Organizational Surveys

The Diagnosis and Betterment of Organizations Through Their Members

Frank J. Smith

• Verlag: Psychology Press
• Jahr: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135629106
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Psychology
• Thema: History & Theory in Psychology

Surveys conducted within organizations have become an important aspect of human resource management and organizational functioning. This new book by Frank Smith--a leader in this field--offers a unique perspective on organizational surveys. It emphasizes the experience of developing, carrying out, and interpreting surveys on a wider variety of organizational issues in a very diverse set of organizations. The book is intended to acquaint managers, students, and potential survey users with a broad understanding of the kind of information surveys can provide and how they have been applied in a wide variety of organizational settings. Through many examples, the book emphasizes the close and necessary link between the continual development of a survey program and the parallel body of research in organizational behavior. This book will be of interest to survey practitioners, students, and instructors in human resource management and organizational behavior, and anyone looking for first-hand examples or survey approaches and the links to research and psychometric theory.

Part I

Introduction: Survey Functions, Tools, and Development

This section introduces the subject of employee surveys with a brief reference to some of the pioneering work carried out in this field within Sears Roebuck. This is followed by a somewhat fuller account of later developments made possible by electronic data processing.

Beyond this brief history, an attempt is made to acquaint readers with the many ways organizations have come to use surveys. The functions served by surveys are detailed in chapter 1.

In chapter 2, a nontechnical discussion of the steps involved in developing a valid survey program are described in order to acquaint readers with a general understanding of the process and to show its close and necessary relationship with behavioral research.

Chapter 3 is a discussion of the tools of survey work questionnaires and interviews as they were developed and used within Sears and later applied there and elsewhere.

Chapter 4 points out some significant but avoidable survey pitfalls to which managers should be alerted. The chapter also provides a reassuring discussion of common questions about the survey process.

1

Functions of Organizational Survey Programs

Since the rather unsteady and unstructured introduction of attitude surveys in the 1930s, they have increasingly helped managers gain perspectives on many facets of organizational life. The expanded use of surveys has been an evolutionary process, born of practical experience and strengthened by behavioral research in and of organizations. As a result, some fairly sophisticated instruments and techniques are now available to address more and more complicated situations. In this process, surveys have come to serve a number of functions that are the primary focus of this chapter.

The presentation of the book is given through the lens of a current, long-established program, originally designed for use in all divisions of a very large company, Sears, Roebuck & Co., but soon extended to serve several hundred other organizations. As such, it also served as a model for programs in other institutions (e.g., Los Alamos National Laboratory, IBM, Johnson Controls, Union Carbide).

History and Context of the Survey Program

The Sears survey program has had a long and protean history. Although its very early development is not detailed here, a short account of its very beginnings may be helpful. In briefest terms, the program was founded with the best of intentions, almost destroyed by some of the worst, and reborn by some of the most enlightened. It began almost by accident when a senior manager, famous for his legendary “people oriented” style, became the company president. Wanting some means of retaining his contact with employees, he commissioned a staff assistant to “figure out some way to find out what was going on out there” (Worthy, 1982, personal communication). The staff assistant contacted a pioneer in public opinion polling (David Houser) and in short order the survey program became a reality. It was a very unstructured vehicle and made no claim to psychometric respectability and was limited to the company’s mail-order plants. It did, however, serve its intended purpose for more than a decade. Its most unlikely beginning in the midst of the Great Depression (circa 1936) makes it the oldest continuous industrial survey program. An excellent and comprehensive account of its very early history (1938–1960) can be found in Jacoby (1986).

It may be of interest that the early survey’s potential influence on productivity and labor relations was not initially considered, (Worthy, 1988, personal communication). That soon changed in the post World War II period. As confirmed by Jacoby (1986), the early survey eventually was used by outside labor consultants as a union prevention tool—in some cases as a weapon! Needless to say this nearly destroyed the program’s credibility among employees and managers. Had it not been for the professionalism of those who actually developed that very early program, it may have died. According to Jacoby,

as this study will show, the research spawned by the program made significant contributions to a number of academic disciplines, notably motivation theory, attitude survey methodology, and organizational theory. Although the research contributed to the company’s objectives of improving labor relations, that was not always its intended purpose. The researchers who participated in the program were not mere servants of power. They had their own intellectual agendas. (p. 603)

As the company became a huge, diversified, and rapidly expanding international concern, the role of the survey program was greatly expanded. Any vestige of its union-fighting role was effectively quashed by an enlightened management action and the insistence of professionals who later became involved with the program. Their actions (circa 1950) completely separated the survey organization from that of labor relations. From then on, the survey program operated independently.

With the availability of electronic data processing, the program received considerable company support in an effort to place it on a sound professional basis and make it a company-wide service. It is this later so-called “modern” era (1960–2000) that is the subject of this book.

Because of the company’s size, cultural variations, and diverse operations, the later survey program had to meet a number of ever-changing situational and procedural demands. For example, the program had to start developing a uniform measure of employee attitudes to be used over a reasonable time and across many work situations. At the same time it had to develop a means for tapping various site-specific opinions expressed in different languages by people at different organizational levels. As such, the program began an evolutionary process through which many different organizational functions were served.

The Purposes of Surveys in Organizations

Almost all survey functions share a common objective, that of providing management at various levels with a picture of an organization from which informed decisions can be made and competent interventions can be mounted.

Some of the purposes to be served by a properly constructed survey in an organization were anticipated very early by Vitelies (1953). He cited four purposes, chiefly aimed at employee welfare concerns: (a) learn how much importance workers attach to different aspects of work, (b) assess levels of satisfaction and morale, (c) identify influences on satisfaction and morale, and (d) extend motivational therapy. In a 1947 address to the American Management Association, Worthy looked at surveys in a more expanded role, where the aim was understanding the whole organization. According to Worthy, “Surveys have as their scope the functioning of the organization as a whole and the entire pattern of formal and informal relationships which comprise it.” Later Smith (1962) and Dunham & Smith (1979) described seven separate functions.

Still later, Higgs and Ashworth (1996), and Kraut (1996) provided a comprehensive list of survey functions ranging from the general to the very specific. The following 10 functions lean on their list and extend it a bit.

They are:

1. Diagnosing organizational situations

2. Providing a feedback loop

3. Predicting organizational outcomes

4. Surfacing organizational strengths and weaknesses

5. Monitoring and trending organizational change

6. Facilitating management decisions

7. Providing training structure

8. Providing platforms for organizational research

9. Reifying corporate values

10. Documenting corporate experience

In the following discussion, each of these functions is described in some detail.

Diagnosing Organizational Situations

Almost all surveys are diagnostic either by intent or simply as a result of the process itself. In many instances the aim is not much more than letting management know what is happening among people in the organization. This is no small chore, nor is it without value to the executives, especially those at the top. Consider, for example, the plight of President Wilson expressed before the National Press Club (1916); paraphrased here: “The people of the United States are thinking for themselves. You do not know, and what’s worse, since the responsibility is mine, I do not know what they are thinking about. I have the most imperfect means of finding out, and yet I have to act as if I knew.” This is not to suggest that President Wilson needed a national survey, but his statement does contrast with the situation of the more modern CEO, described in chapter 14, who by means of a survey, was able to find out what the employees were thinking and was able to act on it.

Assessing current attitudes is all part of the diagnostic function as is the measure of an organization’s strengths and weaknesses, its goal paths and the barriers to them—all as seen by its members. Several examples of surveys, which were at least initially designed as purely diagnostic efforts are given in chapters 11 and 10. Chapter 17, which is devoted to a decade of safety surveys conducted between 1985 and 1996, is also an example of the diagnostic effort.

Providing a Feedback Loop

Somewhat related to the diagnostic function is the notion of a survey as a direct backward channel to top management. It is a channel that automatically completes the management–employee loop; one that often creates a basis for an ongoing dialogue between the two levels. In large organizations, this function can be especially effective in providing “a communication system which gets around the filtering of negative reports often seen in organizations” (Kraut, 1996, p. 8).

Given the “isolation” of the top executive, an unfiltered yet balanced account of “what is going on out there” can be a unique source of knowledge—be it reassuring or disturbing. The survey series reported in chapter 15 had this feedback function as one of its aims.

Predicting Organizational Outcomes

Most organizations would welcome a means by which employee reactions to management decisions could be anticipated, or by which specific organizational outcomes such as turnover, absenteeism, labor negotiations, and customer acceptance could be predicted. In many companies surveys have been used to provide just this kind of information and have often alerted managers to the likely result of their actions. Chapters 5 through 8 provide examples of research that helped establish predictive links between employee attitudes and certain organizational outcomes. Chapter 18 describes an applied example of a prediction, based solely on questionnaire data, of how employees would react to a contemplated organizational change.

Surfacing Organizational Strengths and Weaknesses

Surveys for many years, have been effective in pinpointing problem areas and, through indepth approaches, have often uncovered their probable causes. An example of this function was clearly shown in a series of surveys conducted in a large-scale coal-mining operation. It brought to the surface the extent and depth of the problems whose intensity was only vaguely sensed by management. In doing so it set the stage for a successful intervention based on employee and managerial participation (chap. 9, this volume).

In a similar vein, a survey of a TV and radio station reported in chapter 16 revealed the reality of what turned out to be a “pseudo problem” and in doing so was able to persuade management to abandon a drastic, and likely dysfunctional action it was considering. Chapter 15 includes an example of how a survey identified critically important talents that were largely hidden from management’s purview.

Monitoring and Trending Organizational Change

Change is so ubiquitous in organizational life, its effects are often neither anticipated nor immediately recognized. In organizations with ongoing survey programs, the monitoring of such effects has become a conventional practice. Similarly, where reliable survey measures are available, trends in the acceptance of many policies and practices can be readily plotted. Chapter 15 also includes an example of survey monitoring in a 19-year study conducted in two ski resort operations, elements of which preceded and followed a major change in its location and management.

Facilitating Management Decisions

Probably all top management decisions are made with some sense of trepidation. Questions of how they will be received and the extent to which their hoped for effects will be realized are common. As suggested, properly designed and executed surveys can often give reasonably precise answers to such questions. They can always measure postdecision reactions and often can anticipate them. What is frequently overlooked, however, is the role surveys can play in facilitating the acceptance of management decisions. In unique situations they may even determine the decision itself. An instance of the latter can be seen in chapter 19, in which the use of survey results all but decided the choice of a new CEO. Chapter 13 relates how survey results influenced both the choice of a compensation plan and facilitated its acceptance.

Providing Training Structure

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I: Introduction: Survey Functions, Tools, and Development
• Part II: Introduction: Survey Research
• Part III: Introduction: Survey Cases
• Appendix A: Technical Documentation: Steps in the Development of the Index of Organizational Reactions (IOR) Questionnaire
• Appendix B: A Guide to Nondirective Interviewing
• Appendix C: An Evening With Leonardo
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index