Essay On Workplace Analysis: Citibank

Introduction

Citibank is going to be used as a focal company for this workplace analysis. Citibank is an established company, registering a solid history in the banking industry. It has a global network and has a dominant presence in both the main business hubs and even in emerging markets all over the world.
It will be a very interesting company to study and to analyze through the seven schools of administration as it has a comprehensive organizational structure, a sizeable human resource pool, and a very extensive reach worldwide. There will be many situations, dimensions, and approaches that can be explored in studying Citibank from the different schools of administration.
Managerial Ideology emphasizes on how to motivate, manage, coordinate and secure services within the organization. It asks the question whether a company is a proponent of Theory X or Theory Y (Schermerhorn, 2010). Theory X is about the chain of command, mechanistic/formalistic conception, hierarchy, material motivations, sanctions and span of control or unity of command, while Theory Y is an approach to management characterized by, among others, consensual decision making, long-term job security, slow promotion and evaluation procedures, and individual responsibility within a group context. Proponents of Theory Y suggest that it leads to improvements in organizational performance (Mc Gregor, 1960).
Answer to Questions. Being a traditional and established company, Citibank is inclined to operate in the global business landscape under Theory X. It tends to be faithful to the chain of command and follows a certain hierarchy to keep things working within the company. While it also provides non-material incentives, it is still very much a proponent of material rewards for its human resource.
I believe companies should have a healthy mix of Theory X and Theory Y in its administration style. While Theory X tends to be more familiar in the sense that it has more traditional practices, organizations should inject more of the advocacies of Theory Y like using inspirations and positive reinforcements to encourage employees.
Formalism’s emphasis lies on whether the organization is highly dependent on structures and formal organizations. With sources from scholarly early texts from Leonard White and the US Government Organization Model, the school of administration Formalism is all about the formal structures of organization and structural distinctions, among other things (Bass & Bass, 2009).
Answer to Questions. Citibank, being an established company has in its DNA the mechanics and essence of Formalism. The company’s formal organizational structure has been in place and in effect for the longest time, and has pretty much run the company for the past years. The processes in place are clearly delineated, with everybody having an official function, along with their job description. There is hierarchy across the organization that spans across borders and all departments.
The organization can be described as having a pyramid structure, and there is formal bureaucracy across the organization. A formal bureaucracy is faithful to its processes, established and maintained to keep the status quo and keep the company up and running.
After much emphasis on the structures for the previous two schools of administrations, Social Systems is the school, which concerns itself with the informal side of bureaucracy – behavior, process, and dynamics or the people. With Follet, Barnard, Katz and Kahn being among the pioneers of this school of administration, its main contribution is on leadership and change, communications and group dynamics, culture and influence (Bose, 2012).
Answer to Questions. Citibank, while maintaining its formal structure, has a lot of diversity and allows for more social interactions amongst its employees, with the community it thrives in. Group dynamics, one-on-one interviews and focus discussions happen every so often for employees, the community, the management and other stakeholders.
The company is pretty much a small-town such that a micro community is built around the office. Keep in mind that employees are mandated to be in the office for at least 8 hours, and this should pretty much stress the importance of maintaining a healthy sense of community for the employees.
The political side of any culture emphasizes mostly on the roles of bureaucrats and bureaucracies. Some of the sources of this school of administration include Appleby, N. Long, Rourke, Halperin, Holden, Cronin, Ripley and Franklin, and Graham Allison, among others.
Main contributions of this school of administration are the insecurity of bureaucracy, policy-making discretion and the game of politics play in an organization (McCurdy, 1986).
Answer to Questions. Citibank is still made up of people working together with goals and money on the table, and more often than not, these motivations touch on the political side. It is for this reason that the company also remains to be a political body.
Citibank is also actively coordinating with local authorities, and the government in ensuring that all business transactions are legal and abides by the law. It is an uncompromised rule for the company to follow. It has never been a question for Citibank when it comes threading these matters. The company has made it a point that there will be no gray areas as all matters should be laid in black and white, especially when it comes to political matters.
This next school focuses on both the macro decision making within the company, as well as the day-to-day decisions that employees and the management have to make. It has been said that this may well be the most sophisticated among all the schools as it has produced a Nobel laureate in Herbert Simon as one of the school’s main pioneers (Lunenberg & Ornstein, 2011).
Among the main contributions of this school of administration include the concept of constraints, decision rules prevailing within the organization, compromises that decision-makers have to make.
Answer to Questions. For Citibank, one of the more crucial decisions it has to make in recent years, and which can be considered an “a-rational” decision was its decision to move its critical processes to cheaper countries, effectively cutting employees in main business hubs. This was definitely a huge step for the company back then; to uproot the roles and responsibilities and relocate them halfway across the globe. It was a strategic plan, but one that required careful planning, rational consideration, and most definitely, sound decision-making. The decision to do so did not just constitute a huge change for the company, but also for the employees who would have been affected. In any case, Citibank appears to be thriving even after making this huge move, and has since then established itself in outsourced sites like India and the Philippines.
The school of administration on Policy Studies has set its emphasis on the output of policy making and the process that it undergoes (Sybouts, 1992).
The main contribution of this school of administration is its guidelines on how policies are developed -- that is, by following a sound sequence -- and how they are made in a predictable manner. It also enables the determination of when goals are displaced.
Answer to Questions. Citibank has a strict policy on integrity. After recent stumbles with the market that propelled government intervention, it has become uncompromising in terms of Ethics, which is one of its current CEO, Michael Corbat’s, battlecry. With careful deliberation, the rules were laid out to ensure that each and one of the employees understood what this uncompromising Ethics meant for them and for the company, and how everybody should abide by them.
This last school up for discussion put its emphasis on the ambience and ecology of the administration. Its main sources include John Gaus and studies of turbulence and futurism by Toffler, Naisbitt and Barker.
The main contributions of this school revolve around the challenge of change and how administrative differences are determined by the environments it is working on (Oslo, 2004).
Answer to Questions. Citibank, in recent years, and as touched previously on this paper, has been in hot water over costs, and a market that has seen more favorable times. As such it has had to make hard calls like cutting a sizeable manpower and letting heads role to curb costs, after which, it has outsourced much of its operations to cheaper locations and it has survived since. This is one of the instance where the company’s decisions where determined by environmental factors.

Conclusion

After exploring the different schools of administration, and exploring their merits, it can be concluded that while each had very good points to its name, it can be said that a mix-up of the schools might be the best applicable approach for a company as complex as Citibank. It might be more beneficial for a company to take the most crucial and beneficial from each of the school and apply it accordingly.

References

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Lunenber, F. & Ornstein, A. (2011). Educational Administration: concepts and practices.
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McCurdy, H. E. (1986). Public administration: A bibliographic guide to the literature. CRC
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McGregor, Douglas. (1960). The Human Side of the Enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Schermerhorn, J. R. Jr. (2010). Management. John Wiley & Sons.
Sybouts, W. (1992). Planning in school administration: A handbook. ABC-CLIO.