Introduction
All the important facets of Nissan Motor Corporation’s organizational behavior are important. This paper highlights the importance of employees in accomplishing corporate goals and approaches to strengthen employee leadership and management. Understanding the nuances that make a person productive and devoted to an organization is critical for managers, as this is the key to organizational success. Employee well-being, particularly in terms of work-life balance and job security, must be considered if Nissan is sustainable. Exploring the overall organizational behavior at Nissan is crucial, as it focuses on aspects such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment, justice, workplace ethics, and stress.
Chapter One
Organizational Behavior: A Case Study of Nissan Company
Employees facilitate organizational success and need to be facilitated to attain their highest level of productivity. Understanding the intricacies that make a person productive and devoted to an organization is critical for managers because it allows them to lead better. A company should evaluate its employee performance and organizational commitment to remain competitive (Colquitt et al., 2021). It is essential to review a Nissan Motor Corporation’s organizational behavior to understand how the firm can strategically compete better.
Nissan Motors Background Information
Nissan was founded on December 26, 1933, and is currently led by Makoto Uchida as the president and Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The company is headquartered in Japan, with subsidiaries across all major economies globally. Nissan Motor Corporation engages in the manufacturing and sales of automotive products. Nissan had 605,813 million yen in paid-in capital and about 131,461 employees on a consolidated basis at the end of March 2021 (Nissan Motor Corporation, 2022). Infiniti is the firm’s premium brand recognized globally for its award-winning design.
Employees’ Role in Attainment of Organizational Goals
Nissan employees should understand how citizenship behavior differs from task performance. Task performance describes the behaviors of employees that directly involve transforming organizational resources into services or goods. In contrast, citizenship behavior details voluntary behaviors that a company’s employees partake in that are not mandated by their job descriptions, such as altruism. Citizenship behavior benefits both the employees and the organization in several ways. First, positive citizenship behavior encourages employee involvement in corporate governance, allowing them to provide excellent suggestions to reduce operational costs. Second, citizenship behavior entails sportsmanship where employees forbear slight inconveniences with no protests, enabling managers to complete essential job functions. Third, citizenship behavior focuses on helping coworkers, reducing the need for crisis management and training costs, and supervision (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, employees who partake in citizenship behavior achieve high work meaningfulness and feel a sense of control over their work duties, increasing job fulfillment.
Several advantages are associated with high levels of organizational commitment. First, organizational commitment is positively linked to high worker productivity, allowing Nissan employees to work diligently and achieve company and personal goals. Second, motivated and committed staff show reduced absenteeism since they look forward to working and completing their projects, which can benefit Nissan. Third, organizational commitment increases teamwork as dedicated employees collaborate to increase a team’s efficiency (Colquitt et al., 2021). Fourth, organizational commitment makes employees strong advocates of their organization, who believe in and support their firm’s policies, services, and products.
Nissan managers can adopt several strategies to increase employees’ organizational commitment levels. First, the company’s managers can be supportive by protecting workers’ job security and enhancing work conditions. Second, Nissan managers can increase affective commitment by reinforcing the bonds linking staff. Third, Nissan leaders can foster continuance commitment by creating good compensation plans and advancement opportunities to keep star employees (Nissan Motor Corporation, 2021). Fourth, Nissan managers can increase normative commitment by providing various development and training opportunities for workers, which can tempt employees to repay developmental activities with extra years of work.
Chapter Two
Job Satisfaction, Stress, and Motivation
Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is the resulting pleasurable attitude towards one’s job to work experiences, rewards, and security. Managers at Nissan could increase their employees’ job satisfaction by setting realistic expectations. Managers must recognize workers and their efforts, making them feel appreciated and valued. Job satisfaction can be achieved by creating a culture that values effective communication. Furthermore, employees and the organization should foster greater trust, enhancing job satisfaction (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, the company must prioritize employees’ well-being by encouraging and rewarding citizenship behavior.
Stress Management
Workplace stress is a human response to internal and external job stressors that appear beyond their control. Managers at Nissan could help manage stress by assigning realistic workloads to employees to make tasks more manageable. In addition, managers can make supportive team relationships among employees, creating a sense of belonging. They should also foster positive relationships with employees by being supportive and fair. Finally, managers should ensure employees’ financial remuneration is adequate to reduce money-related stress. Managers must ensure employees remain motivated at the workplace to achieve commitment and productivity. According to the theory, employees make choices considering three beliefs: expectancy, instrumentality, and valance, and are more motivated when they believe they can hit set targets and are rewarded accordingly. Managers can adapt and use the expectancy theory through five steps. First, managers must investigate and find out what motivates their employees. Second, leaders should assign tasks that match employees’ skills. The third step is setting attainable goals to drive employees to hit their targets (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, the managers should use a logical and fair reward system.
Chapter Three
Trust, Organizational Justice, Ethics, Learning, and Decision Making
Organizational Justice
Employees judge organizational justice in terms of four distinct dimensions: procedural justice, distributive justice, informational justice, and interpersonal justice. Distributive justice focuses on gauging fairness by exploring if decision outcomes such as work assignments, promotions, pay, evaluations, and rewards are allocated through proper norms. Unlike distributive justice, procedural justice emphasizes the fairness of the decision-making process and is upheld when authorities follow fair rules that consider all concerns. Interpersonal justice is the perceived fairness of employees’ treatment while implementing different procedures. In contrast, informational justice emphasizes the fairness of communication employees provide in decision-making (Colquitt et al., 2021). The decision-making communication must be fair by following the justification and truthfulness rules.
Workplace justice can benefit Nissan and its employees in several ways. First, organizational justice builds commitment and trust among employees because it requires a company and employees to become vulnerable in front of each other. Second, organizational justice can improve job performance in Nissan when managers treat their subordinates well. Third, organizational justice encourages positive citizenship behaviors as existing scholarship suggests that when employees are treated justly, they are likely to adhere to company policies and show additional conscientiousness and altruistic behavior towards others (Hadi et al., 2020). Fourth, organizational justice builds consumer loyalty and satisfaction when helping others is extended to customer service-oriented actions such as listening to consumer needs and making customers feel appropriately treated, resulting in consumer loyalty and satisfaction.
Workplace Ethics
Ethics are the guiding principles that act as the moral compass of individual or organizational conduct. Ethical organizations perform better in the stock market (Baker et al., 2019). Managers at Nissan can raise ethical levels in the company by being role models to their subordinates, communicating the company’s ethical expectations, and offering training on ethics through seminars and workshops. Furthermore, Nissan managers can promote ethics by including ethical evaluations in appraisals to enforce ethical conduct. Nissan should focus on communicating with employees in overseas organizations to ensure the home country’s ethics are retained. Furthermore, Nissan should develop reward programs for individuals that follow the company’s ethical values. In addition, the company should advocate for fairness and non-discrimination in the workplace (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, it is crucial to consider change impacts and develop policies that do not harm current and future employees.
Decision Making Process
The rational decision-making model is used for novel problems and involves five steps. Managers using the rational decision-making model are expected to identify the best approaches to making a particular decision, considering all involved parties. Next, managers need to generate available alternative solutions to the existing problem. The third step entails the evaluation of the identified alternatives using the criteria developed in the first step. The fourth step involves electing the best alternative given its benefits and costs (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, the rational decision-making model ends with implementing the chosen alternative.
For several reasons, the rational decision-making model in Nissan is challenging. First, the rational decision-making approach is hampered by limited information. For instance, select consumers may complain about minor ergonomic design problems in new car models due to insufficient information. Second, the rational decision-making approach may be hindered by time limitations. For example, the data needed for decision-making may be unavailable while handling a crisis day. Third, the model is difficult to use when engineers work on time-sensitive projects. For instance, Nissan engineers cannot use the model while working on sensitive projects that require precision and caution. Fourth, managers and engineers face commitment bias when evaluating a decision regarding the cessation of producing existing car models (Colquitt et al., 2021). Executive leaders may feel nostalgic about discontinuing the production of failing car models.
Chapter Four
Personality Traits and Abilities
Personalities can be summarized in five dimensions: consciousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness to experience, and extraversion. Conscientiousness refers to a person who is persevering, ambitious, hardworking, reliable, dependable, and organized. Agreeableness indicates that a person is warm, helpful, sympathetic, courteous, and cooperative. In contrast, neurotic persons are unstable, emotional, moody, insecure, and nervous. Openness refers to a curious, creative, imaginative, and complex person. Finally, extraversion indicates an individual is sociable, bold, talkative, passionate, and assertive. Nissan managers need to understand their personalities and that of employees. Managers who understand their personalities can effectively lead teams because they know their strengths and weaknesses. Understanding personality helps a leader recognize the best leadership style to adopt, how to influence, communicate, negotiate business, collaborate, and even manage stress (Mosley 2018). Furthermore, individuals who comprehend their personality traits can effectively collaborate to develop new solutions by helping others (Frieder et al., 2018). Finally, these leaders can develop ways to mitigate against possible losses by giving responsibilities to coworkers.
Personality Assessment
My personality assessment indicated I slightly exceeded the average conscientiousness with a score of 14. I also found that I am less agreeable than most people since the agreeableness score falls three points below the 16. The score for neuroticism is 10, which is minutely lower than the norm. Additionally, my openness score was below average, scoring 9. Finally, the score on extroversion was 11, which is lower than most individuals. From the personality assessment, my personality types are neuroticism and conscientiousness.
Ability
Cognitive ability affects an employee’s performance and refers to one’s capacity to acquire and apply knowledge to solve challenges. For instance, Nissan engineers solve mathematical problems while building efficient engine models. In contrast, the emotional ability is understanding and using emotions to achieve desirable outcomes. For example, emotional ability is required by Nissan engineers who deal with excess stress. Physical ability enables a person to perform physical tasks as demonstrated by Nissan employees working out in the company’s wellness center. Nissan Managers should know that emotional intelligence can allow them to effectively understand and manage employees (Colquitt et al., 2021). Managers at Nissan should improve their emotional abilities by practicing mindfulness, showing empathy towards others, being open to criticism, and accepting employee feedback without necessarily being defensive.
Chapter Five
Team and leadership
Approaches to Strong Team Orientation
Nissan’s management must develop and build a strong culture in several ways. Setting goals can develop strong team orientation as employees should know their responsibilities. In addition, Nissan managers can form groups that focus on specific fields such as finance, marketing, and human capital, to increase efficiency. Nissan can employ people globally based on their capabilities regardless of their race. Furthermore, the company can promote brainstorming to ensure employees can share their ideas to select the best suggestions. Nissan management can also encourage virtual communication to handle tasks and idea-sharing effectively. The company managers should set clear deadlines for team members to increase accountability. Furthermore, the company management should foster trust between team members through regular communication (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, the firm should conduct cross-training to increase teamwork since employees will know their coworkers’ duties.
However, effective conflict resolution methods that foster commitment and team culture can enhance team culture, including the competing resolution style, which entails two conflicting sides who are assertive and unwilling to collaborate because each has an objective to achieve. For instance, Nissan managers use the competing style while making quick decisions. An avoidance approach involves unassertive people who often avoid conflict. An employee can use avoidance when directly asked if employers pay them enough. The collaboration style combines authority and collaboration to resolve a problem jointly. For instance, engineers and executive managers collaborate to create efficient car models with limited research budgets. Accommodation entails self-sacrifice and reservation and is mainly made to please another person. For instance, when a top engineer reports working late, the team leader can ignore their lateness. Finally, compromising involves situations where parties may seek to lower damages (Colquitt et al., 2021). For example, when Nissan faces litigation, it often chooses to compromise.
Leadership Decision-Making Approaches
Several leadership decision-making models include the autocratic system, where the leader consults nobody and bears the outcome burden. In contrast, consultative decision-making involves the leader talking with others before making a decision. For example, managers consult with engineers to know if design models are reliable and efficient. A facilitative decision-making approach involves making decisions by collaborating with specialized employees to enhance brainstorming and creativity to reach a common goal (Colquitt et al., 2021). Finally, a delegative approach entails employees’ decision-making by the leader, who bears all employees’ decisions.
Chapter Six
Organizational Structure and Organizational Culture
Organizational Structure
Organizational structure refers to a system that shows how organizational activities are designed to achieve a firm’s goals and objectives and includes work specialization, a span of control, formalization, centralization, and chain of command. Work specialization refers to a working system that divides tasks according to skills and competence. A span of control indicates the number of subordinates reporting to a particular manager. Centralization entails the concentration of power under a single body within organizations. Finally, formalization is the degree to which an organization formally articulates each stakeholder’s rules, policies, and job descriptions (Colquitt et al., 2021). The chain of command specifies whom different employees report to and a company’s authority relationships.
Nissan Company Organizational Structure
Nissan company’s organizational structure consists of many executives and committees to facilitate proper management of resources in a perfect representation of formalization.
Nissan Company’s Organizational Culture
The organizational culture refers to the set of policies that guide and direct employees. Nissan’s organizational culture can be analyzed on three levels: artifacts, values, and assumptions. Artifacts represent the tangible and visible elements distinct to the organization. A visible Nissan artifact is the company logo, which is copyrighted. Values that define the culture of Nissan are integrity, passion, diversity, accountability, and leadership (Nissan Motor Corporation, 2021). Assumptions are ingrained concepts and philosophies that form the bedrock of Nissan’s corporate culture.
Nissan’s core message entails considering one’s internal power derived from creativity, personal strength, and dedication and determining every employee’s potential in their functional area. Thus, Nissan includes peoples’ shared passion for manufacturing, designing, and selling high-quality automobile. Diversity in the workforce’s background and perspectives allows the firm to achieve the best results (Nissan Motor Corporation, 2021). The organization’s team is willing to overcome difficulties to realize their objectives by developing novel ideas to make innovative vehicles, which increases the company’s competitive advantage.
Conclusion
The report gives an extensive overview of all the aspects attributed to organizational behavior concerning Nissan. It highlights the importance of employees in achieving organizational goals and ways to improve leadership and effective management of employees. Managers must understand how to reduce stress, increase ethical levels, and communicate effectively. For Nissan to realize its sustainability goal, employee welfare must be considered, especially regarding work-life balance and job security.
References
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