Unique organizational context
For a long time, there have been increasing calls in the literature for the need to focus more on the organizational context as a significant concept that affects the outcome of an organization and leadership behaviors. It is important to note that leadership does not take place in a vacuum in any organization but takes place in the unique organizational contexts. Therefore, the main question remains; to what extent has organizations focused on organizational context as the center and front of the recent leadership literature? Most of the researchers do not recognize and appreciate the role of organizational context and its impact on the organization. The following paper focuses on examining the different organizational contexts and identifies the essential factors of any organizational framework.
Organizational context can be defined as the constraints and situational opportunity that affects the meaning and the occurrence of organizational behavior as well as functional relationships between different aspects of an organization (Steyrer, Schiffinger, & Lang, 2008). It is the environment or the background in which an organization operates. Speaking of context or the atmosphere of the organization, we are explicitly pointing to corporate culture, structure, and both externals and internal environment. This concept can be explained using the following graphic. The graphic will apply to any organization, no matter how small or large it is. An organization can be thought to be a house. The roof and the foundation of the house can be understood as the context of the organization that is, where the organization is going, how those in the organization treat each other, who are they, and what are their objectives. Therefore, the context points to the substantial purpose, core values, critical standards, rules, and laws of the organization. At the roof, we find the vision that pulls us towards the desired goals, future priorities, and organizational priorities.
Among the top, the three most essential factors in the organizational context are the organizational environment, corporate relationships, and the performance improvement system. For the regulatory environments, they are external or external factors that affect the operations of an organization (Steyrer, Schiffinger, & Lang, 2008). The factors affect the activities of the organization as well as the decisions made in the organization. Regardless of size, every organization has its environment. The environment is ever-changing and dynamic (Graham, 2020). Every change in the background brings a new challenge to the organization, which is why it is one of the most crucial concepts in the organizational context.
Leaders and managers of the organization need to be vigilant about these changes because they will always occur and embrace the corporate image and the economic and political conditions of a country. There are two types of organizational environments; external and internal environments. An internal environment entails the forces or the surroundings within the organization (Graham, 2020). The situation generally involves the things that exist inside or within the organization, such as human resources, cooperate culture, financial resources, physical resources, organization’s goodwill, and the like. The value created and delivered to the customers by the organization is based on these resources. Besides, the internal factors are the base of defining the organizational purpose and premise on which it seeks to make profits. The responsibility to allocate resources between the ongoing operations and the future is vested on the organization’s top management. The leaders have to ensure that the demand for both resources is balanced, and the funds are always finite.
The external environment denotes the outside factors that affect the operations of the organization. The organization does not have control over the external environmental factors. Therefore, leaders and managers have to continuously observe signals from the external environment to identify emerging threats and opportunities (Huang, & Huang, 2020). It’s an essential context of the organization because it presents opportunities for market dominance and growth in leadership. It also poses a threat of obsolescence for technology, markets, and product. The main components of this environment are; legal-political factors, demographic factors, economic, social culture, and the natural environment.
Another important factor of organizational context is the relationship of the organization to its customers. The main aim of any organization is to retain and attract more customers. Therefore it is essential to build a customer relationship that will enable the organization to get attract more and keep the old customers. In an organizational context, those who are significantly involved in building customer relationships are those in sales, customer service, and marketing departments. The main aim of a marketer is to persuade, educate, inform, announce, and invite responses of customers (Anshari et al. 2019). Every communication that marketing personnel makes is an opportunity to build a customer relationship. Therefore, marketing should frequently demonstrate a focus on the target audience’s needs, challenges, and concerns to make a good customer relationship. The sales team greatly benefits from the relationship created by the marketing team. However, there is a need to develop their connection with the customers because their link is more direct and proactive (Anshari et al. 2019). They need to listen to customers carefully, deliver effective presentations, ask appropriate questions, assure new customers they are making the best decisions, demonstrate a customer-centric orientation and ask for orders to be able to build a customer relationship that will lead to achieving revenue goals of the organization (Löfsten, 2019). Finally, yet importantly, customer service plays a significant role in building and maintaining a good customer relationship. The only way to do this is by showing personal interest to the customers, being creative, and demonstrating a high level of professionalism.
The last but not least aspect of an organizational context is organizational performance. The performance of any organization is not only crucial to the organization itself but also the daily lives of the general public. Therefore successful organizations are a vital aspect for any developing nation. The performance of an organization and organizational leadership are inseparable (Bulkaini, 2019). This is because the organization itself does not perform. Organizational performance is when leaders commit to their duties and work towards the goals of the organization. The following factors determine organizational performance. This includes human and cultural factors, economic factors, and natural resources (Steyrer, Schiffinger, & Lang, 2008). Markets, regulatory measures, financial resources, leadership styles, structure, teamwork, philosophy, and technological factors. A proper combination of these resources enables the organization to attain effectiveness, development, efficiency, and customer satisfaction. The organization can also achieve a competitive advantage in the ever-changing market (M’arimi, 2019). The external and internal environment is also a significant determinant of organizational performance. Therefore, managers and core leaders in an organization should struggle to achieve proper alignment between the organization and its environment.
In conclusion, every organization has a unique organizational context. This context is the center of all corporate operations and the focus of leadership in organizations. There are critical elements of organizational context that includes, regulatory environment, customer relationship, and organizational performance. The main aim of an organization is to maintain an excellent performance, which calls for a good customer relationship and alignment of the organization’s environment. Its organizational context will determine the success or failure of any organization.
References
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Anshari, M., Almunawar, M. N., Lim, S. A., & Al-Mudimigh, A. (2019). Customer relationship management and big data-enabled: Personalization & customization of services. Applied Computing and Informatics, 15(2), 94-101.
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