Essay: Analysis Of Organisational Behaviour And Culture In BHP Billiton.

This assignment has been delegated to management students and the purpose of the assignment is to learn logically and to analyze the theory and practices of organisational behaviour, organisational culture, politics and the changes that impact the business environment. Furthermore, the assignment deals with finding out personal strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of the learner and others around. This assignment aims to find out whether the learner is fit to work in the chosen organisation and whether the work environment and the organisational practices are suitable for the career growth and development. By focusing on culture and the managerial practices of the company the learner can understand the nature of the business that the company engages in and will give the learner an idea about the practical world.

A personal SWOT analysis has been undertaken in this assignment which is based on the self assessment test that has been conducted. This analysis will help the learner to understand weather the learner is fit to be employed in the organisation of choice.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, BHP Billiton is a multinational company that operates in the mining industry and the market leader in providing diversified natural resources. The company has a long trail of heritage and a history of more than 130 years of incorporation, which adds to the goodwill of the company. In 2001 Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited of Australia and Anglo-Dutch Billiton Plc amalgamated to form the BHP, which is previously known as BHP Billiton. The company has goodwill with all the stakeholders and is also proud to boast about their employee retention rate. The organisation ensures an excellent combine of quality in terms of products and services, low-cost resource assets (Home Page, 2017). The quality of the product and service is further complemented by a strong management team to keep the operations of the business aligned with the objectives of the company (Cascio 2014).

Positive: As multinational company that operates in the heavy industry, BHP has the opportunity of career growth and personal development through training and skill improvement sessions that are initiated by the company (Terera & Ngirande 2014).  The company follows a democratic leadership style which ensure that all issues and grievances of the employees will be given equal importance, not only that the company will also recognize the voice of employees while taking any decision as well. The organisational structure that the company follows is the matrix structure which perfectly aligns with the leadership style that has been mentioned above. Team work is given precedence instead of personal focuses and people who are a team player learns and grown in the business (Terera & Ngirande 2014).

Personal SWOT Analysis

Negative: The organisational structure of BHP encourages team work and hence people might feel a personal negligence regarding the performance this process also narrows down the prospect of personal growth as well. The matrix structure can also give rise to internal conflicts and issues. Internal complexity in this organisation structure has high possibility. The hierarchy in this structure is not clear and this may give rise to confusion and chances of miscommunication within the organisation. For example, varied perspective regarding the same task may be given to an employee. In the long run this may impact the operations of the business as well.

The methodology that has been followed in order to complete this assignment is secondary in nature as the data that has been used to conclude the assignment are all taken from information that was already available. No new information has been gathered in the process of completion of this assignment. The information that has been gathered is taken form relevant journal articles and also from analyzing the official website of BHP. As BHP has a very informative official website information regarding the company was easily available along with the history of incorporation and the merger. Information regarding the employment policies and past experiences of the employees are gathered from the internet. Several news articles regarding BHP has also analyzed to form an insight about the organisational structure.

The information that has been used while conducting this assignment is mostly sourced from journal articles from Google scholar and Torrens University Library. The news papers or more specifically the online news papers are one of the most valuable sources of information.

The first tool of self assessment that has been used by the learner is the personal value survey. The principles and values that a person follows in life ensure what is important and what is unimportant to that person. It helps in ensuring the characteristics of an individual in term of the values the person owns. There are six values that have been taken into consideration while conducting this survey: wisdom and knowledge, humanity, courage, justice, temperance, transcendence (Robinson et al., 2013). All these aspects are values as well as strengths in the personality which will not only help an individual choose what is important it also represents the how a person will excel I life using some of these aspects. The wisdom and knowledge value or strength represents the cognitive development in an individual and the level at which a person is open to knowledge and learning. Humanity: the strength to think and to act according to the interest of others. Courage: the use and the power of will that ensures the success of an individual in achieving the objectives. Justice: this refers to the sense and perspective of a person in leading a healthy social life. Temperance: anything in excess is not right and this value deals with that aspect of strength. Transcendence: deals with the intellect and the abstract aspect of life beyond what can be seen and observed. Thus, this survey provides a holistic approach towards the personality of an individual (Robinson et al., 2013).

Introduction to BHP Billiton

The other tool that has been employed in order to conduct self assessment is the Briggs Myers & Jung typology personality test, developed from the approach suggest by Carl jung and Isabel Briggs Myers. Four aspects of general attitude in an individual have been identified: extrovert and introvert, sensing and intuition, thinking and feeling lastly judging and perceiving. The score of the test that has been undertaken reflect ENTJ (Tananchai, 2017).

While conducting the test of self assessment all the information that the learner has used is naturally occurring. Some of the examples of naturally occurring data are conversations, casual observations, information that has been perceived by reading an informal text etc.  Data collected for the any research or analysis purpose can be gathered with the help of two sources firstly the information that is already available in the topic, this kind of data is known as the secondary data (Stanley & Rebecca, 2016). Next, is the primary information it is the data that can be collected from the new information that is gathered from various tools. As discussed before that the information used in this assignment are data that is already available natural occurring data is a type of secondary data that is available without any intention of conducting any academic research (Howard et al., 2016). This is also a source of information in this assignment. Three kinds of naturally occurring data have been used: casual conversation, information that is collected from personal log and information that is gathered with the help of entertainment. The conversations that the learner has conducted with the peers or professor have helped him understand the industry in which he is interested in. The personal log that is maintained provides information regarding the preference and taste of the learner in terms of career choice and field of operation (Naslund et al., 2014). On the other hand entertainment is a great source of naturally occurring information; with the help of Series, movies and books that the learner has grown up with has assured that he wants to be associated with a multinational company, the learner has learnt professionalism and about organisational behavior through television series (Alias et al., 2014).

The learner is aware of the strengths and the weaknesses in the personality and aspires to work on the weakness by harnessing the strengths in the long run. Form the Personal value survey that has been undertaken it is evident that the strength is transcendence. This shows the optimism and will power and also how the learner can balance the stress of life with the help of humor and spirituality. Form the conversations it has been analyzed that the learner is also a good listener which given him an opportunity to learn in every aspect and the urge to know more, aligns with this aspect of the personality. The weakness that the learners have is directly impacting the threats and can be said that by working on the weaknesses the learner can overcome the threats that have been stated as well (Addams  & Allfred 2013).

Positive Aspects of BHP Billiton

From the management perspective the learner is in a position where he can be easily accept the organisation culture and the management structure of a company without any issues as curiosity drives an individual to learn and adopt to the work environment. In order to continue working and growing in an organisation it is important for the learner to stay in sync with the organisational behavior (Howard et al., 2016).

Diversity in organisation is regarded as strength that as it ensure varied perspective form different back ground. This in turn provides the organisation an understanding of the consumers who are also usually diversified in nature. For a multinational company it is more suitable as the organisation operates on the foundation of acceptance of diversity. For example: during ideation of a strategy is helpful if the inputs are varied in nature (Herring & Henderson, 2015).

The organisation that has been discussed before is BHP. The analysis of the SWOT focuses on the creativity and the innovation desire of the learner which matches with the purpose of the organisation. The structure of the organisation discussed before is matrix and hence the possibility of growth and development in the career with the help of creativity and innovation is possible. As the strength of the learner is aligned with this aspect of the characteristic, working in this organisation will prove to be helpful for the career of the learner (Naslund et al., 2014).

Another aspect of the organisational culture and behavior that is in sync with the strength and opportunity of the learner is that the company believes in team work and collective development of the group more than giving priority to personal performance. This kind of set up is advantageous for a person who is focused in the work to outshine others and gain personal development along with the development of the team (Howard et al., 2016).

The values and principle that BHP follows are also suitable for the learner and is also on the similar line the company indulges in CSR activities which uplifts the brand image and also makes the workers of the organisation feel that their work is also bringing some value to the people and the environment as well. This will make the acceptance of a new place easier for the learner.

Conclusion  

There are almost 45,000 workers of BHP and many of these have been a long term employee proving that the employee retention rate of the organisation is high and the environment and work culture is works on the favor of the employees. Hence, it can be said that the learner can fit in BHP and match up to the organisation behavior and can also grow and explore opportunities in career. As a multinational organization the employment can also provide the learner opportunity to travel.

Reference list:

Addams, L., & Allfred, A. T. (2013). THE FIRST STEP IN PROACTIVELY MANAGING STUDENTS'CAREERS: TEACHING SELF-SWOT ANALYSIS. Academy of Educational Leadership Journal, 17(4), 43.

Alias, N. E., Noor, N., & Hassan, R. (2014). Examining the mediating effect of employee engagement on the relationship between talent management practices and employee retention in the Information and Technology (IT) organizations in Malaysia. Journal of Human Resources Management and Labor Studies, 2(2), 227-242.

Cascio, W.F., 2014. Leveraging employer branding, performance management and human resource development to enhance employee retention.

Herring, C., & Henderson, L. (2015). Diversity in Organizations.

Howard, L. W., Turban, D. B., & Hurley, S. K. (2016). Cooperating teams and competing reward strategies: Incentives for team performance and firm productivity. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 3(3).

Naslund, J. A., Grande, S. W., Aschbrenner, K. A., & Elwyn, G. (2014). Naturally Occurring Peer Support through Social Media: The Experiences of Individuals with.

Robinson, J. P., Shaver, P. R., & Wrightsman, L. S. (Eds.). (2013). Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes: Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (Vol. 1). Academic Press.

Stanley, S., & Rebecca, C. (2016). Discourse analysis of naturally occurring data: The relational development of mindfulness.

Tananchai, A. (2017). The Personality of Students Studying the Social Etiquette and Personality Development Course by Myers Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI) Theory. AJE, 3(2).

Terera, S. R., & Ngirande, H. (2014). The impact of rewards on job satisfaction and employee retention. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(1), 481.