Simven analysis

1. Aspect of the SimVen experience to be analysed

The aspect of our SimVen experience that we are going to analyse is the role of the CEO in the organisation. His impact on the decision-making process and generally the type of organization the members wanted to implement:

The power of the CEO was minor, as he did not really have any authority or influence on others. That was a choice made by all the members, that decisions should be taken by everybody. Also, all the members wanted to make decisions in an intuitive and spontaneous manner.

However, instead of a rigid organization with a clear chain of command. for instance, head of finance department taking accounting decisions, head of human resources department taking people related decisions. We opted for a more elastic and flexible organization that all the members through a common consensus take all types of decisions reducing considerably the role of the CEO as a central and primary figure.

                   2. Analysis of this issue using the Politic and Culture metaphor.

This can be analysed through several images of organizations according to Gareth Morgan.

1) Political Metaphor: Viewing the situation through the lens of the political metaphor, according to Morgan , organizations can be understood as mini-states where the relationship between individual and society is paralleled by the relationship between individual and organisation. Political metaphor - From a political perspective, Morgan’s definition of the unitary view of organization is clearly the one characterizing our company. Indeed, regarding our interests, we placed emphasis on the achievement of common objectives. Our organization is being united under the umbrella of common goals and striving toward their achievement in the manner of a well-integrated team.

Regarding conflict, it is true that the CEO saw conflict as a source of trouble and as unwanted intrusion. Hence, his orientation was usually to eliminate or suppress conflict whenever possible. In others, we all saw formal authority as the only legitimate source of power. In group decision making, the absence of conflict often produces conformity and “groupthinking”, that’s what we sought to implement in our philosophy.
Although this unitary view may seem somewhat narrow and old-fashioned, it is often extremely pervasive and influential and is supported by many theories of management. Indeed, Mary Parker Follett statement is close to that unitary view that was implemented in our team process: She suggested the replacement of personal power with the authority of the task or what is commonly called “law of the situation”.

Regarding Power,
The role of the CEO, the leader can be defined as the ability to develop and integrate group ideas, using “power with” rather than “power over” people.
Holistcally, the political metaphor leads us to the idea that our company largely ignores the role of the CEO as powerful figure with concepts such as authority, leadership and control tending to be preferred means of describing our management of guiding the organization toward the achievement of common interests.
(We may acknowledge that the team idea, the attitude that “we’re a team” is often much more attractive than the idea of a somewhat chatic political system that wishes to move inmany directions at once.)
Switching to the culture metaphor, it can be used to show how the organization is being held together through core values and shared meanings. The culture metaphor points toward another means of creating and shaping organized activity: by influencing the ideologies, values, beliefs, language, norms, ceremonies, and other social practices that ultimately shape and guide organized action. In our case, the culture metaphor has been used to influence the ideologies, values and beliefs. Indeed, we shaped the organized action in a way that we influenced the primitive ideology and belief that the leader is the one deciding of everything in the end. We eliminated the idea that the CEO is a powerful figure or the one detaining the truth. That has allowed our corporate culture to born. This interpretation of the leader permitted us to feel more at ease and free to share our ideas amongst the members, facilitated communication. We note how the flexible style of operation in our company was underpinned by a highly cohesive corporate culture built around the shared ideas and values of the five members. The corporate philosophy stressed the importance of seeing the CEO a standard member because lifting him to a higher scale could raise conflicts or decrease some member’s productivity, as they would ultimately feel that their ideas might not always be considered. If the CEO had always the final say, he would have power over others and not power with others, which is one of the main characteristics of our corporate culture.