Chapter 4: Social systems and organizational culture

Incident
Liberty Construction Company
Social system is a complex of human relationships interacting in many ways. Two points
stand out in the complex interactions among people in a social system and one is that all
parts of the system are mutually interdependent wherein a change in one part of a system
affects all other parts, even though its impact may be slight. In the case of the Liberty
Construction Company, due to the new assigned position of Michael Federico for the
second newest of the company’s five backhoes, job conflicts arose. Due to a change in
one part of a system, the other parts will be totally affected just like Pedro Alvarez and
the other employees’ rebellion. Moreover, the company is in its disequilibrium because its
parts are working against one another instead of in harmony.
The conflict and the disequilibrium situation of the company started when Federico was
assigned for the second newest of the company’s backhoes and Alvarez was reassigned
for an older machine. Alvarez reason for his dissatisfaction about the changes with their
positions is that about their roles and statuses. Status is the social rank of a person in a
group and role is the pattern of actions expected of a person in activities involving others.
Federico is a college student that had been employed by liberty as a backhoe operator for
the last three summers and to his return, he was assigned the second newest of the
company’s five backhoes for the reason that he had nine months of work seniority.
Alvarez, on the other hand, is regular employee who had been with the company seven
months and to be reassigned to an older machine, Alvarez was strongly dissatisfied with
this new role because he felt that as a regular employee, he should have retained the
newer machine instead of having to give it to a temporary employee. Therefore, I may
say that this conflict between Alvarez and Federico is what often called Role Conflict
because they have different perceptions or expectations of a person’s role. Alvarez
believe that because of his status of being a regular employee, he must get the role of
being in the position for the newer machine instead of giving it to an employee with
lower status than him and being in the position of newer machine is a status symbol as
evidence of his social rank.
The other employees soon fell into two camps, one supporting Alvarez and one
supporting Federico and each group seemed to delight in causing work problems for the
other group.
However, when an employee joins an organization, they make an unwritten psychological
contract that defines the conditions of each employee’s psychological involvement – both
contributions and expectations – with the social system. An employee then agrees to give
a certain amount of loyalty, creativity and extra effort, but in return the employee expects
more than economic rewards from the system. But if the organization honors only the
economic contract and not the psychological contract, an employee tends to have lower
satisfaction because not all their expectations are being met; just for instance in the case
of Alvarez. For this reason, base in the case, in less than a month Alvarez left the
company.

Chapter 5: Motivation
Incident
The piano builder
Based in the case/situation, I can say that Bird really has the motivation to build pianos
continuously. According to him, the most satisfying part of his life is his hobby of
building pianos from the beginning. The challenge of the work is what attracts Bird
onward. The fondness and likeness of building pianos and the challenges he will be
facing off are what I may say the natures of his motivation.