Executive Summary
An organization can encompasses healthy and unhealthy characteristics that can affect how management team’s roles are viewed. By investigating in to the psychology of personnel of how others view ideas, a manager can make an informed decision. A business can also begin to manage how they are perceived in regards to ideas that they are pursuing or activities that they have accomplished. This will allow employees to be empowered, as well as giving them the responsibility and empowering them.
Effect of Leadership
Related to almost every aspect in both the business world and our personal lives are leadership and management. With many different characteristics of leadership, there are pages of research and opinions that can be referenced. This paper includes references to articles and text that discuss leadership theories, styles, and skills. From analyzing these materials, I have gained a better understanding of the interpreted main opinions regarding the essential skills needed to be an effective leader.
While I have not been employed with my organization long, it is not hard to predict that Eastern Oregon University will face many changes in the future. The article “The Passive-Aggressive Organization” by Neilson, Pasternack, and Van Nuys, identified seven organizational types including three that are healthy and four that are considered unhealthy (2005). After reading this article, I would conclude that Eastern Oregon University fits into the four categories of unhealthy organizations: passive aggressive, over managed, out grown, and fits-and-starts.
Passive-aggressive organizations, as defined in the article, are “Congenial and seemingly conflict free, achieves consensus early, but struggles to implement agreed upon plans” (Neilson, Pasternack, & Van Nuys, 2005, p. 3). While I do not have insight into each individual’s role at Eastern Oregon University, I do have an inside perspective as to what the Registrar’s Office, Admissions Office, and Advisers Office are tasked with. Meetings are held, many decisions are made, and various people are informed of these decisions. While everyone seems on board with the plan of action agreed upon at the meeting, when it comes time to move forward the process often seems to come to a halt. Someone insists that there is an issue with the previously agreed upon course of action, but instead of fixing the issues and moving forward, the entire process is either pushed aside indefinitely to deal with more urgent issues, or a completely new plan is proposed. The process may or may not be brought back up, but this usually depends on if the employees that are working with the process really support the idea and the steps to achieve it or if they were simply agreeing with the plan for lack of conflict.
The second unhealthy organizational type in which I classified Eastern Oregon University is over managed. While some issues have been cleared up since the appointment of President Jay Kenton, there was a time not long ago when an employee could have up to four bosses. According to Neilson, Pasternack & Van Nuys, “Organizations that are over managed have multiple layers of management create analysis paralysis and also politicize decision making” (The Passive-Aggressive Organization, 2005, p. 3). After working at Eastern Oregon University for several weeks, I was still unclear as to whom my boss was. Management that I reported to in the first three months of employment included the Assistant Registrar, the Registrar, Assistant Director of Human Resources, the Provost, and the President. At any point in time, any one of these administrators could ask me about the same situation without communicating with each other first. While each of these positions has job duties and functions, the lack of communication gave the impression that they did not work
