BUS603: Managing People

One of the highest valued organizational cultural characteristics of a furniture manufacturing company is management support: 4.0 points in 2006 and 4.1 points in 2008 on a 5 point scale. Employees pointed out that they were encouraged to ask questions or talk with their immediate manager. During the second step of research the respondents said that their relations with managers had improved. But in 2008 7.5% of the respondents emerged who were not able to ask or talk with their immediate managers about the employment issues (the majority of specialists working in the  production department).

It was noticed during the in-depth interviews, however, that part of the employees fear the responsibility and therefore contact their immediate managers; later, if it turns out that the decision was wrong the employees may claim that they were encouraged to behave in that way by their manager and therefore it is the manager who is responsible for the failure.

Employees are also used to interacting, sharing information and helping colleagues to respond to emerging issues. Both first and second steps of research and also in-depth interviews confirm the high degree of cooperation (Quotation from the in-depth interview: "If you have some problem or question, the most important is just feel free to ask the colleagues, perhaps not immediately, but they will really try to help and answer your question"). In 2008 compared to 2006 the average assessment of the statement about cooperation increased from 3.4 points to 3.8 points.