Understanding corporate organisation as social system for performance

Olufemi Adedamola Oyedele, MPhil. Construction Management, managing director/CEO, Fame Oyster & Co. Nigeria, is an expert in real estate investment, a registered estate surveyor and valuer, and an experienced construction project manager. He can be reached on +2348137564200 (text only) or femoyede@gmail.com

CORPORATE OR GANISATION IS the organised business concern consisting of employees whose primary duties involve the organisation’s activities as a whole and not the activities of a particular division of the organisation. They are large organisations with a sizable number of employees. They have four principal functions: (1) to develop or discover business opportunities; (2) to raise capital; (3) to enter into contracts on behalf of the corporate organisation; and (4) to perform the statutory and social duties stipulated by the memorandum and articles of incorporation, including nurturing a business for profit. Corporate organisations are set up to perform sets of objectives aimed at satisfying human needs. In satisfying these objectives, corporate organisations have sets of people, in different positions due to their different capacities and performing different functions/ tasks.

In sociology, a social system is the patterned network of relationships constituting a coherent whole that exists between individuals, groups, and institutions. Human beings are social animals and savour living with and relating together, a practice known as Gregarianism. Corporate organisations are social systems because they are associations of people and cannot function effectively without reference to each other. An organisation as a system is a combination of interrelated parts operating as a whole. It becomes a social system when it relates to people. The subject of business and society covers relationships to the broader social system outside its own organisation. Corporate organisation structure becomes complex not because it has different sections in its system, but because its objectives cannot be achieved without the interrelationship of people in the different parts/sections.

Typically, a corporate organisation will adopt division of labour in achieving its objectives as it is not economical for a single person to perform the different tasks necessary for production or to achieve the objectives of a corporate organisation. Division of labour is the assignment of different parts of a process (manufacturing or service) or task to different people in order to improve efficiency. Leading the company as a social system is not easy because in the modern world, comthe panies are seen as a dynamic organism, but where the dynamics are performed by machines, laws, orders, rules, procedures and policies. Corporate organisations are social structures. Social structure is a unit for sets of non-fortuitous social relations between individuals, between parties, and between parties and individuals in an organisation, in the larger societies and in the business environment. Social organisation is the basis of all organised human society.

Corporate leaders, due to internal and external pressures, are aware of the need to take into account the concerns, interests and aspirations of: the people who are directly part of the system, that is, the employees, customers, suppliers, contractors, subcontractors, etc; the larger system that is known as the society, the legal system, the financial system, the family structure, etc; and the purposes of the different systems. Corporations must aim to satisfy the yearnings of the whole system where all stakeholders, the workers, the institutions; the customers are all respected as kings. Corporate leaders must listen to the stakeholders, share experiences with them, and help them to give solutions to problems, request their feedback and help by giving the resources for development. These people must be seen as “corporate shareholder” and not as just “stakeholder”.

Modern corporate leaders must be aware that most employees today can do their jobs better than they are doing if given free hand. The traditional notion about supervision is old-fashioned especially with the advent of COVID-19 pandemic which necessitated ‘virtual working’ and ‘working at home’. The important thing now is to create working conditions under which the subordinates will function well, feeling respected, with a culture of trust. It is the obligation of corporate leaders to enable their people to do better in their tasks tomorrow than they do today. “Thank you” note recognition means award and reward are more important than a salary increase to motivate the workers. Corporate leaders must see their working environment as a social system and be open to the experiences of others, especially their subordinates and learn from failure.

Most corporate organisations are in the habit of providing “standing operating procedures (SOP)” or job schedules or office manuals or Do’s and Don’ts, in developing a quality system and to guide the interactions between departments and people. Nowadays, it is better to manage the relations between people and departments as this practice has been proved to give maximum contributions for the whole system. Corporate leaders must focus more on stakeholders’ satisfaction (both internal and external) than on performance indicators of their organisations. Corporate performance indices are also important, but there must be a balance between corporate performance and the welfare of those that make the performance possible. Delegation must be maximally adopted to show there is a level of trust on sectional heads and employees. Decisions have to be made at different levels, from managers to labourers, so that the organisation can change very rapidly and effectively.

In a social system, everybody is ‘struggling’ for survival and ‘competing’ to outshine one another. As it is the function of the government to ensure healthy competition and to ensure there is less oppression, corporate leaders must ensure self-development and self-confidence of every worker. Personal mastery must be encouraged because the organisation’s development level is the total sum of the individual personal development of the workers. Learning effectively from others will happen when a culture of constructive dialogue is created among a knowledgeable workforce. A boss can only be good if his subordinates are good. The important thing is to create a social system (working condition) under which the subordinates will function well, feeling respected, with a feeling of trust. These conditions are necessary so that there can be “creative interchange’ and cross fertilisation of ideas among all cadres.