In the corporate world organizational structure is a mapped out and practiced thing. Employees are broken up into departments and assigned specialist functions. From the CEO to the mailroom clerk everyone knows their place and their purpose. At a start-up company the hierarchy rules go out the window. The CEO is just as likely to bring in donuts or lock-up the office as the fresh out of college intern is.
In this blog we often use television clips from shows like The Office and Undercover Boss to highlight organizational behavior, mentoring and success strategies as seen through the lens of entertainment. Television shows produced by the major networks are a microcosm of the companies that produce them. They have accepted hierarchies. Every employee from the lead actress to the craft services chef is a specialist.
But, that is not the case in the emerging world of webisodes. Like a bare-bones start-up company webisodes ask employees to perform a variety of functions. The lead actor is also a writer, producer and janitor. I have provided links to two webisodes below. The first is from a show called Epic Meal Time. The show has an avid web following, but a format structured specifically for the web. The second clip is from Live from Daryl’s House. In this show Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates fame invites musicians to his country house to hangout and perform. The show has since been picked up for television production.
How do you think mentoring and success strategies play a role in Epic Meal Time where hierarchy and specialization have yet to take root? And do you think a more corporate approach as seen in Live from Daryl’s House improves or diminishes the webisodes authenticity?
Looking forward to your comments!
Epic Meal Time: Ultimate Pizza Sandwich
Live from Daryl’s House: Episode 54 – Butch Walker
Image Credit: EpicMealTime.com
For this blog assignment I am going to use the TV show, “The Office.” On the third episode of the first season, named “Health Care”, Michael decides to delegate his job to Dwight. He is told to carefully go through all the benefit plans they had and select the cheapest one for the company. The reason why Michael did not want to do it was because he wanted to avoid having his employees complaining to him about this health care plan reduction.
When Dwight came out of his office to hand out all the benefits that all the employees were going to have with the new plan, they complained straight away. Every employee in the working space was unhappy with this new decision taken by Dwight and this led to complains from the employees to Michael, who is the boss. As everyone complained, Michael tried to compensate this cut to their health care plan by telling them that he had a surprise for everyone and was going to give it to them by the end of the day. Of course this wasn’t true, he was only trying to appeal to the emotional side of the employees by motivating them with any different thing that would make it up by the reduction on the health care plan.
The management theory that I think would best find under this episode is the expectancy theory of motivation. Why? Because the expectancy theory deals with the behavior on a person based on the motivation he or she receives from their work environment. In this specific case, the company would have a better outcome from the employees if they didn’t cut the benefits from their health care plans. In this episode you can clearly see how employees stopped working after they received the news that their plan was going to get reduced.
-Is the financial benefit of cutting the health care plans really worth if you know that employees are not going to be happy and willing to work hard?
-Is it better for the boss to delegate such a special issue to a lower-level employee? Wouldn’t it be better for the boss to deal with it since he is the authority in the workplace?
-After this news, how would the boss motivate again the employees?