1. What causes the employee feel dissatisfied at the workplace?

2. Managers should do everything to enhance the job satisfaction of employees. Would you agree or disagree? Support your answer

3. Positive attitudes can create employee job satisfaction. State your opinion and example to substantiate this assertion.

5. Do you think Simon can stay longer in Bank X? Why?

6. Why is resistance so important in organizations? Discuss briefly and relate to the case study.

A case study of Organizational Behaviour and Resistance to changes in Malaysia's Commercial Banking Industry

INTRODUCTION

In August 1975, Bank X was established in Malaysia. Being the sixth biggest banking group in Malaysia, it comprises of Bank Y and its subsidiaries Bank A, Bank B, Bank C, Bank D and Bank E. This group of bank offers a wide range of investment banking, commercial banking, retail financing, and related financial services, which includes Islamic banking, underwriting of general and life insurance, stock, share and futures broking, investment advisory as well as asset, property and unit trust management.

The core philosophy of Bank X incorporates a deep-seated commitment to the satisfaction of its broad range of customers, with numerous customer driven initiatives woven into all configurations of communication and interaction with all client groups. The Group provides new and innovative products and services to its clients with its strategic partnership with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), one of Australia's leading banks. To improve their service and support, Bank X embraces the following vision: "As Malaysia's preferred diversified, internationally connected financial solutions group, we hold pride in developing your future with us". The bank operates with principles focused on achieving the organizational goals and objectives. The values practiced by Bank X are based on the concept of pace, which stand for principled, proactive, appreciative, connected, and evolving. Bank X has its own criteria for staff nomination. A few years ago, Bank X appointed Mr. Simon, who previously worked in another bank, as the new general manager. Simon is currently the general manager of the DSS unit, and he handles and coordinates this unit. He has 26 years of experience in the banking industry. He previously held a clerical position, and due to his desire for self-improvement, he furthered his education by enrolling in diploma and degree courses. The outcome of his determination led to him being appointed as the general manager of DSS unit. Simon, being and an energetic man, displayed dedication and punctuality in everything. His attachment to the unit resulted in a high turnover. However, all the staff did not like his attitudes that were full of conventions. Twenty employees resigned because of his attitude and character caused job dissatisfaction among employees. To date, he has served in this unit for six years, and the new subordinates are tormented by his position and demeanor. Meanwhile, manager is an individual who likes to encourage his staffs to be involved in CSR activities. However, he has the habit of claiming others work as his personal achievement. He often fails to acknowledge the staff that did the job, and claims the rewards offered by the top management for himself. This consequently results in the subordinate feeling unjust, demotivated, as well as dissatisfied with their job.

SITUATION IN THE BANK

In this case study, the application of operationalisation is used to determine the terms of a process (or a set of proof tests) that are needed to regulate the nature of an item or phenomenon. In this case, researchers determined some operational definitions in terms of organisational behaviour, negative behaviour, positive behaviour, negative attitude, positive attitude, job satisfaction, job dissatisfaction, and job performance. Organisational behaviour focuses on trying to understand the different types of human behaviour and its advantages as well as its disadvantages. It considers how phenomena like motivation can influence human behaviour, attitude, individual, team and group work in organisations (Velikovska, 2017). Negative behaviour and positive behaviour can be classified as an organisational behaviour because both of it influences human's attitude in the organisation. Negative behaviours orattitudes act as facilitators and barriers to effective mutual workplace relationships among workers in organisations (Almost et al., 2015). According to Hoppock (1935), job satisfaction is defined as a blend of mental, physiological, and natural circumstances that enable employees to speak honestly about his/her satisfaction toward the job that they hold in the organisation. In this case, Alex is well-educated, and he holds a master's degree from the United Kingdom. Additionally, he has over 25 years of experience in the banking industry. As a senior executive, Simon's negative attitude annoys and disappoints him, hence, resulting in him being dissatisfied with his job. Simon also penalized Alex by taking away his promotion, increment, and bonus; leaving the employee to work under pressure. Other subordinates were also not satisfied with the job because of Simon's behaviour, and they ceased from the task. Generally, Alex has his own perception about the job, and he wants a peaceful working environment instead of opposing and conflicting opinions which often lead to arguments between them. How does Alex manage Simon's negative attitudes which create employees' job dissatisfaction? Additionally, how does Alex manage Simon's negative attitudes to become positive attitudes that can enhance employees' job satisfaction? Figure 1 and Figure 2 relates to this case study, and it shows how the managers' negative attitudes and positive attitudes in the workplace can create job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction among employees

Figure 1 illustrates that managers' negative attitudes can create employees' job dissatisfaction due to the arguments that arise between the manager's and subordinate. Often, the arguments are caused by differing opinions, behaviours, and feelings in handling the position. In this case, Alex being a subordinate must listen to Simon because Simon is the general manager. It believed that both their leader-member relationship and interpersonal communication is not good. Simon's persistent negative feelings, thoughts, and attitudes toward Alex, decreases Alex's productivity and job satisfaction. In other words, Simon, being free to display his negative attitudes in any position, affects the employees working moods, hence, demotivating them and causing job dissatisfaction. However, negative thoughts are acceptable to a certain level as it enables a manager to observe employee every day and every time to identify their fault; although this is not a great issue for the business organisation. In certain events, negative thoughts can grow into negative feelings, which in turn may result in managers hurting their subordinate by sending e-mails to HR requesting for actions against small mistakes. This childish attitude makes employees uncomfortable with their manager. Employees further develop a big change in behaviour (negative attitudes). This kind of changes in behaviour can affect both sides, as it causes negative productivity and job satisfaction that spills over to existing co-workers.

The moral of this case study is, a manager cannot control the subordinate's thoughts and opinions, as well as penalize an employee. This is because being a leader; a manager is responsible for the subordinate and the work that they do. A manager should consider the employees' position and behaviour while making certain decisions, as to not disassemble the spirit in the team. Managers and leaders are prone to give a negative comment when employees provide suggestions and thoughts. As employees usually work hard to bring positivity and improvement, harsh and unsupportive remarks may demotivate them. Demotivated employees further express their dissatisfaction by coming to work late, taking frequent medical leaves and disregarding the works assigned by the supervisor. An employee has the right to take actions on such managers, but very often they do not. Throughout an employees' working life, encounters with ill-behaving managers are unavoidable. As there is no alternative way to ignore this kind of working environment, employees often resort to resignation. As leaders, managers should guide their subordinates and not ignore employees. Managers should cultivate positive thinking, constructive opinions, and ideas to sustain the workplace culture and improve the leader-member exchange relationship. Figure 2 exhibits the negative attitudes of manager that causes employees' job dissatisfaction.

Figure 2 illustrates that how negative thinking can result in negative attitudes that erode an individual's working journey. Managers who have negative thinking and attitudes often wear down their subordinate because they do not like their subordinate to hold their position. Besides that, staffs with negative feelings can also steal the bliss of their co-workers; often spoiling the working ambience and energy of every employee. As per the case study, individuals who can drain other workers' energy and mood, often controls everyone's activities in the workplace. In such events, the employees feel dissatisfied and unhappy and often decide to stop their job as they do not wish to stay in the demotivated situation. Things are further worsened by the lack of concern displayed by the manager, who thinks that he is right, and nobody can question him. Daily, employees feel that they have wasted their time by managing all the work because all they receive are negative remarks from the manager who does not desire to appreciate his employees' work. Such managers often cage their employees' mind by not permitting them to share their opinions and suggestion due to presumptions that employees lack in creativity and innovation. In this case, Simon lost a competent employee, Alex, because of his negative attitudes that decreased employees' job satisfaction. Simon's behaviour also created low morale among other subordinates. He lost the trust and value that the subordinates had on him. The interpersonal communication between leader-member was categorized as low-quality relationships because both often misunderstood in all the situations.

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

It is a difficult task for organisations to avoid changes because new ideas can promote employees to grow in the organisation. In organisations, changes occur for many reasons such as new staff roles, increase or decrease in funding, achievement of new engineering, new missions, visions or goals, to attain new members or customers, and due to changes from negative to positive behaviour. Resistance to change can be a challenge to an employee and employer, especially when resolving the troubles. According to Burke (2008), people protest the imposition of change which is borne as a general truth. However, resistance can also be proactive resignation or planned to damage (Kreitner and Kinicki, 2010). Any form of changes must be discussed at three levels; organisational, individual and team or group level.

CONCLUSION

Every organisation has issues to handle, and the way the management or leaders handle the issues can affect the organisation's performance as well as the employees' performance. As a part of the top management, leaders should encourage employees and avoid demotivating attitude to ensure a better work environment. Emotional intelligence is the most crucial aspect that should be observed by everyone in an organisation. A high positive level of emotional intelligence establishes a high level of organisational citizenship behaviour, which further increases organisational performance. When bank employees can express their emotional experiences, both individual and organisational performance becomes enhanced. Hence, this brings down the workplace stress. Successful organisations know the importance of practising positive attitude in various condition, performance, and employee engagement. Such positivity is very crucial for employees when they later face with a negative work environment. Therefore, training assessment and evaluation of employees are very important as it guides them to learn as well as support the team members at the workplace, while they continue to attain the organisational goals, vision, and mission. In other words, training provides employees with a chance to learn coaching, guiding and motivating techniques that can be used to improve the team members; creating a supportive work environment for the group members further ensures emotional intelligence development and elimination of negative attitude in the workplace.