2. Organizational Effectiveness
Organizational Effectiveness
Organizational effectiveness is a tool manager’s use to measure how effective they; and
their organizations are at achieving outcomes and creating value. Organizational effectiveness
can be very difficult to measure in an organization. Organizations can be diverse and very large.
Also one organization can have multiple goals and perform many activities at the same time.
Managers must decide which indicators they want to measure in order to determine the
effectiveness of their organization. There are three approaches managers can use in evaluating
effectiveness. They are the external resource approach Control; the internal systems approach
Innovation; and the technical approach Efficiency. Each approach has something to offer but all
focus on different parts of the organization.
Officers drive the overall effectiveness of public safety organizations and represent their
agencies’ most valuable assets. Employees’ level of engagement forms the foundation for this
success. Personnel make the difference in life-and-death situations by expending energy and
effort to protect citizens’ safety every day. Effective officer performance helps lower crime
levels and increase citizens’ trust in the police to improve quality of life. Law enforcement
organizations face the challenge of identifying factors that impact engagement and performance,
proactively anticipating and rectifying problems that can affect individual and, ultimately,
organizational effectiveness (2011). The internal systems approach allows managers to evaluate
how well their organization functions and how smooth it operates. An organization needs to be
able to rapidly create products, make services available; and speed up decision making in order
to adapt and respond quickly to the forever changing environment.
Police departments have battled with the age-old problems of improving effectiveness,
improving the quality of service to the public, responding to the ever changing environment, and
improving the quality of life in the workplace while living with long-term resource scarcities.
Development and adoption of an organizational strategy as the foundation of short-term and
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3. Organizational Effectiveness
strategic long-term planning. When organizations make changes to increase employee morale
and coordination this can have a direct impact on its ability to respond to the environment. When
employees are satisfied and happy departments work together better and this can help ensure
high productivity. The problem with the internal systems approach is that the total output and the
organization’s relationship with the external environment are not evaluated. The technical
approach allows managers to evaluate how efficiently an organization can convert some fixed
amount of organizational skills into finished goods and services. Public safety requires
supervisors to maintain a certain level of command and control to ensure professionalism and
accountability. From the direct supervisor’s level, the study noted contradictory results in the
effectiveness of internal communication. Supervisors not only must understand the concepts and
techniques of effective evaluations but practice these skills in role-play situations to become
comfortable in having potentially difficult conversations with personnel regarding performance
concerns. A goal is for officers to see feedback as positive, not threatening, and to participate
more easily in uncomfortable conversations. Also, discussion must include two-way participation
from both the supervisor and the employee. Performance must be viewed from different
perspectives, from formal after-action reports to impromptu conversations, with the same goal of
identifying what can be learned. For professionals in law enforcement, feedback received today
may change behavior and save the life of a citizen or teammate tomorrow (2011). Leaders
within the organization supportive leadership enhances working relationship between leaders and
their followers. According to Shah, (2011), this style of leadership enhances friendly working
environment for employees. This improves employees’ performance in their quest to administer
justice for all in a fair and appropriate manner. This culture has proved to be effective in many
organizations that administer criminal justice. Effective leadership is essential in improving the
performance of the organization. Organizational culture revolves around leadership’s
commitment and participation in the tasks of the organization, (Lock & Crawford, 1999).
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4. Organizational Effectiveness
Effective leadership is therefore, affected by culture which in turn impacts on the performance of
the organization. Effective leaders must therefore, be supportive of the employees, must
collaborate and should also be able to build team culture.
The concepts of power and leadership have been and will continue to be interconnected.
While an individual may exert power without being a leader, an individual cannot be a leader
without having power. In organizational settings, leaders must exert power to achieve
individual, team, and organizational goals. Leaders must be able to influence their followers to
achieve greater performance; their superiors and peers to make important decisions; and
stakeholders to ensure the vitality of the organization. Managers achieve organizational goals by
managing intellectual capital in order to get the most out of organizational resources. An
important part of this process is monitoring performance and outcomes. Organizational control
structure is a distribution of means used by an organization to elicit the performances it needs
and to check whether the quantities and qualities of such performances are in accord with
organizational specifications. The means used differ in their availability to the organization and
in the performances they elicit as judged by service to organizational goals and needs.
Organizations are social units that serve specific purposes. They are planned, deliberately
structured, constantly and self-consciously reviewing their performances, and restructuring
themselves accordingly. Regardless of the negative connotation of the word control, it must
exist or there is no organization at all. In its most basic form, an organization is two or more
people working together to reach a goal. Whether an organization is highly bureaucratic or
changing and self-organizing, the organization must exist for some reason, some purpose, some
mission implicit or explicit or it isn't an organization at all. The organization must have some
goal. Identifying this goal requires some form of planning, informal or formal.
Overall it is difficult to measure organizational effectiveness. According to the web
module on General Management and Organization (2004) many managers have a hard time
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5. Organizational Effectiveness
measuring organizational effectiveness based on characteristics that are not subject to hard
quantitative measurement. Top executives at some the biggest and leading companies today are
finding new ways to measure effectiveness, through indicators such as customer delight and
employee satisfaction.
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6. Organizational Effectiveness
References
Bal, V. Campbell, M. Steed, Judith, Meddings, K. The Role of Power in. (2008).
Retrieved from http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/roleOfPower.pdf
Lock, P & Crawford, J. (1999). The relationship between commitment and organizational
culture, subculture, leadership style and job satisfaction in organizational change and
development. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 20(7), 365-373.
Phibbs, W. M. (2011). Analyzing Organizational Performance. Retrieved from
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/december-
2011/analyzing-organizational-performance
Shah, S., Iqbal, J., Razaq, A., Yemen, M., Sabir, S & Khan, M. (2011). Influential Role
of Culture on leadership Effectiveness and Organizational Performance; Information
Management & Business Review, 3(2), 127-132. Retrieved from
http://www.oracle.com/us/media1/steps-effective-leadership-dev-1657106.pdf
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7. Organizational Effectiveness
References
Bal, V. Campbell, M. Steed, Judith, Meddings, K. The Role of Power in. (2008).
Retrieved from http://www.ccl.org/leadership/pdf/research/roleOfPower.pdf
Lock, P & Crawford, J. (1999). The relationship between commitment and organizational
culture, subculture, leadership style and job satisfaction in organizational change and
development. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 20(7), 365-373.
Phibbs, W. M. (2011). Analyzing Organizational Performance. Retrieved from
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforcement-bulletin/december-
2011/analyzing-organizational-performance
Shah, S., Iqbal, J., Razaq, A., Yemen, M., Sabir, S & Khan, M. (2011). Influential Role
of Culture on leadership Effectiveness and Organizational Performance; Information
Management & Business Review, 3(2), 127-132. Retrieved from
http://www.oracle.com/us/media1/steps-effective-leadership-dev-1657106.pdf
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