Essay: Managing Human Behavior in the Organization – AT&T Inc.

Executive Summary
Dating back to Bell Telephone Company in the late 19th century, AT&T Inc. transformed itself from a company that focused on landlines to a multinational conglomerate that penetrate almost every aspect that relates to telecommunication.1 Now with its headquarter in downtown Dallas, Taxes, AT&T Inc. is the second largest telephone provider in the United States with services such as U-verse internet and AT&T Inc. entertainment.2 The company has a complicated and multi-layer corporate structure with both a divisional and a functional organizational structure. Despite AT&T’s success, being such an enormous conglomerate, human relation issues consequently arise. We found that the company has been constantly innovating and improving its products constantly. However, criticism and controversies regarding AT&T Inc.’s handling of human relation never stopped since the division was created. The company faces challenges such as employees’ motivation, international management relations and decisions, and organizational culture.
Introduction
The AT&T Inc. is the largest multinational telecommunications provider of wireline voice communication services mainly in the U.S. It is a world leader in communications, media and entertainment, and technology. The company was founded in October 5th, 1983 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The current iteration of AT&T Inc. began its existence as Southwestern Bell Corporation. Moreover, AT&T has powerful network resources, including the nation’s fastest mobile broadband network. Moreover, it is also one of the top suppliers of mobile, wi-fi, digital TV, high-speed Internet and voice services.
When we were researching for our target company, we found that AT&T has encountered many issues across different business sectors, one of the problem relates to its human resource. According to Indeed, which is an American worldwide employment-related search engine for job listings, one of their employee said that At&t has an extremely unprofessional environment. Their management support unethical business practices.
Moreover, we also saw customer’s review on Indeed. In this customer review, we found that this lady has encountered one of the most serious consumers can experienced, the billing issue. So, she contacted the customer service in order to solve her problem, yet her situation got even more complicated after.  After connecting multiple times, each customer representative had a different story and solution for her. This does not only complicate the whole situation which makes her more confused, this also raises the concerns that At&t does not have a consistent business practice. This has proven that At&t customer service lacks a good managerial governance oversight, and the company lacks effective internal communication.
The objective of the paper is to analyze three scopes of managerial issues of AT&T and provide recommendations on how the company can improve in these areas:
1.     Employees’ motivation
2.     International Management relations and decision
3.     Organizational Culture
Motivation: Being the world’s largest telecommunications company is not easy, especially having to manage more than 250,000 employees around the world.  AT&T has spent millions on employee education and professional development programs, but to motivate them to realize their fullest potentials is still a very much challenging task even to AT&T.
Internal management relations and decisions: The multiple layers of management structure are not likely to simplify the work decisions and the vast range of social aspects relational issues. Management teams’ decision could affect business functions and processes in organizations across a range of industries. With many factors affecting the future of business, where should leaders focus? What should they prioritize?
Organization culture engagement: Changing the culture of the company to be more innovative, adaptive, and resilient is not easy. It takes leadership and cultural transformation.  AT&T is struggling with employee engagement, the collective morale of employees is low and they have a hard time on engaging their action into the company cultures. How the company can lead and inspire them into organization culture have become the main problem.
Focal Theories and Related Problems
According to Glassdoor, AT&T receives a 3.4 out of 5 overall rating from its employees; 60% would recommend working at AT&T to a friend, 66% approve of the CEO, and 49% share a positive business outlook. In addition, the compensation and benefits of AT&T only got 3.8 out of 5 from its employees.3 Most comments mentioned about that AT&T sales are suffering from high stress and less compensation.
Based on the research, although AT&T is one of the world’s largest telecommunications company, it seems their employee treatment is not good. On May 19th, 2017, tens of thousands AT&T workers went on strike, including 400 people in San Francisco Workers. From that Friday to Sunday, hundreds of people gathered in front of the AT&T flagship retail store located on 1 Powell St., in San Francisco. And about 40 people made a protest outside the administrative office.4 They vowed to fight against AT&T with two main points: Increase sales commission and health/welfare benefits.
This case shows how ineffectively the management of AT&T is at motivating their employees. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there are five levels of employee needs, ranging from physiological on the bottom, to self-actualization on the top of the hierarchy.  Based on the information found in the article, we know that the workers are demanding for higher sales commission and health/welfare benefits. This aligns with Maslow’s theory because the workers are demanding for physiological needs and sense of safety in the strike.  Those are the two bottom needs in the hierarchy that need to be addressed first before they are advancing to self-esteem and self-actualization. With that being said, it is fair to say that the AT&T management has failed as a governing body to provide basic needs for its employees, and the resulted strike has caused the company a lot more money than to provide those basic needs for its workers.
Recommendation Theory: Frederick Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
Herzberg stated that remedying the causes of dissatisfaction will not create satisfaction. Nor will adding the factors of job satisfaction eliminate job dissatisfaction, as illustrated in figure 2. The factors related to dissatisfaction levels are the hygiene factors, which are extrinsic.5 He suggested that in order to motivate people, an organization should focus on the intrinsically rewarding factors such as achievement, recognition, rewarding work, responsibility, advancement and growth. Based on the case above, we discovered that inner satisfaction will eventually result in a more efficient production process.
Managing style
There are many managing styles as well as managers, but only one characteristic that sets apart one from the rest.  The concept of “discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it” most times differentiates one from the rest of the managers. Managers need to plan and coordinate their movements, certainly, but they all move at the same pace, on parallel paths. Great managers know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.
According to research, in AT&T there are cases on rotating series of bad managers. On corporate level, they had a policy of changing and rotating managers around places every six to twelve months, which leaves a loss of instability to the coworkers and employees. As well as the sales goals were set by people from different levels, or levels above the frontline representatives in the stores, which that sales representatives were constantly required to sell services and products no one wanted and aggressively reprimanded when they inevitably fell short.6
Recommendation Theory: Path-Goal Theory
The superior and the team leader is supposed to be supportive, communicate and help the workers to achieve their performance goals at work instead of acting passive aggressively, as they did in this case.7 There are two main concepts involved: setting goals and improve the path to the goal to ensure the goal is achieved. Setting realistic goal is the subject of successful performance, which can be used to measure the performance standard of individuals and groups. Group members need to feel that their goals are valuable and they can achieve that goal under existing resources and leadership. If there is no common goal, different members will go in different directions.
Management should help staffs on resources, budgets, and other factors that help to complete the task, eliminate hazardous to employee performance environmental restrictions, showed a positive impact, performance and efforts for the effective and timely recognition: the second is the psychological support, leaders must stimulate staff willing to work.
According to the path-goal theory, the extent to which a management’s behavior is accepted by a subordinate depends on whether the subordinate perceives such behavior as an immediate source of satisfaction or as a means of obtaining gratification in the future. Leader behavior incentive effect, that satisfies the needs of the subordinates and associated with effective job performance, and provide the necessary for effective job performance counseling, guidance, support and reward.
Business Culture
Another case related to AT&T’s business culture. At AT&T, sales are told to not only retain existing customers after their promotions expire, but to also sell more to these people. The high pressure and high target created a culture of reps promising promos, but not adding them. Or telling the customer they are disconnecting the service, but just not doing it.8 The employees are becoming sleazes and liars, creating a culture vulnerable to corruption. And because of the strict sales target and cold management, it’s hard for sales representatives to be ethical and not making any mistakes. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy theory, the second top level is the needs pertain to esteem. This deals with the emotional fulfillment of the individual: self-esteem, the respect of others, confidence in his abilities, and a sense of achievement. The level below esteem needs is the social needs. The social needs in Maslow’s hierarchy include such things as love, work relations with co-workers, and belonging.9 Maslow believed that these needs play a major role in motivating behavior. When it comes to poor self- confidence and lack of sense of achievement, sometimes employees often try to fake the account numbers to make them look nice on paper. When it comes to lack of cares and harsh work requirements, employees tend to have high turnover intention. Each level of Maslow’s hierarchy needs to be full filled in order to go to the next higher level. If one is not doing good in the esteem needs and social needs levels, he or she will not be able to achieve their final goals.
Recommendation
Provide high level of job engagement and participation
Employees has the desire to participate in management, creating and providing all opportunities for employees to participate in management is an effective way to mobilize their enthusiasm.
Through participation, employees’ sense of belonging and identity of the enterprise can further meet the needs of self-esteem and self-realization.
In order to give full play to the enthusiasm of employees, AT&T should consider how to make the work more intrinsic and challenging, and give employees a sense of self-realization. Instead of unrealistic sales goals and creating high stress environment.
This requires AT&T to design their work to enrich and enlarge their work content. The managers should let employees feel five senses: first is to allow employees to feel that they are important and meaningful in their work. The second is to let employees feel that the boss has been paying attention to him; Third, let the staff feel that his position is the best use of his talents; The fourth is to allow employees to feel that they have feedback on everything they do; The fifth is to enable employees to feel the integrity of the work.
Apply correct managing style to manage employees and increase productivity.
AT&T often used wrong managing style, the company should apply different style with different situation. AT&T should implement the imperative leadership style only to those employees who lack the ability to work but willing to work. For example, new employees are enthusiastic but inexperienced. Managers should use imperative leadership styles to help employees identify problems, provide clear responsibilities and target positions, develop action plans, and track feedback in time.
In addition to selecting leadership styles based on employee types, AT&T needs to understand the common characteristics of the leadership styles. Whatever leadership style the company use, managers should set clear goals, observe and track employee performance, and give feedback in the process of performance tracking. When setting goals, managers can listen to employees’ opinions and involve them in setting goals. At the same time, in the process of performance tracking, managers should give feedback timely. Unlike the first two, the feedback in the tracking process, no matter what type of employee the managers need to be sufficient, so that all types of employees can be improved.
Building corporate values and enhance corporate culture.
The impact of enterprise culture to enterprise, communicate important one is to promote the fusion, employees a minor misconduct could damage the image of the enterprise as a whole, which requires the enterprise culture and enterprise system integration.
Only when the corporate culture and management system are coordinated and complemented and integrated, can the external tree brand image and internal coordination and coordination be realized, so as to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises.
Corporate values can be shaped from two aspects: leaders and employees.
In the aspect of leaders, one is that the enterprise leaders must make their employees actively support and participate in the construction of corporate culture through their own advocacy and demonstration, and create a unique corporate culture.
Awareness, 2 it is to cultivate staff’s enterprise employees’ understanding and knowledge to our enterprise values, including the understanding of the nature and characteristics of enterprise, to the enterprise survival and development, the rise and fall of the sense of responsibility, etc.
Third, we should strive to create a good internal environment for enterprises, and optimize their environment, cooperation environment and competitive environment.
Create an atmosphere of knowledge sharing and harmony among employees;
To provide training opportunities for employees, to train them to be good employees who believe in the core values of the enterprise and have excellent performance in the actual work;
Establish a reward system consistent with the core values of the enterprise and implement it strictly.
Conclusion
As our society and organizations start to recognize employees as individuals rather than to objectify them as assets, the focus on self-satisfaction and culture become preeminent. The problems related to motivation, internal management, and business culture that AT&T Inc. possesses represent the universal struggles of big organizations. With harsh and cruel management styles, employees scramble to express their opinions upward and often slack on their work. In order to work for a company that achieves high sales goals, employees often experience low self-esteem, inner satisfaction, and sense of belonging. Therefore, our team urges to use Herzberg Dual Factor, Path-Goal Theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy theories to improve AT&T’s employee motivation, organization management, and company culture.  High levels of employee engagement foster customer loyalty and improve organizational performance and stakeholder value. Self-realized employees will equate improved productivity and better working environment. Helping employees feel rewarded, recognized, and appreciated is the key to become a successful manage and for them to manage human behaviors.