Social Behaviors & Their Contextual Mechanisms

All business owners aim to succeed and achieve better performance of their companies. An established enterprise is expected to be profitable and successful. Good management is one of basic features which can help to create a profitable business. Every prosperous businessman will tell you that quality staff recruitment and proper management can guarantee successful development of business. However, for the successful business it is necessary to know and to implement the main principles of psychology and social behavior in order to organize their work in the best way for the company. For the last three decades there appeared a big number of different theories, based on psychological, sociological and economic research, which presuppose that success can be achieved if managers use the work of their employees in the most effective way and at the same time they allow the employees to achieve their own aims at work. In fact, the balance between the satisfaction of the employees’ needs and the needs of the firm is difficult to keep. In the majority of companies, either one side or another may suffer. However, only skilled and experienced managers understand that their employees are the main guarantee of their success. For the success of the entire company managers employers should give them an opportunity to express themselves and to achieve their personal aims in the company. In the paper the theory of Competing Values Framework and its role in proper management of a company will be considered. Competing Values Framework model is based on the notions of social behavior and its contextual frameworks. The main point of this theory is the concord of the activity of employees and its control. The control of employees is a complicated process, which demands much skill. It should include both incentives and punishment.

People, working for the company, can lead the business either to success or to a failure. It is important to encourage the employees and to create favorable conditions for their work.  In his book Organization: management without control, Howard P. Greenwald (2007) emphasizes that the most successful companies are those that let the employees attain their own goals while achieving the goals of the company. (5, p. 152 ). Therefore, the theory of performance appraisal plays a significant role. It is based on the principles of fairness to all the employees. Aligning rewards with the performance is natural and quite explicable; however, it is always necessary to be careful in treating the workers equally and being a fair manager. Rewarding people one should be careful not to encourage wrong behavior and thus not to favor harmful atmosphere in the team. Reward system always entails certain consequences and one should try to foresee them before introducing this or that reward. Any reward system will be effective if it is based on two main principles. Firstly, the rewarded employees should accept it as a positive event; and secondly, the reward should be the incentive for the appropriate behavior. It is the entrepreneur who should determine the goals of the venture and to channel the performance, behavior and values of the staff for the favor of the enterprise.

In order to succeed in it the entrepreneur should be a part of the team, should know all the needs, priorities, perspectives of the employees. Thus, he or she will be able to understand employees better and so to influence on their performance more effectively (Spitzer, 2007).  As mentioned above monetary incentives are not the only way to reward good work. Incentives are an important part of the manager’s work, however, employees should feel attention and care from the authorities; they should perceive their importance for the company and its success.  The role of manager in a company implies being a leader and never a dangerous supervisor. All achievements of the company, both small and big, should be celebrated together in one friendly team. It will make people feel an essential part of a prosperous company. When people succeed in the performance, when they manage to cope in time with all tasks, a manager may augment their responsibilities, simultaneously giving them more freedom to make decisions.

If managers want to have a decisive, full of energy and creative ideas staff that is eager to work, they should trust them and ask them what they think and what they propose to do. Such approach changes the employees’ attitude towards the company and retains them within the company.  Enforcement mechanisms may include both legal sanctions and a system of incentives. A system of incentives usually depends on the policy of the company management and might differ much in various organizations. It is necessary to note that incentive programs play a significant role in the motivation of employees. Many prosperous businessmen consider different kinds of incentives an essential part of their performance as they stimulate employees to work harder on the common objectives.

Generally, employees are motivated both by financial and non-financial recompenses. Rewards do play a significant role in the employees’ performance (Howell, 2006). Incentive programs developed directly for the employees are usually used to diminish the fluctuation of personnel, to support moral values in the organization, to improve the health care of employees and to stimulate the performance in general. The programs aimed at customers of the companies become more and more popular nowadays as the majority of managers understand the importance of consumers in their business. The fact that it costs less to retain present clients than to attract new ones becomes evident. So, this kind of programs becomes increasingly popular.

The conception of four models of management helps to organize the work in the company and to balance between strict control and adaptation to the needs of workers. As was mentioned above there are four models of management
and organization, Human Relations, Open Systems, Rational Goal, Internal Process (Quinn & Kim, 1998). The criteria of these models might be influenced by the context, in other words by the situation at work. Thus there are different aspects that might influence them.

Therefore, I would like to consider a model that consists of two fundamental elements of any organization ”“ Processes and Context. Processes are the work, which is done in the company, the functions fulfilled by people and the activity of the enterprise on the whole. The Context is the mechanism of company control and organization, in other words, conditions that should guide the processes. The context might include the whole range of governance mechanisms from the structure of the company to governmental laws. However, the system of management should be supported by a system of Enforcement mechanisms, which are a crucial factor in a skillfully managed company.

This two-element model might be explored in two spheres of work, Human Systems and Task Systems. Both spheres have their contextual frameworks ”“ governance frameworks and governance enforcement mechanisms, which regulate interpersonal relations and the fulfillment of the tasks.  It is obvious that the employees’ behavior might have absolutely different consequences and influence on different people in different situations. it is known that the display of the same values might influence people differently. What might seem to some people a positive trait might hurt others. For example, on the one hand, such value as truthful reporting brings personal satisfaction and seems the right decision; on the other hand it might result in layoff of workers. Loyalty to superiors might also have double effect, an opportunity for promotion and danger to test pilots. To crown all, we see that the same action may have absolutely different results in various situations and concerning different people. All these factors should be considered when planning the policy of the company.

To make a conclusion, successful management presupposes good knowledge of psychology and social behaviors. It is necessary to understand that social behavior of employees is always restricted by contextual frameworks, which include the
whole range of limitations and incentives both within the company and within the whole country. Contextual frameworks influence on social behavior of people and may either encourage them to achievement of the company’s goals or confine their activity. One of the effective models of management is Competing Values Framework model. At first sight, the criteria of this model are hard to balance, still all together they help managers both to organize the work in the company and to create favorable conditions for employees. Taking everything into account, the management in a company should be controlled and structured. In addition it should be flexible for employees so that they could manifest themselves and achieve the goals of the company.