Data liberation and empowerment in modern society

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Referring to "Data will set you free":

Why do you think Freescale focuses on metrics? Why don't more organizations follow its approach?

Freestyle is in an intensely competitive industry, semiconductor development and manufacturing, which is characterized by its very rapid product development timeframes and intensely competitive pricing structures. The skill sets of employees in this industry are highly sought after, especially integrated circuit designers and engineers who contribute to next-generation component dressings. As a result, competitive differentiation and financially viability of firms in the semiconductor industry are correlated with the ability to manage a diverse and highly skilled workforce (Agresti, Harris, 2009). Due to the strategically important role of engineers, designers and technical professionals critical to the company's growth, there is a high level of importance associated with retaining employees and developing them over time. Freestyle Semiconductor focuses on metrics of performance to ensure there is a very high level of accountability on the part of line managers as to how they manage their employees as a result. Stability of their highly educated and valuable workforce has direct implications on their ability to continually gain market share and stay technologically current with their product lifecycles. Longitudinal studies indicate that the more stable a workforce is the greater propensity a company has to achieve its product development strategies over time (Wouters, 2009).

Freestyle and its competitors must continually focus on retaining talented and highly skilled workers to keep their competitive advantage. The uses of retention strategies in IT are pervasive from both a development standpoint and from system maintenance approach as well (Amaram, 2005). Other companies do not however participate in these types of retention and employee growth strategies using metrics as their cultures often fight change. In general companies fight any changes that will threaten established values and processes that people obtain status or stability from. Often companies do not pursue these strategies as it also forces a level of accountability into an area that is a known weakness, and no one wants to admit things are that bad in retention for example. In addition, companies will not implement these strategies based on a lack of process definition and awareness of how to change the results once obtained unless there is a catalyst strong enough to make them change their cultures as a result (Ton, Huckman, 2008). .

1.2. In general, what do you think are the advantages and limitations of such metrics?

The advantages of these types metrics is that they first focus accountability and performance in the most critically important areas of companies who rely on employee knowledge for competitive advantage. Second, these metrics also provide a baseline to illustrate how best to improve these strategies over time. Third, metrics of retention and employee growth over time also can provide insights into which strategies are best suited for the unique needs of a company and which are not. The limitations of these types of strategies are that they do not take into account the significant ownership of reporting and results that are needed in order to make them relevant in organizations (Clausen, Jones, Rich, 2008). There is also the limitation of measuring what is really relevant vs. what is easy to measure (Ittner, 2008). Just measuring a given metric does not ensure success of any retention program as well. There must be a correlation between the measurement used and its relevance to the efforts aimed at retention as well.

1.3. Freescale focused on metrics for the acquisition and retention of employees. Do you think metrics can be applied to other areas of management, such as employee attitudes, employee performance, or skill development? How might those metrics be measured and managed?

There are an abundance of opportunities to provide metrics of performance in other areas of management as well. The uses of metrics for example for measuring employee attitudes and attributes that lead to performance analysis are also pervasive in defining human resource management strategies aimed at increasing both morale and performance (Bukowitz, Williams, Mactas, 2004). Often these metrics and more like they are integrated into a common benchmark report often called a balanced scorecard and are used for assessing strategies and their performance over time.

2. How have the fields of psychology and sociology contributed to our understanding of organizational behavior? Explain with suitable illustrations

There is direct relevance to organizational behavior of psychology and sociology across several different dimensions. First, there is the use of psychology in defining how organizational behavior is perceived across cultures and nations. The work of Dr. Geert Hofstede on Cultural Dimensions for examples show how critical the area of psychology is on international organizational behavior, in addition to managing intercultural differences on the dimensions he defined in his model (Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, Sanders, 1990). There is also the need for psychology to contribute to the role of organizational behavior in overcoming resistance to change. The fact that the majority of enterprise-wide software and IT related projects fail due to resistance to change is a testament to how powerful these forces can be in any organizational culture. Psychology plays a role in defining how companies can device change management strategies that overcome massive strategic direction shifts, as IBM and Microsoft were both forced to do as the Internet threatened to rapidly make them obsolete over time.