Based on the who, what, when, where and why, and the five types of powers about

Question

Based on the who, what, when, where and why, and the five types of powers about Netflix, Please answer the following questions. Answer the question at the bottom. I appreciate the help. Thanks.

• Who: The individuals involved in the issue are Reed Hasting, CO founder, CEO, Patty McCord and employees. organization involved is Netflix.

• What: My understanding from reading the case study on the woman behind the Netflix culture, from what I gathered, the issue here is the fact that Netflix wanted to change the way it recruited its talents. In other words, they wanted to have employees who were very knowledgeable, and fit into the Netflix culture. The company believed that every position should be filled with stars. Netflix was still growing and so they did whatever they felt would help them segment the market and reach a wide audience of talented, well skilled and educated employees. the company had been growing fast, but unfortunately, “after the dot-com bubble burst and the 9/11 attacks occurred (Patty, 2014)”. This led the company to lay off a huge number of its staff, but soon after worth, things started to look good again for the company.

• When: The issue at Netflix began in the late 2001 right after the 9/11 attack. Right after that, the company laid 30% of its staff due to a setback, but it is said that in early 2002, things had started to pick up for the company, but the damage was already done because they were now short 30% of staff. It is unclear as to when the issue was settled, but if I could guess, I would say about before 2013 because the company’s stock had tripled.

• Where: The problem was within the entire organization in their location in Silicon Valley, because the company was making changes throughout the various departments. The geographic location, department, or division in which the problem exists.

• Why: Netflix wanted to have “A” performers in every department, because they felt that it would get the organization on the track they were aiming at if every department was equipped with the right individuals the company won’t have to waste money on recruiting new talents every time, but rather, they would try to retain the good ones they were able to develop to match the company policy.

• How: Netflix created a policy based on trust, honesty, and rewarding performance. “Most companies spend endless time and money writing and enforcing HR policies to deal with problems the other 3% might cause. Instead, we tried really hard to not hire those people, and we let them go if it turned out we'd made a hiring mistake (Patty, 2014)”. They didn’t believe so much in HR policies because it is costly for any company and most employees don’t even abide by them.

                                                            Five Types of Power

Official (positional) power: As mentioned in the example, Sharon has official power from the position she holds. Since Sharon is the CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), she can drive the organization based on her decisions which would be considered of high importance. She can drive her company to her decisions based on her designation and power.

Transactional (reward) power: Since Sharon exhibits great performance she has the attitude to reward employees with great performance who exhibit their skills to the achievement or improvement of the organization’s processes. Since Alice is an asset for the company as she has great knowledge of Excel, Sharon can reward Alice to stay back with Netflix to take advantage of her knowledge.

Coercive power: Sharon has the authority to take severe disciplinary action against employees who are violating the code of conduct or business ethics. Sharon is fair however firm.

Knowledge (information) power: Sharon has drawn great knowledge in human resources from her previous position as Vice President of Human Resources in General Electric. She has an in-depth knowledge in human resources. Sharon’s experience helps her to make Netflix the number one in all on-demand entertainment categories.

Charismatic: Sharon’s attitude is to drive the employees in the right direction helping them come up in their career. Her innovative methods and great experience in human resources helps her to contribute for the success of the company.

Principle-centered (social): Sharon is people centric. Her passion to handle people and involvement in her role as CHRO enables her to contribute to the success of the organization. In her negotiation, she can identify top performance and negotiate to retain such employees with Netflix.

Question:

A. What inferences can you draw about the company’s organizational culture based on how they react to an employee leaving? Support your reasoning with specific examples.

B. Describe the types of power (positional, information, reward, coercive, social, charismatic) the CHRO has and how they are important to this particular negotiation.

Explanation / Answer

A. Netflix still seems to be working in a startup mode where the organizational culture is quite dynamic. Here every individual is expected to take ownership of his/her task and work independently for the best of the company and contribute constantly. This ofcource is how every company wishes of their employees but netflix when it says it wants only the best of talent they are expecting them to start functioning and contributing from day 1 with not much emphasis on training or orientation which are usually part of the HR policies.They even seem to be very indifferent of the employees leaving their company. When they say they don't want to put additional efforts in working with the remaining 3% and giving a chance for them to adjust to the new company and culture and also that they would simply remove the people who they feel are not a right fit after hiring, shows their apathy towards humans as employees but just considering them as mere machines to do a particular task.

B. As we see the types of power the CHRO has like the positional power where she can direct the comapny as per her own methods due to her designation, this power is very crucial as there are no HR policies in place, there has to be a central figure who functions as the model figure to direct the HR functions of the company which usually work as per the model HR policies.

Then the information power is where the employees coming in can expect to learn and look up to her as she has an in-depth understanding of the processes and clear about the path she wishes to take netflix towards. The Reward power adds to coercive power as sharon has the power to retain a well performing employee as what is been envisaged by the company and with her power to take disciplinary action against anyone who isn't performing to the expectations, sharon can strike the right balance of maintaining the best of talent. Sharon's people centric approach with her social power helps her exercise the above powers in the negotiation very smoothly as she can identify and select the best employees through negotiation and the incoming employee doesn't feel out of place.

Aiding to all these powers is her charismatic power which makes the employees listen to her, follow her advice or fear her for what she is rather than just her designation and hugely helps during negotiations as her exercising of any power doesn't come across as being impersonal or arrogant but a necessary action.

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