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Whole Foods: Organizational Behavior

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Explore successful and/or unsuccessful application of organizational behavior concepts in any organization. Select and research three to five organizational behavior main concepts that, uniquely practiced, make your chosen organization either successful, unsuccessful, or a combination of both. The organization you select should provide you with ample opportunities for research, since you will be required to use five to seven references as part of your research.

Please use the following outline:
Introduction and thesis statement
Body with supporting evidence and in-text citations
Discuss 1st main concept
Discuss 2nd main concept
Discuss 3rd main concept
Look for data that can be placed into a table
Conclusion
Reference list with at least five to seven sources

Choose three organizational behavior main concepts. Research should uncover how your selected organization successfully uses, or suffers by ignoring any of three of these concepts:
Decision Making
Motivation
Group Behavior
Communication
Power and Politics
Organizational Structure
Human Resource Practices
Change Management

Be sure to provide multiple examples of the main concepts as practiced at the organization. Include three to five examples of how the organization applies/does not apply the concept and state the impact.

- Are there any revelations about each of the examples?
- Is the organization proactive or reactive? Are they applying management theories? If so, what are they? If not, is there any logic in how the organization has applied these concepts?
- Does your three concepts have any relationships? Does poor application of one concept cause the other two concepts to do poorly? Does the successful application of one concept result in a positive effect on the other two concepts.
- Has CEO turnover or restructuring had an effect on these three main concepts?
- Form some opinions about what has caused the positive/negative use of the three main concepts.

Research theory.
Look for theories that supports/contradicts your opinions.
Look for best practices to support/contradict your opinions.
What are the latest theories on these subjects?

Many organizations use organizational behavior concepts, but not all organizations publicize their methods for success or missteps to embarrassing failures. Select an organization for which a good amount of research has been conducted and has been made publicly available. I would like to address these issues to:

Whole Foods Market

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Solution Summary

This response provides guidelines on creating a paper on the organizational behavior of Whole Foods. Concepts such as decision making, motivation, change management, and communication are discussed.

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Note: As the policy of brainmass.com, this response is to not complete the assignment itself for student.

Introduction
Today organizations are challenged with obtaining top talent that is able to uphold the standards of the organization. The concept of a team has never been harder to come by with individuals looking out for their own self interests which are fostered by the American individualistic mentality. However for an organization to reach its pinnacle, it is imperative that it foster a sense of unity by holding its employees to the highest level of standards. This is even truer today after the numerous financial scandals that have plagued large business. This paper will discuss what I consider to be my organizations high level of standards and provide an overview how my organization rewards our employees for maintaining these standards.

Integrity and Ethical Standards
The organization that I work for maintains the highest levels of standards for their employees, not only from the work perspective, but from a personal perspective as well. Many people today would take issue with their employer providing guidelines and policies that dictate how they live their lives once they leave the office. However, working for an intelligence agency this is exactly what happens. To work for an intelligence agency one must pass a rigorous polygraph examination that determines an individual's suitableness for employment with the agency. An individual selected for an intelligence position must maintain values that are consistent with what is considered an up-standing citizen. For this reason, the individuals who work for these agencies have the highest standards of integrity and ethics that can be found in the working world today. Many would disagree with that statement based on news reports the past couple of years. However it is indeed a fact and Intelligence officers maintain vigilance of their actions 24 days, 7 days a week.

For this reason, the disciplinary issues that many organizations encounter are not seen at my place of work. It can be reasonably expected that when employees come to work they are going to give a full days effort. Certainly there are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part employees can be counted on to give it their best. Keeping in mind standards are both goals and values (Kouzes & Posner, 2002). Expecting the best from our employees does not meet I do not set high goals for my organization and those that carry out our mission. In fact, for this reason, I set the goals for my organization much higher than I might if I were in private industry. According to Kouzes and Posner, "successful leaders have high expectations, both of themselves and of their constituents".

I have always been under the belief that the higher one sets their goals the higher success one will achieve or as stated by Kouzes and Posner, "The expectations that successful leaders hold provide the framework into which people fit their own realities". This can be tricky at times as I want to set the goals as high as possible, but at the same time I want to ensure that they are feasible and attainable. Setting goals that are not attainable simply leads to bad morale as employees are never able to accomplish their objectives. Another reason I feel confident about setting high goals is due to the fact, that employees that work for my agency, for the most part, are there because they love what they do, and because their sense of patriotism. As all employees hold a Top Secret security clearance, they can easily leave the government and obtain a job in the private sector making $40k more per year. Although this does happen at times, the majority of employees continue to work for the agency due to the fact that they feel they are doing something important for their country.

Rewarding of Performance
Even though employees want to ...

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