Whether good or bad, the outcomes that businesses provide are the result of the match between what they’re capable of delivering and what they need to deliver to meet their clients or users. By way of example, an organization may need to deliver very high-reliability products however, if their processes aren’t strong enough to build in’ reliability, then it will not happen and the results will suffer. In another case, an organization may need to deliver exceptional customer support but its staff’s behaviors may not match the requirement and so, again, the organizational results will suffer. This report focuses on elements of the Intangible Asset and Human Resources elements of Grant’s model – looking at why it is that some organizations have the ability to produce an environment with motivated people and teams that can collaborate for success, and many others can not.

Why do organizations get what they get? Why is it that like-for-like organizations with access to individuals of the identical ability levels, with identical equipment and dealing with the exact customers, can acquire such widely differing results? Why is it that one automotive manufacturer will create cars that sell like’hot cakes’ and others go to the wall? Why is it that hospitals dealing with the exact sorts of patients with the very same sorts of employees and equipment can have such a difference in their mortality prices? The difference in performance can often be put down to the organizational environment and this manifests itself as artifacts’, concerning the physical performance and operating concepts of a team or organization.

The organizational artifacts are constructed on the norms and behaviors within the organization concerning the ways of acting that are left-handed (or authorized) and subjects which are’taboo’. Subsequently, these norms and behaviors are influenced by the beliefs and assumptions of teams and individuals concerning the explicit beliefs of people (for example, this is a poor organization to work for’) and implicit cultural assumptions (such as’managers make decisions; we just carry them out’). Creating the perfect environment isn’t something which may be done overnight because you’re dealing with assumptions and beliefs which might have been ingrained within the organization over several years.

Really, these beliefs are often reinforced daily through management behaviors and activities that strengthen the status quo, and these are often seen at the stage an organization would like to really change. Here are two examples:

1. An organization with a history of treating its employees as amounts’ had established an environment with demotivated employees and poor levels of customer care. To rectify the issues with client care, it established a program to change the way its employees interacted with customers. A first-team was formed to handle response times in a call center. The group achieved impressive results and were feeding back to the chief executive when he chased them with the term, “That is great but when can I bank the cheque?”

2. A hospital had introduced a policy of nothing worn beneath the elbow’ to reduce the chance of infection. A senior doctor came on award wearing a shirt that went below the elbow and a nurse approached the doctor to inform him that he had to roll up his sleeves. The doctor responded, “Do not be silly I am in a rush.” The nurse reported this to her Matron and was told, “Oh do not worry, just let it go.” In both cases, the activities of the leaders involved (the chief executive in the first case and the matron at the second) reinforced the prior beliefs and assumptions and, thus, preventing any change in the organizational environment.

In fact, within most organizations, there isn’t one single’uniform environment’. Instead, the organizational environment will differ from team to team, division to division, and so forth and the effect of the combination of the many micro-environments will specify the general environment for the organization. In this complex organizational environment, leaders at every level can have a large effect on their own’local’ environment. An ineffective and abrasive divisional leader will negatively influence the operation of every component of her/his branch, while a successful team leader of a tiny front-line team within the division might help create a local environment which produces the incompetence of their divisional leader more bearable for the rest of the team – and vice versa.

The degree of sophistication within organizational environments affects the length required for this to change. As was said:’The seeds of successful change needs to be planted by embedding behavioral and behavioral changes in the organization long before any improvement initiative is established.’ What organizational environment would you like? Most organizations need an effective environment’ but what does this mean? Figure 1 showed that competitive advantage is gained by organizations having the capability to supply the crucial success factors in their marketplace and that these capacities are affected by the organizational environment. So, a successful environment is simply one which permits you to develop and maintain competitive advantages in your own market.

Various organizations will operate in different environments and, so, will need different organizational environments to work. Four Kinds of the organizational environment are shown in the table below: The Clan A friendly place to work with good relationships between staff and supervisors. Commitment is high and there’s a significant investment in developing the capacity of individuals. Teamwork, involvement, and consensus are encouraged and success is characterized by team satisfaction and involvement. Adhocracy A lively environment where leaders operate with freedom and flexibly. They encourage their teams to be creative and ‘stick their necks’ out. Calculated risk-taking is encouraged and teams form and reform as required. Experimentation is the lifeblood of this adhocracy based organization and individual liberty and initiative are encouraged.