Management in a Foreign Country



Management in a Foreign Country

Business Practices and Labor Issues in South Africa

The organizations in South Africa follow a hierarchy system example; department head, assistant head, team leaders, vice team leaders, team coordinators and team members. This way each employees know who they will report to and who to go when there is a problem. A tall organizational structure is followed by the South African business organization which is usually more centralized, standardized, formalized and has more layers of management. The management style used in the South African organizations is autocratic management style. An autocratic management styles means that the managers will make decisions on unilateral basis and without much consent of the team members or cub-ordinates (Bjerke, 2001). As a consequence, the decisions taken under this management style projects the personality, perception and opinion of the manager, this in turn reflects a confident and well-managed business image. In other words, the sub-ordinates become dependent on the managers and supervisors. There are two different types of autocratic management styles: directive autocrat who makes decisions independently and closely observes his or her subordinates; and the permissive autocrat who makes decisions independently but provides freedom to their subordinates in the way carrying out their work. The autocratic is the head that delights in giving orders and decisions are imposed without consulting the group actions. They do not provide information about future plans, but simply indicate that immediate action is to be taken. These people usually appears separated from his subordinates (Reuvid, 2008).

Under this heading, flow of communication is usually downwards, but the feedback is always encouraged by the managers in order to keep the morale high. This style can be highly influencing and beneficial when it increases loyalty in employees, leads towards a decrease in employee turnover, thanks to ...