Organizational Behavior Paper

University of Phoenix

MGT 331

Organizational Behavior

Gary Denny

January 15, 2006

Organizational Behavior Forces

All companies experience internal and external forces that affect the nature of their business. Some of these forces can be controlled by the company itself these are called internal forces but actions that occur outside of the company without the company being able to control them is called external forces. These forces whether they are internal such as company restructuring or external forces, for example the company's competitor coming out with a better product push the company to take actions to ensure that the company will survive through them. The internal and external forces that can affect each company range from company restructuring, organizational mission, fiscal policies, competition, the economy, customer demands, and globalization. The members of Team A have examined each of his or her respective organizations and discussed below how internal and external forces have affected each company.

Intertec Publishing -The Atlanta Office

Throughout the years, several internal and external forces have influenced the decisions made by the strategic planners in the Atlanta office of Intertec Publishing. The company's mission is to keep the company viable and profitable while maintaining a competitive edge. To achieve a company's mission, various forms of restructuring measures such as lay offs; downsizing, outsourcing of jobs, bringing jobs in-house, and changing top-level management are implemented. To keep the company viable and in good financial standing, fiscal policies such as quality control, waste control, over-spending and the need for quality as well as quantity production issues were addressed.

External forces that have had an impact on the growth and stability of the companies include competition, economy, customer demands, and globalization. It is safe to say that competition, the economy, and customer demands are a few of the driving forces that have led management to implement new and innovative ways of marketing, distributing, and advertising their product. The effects of competition and the rise and fall in the economy have resulted in various forms of mergers, closures, sales, and acquisitions. Intertec Publishing continues to meet the demands of costumers by providing quality customer service, and by using cutting edge technology such as computers, electronics, and the Internet to distribute information easily and conveniently to customers. Technology and electronic communication have also promoted a global market for the company.

SC Department of Health and Environmental Control

The Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) is a state agency located in South Carolina and is divided in nine regions. The specific Region being discussed is Region 1. Since DHEC provides healthcare services to the public, they are constantly influenced by external factors mainly their customers. DHEC's revenue is determined by their ability to provide various healthcare services to customers. If DHEC is unable to provide these services they are unable to bill customers directly, to bill private insurance and/or bill Medicaid.

In recent months the customer base has been off. Some of the factors that caused these fluctuations are due to the changes DHEC made to the appointment system. Customers are unable to make appointments as quickly and easily as before. Another factor has been that the Agency discontinued providing family planning services. The final factor was due to changes in the State Medicaid program. Unfortunately, these changes have affected the entire SC DHEC agency including a budget deficit.

The budget deficit an example of an internal factor affecting our agency is causing the company to face budget cuts, hiring freezes, staff reductions, and decrease in customer services. Another example of an internal factor occurs when the "Upper Savannah" health district merged with the "Appalachian I" health district to form Region 1 Public Health. Even though DHEC is a state agency a merger still affects every employee. The ramifications of a merger are felt stronger at the upper-levels.

R.W. Armstrong

R.W. Armstrong is an engineering firm located in Indianapolis, Indiana that has grown from a small family-owned firm to a mid-size corporate organization in only 2Ð'Ð... years. Due to the fast and immediate growth restructuring and resource-leveling has become the two biggest internal factors within our company. During this massive growth period, we formed an alliance with A2SO4 a minority Architectural firm in order to offer our customers more services. R.W. Armstrong is also in the process of becoming a global company, in order to provide services to customers in the United Arab Emirates; due to these projects they are opening two new offices in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to meet customer demands. The impact of exponential growth within R.W Armstrong has created stress among the organization and has created new management policies and a great deal of diversity with the organization.

Since R.W. Armstrong is a civil engineering firm, it is also affected heavily by political changes within the states that they work in. A change from a Republican Party to Democratic Party could mean projects getting cancelled due to one politician's view of importance over another's. Since it is political, a great many of the projects proposed by R.W. Armstrong depend on the states economy another external factor that is hard to manage.

United Healthcare

At United Healthcare, one of the internal impacts to my organization was restructuring. Many employees were not happy with the organizational changes, which meant that they no longer report to the same person and in some cases; they were switched to a different location. This caused many employees to have bad attitudes and no longer care about the quality of their work. Employees missed deadlines with not a care factor or recourse, this caused the Organizational mission to fall below standards since the first step in the Organization mission is to put the customer first. Most of our work is done strictly for the customer and has an impact on the customer and any third party carriers that they may use. Of course, this leaves room for many customers being dissatisfied with their services.

There was an obvious problem with meeting the Customer demands and it caused the executive level management to become