriously and did not learnt anything from the failure. The failure of the Sun Java System was the poor structure and inadequate talent to manage the system. Neeley and Kaplan (2014) stated that the innovation and the organizational culture has a strong relationship. The innovation trauma can be overcome if the organizational culture supports it. Moreover, the employees of the organization also need to learn the causes of the failure and identify their weakness. In such case, the organization can help the employees by providing proper guidance and training. The employees of the organization have less experience and the insufficient capital. The organization has the poor inventory management, which needs to be developed. They need to fix the poor assets and reduce thee conflictions of the company. The technical failure could not be effectively overcome due to the lack of effective recovery business strategies.
Intrinsic Motivation and Herzberg Theory
The innovation failure is another cause of the innovation trauma. After the failure of the Sun java System, the organization did not take any action as a result the success of the company becomes diminished (Lewis and Heckman 2006). Moreover, the Sun ray thin- client system has diminished due to the poor structure and culture of the organization.
The paradigm refers to the background of the company. The Sun Ray is the company, which mainly produce the computer parts and the system like java programming. It states the vision, mission of the company. The mission and vision of the company is to reach to more customers and provide them the best service. However, they fail to reach to more customers as their java system has failed already. The control system is the process to monitor the activities of the organization. The organizational structure refers to the reporting lines, and the hierarchies, which can work fluently via the business (Powell et al. 2013). The power structure is the process, which makes the decisions and decides how much the power needs to be spread. Symbol includes the organizational logo as well as the designs. The rituals and routines help to manage the meetings, and the board reports to which the employees become habituated. The stories and myth help to build up the events and make the relationship in between the employees. This helps to convey the message about the values of organization. However, these substances can overlap each other. Thunnissen, Boselie and Fruytier (2013) mentioned that the power structure depends on the control system that can exploit the rituals.
The problems of the organization can be overcome various theories and models. One of the theories is Herzberg Theory that helps to improve the hygiene factors. The hygiene factors include the motivation and employees satisfaction. It is related to its derivatives, for example salary, job security, HR policies, physical work environment, paid leaves and interpersonal relationships
(Zheng, Yang and McLean 2010). The employees need motivation and the training that can help to reduce the chances of failure. The organization needs to include these factors to overcome the issues of the organization. The presence of these factors will foster motivation among the employees. The satisfaction of the employees can be developed if the hygiene factors can be developed. The satisfaction includes the two edges that are the frustration and dissatisfaction. The satisfaction includes the motivation and the extrinsic motivation. When both the hygiene factors and motivational factors will be present in the workplace, the employees will feel motivated. Extrinsic motivation is important under the number of the situations like routine & non-challenging tasks, stagnation in the company and inadequate career development opportunities (Powell et al. 2013). One of the effective theories on this motivational factor is Expectancy theory. Expectancy theory helps to motivate the employees by proving the rewards and opportunities. The outcome of the theory can include the two parts that are job related and the employee related outcome. Job related aspect includes the unswervingly impacts on the operations of the association. On the other hand, the employee related outcome is the outcome that are the rewards or the punishments of t he job (Christensen Hughes and Rog 2008). Expectancy is the likelihood of accomplishing the task result with positive amount of effect. It also determines the perceived effort-outcome relationship. This helps to motivate the specific tasks by important mechanisms (Zheng,Yang and McLean 2010).
Extrinsic Motivation and Expectancy Theory
Innovation value chain is important to display the method of transforming ideas into commercial outputs as an integrated flow. The most important steps of the model are the idea generation and the idea conversion. Ideas and concepts that are already sourced, funded and developed will require receiving buy in (Thunnissen, Boselie and Fruytier 2013). Organizations will have to gather proper constituencies in order to assist and promote new products and practices in targeted geographical areas, channels, and consumer groups. The most important thing is to find out the proper ways to handle them. It is evident that new idea will not cultivate better results unless there is powerful screening and funding mechanism. : It is known as the perception of the employees. It allows the employees to think that job related results will lead to employee related results. It is the likelihood of accomplishing the task result with positive amount of effect. It also determines the perceived effort-outcome relationship.
Conclusion
This assignment clearly highlights the various causes of the failure of the Sunray product of Sun Microsystems. A critical appraisal of the journal article sheds light on the fact that the one of the major causes that contributed to the failure is the lack of proactive management of the innovation. The management failed to motivate the employees enough for innovation. Lack of effective talent management is another major cause of the failure. The employees were not prepared adequately for the innovation challenge. Despite of having a very strong competitive advantage, the product Sun Ray was unable to attract enough customers. The failure of the previous product Java Station could not impart adequate lessons to the company, thus resulting in another failure of Sun Ray product. Moreover, the lack of originality of the products also had a significant contribution to the failure of the Sun Ray product. The management and the eminent leaders of the company failed to motivate the employees enough to take up the innovation challenge positively. The lack of proactive participation also resulted in failure of the Sunray product. The organizational culture and environment did not provide a favorable platform for the development of the new product. Learning from the failure of the Java station, Sun Microsystems could have developed proactive management practices that enhanced the platform for innovation challenge. However, the failure of the Java Station created an innovation trauma among the employees as well as among the management thus resulting in another major failure. All of these factors resulted in the failure of the Sun Ray and the product failed to shine in the competitive market. Thus, various eminent authors trauma have rightly criticized it that the failure of the Sun Ray product of Sun Microsystems owes its failure to the innovation trauma, and not to technology.
Idea Conversion, Generation, and Diffusion
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