Organization Behaviour and HRM June 2026
Q.1: A fast-growing technology startup has quickly scaled to over 150 employees across multiple locations. The founders have historically managed HR functions in an ad hoc manner, resulting in inconsistent performance management, rapid turnover, and a fragmented company culture. With new funding secured, the company appoints an HR Director to establish a formal HR infrastructure, drive employee engagement, and leverage data analytics for strategic decisions while retaining the startup's culture of agility and innovation. Apply Strategic HRM principles to explain how the HR Director can align performance management and employee engagement practices to support organizational growth while maintaining agility.
Answer:
Introduction:
A fast-growing tech startup tends to concentrate more on speed, innovation and growing their market presence. As this company scales to more than 150 employees at a variety of locations, informal or ad-hoc human resource (HR) strategies will begin creating challenges. The inconsistent performance management, high turnover rate, and fragmented company culture reflect the inherent difficulty in establishing structured HR systems. If these obstacles are left unresolved they could slow the company's growth and adversely impact employee satisfaction.
The role of Strategic Human Resource Management (Strategic HRM) is to provide the framework for aligning people management practices with the future direction of the company. Through Strategic HRM, the organization's HR functions (i.e., performance management and employee engagement) will be performance based and aligned with the overall business strategy. The HR Director, who has just been hired by this startup, is responsible for developing a formal HR structure while maintaining the company's core strengths of agility, flexibility, and innovation.
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Q.2 (A): The Hawthorne experiments showed that employee productivity is influenced not only by physical working conditions but also by social and psychological factors such as recognition and group relationships. A manufacturing firm today is deciding whether to focus more on improving technical work processes or on improving employee morale and teamwork. Evaluate the relevance of the Hawthorne experiments in today's organizations. Based on this, should managers focus more on technical improvements or social factors?
Answer:
Introduction:
During the 1900’s, and many of the experiments conducted by Hawthorne, help us understand what impacts employee productivity. Physical variables, such as the amount of light that was used; or types of equipment, as well as, various social and/or psychological factors (such as; how they were recognized, how they were attended to, as well as, their relationship with coworkers) all impacted the productivity of workers. While we are now considered a more dynamic workplace (more people in the workplace), and since we have such a high focus on the employee within today’s organizations versus the employer, we must still keep in mind the results from the past work by Hawthorne.
Q.2 (B): An HR manager at a leading service organization observes that several employees with strong technical skills are underperforming on collaborative projects due to recurring negative attitudes, resistance to feedback, and interpersonal conflicts. While some managers propose strict performance policies, others advocate for targeted attitude and emotional intelligence training. Evaluate these two approaches for improving employee performance. Which approach is likely to be more effective in the long term?
Answer:
Introduction:
Sometimes employees possess technical knowledge that is above-average or even excellent. However, these same employees may not perform well in team-based tasks due to negative attitudes and/or poor emotional control and/or poor interpersonal skills causing a breakdown in collaboration between coworkers. In the example provided below, the HR Manager faces an issue that is very common in service organizations, whether they should implement strict performance policies to control behavior or whether they should invest money and time developing employee’s attitudes/emotional intelligence to help improve their performance. Both options are designed to aid in improving employee performance; however, the methods used by both options differ drastically as do the long-term effects.