Organisational Behaviour Holacracy and Teal in Zappos Online Footwear

Question: Discuss about the Organisational Behaviour Holacracy and Teal in Zappos. Answer: Zappos is an online footwear retail company its headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company started as a shoe vending retail Company, but over the years it has diversified to the sale of other products such as clothing, kids merchandise, bags, accessories, watches, jewelry, eyewear, wedding wear, and handbags. Consequently, shoe selling remains as the primary inventory contributing to almost 80% of Zappos annual revenues. Since its inception, Zappos underwent turbulent changes that have ensued to both positive and negative effects in the organization. For instance, Zappos moved its headquarters to Nevada from San Francisco and expanded their product sales resulting to increased growth in revenues. In 2013, the CEO led the movement of the headquarters from Nevada to Las Vegas; this change was aimed at renovating downtown Las Vegas and making significant improvements in the city as an economic and cultural hub (Ng, 2016). The founder, Tony Hsieh has steered radical transformations o f organizational management. For instance, he tried to ensure that all employees maintain a distinct company in the future on the companys online presence. He emphasized that the employee's social media accounts should portray Zappos human face in the online interactions with customers. In fact, most of the employees on Twitter use their accounts for casual communication rather than marketing and promotional purposes. Tony emulated the culture as portrayed in his casual communication on his twitter page with over 2 million followers. Notably, Hsieh tried to institute the idea of holacracy which is a full suite of concepts, but in simple terms seeks to flatten the organizational structure (Lemons, 2017). Unlike the traditional top-down hierarchy in organizationalmanagement adopted by most companies, Zappos under the influence and leadership on Hsieh has shifted to holacracy. Holacracy is a system of corporatemanagement that emphasizes on self-manage thus eliminating the hierarchies in an organization (Van De Kamp, 2014). Holacracy in Zappos has resulted to self-management of employees which has experienced its own merits and demerits within Zappos. As highlighted by a recent business report, most employees have expressed their opinion about holacracy in Zappos. Most employees viewed that it took a rampant change to transform to holacracy from the bureaucratic management (Steenkamp, 2017). However, holacracy is imagined to be the primary cause of the high employee turnover in Zappos. As stated by Hsieh, holacracy is a system aimed at making the workplace enjoyable by replacing the organizational team with 'circles' and managers by 'lead links,' differentiating Zappos from other tradit ional companies. He expressed that Zappos was aimed at eliminating the risk of organizational death attributed from traditional management theories. Hsieh views that holacracy is the future system for organization management which is all about self-management. To sum it up, the major problem with holacracy in Zappos has been the radical change of the organization management. In 2017, Hsieh radically moved from holacracy to teal. Hsieh tried to implement teal concept with the future expectation of transforming the development within Zappos. In the book, reinventing organizations, it is provided that teal organization is aimed at eliminating hierarchy management. In a teal organization, the roles and existence of people managers are eliminated (Laloux, 2014). Hsieh anticipated on reinventing Zappos through the teal system which he claimed that will have its challenges in the implementation but Zappos is up for the challenge and will cope with any obstacles in teal implementation. According to Hsieh, Zappos would be reinvented through transformation or the organization management provide a holacracy system to achieve a teal organization objective. Teal in Zappos would likely result in loss of leaders who have been with the company since its inception. However, Hsieh views that he is ready to lose top managers. The expected effect of teal would be self-management by all employees having a purpose beyond making m oney. The case of Zappos relates the transformation of organizations from traditional organizational behavioral theories. These changes concerning holacracy which has reduced bureaucracy characterized by the traditional hierarchical organizational structure. Zappos has re-invented from a manager based workplace to a managerless organization. Unlike traditional organizations, holacracy in Zappos relies on employees circles that are run openly and democratically, providing openness in decision-making and operational management (Miner, 2015). Contrary to traditional hierarchical organizational structure, where organizational departments are headed by managers and supervisors, Zappos holacracy ensures the staff circles offer freedom of innovativeness to every employee. In traditional hierarchy of corporate management, bosses have superiors mandate over the subordinate staff hence affecting innovativeness among the staff. According to Steenkamp (2017), holacracy has proved that most employees p refer working in a manager less organization, where decisions are made through a fair contribution of almost every staff hence corporate power is distributed widely within the organization. The circle and lead links in holacracy have transformed the organization structure bring about confusion in organizational management. The lead links are the leaders in the circles and allocate resources and provide direction and purpose planning for the circles. This has however, confused most employees who feel that the lead link is similar to the manager as in traditional hierarchical structure. However, the lead link is just an authoritative member in the circle and hence all members of the circle should not look up on the link lead. The staff should be self-managers and conduct Business Corporation hand in hand with fellow staff. Holacracy emphasizes on employee happiness and motivation (Pinder, 2014). Zappos has put this concept through the companys core values and principles, For instance, Zappos offers a free 5 weeks training and offered $2,000 to anybody who want to quit the programme. However, only a few people take the offer which has made Zappos to be listed among the 10 best companies to work for in 2010s Fortune magazine (Ng, 2016). Ultimately, Zappos focuses on employee motivation through self-management and attractive benefits. Considerably, unlike traditional organizations that focus on employee productivity with less concern for their happiness, Zappos maintains employee satisfaction and motivation as the primary driving force for all staff. With a manager less organization most people find Zappos to be a preferable company to work for rather than traditional organizations. Zappos case provides that holacracy has eased staff to gain new skills, follow their passions outside the job description or transition roles, hence providing room for innovation. In a teal and holacracy organization, communication changes in the workplace are experiences (Bernstein et al., 2016). For instance, in Zappos, the lines between teams and employees are more connected to the corporation, they feel a sense of belonging to the company which improves productivity in the roles. About that, employees feel more empowered in their job, and they are more focused on the success of the organization whereby their overall goal is to see Zappos grow and succeed in the current global market. Holocracy and teal have created an opportunity to wean out traditional structural changes to their job and the work team to help grow the business. As provided by Zappos holacracy implementation team, employees are required to adjust and define new roles within the overall organization structure beca use the entire concept involves employees to stay proactive rather than reactive within the job (Steenkamp, 2017). In conclusion, Zappos was the first company to transform the traditional bureaucracy organizational behavior theories. The transform changed Zappos to a teal and holacratic company. The transformation has been implemented slowly in the company to wean off the traditional concept of managers. In a holacracy and teal organization, departments have been changed to circles or group and lead links which have replaced bosses. The circles comprise of employees who work towards the same goals differentiating itself from the miniature hierarchies in the traditional organizational hierarchy. Ultimately, Zappos has experienced radical changes attributed to the transformation to holacracy and teal which focuses on corporate goals and how to achieve organizational success rather than emphasizing on corporate titles and positions. References Bernstein, E., Bunch, J., Canner, N., Lee, M. (2016). Beyond the Holacracy Hype.Harvard Business Review. Laloux, F. (2014).Reinventing organizations. Nelson Parker. Lemons, J. F. (2017). Issue: Flat Management Flat Management. Miner, J. B. (2015).Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge. Ng, C. (2016). ZAPPOS-CAPSTONE-PDF. pdf.Journal of Online Business. Pinder, C. C. (2014).Work motivation in organizational behavior. Psychology Press. Steenkamp, J. B. (2017). Organizational Structures for Global Brands. InGlobal Brand Strategy(pp. 151-179). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Van De Kamp, P. (2014). HolacracyA radical approach to organizational design.Elements of the Software Development Process-Influences on Project Success and Failure. University of Amsterdam, 13-26.