Conformity to a Supervisor; Is I Beneficial?

Tim Burke 2804531

There are many key aspects to running, participating and keeping an organization successful. For me personally, I believe this starts at the top and works down. If owners, supervisors and managers are all respected and relatable this goes a long way to the running and structure of a successful business. These views on a successful organization stem from the belief that overall, employee conformity to their supervisor is beneficial. I believe this belief is key in so many aspects of an organizations ability to be successful and throughout this essay I will explain why this is true.

To start with we must look at the definition of a supervisor and what they within an and for an organization. A supervisor is “A person who supervisor’s workers or the work done by others” the title of supervisor is typically applied to a worker who is in a managerial role, often occurring in industrial and administrative settings. Usually, in a business sense, the supervisor is responsible for section or group of workers with the task of guiding his task team to increased productivity and goals set by the organization. A huge amount of responsibility and excellence is expected upon the role of a supervisor. (Nichola ladany, 14 september 2014)

The next step is conformity and how this fits into the business and the relationship it has to being beneficial to an organizations day to day operations. Conformity is “the most general concept and refers to any change in behaviour caused by another person or group; the individual acted in some way because of influence from others”. Conformity in a business sense is acting upon another’s guidance and experience to mould to the organizations culture and values. In relation to a business situation Informational conformity is a good form of conformity to look at, as this form of conformity happens when a person lacks knowledge and looks to the group for information and direction. (Robert crowson, 1938)

When first entering an organisation we become familiar with the day to activities, practices and values that make up the culture of the organization. The culture of an organization is instilled in the workers through the different levels of management coaching and mentoring workers towards the goals of the business. The goals of every business usually involve increasing productivity, increasing overall profit and building an organization within its own market, if businesses are going to be able to achieve the goals that they set for themselves it is important for supervisors to ensure all business operations are running smoothly and everyone is following the right practices as well as completing they’re on job to a high standard. Through conforming to a supervisor, we as workers are following the practices of the business to give ourselves the best opportunity to achieve the goals we have been set out to achieve. Supervisors being people are the ideal representative of the business, being loyal, hardworking and experienced they are people who should be respected and followed in the business setting. I believe that through conforming to the behaviour and ethic shown by supervisors in the workplace, we are giving ourselves the best opportunity for 1) the worker to be successful in his/her job (which is ideal in terms of gaining promotion and being rewarded in the workplace) and 2) the business to be successful through ensuring goals are met through the environment the business has created. (John fisher, 2008)

Each organization has a certain set of values and behaviours that contribute to the overall organizational culture of the business. Organizational culture is defined as “the values and behaviours that contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization” I believe it I extremely beneficial to follow and mould your working to the organizational culture. In terms of an example It is easy to relate to sport, if a new player is introduced to say a football team with a certain style of play but this player does not mould and play as a team member but as an individual and selfish player the team will not play as well and run as smoothly. When referring to a business sense when a system is in place that produces results and works towards goals set by the managers. Not conforming to these systems will result in decreased productivity and animosity within the workplace. Not conforming to systems and supervisors involves workers taking things into their own hands, not following business protocol both of which could possibly end up tarnishing the businesses reputation when it comes to going about day to day business a certain way.

For consumers when they choose to use the services or consume the goods of a certain brands we know what experience we get. For example, we know when we choose to buy a burger form Burger King we will receive our food fast and warm but produced with not much care, this is because within the business they have a system where the pace of the food getting out to the customer is the priority. They will have a specific way to prepare the burgers so that it uses minimal time. Now if a new employee was hired and did not conform to the supervisor and mould to the businesses sets of values and practices and slowing down the burger making process by not following the set way. it will lead to a decrease in productivity and in this case lead to customers waiting longer for their meals, the opposite of the wanted experience.

Whilst discussing this statement among some peers one had the view that without conforming you were “thinking outside the box”- creating, growing and encouraging within the workplace. And yes, for some businesses this is how they are run, with workers freedom to change processes to encourage the increase of productivity. The following was found in a journal article discussing the relationship between conformity and power, showing conformity does not alays come with legitimate power. “Although prior research indicates that power and hierarchy illegitimacy independently decrease conformity to social norms, we demonstrate that the two interact. In five studies, we find that legitimate power decreases conformity, whereas illegitimate power increases conformity” (Nicholas a hays, september 2015)

But I do believe if there is a system put in place that is followed and is instilled in the businesses values then conformity is the key to the success of a business. It allows workers to understand their job within the business and operate with a clear sense of their goals. The following article relates to conformity studies done with animals but relates to how many are attracted to a group norm which in a business situation would work well as if everyone was doing it a new worker would be encouraged to use the same system as everyone else. “Conformity to local behavioral norms reflects the pervading role of culture in human life. Laboratory experiments have begun to suggest a role for conformity in animal social learning, but evidence from the wild remains circumstantial. Here, we show experimentally that wild vervet monkeys will abandon personal foraging preferences in favor of group norms new to them. Groups first learned to avoid the bitter-tasting alternative of two foods.” (Erica van de waal, christèle borgeaud, andrew whiten, 26 Apr 2013)