First assignment, first class
To complete this assignment, refer to the notes you took during the Selecting a Research/Project Topic session you attended. You may also find it helpful to view the recording of the Selecting a Research/Project Topic session. You can find the recording on the Symposium Web site.
During Symposium I, you had the opportunity to work on and refine the topic of your dissertation.
Write a paper of 2-3 pages (not including title and reference pages) that describes your initial thoughts and ideas for your dissertation research. Your paper should include the following:
Discuss 2–3 topics that you are interested in researching as a dissertation topic.
Discuss why you are interested in these topics.
After attending the Symposium, how do you plan to begin your research and narrow this down?
Your paper should be submitted in APA format and include 2-3 references.
The Case of Boundaryless This class is 4-6 pages not including title and reference page Organizations
Multinational organizations are an increasingly common and important part of the economy. This case takes you into the world of a cutting-edge music software business that seeks success across three very different national and organizational cultures. Its managers need to make important decisions about how to structure work processes so that its employees can be satisfied and productive while doing very different tasks.Major Topic Areas
Organizational structure and boundaryless organizations
Organizational culture
Human resources
Organizational socialization
The ScenarioNewskool Grooves is a transnational company developing music software. The software is used to compose music, play recordings in clubs, and produce albums. Newskool’s founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Gerd Finger, is its biggest fan. “I started this company from nothing, from just me, my ideas, and my computer. I love music—I love playing music, writing programs for making music, listening to music—and the money is nice, too.” Finger says that he never wanted to work for someone else, to give away his ideas and let someone else profit from them. He wanted to keep control over them and their image. “Newskool Grooves is always ahead of the pack. In this business, if you cannot keep up, you are out. In addition, we are the company that everyone else must keep up with. Everyone knows when they get something from us, they’re getting only the best and the newest.”The company headquarters is in Berlin and is where new products are developed and the organizational strategy is established. Newskool outsources a great deal of its coding work to programmers in Kiev, Ukraine. Its marketing efforts are increasingly based in its Los Angeles offices. This division of labor is at least partially based on technical expertise and cost issues. The German team excels at design and production tasks. Because most of Newskool’s customers are English speakers, the Los Angeles office has been the best group to write ads and market products. The Kiev offices are filled with outstanding programmers who do not require the very high rates of compensation that you would find in German or U.S. offices. The combination of high-tech software, rapid reorganization, and outsourcing makes Newskool the very definition of a boundaryless organization.Finger also makes the final decision on hiring every employee for the company and places a heavy emphasis on independent work styles. He says with a laugh, “Why would I want to put my company in the hands of people I cannot count on? They have to believe in what we are doing here, really understand our direction, and be able to go with it. I am not the babysitter; I am not the schoolmaster handing out homework. Schooltime is over. This is the real world.”The Work CultureEmployees want to work at this company because it is innovative. Various dance musicians and DJs, who have been the firm’s core market and see it as a relatively expensive but very high-quality and innovative brand, use Newskool’s software. Whenever the rest of the market for music software goes in one direction, it seems like Newskool heads in a completely different direction in an effort to keep itself separate from the pack. This strategy has tended to pay off. While competitors develop similar products and therefore need to continually lower their prices to compete with one another, Newskool has kept revenues high by creating completely new types of products that do not face this type of price competition.Unfortunately, computer piracy has eroded Newskool’s ability to make money with just software-based music tools, and it has had to move into the production of hardware, such as drum machines and amplifiers that incorporate its computer technology. Making this massive market change might be challenging for some companies, but for an organization that reinvents itself every 2 or 3 years like Newskool does, the bigger fight is a constant war against stagnation and rigidity.The organization has a very decentralized culture. With only 115 employees, the original management philosophy of allowing all employees to participate in decision making and innovation is still the lifeblood of the company’s culture. One developer notes, “At Newskool, they want you to be part of the process. If you are a person who wants to do what you are told at work, you are in trouble. Most times, they cannot tell you what they want you to do next—they do not even know what comes next! That is why they hire employees who are creative, people who can try and make the next thing happen. It is challenging, but a lot of us think it is a very exciting environment.”The Boundaryless EnvironmentBecause so much of the work can be performed on computers, Finger decided early to allow employees to work outside of the office. The senior management in Berlin and Los Angeles are both quite happy with this arrangement. Because some marketing work does require face-to-face contact, the Los Angeles office has weekly in-person meetings. Employees who like Newskool are happiest when they can work through the night and sleep most of the day, firing up their computers to get work done at the drop of a hat. Project discussion often happens via social networking on the company’s intranet.The Kiev offices have been less eager to work with the boundaryless model. Managers say that their computer programmers find working with so little structure rather uncomfortable. They are more used to the idea of a strong leadership structure and well-defined work processes.”When I started,” says one manager, “Gerd said that getting in touch with him would be no problem, getting in touch with L.A. would be no problem. We are small, we are family, he said. Well, it is a problem. When I call L.A., they say to wait until their meeting day. I cannot always wait until they decide to get together. I call Gerd, and he says, ‘Figure it out.’ Then when I do, he says that it is not right and we have to start again. If he just told me in the first place, we would have done it.”Some recent events have also shaken up the company’s usual way of doing business. Developers in the corporate offices had a major communications breakdown about their hardware DJ controller, which required many hours of discussion to resolve. It seems that people who seldom met face to face had all made progress, but they had moved in opposite directions. To test and design the company’s hardware products, employees apparently need to do more than just send each other code. Sometimes, they need to collaborate face to face. Some spirited disagreements have been voiced within the organization about how to move forward in this new environment.The offices are experiencing additional difficulties. Since the shift to newer products, Sandra Pelham in the Los Angeles office has been more critical of the company. “With the software, we were more limited in the kinds of advertising media that we could access. So now, with the hardware—real instruments—we finally thought, ‘All right, this is something we can work with!’ We had a whole slate of musicians and DJs and producers to contact for endorsements, but Gerd said, ‘No way.’ He did not want customers who only cared that a celebrity liked us. He scrapped the whole campaign. He says that we are all about creativity and doing our own thing—until we do not want to do things his way.”Although the organization is not without problems, there is little question that Newskool has been a standout success in the computer music software industry. While many are shuttering their operations, Newskool is using its market power to push forward the next generation of electronic music-making tools. As Gerd Finger puts it, “Once the rest of the industry has gotten together and figured out how they are all going to cope with change, they will look around and see that we are already 3 miles ahead of them down the road to the future.”Your AssignmentFinger has asked for your advice on how to keep his organization successful. He wants to have some sort of benchmark for how other boundaryless organizations in the tech sector stay competitive despite the challenges of so many workers heading in so many different directions. You will need to prepare a report for the company’s executive committee. Your report should read like a proposal to a corporate executive who has a great deal of knowledge about the technical aspects of his company but might not have much knowledge of organizational behavior.When you write, make sure that you touch on the following points:
Identify some of the problems that are likely to occur in a boundaryless organization like Newskool Grooves. What are the advantages of boundaryless organizations?
Consider some of the cultural issues that will affect a company operating in different parts of the world and whose employees may not be representative of the national cultures of each country. Are the conflicts you observe a function of the different types of work that people have to perform?
Based on what you know about motivation and personality, what types of people are likely to be satisfied in each area of the company? Use concepts from the job characteristics theory and the emerging social relationships perspective on work to describe what might need to change to increase employee satisfaction in all areas.
What management practices might be needed in this type of organization? How should power and influence be used?
What kind of performance measures might you want to see for each office?
How can the company establish a socialization program that will maximize employee creativity and independence? Do employees in all its locations need equal levels of creativity? Third assignment, Third class
Key AssignmentDevelop a dissertation prospectus that will outline the key elements of your desired doctoral research. Be sure to include the following:
Problem statement (2–3 paragraphs)
Significance (2–3 paragraphs)
Brief description of underlying conceptual or theoretical framework (2 paragraphs)
Statement of research purpose (1 paragraph)
Proposed general approach to the research (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods) (1 paragraph)
Summary of proposed methods: Possible sources of data and proposed data collection strategies (2 paragraphs)
Last Completed Projects
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