Bureaucracy in Olympic Sportswear: Analytical Essay

To what extent do you agree that Olympic Sportswear provides an example of ‘bureaucracy gone wrong’? How could the organisational structure be changed to make it a more enjoyable (yet still productive) place to work?

Introduction

This essay is based on the organisational structure and power and politics of Olympic sportswear. The Olympic Sportwear is high street retailer which has total 66% of the market share in the market in 2106. At first it talks about how bureaucracy enables Olympics Sportswear manage to grow and become successful organisation as we see today and the negative impact on the organisation of following bureaucracy style of management. Then it talks about post- Bureaucracy as an alternative way of developing the organisational structure to make working environment more comfortable to the employees yet more productive and efficient.

The Olympic Sportwear is an example of an organisation with bureaucratic structure. bureaucracy is (Matte, 2016) “standardization of procedures, keeping records of transactions, and organizing decision-making processes in a management system.” It helps to organise people to work cooperatively with others to complete their task with in the organisational hierarchy (Mori, 2017).

According to (Reynolds, 2018) characteristic of bureaucracy includes “hierarchies with written rules and a specialized division of labours, where advancement was based on achievement, resulting in an efficient and impersonal organisation”. Olympic Sportswear has a set of rules and regulation like “down to waist searches” and “the black mark rule” that the company employees have to follow. In Olympic Sportwear when the employee’s carryout the business activity, each and every employee knows what task they have to carry and the target set by the management. so, they would try to meet up these targets. Division of Labour means breaking down production process into smaller task and enables workers focus on completing those task (Pettinger, 2017). According to CEO David Giaziri, each employee has their specific task to complete in the Olympic Sportswear. Thus, division of labours is one of the major causes for the improvement in the productivity of labours (Anon, 2001) in the Olympic Sportswear.

According to (Sandro Serpa and Carlos Miguel Ferreira, 2019) “Max Weber proposes the concept of Bureaucracy in a context in which he considers rationalisation of society as inevitable.” He also says (Labolo, 2013) “bureaucracy is a rational organization with all the characteristics inherent therein.” In Max Weber theory of bureaucracy there is impersonality. In the Olympic Sportwear the friendship among the hierarchy is reduced inoredr to avoid situations like “paying favourites”. Hence, following bureaucracy the employees would feel they are been treated equally without discrimination. Bureaucratic structure is more applicable for a large company like Olympic Sportwear as it would enable to operate business activities more efficiently and rational way. Olympic Sportwear directly supervise the performance of employees and sometimes through the camera at warehouse to be more efficient. Thus, increase profitability of the company.

There is lot of criticism for Olympic Sportswear as they follow bureaucracy. Olympic Sportswear is doing some unethical practice with in the organisation. In Olympic Sportswear there is culture fear. The female workers are sexually harassed at work place and at same time, working condition at warehouse are bad they have no chance to speak it loud fear of losing job. Hence, bureaucracy is (Emmanuel Josserand, 2006) the process of rationalization inherent in past bureaucratization resulted in a diminution of freedom as officers were expected to become obedient subjects, encased in an “iron cage”.

According to (Sandro Serpa and Carlos Miguel Ferreira, 2019) “Bureaucracy, in general, is associated with very negative features of organisations, such as delays in operation, action centred on opaque standards, excessive requests for documentation, or even countless difficulties in meeting users or customers’ requests.” The company have tight control over stakeholders which make difficult for stakeholders to wok with the company. This might even damage the reputation and mat result in fall in the profitability of Olympic Sportswear.

According to case study company CEO says “It’s no good having everybody ‘be their own boss’ if it makes them more stressed by doing it.” Employees do not have any chance to use their own creativity and ideas in the working environment and they were been treated as machines as they have to try hard to meet the target set by the management. Higher ranking people in company shout at new employees who work at warehouse. This would demotivate the employees as they were treated like inhumane way. The 93% of employees are employees on zero-hours contract and could ask to come to work at any time.

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Furthermore, according to case study Mick Armstrong “admitted that the company may have broken the law by paying employees (effectively) under minimum wage”. Despite working as machines, they receive lower average hourly wage rate of £6.98 compared to statutory rate of £7.20. There is no job security and the employees would have a fear of losing their job at any time if they are not performing there work well. Moreover, when the management take decision these decisions are taken in favour of increase in the profitability of the business. So, there is no voice of employees in the decision making.

Post-bureaucracy

post-bureaucracy has come to the agenda when bureaucratic principles and values became inadequate for the organizations (ÖZMEN, 2013). For Olympic Sportswear, they can use post-bureaucracy as an alternative for bureaucracy. According to (Maravelias, 2003) “post-bureaucratic organizations are better represented as networks than as hierarchies.” The company can adapt their business strategies in a way that benefit both the company as well as the employees. If the employees have to follow strict rules and regulations such as Monitoring and Surveillance, the ‘black-mark’ rule and Down to the waist’ Searches they would feel that they don’t belong here. As a result, it would have negative impact overall productivity.

In Post-bureaucracy it would be more flexible for workers as there is no strict hierarchy, communication with top level of management would be easier and voice is considered while making decisions. In Post-bureaucracy there is more humanity as there are no longer treated as machine like working 7 days in week as in the case of Olympic Sportswear. After internal review, Mick Armstrong has apologized for its practices and policies they were following past and agrees to change those to employee’s friendly way such as greater flexibility over break and lunchtimes and giving training.

Power and Politics

Power is a “force that results in behaviour that would not have occurred if the forces had not been present” (Nweke, 2014)

“Organizational politics can be referred to as the structure and process of use of authority and power to effect definitions of goals, directions and other parameters of the organization” (Somoye, 2016).

Unitarian

“the management and workforce are working together for the good of the company” (Nge’the, 2012)

Pluralism

“According to pluralist theories, group members’ success is dependent on the appropriateness of power tactics, along with the political dynamics he or she employs with other people in a group” (Alapo, 2018).

Conclusion

Evidence from the case study it shows that Olympics Sportswear is an organisation that mixed with both bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy. In practice, it is difficult for any organisation to follow 100% on the theory. Even though there are some problems arise in following bureaucracy it is better Olympic sportwear to stick with bureaucracy inoredr to become more successful business.