YARDISTICK INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE

Course Title: -Change and Innovation management

Course Code: - MAPMC-612
GROUP ASSIGNMENT ON ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR & DEVELOPMENT
A Term paper on organization’s practices of ethio telecom
No. Group Name ID No.

1 AyeleTeferi MAPM (1)092/13B

2 AzebMuhaba MAPM (1)009/13B
3 BelestieTenaw MAPM (1)011/13B
4 BetelehemAnketsebirhan MAPM (1)012/13B
5 Biruhalem Tesfaye MAPM (1)051/13B
6 Dagne Bekele MAPM (1)013/13B
7 Daniel Abate MAPM (1)014/13B
8 Dawit Tadesse MAPM (1)015/13B
9 Dessie Kefale MAPM (1)016/13B
10 MelekameAssega MAPM (1)031/13B
11 Melsie Tadesse MAPM (1)088/13B
12 MuluTibebu MAPM (1) 102 /13B

Submitted to: Gebre (Ph.D.)

Submission Date: Dec , 2021
 A Term paper on organization’s practices of Ethio telecom

Introduction

Brief historical review

Telecom service was introduced in Ethiopia by Emperor Menelik II in 1894 during the
commencement of the telephone line installation from Harar to Addis Ababa. Then the
inter-urban network was expanded in all other directions from the capital and many
important centres in the Empire were interconnected by landlines to facilitate long-
distance communications with the help of intermediate operators acting as verbal
human repeaters.

Establishment of Ethio telecom

As a continuation of the 2005/06-2009/10 five-year plan and after concentrating its

efforts on education, health and agriculture, the Ethiopian government decided to focus
on the improvement of telecommunication services considering them as key lever in the
development of Ethiopia. Ethio telecom was born on 29 November 2010, from this
ambition of supporting the steady growth of our country.

Organizational reform

 1890: - Central Administration of Telephone and Telegraph System of Ethiopia

 1907:- The central office of Post, Telegraph and Telephone (PTT) System of
Ethiopia
 1910 :- Ministry of Post, Telegraph and Telephone (PT&T)
 1952 :- The Imperial board Telecommunication of Ethiopia (IBTE)

(Recruited promising young Ethiopian to fill various senior positions and carried out and
completed the Ethiopianization program in 1973)

 1975 :- The provisional Military of Socialist Ethiopian Telecommunication

Services
 1996 :- Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation (ETC)
 2010 :- Ethio telecom

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 A Term paper on organization’s practices of Ethio telecom

Transition to Ethio telecom

Ethio telecom has got its current status since 29th November 2010 as a part of
Ethiopia’s 2005/06 – 2009/10 GTP following the federal government’s decision to
focus on improving telecom services, taking them as key to national development.
Consequently, the country’s telecom infrastructure and services have been transformed
to world-class standards to facilitate the development of the country with a great
paradigm shift in the improvement of the sector.

The following points are the overall assessment of organizational practice, its gaps and
our recommendations based on the theoretical concepts of the courses.

 Core management principles assessment in order to explain, predict,

influence and manage human behaviour at ethio telecom.

Ethio telecom work gets done through people, individually or collectively, on their own
or in collaboration with technology. Therefore, the management of the organization
especially human resource can do the management task—a task that involves the
capacity to understand the behaviour patterns of individuals, groups, and
organizations, to predict what behavioural responses will be elicited by various
managerial actions, and finally to use this understanding and these predictions to
influence, manage, and control human behaviour in the organization.

We recommend the firms to take in account the human beings are complex, and few, if
any, simple and universal principles explain organizational behaviour. Because we are
not alike, our ability to make simple, accurate, and sweeping generalizations is limited.
For example two people often act very differently in the same situation, and the same
person’s behaviour changes in different situations. Not everyone is motivated by
money, and people may behave differently at a religious service than they do at a
party. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t offer reasonably accurate
explanations of human behaviour or make valid predictions.

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 A Term paper on organization’s practices of Ethio telecom

 Process and methods identification which are used to improve behaviours,

attitude and effectiveness of its member.

It is known that attitude and behaviour are directly related because a good attitude
results in positive behaviours & its effectiveness and bad attitudes lead to negative
behaviours in most cases. Employee of ethio telecom believes in the products of the
company is more likely to engage with customers positively. Ethio telecom
managements uses different process and methods like hiring people with the right
values and attitudes, communicate the behaviour they want, model the behaviours they
want to see, pay attention to behaviour, reinforce the right behaviours, understand the
cause and motive, respond to behaviour consistently, Inspire others.

 How to manage the influences of individual difference in personality,

attitudes, emotions and perceptions in the firm.

Differences are inevitable, but also have an opportunity to recognise what the firm
want and how can achieve this without making a judgement. The Human resource
managers of ethio telecom manages such differences in personality, attitudes, emotions
and perceptions through considering individuals Positive Intention, finding any common
ground among individuals, listen in seeking to understand, understanding individual’s
behaviour and its impact on others, embracing the difference as opportunity.

 How do organizational politics and power affect behaviour in the firm?

The Irrational behaviour of the individuals in the firm towards power and politics at the
workplace is simply to come in the limelight and gain undue attention and appreciation
from the seniors and in order obtain advantages which are beyond their control. This
affects the overall productivity by decreasing the output of an individual and
eventually affects the productivity of the organization.

In doing so the organization has no clear direction to mitigate or reduce politics and
power which affect the behaviour of the employees as well as the firm.

In order to mitigate and reduce those power and politics the firm should better to use:

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 A Term paper on organization’s practices of Ethio telecom

 Transparency must be maintained at all levels to reduce politics.

 Employees must be aware of the goals and objectives of the organization and
strive hard to achieve the same.
 Makes company policies be same for everyone.

Work

 Promote team work at the workplace to strengthen the bond amongst the
employees. Individuals shall be made to work in teams so that they come closer
and develop a liking for each other.
 Celebrate various festivals at the workplace.
 Once in a while take your employees out for informal get together and picnics.
Such initiatives go a long way in reducing misunderstandings amongst the
employees.

 Issues must be discussed on an open forum and everyone related to the matter
must be allowed to participate in the same. Problems arise when matters are
discussed in closed cabins and employees do not get a common picture.
 Employees are being able to express their views and grievances in front of their
superiors.
 Hierarchies must be well defined to reduce politics.
 The subordinates must have an easy access to the boss’s cabin at the time of
queries.

 Effective communication reduces the chances of politics at the workplace.

 Employees should not play with words and pass on the information in its desired
form.
 Information must not be manipulated at any cost.
 Individuals shall prefer written modes of communication to avoid confusions.

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 Communicate through emails and do keep your boss in the loop. This way the
superiors are aware of what is happening around and no employee can cook
up stories against anyone.

 Assessment the practices regarding the Motivational theories and their

management practices.

- From different theories of motivation, ethio telecom used Victor Vroom’s

expectancy theory which is most comprehensive explanation of how
employees are motivated. It includes three variables or relationships
invoked expectancy, instrumentality, and valence (Coulter et al., 2002).
According to Vroom (1969) expectancy theory, that an employee will be
motivated to apply a high level of effort when he or she trusts that effort
will lead to a good performance appraisal, followed by organization
rewards such as promotion which later satisfy personal goals.

- Employee motivation is one of the rules of organization managers for

growth and efficient task control between personnel in businesses. A
motivated employee is responsive of the precise goals he or she ought to
achieve consequently he or she directs its attempt in that course.
- Motivation formulates an enterprise greater successful because provoked
employees are constantly seeking out progressed practices doing more.
Getting employees to do their satisfactory performance even in
energetic
circumstances is one of the personnel most stable and greasy demanding
situations and this can be made possible over motivating them.

- Motivation principle is concerned with what determines purpose directed

behavior. Those wishes, how the fulfillment of goals and or comments on
their success reinforces a successful behavior and the way perception in a
single’s capacity to perform a specific task will actuate behavior.
- It is important HR departments to emphasis on the promotion,
opportunities and flexible career development which are highly

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prioritized by crews as an important motivation factor. Employees who

work harder and perform well and meet their targets should be
motivated by their respective organizations by giving them a special
treatment in terms of incentives like bonus, salary increment,
transportation and housing allowances and training programs to induce
others to follow their footsteps. Incentives were generally developed to
generate employee motivation, satisfaction, and greater performance of
any company. In addition, with an effective incentive, employees could
gain several social and psychological benefits as a result of improving
their purchasing power to meet his or her needs of goods and services.
- Therefore, it can be concluded that incentives have great potential for
improving employee work performance and increasing production
efficiency through encouraging individuals or groups to act in a desired
and productive way. And also, the implementation of teamwork can
increase efficiency and encourage employees to work smarter and
strongly.
- The major challenge confronting management practice activities and
program in Ethio telecom are: lack quality management training
program, lack of motivation among managers & inaccurate management
practices need assessment difficulty to evaluate training and
development out comes.

 Top managers and line managers need to be committed, and supportive for
management practice activities through being involved in formulating the
progress of a strategies, plans and objectives.

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 Ethio telecom Practices or styles assessment regarding the Conflict Handling

and stress management Practices.

- Conflict is inevitable in Ethio-Telecom as it is the case in any other organization.

And conflict between management and employees is more particular than other
types of conflict. Managers did not create attractive environment for employees
they enable them to participate and express their ideas freely and this condition
leads employees to develop undesirable behaviours against their supervisors.

- The attitudes of management respondents were sometimes positive and sometimes

negative due to the fact that they are mature enough to see things from different
angles. Employees, on the other hand, view conflict negatively which harm or block
their activities. Various departments in Ethio-Telecom are interrelated to each other
and delay multifunction of one group hampers the activities of other departments
and overall performance of the organization.

- Informal group members in Ethio-Telecom devotes their time to comply with the
requirement of management rather than the informal groups, there is high degree
of rumour that is dispensed by grapevine and therefore, this makes them one of the
major factors for inter group conflict.

- there is a problem of job assignment in EthioTelecom. Employees are assigned with

multiple roles, which are not possible to be undertaken simultaneously. Moreover,
managers have a problem of assigning and clarifying what is to be done clearly that
enable the employees to understand the job description. Thus, these conditions enhance
the conflicting environment.

-Even though a considerable disagreement does not occur between specialists and line
generalists, there is a problem of proper authority delegation that enables and
motivates staff specialist to play their role properly. And this may lead staff specialists
to develop bad feeling on the line generalist, which is a manifestation of conflict.

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- Conflict sometimes may raise coordination and cooperation of activities, help to

highlight weaknesses and facilitate improved performance, on the other hand, it may
negatively affect the organizational activities and performance. Hence, management
of the organization is supposed to manage conflict effectively so as to attain a
moderate (functional) level of it.

- In order to attain a moderate of it, high level conflicts that could occur in the
organization should be resolved and low-level disagreements should be encouraged so
as to attain a healthy level of conflict. According, the community of the organization
suggested that problem solving (consensus) as an effective conflict resolution method
rather than applying other techniques. Even if management gets an understanding of
the benefit of functional level of conflict, it does not consciously engage in stimulating
low level conflicts to a moderate and functional level so as to contribute positively to
the organization's change and creativity. Besides, it seems not that much consideration
is given to it. But, fortunately, the organization reamed unexpected constructive
consequences from it. In our assessment conflict is important to facilitate the
organization's undertaking and help to maintain good human relations as far as it is
managed.
Recommendations

- Ethio-Telecom has the aim and objective to connect Ethiopia to the future
and be one of the most competitive in Africa. In order to attain these
objectives looking ahead in to the future is greater significance in today's
globalizing business environment. Thus Ethio-Telecom top managements
need to give due attention for conflict management as part of its effort
to achieve its vision. Since work flow interdependences, role ambiguity,
and power and value differences are instrument in creating more of
dysfunctional conflicts, the management need to proactively respond to
conflict resulting from such factors.
- To keep the moral and performance of employees high, the
organization better give much attention (focus) on evaluating the

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appropriateness and effectiveness of the measured taken; it is the

way of taking corrective actions if necessary. For the time being the
organization has no responsible body. So, it is advisable to use
accommodating (smoothing) style of resolution because it can be used
when a temporary solution is needed in the short run.
- Ethio-Telecom need to prepare open discussions (seminars, workshops etc)
intensively and give right and up to date information to employees
to minimize interpersonal conflict exist in the organization.
- Conflict is not always negative conflict, like fire can be a useful
force when properly handed. So Ethio-Telecom should also focus
on stimulating competition and conflict. Sometimes, conflict can
have a galvanizing effect on the progress of organization. So,
managers must recognize the differences between constructive and
destructive conflict situations and get the best out of them.
- In recent years managements of many organizations shifted their
views, that is conflict is seen as inevitable in every organization
and often necessary to insure high performance. So Ethio-Telecom
must take actions to change the traditional views of all the
organization management and employees to modern views, this
enables Ethio-Telecom to alter the level and forms of conflict in
ways the maximize benefits and minimize its dysfunctional
consequences.
- Generally speaking, for all problems mentioned and discussed
before, the assessment shows that assigning a responsible
body who has the experience and capacity to practice conflict
management in all directions may be key to solve the widely
prevailing conflicts in Ethio-Telecom. Here it should be noted that
there is no one best resolution methods; it all depends on
situations, type of conflict, and nature of the organization and
nature of parties involved init.
- Most of the time job characteristics and interpersonal relationship is the
source of stress among employees of ethio telecom. In doing so the firm

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devised employee Assistance Program which include counselling

employees who seek assistance on how handling conflicts at the work
place, dealing with marital and other family problems and career
counselling helps the employee to obtain professional advice regarding
career that would help the individual to achieve personal goals.

 Assessment of change management, organizational environment,

effectiveness and globalizations.

- In November 29/2011,’the former Ethiopian Telecommunications

Corporation was rebranded itself to the new company known as ‘’ ethio
telecom’’, which was part of the transformation process of the company.
Although ethio telecom undergoes various incremental changes in its life
time, the original company structure is extended to the level of regions,
zones, headquarters, shops and departmental divisions proposed by
France telecom (Orange) during its transformational change in the year
2011-2013 and each division under the respective zones, regions and
headquarter is composed of various departments based on its
complexity of work flow and scope .On the other hand, ethio telecom is
one of the companies implementing change management practices such
as balanced scorecard and kaizen philosophy in Ethiopia to realize over
all continuous improvement in its performance. Even though ethio telecom
established and availed all the above desired requirements, the
company is facing problems during implementation (Annual report, 2016
and 2017). According to the company annual reports kaizen is not being
practical as it is planned in general and that the established standard
quality circles are not bringing the change which the company
aspired in particular. Due to the above-mentioned factors are
not well practiced in ethio telecom in graining the culture of
kaizen.
- all the change management practices (Balances scorecard practices,
kaizen philosophy management practices and Standard quality circle

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management practices) were practiced occasionally. all practices

contributed to ethio telecom organizational performance to great extent.
- The effect of the practice can significantly improve its organizational
performance from the current position
- For successful of those change management practices, employees shall be
properly trained on the change management. More importantly,
managers and supervisors of ethio telecom are advised to wait for
change management especially in the telecommunication industry
changes where occur every day.
- In addition, the training is better on a continuous basis including work
specific training to enhance employees’ capability. Moreover,
management of ethio telecom should advise to communicate, motivate
and support employees and encourage effectively their participation.

 Organizational culture, structure and design assessment and its influence on

the behaviour of the employees, team and whole organization.

Practices

organizational culture at ethio telecom count a basic assumption that a group has
invented or discovered in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation
and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid
and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and
feel in relation to any encountered problems. By taking in account culture is a dynamic
process, resulting from the interaction among others and promoted by leadership
behaviours. It encompasses a set of structures, routines, rules and norms that guide and
constrain behaviour.

In the firm organizational culture is a source of sustained competitive advantage and

improving employee retention, knowledge management, organization effectiveness,
innovation, and performance. Also organizational culture of the firm can serve as a
source of distinctions among organizations and can transmit a perception of identity for
organization members, can promote the commitment, strengthen stability and

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consistency of the organization and can help to manage the behaviours of the members
of the organization by shaping their shared values and beliefs.

From organizational culture profile aspect, Market culture is the dominant cultural
orientation at the moment in Ethiotelecom which is result oriented to ensure
competitiveness and larger market share sustainably, Loyalty and sensitivity to
customers and concern for people are central characteristics of the organization. In this
regard organizational culture is crucial because it can provide guidance for managers
in searching for ways to improve their organizations’ effectiveness and performance.
Identifying and knowing the culture type of the organizations important as the success
of organization depends on the extent to which the culture matches the demands of the
industry.

Ethio Telecom's organizational structure and design has a direct impact on the work
environment. It gives spaces for employees to rate their environment and are very
happy working at Ethio Telecom with respect to cultures and environment at Ethio
Telecom. This eventually creates good relationship among co-workers and the
management team and working to attain common goal.

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Reference:

- www.erhiotelecom.com
- Interview of senior human resource manager
- A research on human resource management practice at ethio telecom
by fetene tefera.

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