RTD Co. Ltd is a manufacturer of oil field pumps and spare parts. It is a joint venture established in 1079 between a European firm and a partner from Saudi Arabia, owning 50% each of the company shares. The company is composed of 5 different units which are manufacturing, sales, supply management, and engineering and after sales service units.
Each of these units reports to their unit manager and all the unit managers’ report to the company president. RTD Co.Ltd is serving many companies to name a few; they are serving Arabiain Oil Company (Aramco), Khafji Oil Company (KJO) and EPCs or the engineering procurement contractors whom are working for the projects of Aramco and KJO. As to date, RTD C. Ltd is employing 200 assemblers and machine operators working inside the production floor while 120 staff serves as managers, engineers, designers, sales men and administrators. If subject to observation, the procedures of functionality of the organization are grounded upon the complexity of the works involved which are done within each section.
The divisions were principally useful to standardize the diverse job application procedures throughout the hours of work. These divisions also assist the organization’s Department of Human Resources in determining the skills, capabilities, and the measurement of salary of the organization for each worker. As it could be taken into account, the five divisions also have their own set of authorities. The authorities come in forms of supervisors, managers and other officers of the organization. The officers act as the bridge of communication involving the lower-level of employees and the higher management.
Managing RTD as a multicultural organization is not at all easy. Together with the individualistic personality of each employee comprising all the sections in the organization, it should be constantly kept in mind that the diversity in culture of the employees can lead to conflicts among colleague workers. On the other hand, for the reason that of the proposition of leadership’s right of way and dictatorial control contained in each segment of the organization, the said impediments of opinion and views in the area of work is relatively keeping pace.
Conflict of negativity is very apparent within this particular multicultural organization because of the deficiency in skills and cohesive provisional language of communication among the employees comprising the five divisions as well as the five divisions’ managers. For that reason, every managers of each division began to advanced people who shows loyalty to them, despite the fact if they are not eligible, in order to safeguard all of them in the RTD’s internal negative conflict.
The diversity of culture and its effects to the behavior of the organization is very powerful and complex. Cultural diversity, according to Cox (1993) is the “representation, in one social system, of people with distinctly different group affiliations of cultural significance. ” To measure and identify diversity and its effects, it is needed to study the culture of the organization. Customarily, the culture of organization covers the shared beliefs, values, backgrounds of the members and behavior. The members share a general heritage of socio-culture.
Culture has been ethnically or nationality portrayed, however, the factors of culture are presently comprised of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, disability or age. (Blank & Slipp 1994). Individuals coming from diverse backgrounds of ethnicity have diverse values, norms and attitudes. The increasing diversity in culture in private and public groups pays attention on the differences among various ethnic groups in their performance and attitudes in their work. Metaphor Theory Metaphor gains its importance in history from the emphasis on the significance to social structure of symbols.
The thought was that representations and their symbols of intricate realities in society are essential not only in understanding and studying several social organizations, except for the success of that particular organization. For instance, neutrally experiential rituals and myths in the organizations does not only provide evidences to skewed forces and strains working underneath the exterior phenomena of process and construction, but provide the organizational members the opportunities to muddle through with such forces and strains.
Therefore both the study of accuracy of organizations and the organizations’ success on themselves rely on the dependability of symbols. Consequently, this curiosity in both the subjective and objective features of existence of organizations, change and development was fitting a fundamental apprehension of theorists of organizational groups. One foremost concern recognized was that collection of symbols can turn into “unsound” in the course of exploitation with meaning to mislead, thus separating theory from objective and practice from reality’s subjectivity, and in that way menacing the organizational enterprise’s success.
Having the significance of sound symbols to associating the practice or theory gap and the subjective or objective gap, an approach to solve the common predicament of sustainable change is to make use of metaphors not only to encourage innovative ways of thinking but to help in the process of internalization at the same time. Metaphors are principally useful in this context, as their appropriate use guarantees to support in the integration and mobilization of all levels in the organization and both units by supporting legitimizing the changes that occur and shared understandings.
Such guarantee acquires for the reason that “symbolic language” are metaphors having the possibility to go beyond cultures, connecting people in all the levels of organization and as well as from all space and time. Moreover, the “symbolic reality” of metaphor is further communicative compared with the literacy of language, thus ideally concentrating the unarticulated and emotional needs, possibly even insensible, interests and hopes that must be focused on if the change in culture is to accompany structured change.
A way in which this can be done is by the ability of the metaphor to increase concurrently the legitimacy of change and efficiency by permitting people to grasp diverse meanings although parallel from the implications of behavior from the reflection that it shows. (Vaill 1996) Every metaphor may verify improper, and clout no point in the organization, or be overstated. Furthermore, metaphors, such as forms of communication symbols, may be used to divert and rationalize concentration from genuine issues or can offer symbolism to appease the community (Fox, 1993).
On the other hand, such predicaments may be principally be surmounted by taking on appropriate rules for the use of metaphor and by interpreting them into terms of operations for hypotheses put to test in that way enabling them access the practice and study of development and its management. At present, having the idea toward change on organization is well-versed by a compound of metaphors, all addressing on one facet of change however still remained chiefly insensible to the process of sustainable change and “building it up” by assimilating the rationally cultural and introducing the processes of structural change.
As a result, they fall short to put forward acceptably how effective and sustainable change may also be secured or accomplished. As a concise analogy, the well-heeled metaphors of machine can be employed and rational actor to point up the process and its stages while remaining in the most effortlessly apprehended medium for perceptive. Given the importance of sound symbols to bridging both the theory/practice gap and the objective/subjective gap, one approach to solving the general problem of sustainable change is to employ metaphors not only to stimulate new ways of thinking (Morgan, 1986) but to aid in the internalization process as well.
Metaphors are particularly helpful in this regard, as their proper use promises to aid in the mobilization and integration of all organizational levels and units both by promoting shared understandings and by legitimizing the changes that occur. This promise obtains because metaphors are “symbolic language” with the potential to transcend cultures, linking people not only across organizational levels but also across time and space Qung, 1964).
Furthermore, the “symbolic reality” of metaphor is more expressive than literal language, better addressing both the emotional needs and the unarticulated, perhaps even unconscious, hopes and interests that must be addressed if cultural change is to accompany structural change (Daft, 1983; Pondy, 1983). One way this may be accomplished is through metaphor’s ability to enhance simultaneously a change’s legitimacy and efficacy by allowing people to draw different meanings but similar behavioral implications from the image it presents (Donnellon et al. , 1986).