Behavior Controls An organization’s structure does not by itself provide mechani

Question

Behavior Controls

An organization’s structure does not by itself provide mechanisms that motivate employees to behave in ways that make the organization succeed, hence there is the need for control systems that motivate and shape employee behavior. You are about to read a case about the development of the Vista operating system at Microsoft. You will be analyzing the type of behavioral control used at Microsoft and identifying why it failed.

Read the case below and answer the questions that follow.

Even though the events in this case happened many years ago, it still provides a good example from which we can examine what does and does not work with behavioral control systems.

From its beginning, Microsoft organized its software engineers into small teams so team members could cooperate, learning from and helping each other. One goal of this approach was to speed the development of innovative software. Each team worked on a subset of the thousands of programs that together made up Microsoft's Windows operating system and applications software. In the past, much of Microsoft's reward system was based on team performance. Employees of successful teams that quickly developed innovative software received valuable stock options and other benefits. Microsoft's team-based reward system encouraged team members to work together intensively and cooperate to meet team goals. At the same time, the contributions of exceptional team members were recognized; these individuals received rewards such as promotions to become the managers or leaders of new teams as the company grew.

Microsoft ran into serious problems when it was developing its Vista operating system. Vista was scheduled to come out in the summer of 2006, but unforeseen delays had put the project six months behind schedule. Why? Many analysts blamed the delay on the new performance evaluation system Microsoft had introduced, which, because it was primarily based on individual performance contributions, was hurting team performance. As Microsoft grew over time, it developed a more and more rigid performance evaluation system that became increasingly based on each engineer's individual performance. The manager of each team was expected to rate the performance of each team member on a scale of 2.5, 3.0, and so on to 5, the highest individual performance rating. Microsoft adopted this system to try to increase the perceived fairness of its evaluation system.

However, employees still worked principally in teams. The new emphasis on individual performance negatively affected the relationships among team members, because members were aware that they were in competition for the highest ratings. For example, when confronted with a situation in which they could help other team members but doing so might hurt their own personal performance evaluations, they behaved self-interestedly, thus hurting overall team performance.

Additionally, Microsoft is highly secretive about employees' performance evaluations, current salaries, and raises. Employees are told not to share such information and can get fired if they do. Further, the way these evaluations were made by team managers also was highly secretive. Employees believed that when the managers of different teams met to discuss which teams (as a unit) had achieved the highest level of team performance, these evaluations were distorted by favoritism. Because evaluations were seen as biased by personal likes and dislikes, the performance evaluation system was regarded as being highly political.

When team members feel that their personal performance contributions are not being adequately recognized, and that the performance of different teams is not being judged fairly, many performance problems can arise. One of the problems that arose for Microsoft was that many of their best software engineers, believing that they had not received the recognition they thought they deserved at Microsoft, left to join rivals such as Google or create their own start-up organizations.

Fortunately, Microsoft recognized some of the problems it had created in its control system, and changed to make team performance a more important element of its promotion and reward system.

1. Microsoft’s early use of the individual/team evaluation process appears to have been a successful method of __________ control.
input
operational
output
occupational
behavior

2. Microsoft’s teams are expected to be innovative. Therefore, ________ would not be as effective as another form of behavior control.
supervisory control
direct supervision
clan control
financial ratio control
management by objectives

3. Management by objectives would ______ at Microsoft.
save money by emphasizing individual goals
require all workers to agree on their pay and benefit offers
be extremely difficult to implement because of the use of teams
work well in the team environment
interfere with the emphasis on output controls

4. The type of behavior control used during the Vista rollout at Microsoft
demonstrates the negative effect of choosing the wrong type of behavior control.
would have succeeded if Microsoft was not a global organization.
would have succeeded if Microsoft had implemented it throughout the company not just for this group.
caused Microsoft’s output controls to fail.
was the best choice of behavioral control possible.

5. The negative effects of using direct supervision during the Vista rollout include all of the following EXCEPT
engineers quitting and moving to Google.
improvement in the management by objectives process.
growing perception by team members that favoritism played a big part in performance evaluations.
growing perception by workers that the performance review process at Microsoft was unfair.
software engineers leaving to start their own businesses.

Explanation / Answer

1.     Microsoft’s early use of the individual/team evaluation process appears to have been a successful method of Output control.

Output control: Obtaining results through particular behavior

2.     Microsoft’s teams are expected to be innovative. Therefore, _ supervisory control would not be as effective as another form of behavior control.

Supervisory Control : Authoritative approach

3.     3. Management by objectives would be extremely difficult to implement because of the use of teams at Microsoft.

Be extremely difficult to implement because of the use of teams

      4. The type of behavior control used during the Vista rollout at Microsoft
            demonstrates the negative effect of choosing the wrong type of behavior           control.

             Caused Microsoft’s output controls to fail.

5. The negative effects of using direct supervision during the Vista rollout include all of the following EXCEPT

           Improvement in the management by objectives process.

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