Effective employment relationships within companies have been recognised to be one of the crucial conditions of succeeding in the marketplace in all industries, including events industy. Therefore, all factors affecting the level of employment relationships within organisations in direct and indirect ways need to be analysed in great detail. Moreover, companies need to promote the factors positively affecting the level of employee relationships at the same time when eliminating the factors with negative effects.

Personality can be defined as “the overall profile or combination of stable psychological attributes that capture the uniqueness nature of a person” (Hellriegel and Slocum, 2007, p.42). And “the personality of a person has a bearing on his performance and impression” (Bhatti, 2009, p.3). The nature of personality of an individual has specific impacts on people who interact with that person and the impact is even greater in manager-subordinate type of interactions.

According to Adair (2007), the personality of people working in management positions plays significant role in employee motivation, and consequently in achieving organisational aims and objectives.  The author rightly argues that managers with such personality attributes as leadership, compassion and effective communication skills are able to motivate the workforce with minimum use of tangible resources.

Likewise, managers whose personalities lack important attributes such as leadership and interpersonal skills are most likely to face challenges in terms of motivating their employees and such a scenario would adversely affect the overall work environment and productivity of the organisation.

The issue of the personality of managers has even greater implications in the context of event organisations in UK. This is because the successful organisation of special events depends on the level of motivation and enthusiasm of events participants in general, and event staff and volunteers in particular (Matthews, 2008). Moreover, such elements as creativity and originality play far greater role in successful organisations of events than many other types of businesses and only highly motivated workforce would be able to be highly creative and propose and implement original ideas regarding the various aspects of organising events.

A case study of Time Based, a UK event organisation can be mentioned as an example of the impact of personality in employee motivation, where event director Anisa Daniels was able to contribute the successes of the company through motivating employees in an effective manner through her lovable personality (The Team, 2010, online)

The personalities of individuals employed by events organisations have tremendous effect on organisational efficiency as well.  This is because organisational efficiencies or inefficiencies are caused by performances, initiatives and behaviour of employees in the first place, which primarily depend on their personalities.

Moreover, the types of personalities of managers of UK event organisations play important role in ensuring organisational efficiency. For instance, Tonge (2010) convincingly argues about the great importance of intensive level of communication with various stakeholders for the success of special events. Therefore, it can be stated that the managers of UK event organisations with extraverted personalities and excellent communication skills would be in a better position to establish communications with various stakeholders of the event organisation efficiently and thus achieve greater organisational efficiency.

 

Management and Decision-Making Styles and their Impact on the Level of Employee Motivation in UK Events Organisations

Along with the personality of managers the level of employee motivations is affected by management and decision making styles as well. Robinson (2005) divides management style into four categories: autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laisser-faire.

Autocratic management style involves the manager assuming all of the power and taking decisions single-headedly. The autocratic management system is considered to be the least effective in term of employee motivation in UK event organisations; because the role of employees is usually limited to implementing the management decisions and their opinions are usually not considered.

A democratic manager, on the other hand, “is the one who is more cuddy than hard nosed, being supportive and considerate of staff, as well as participating in many work activities of the team” (Courtis et al, 2006, p.17). The democratic management style is the most effective for motivating employees of UK event organisations because this system can generate creativity and originality, which are the most important aspects of the event industry, through including employees in decision-making process.

In a paternalistic management style decisions are taken by the manager in a dictatorial manner, however the various interests of employees are also taken into account. The impact of the paternalistic management system on the level of employee motivation in UK event organisations largely depends on the circumstances of each individual case, including the personalities of managers and employees.

The laisser-faire management style involves the minimum participation of managers in terms of leadership among the workforce, and therefore this management system does not effectively motivate the employees of UK event organisations.

The Fishing Touch, one of the leading event management companies in UK, has a democratic management style and the viewpoints of employees at al levels are taken into account in managing various aspects of the business (About US, online, 2011). Such a management style has positively contributed to the level of employee motivation within the company and the overall performance of the business has improved as a result

Decisions-making styles are also found to have a great impact on various aspects of employment relationship within UK event organisations. Decision-making styles are divided into analytic, conceptual, directive, and behavioural categories by Verma (2009).

In directive decision-making the tolerance for ambiguity is low and short-term and quick decisions are made on the basis of logical thinking. Analytical decision-making style, on the other hand, involves great level of ambiguity and big amount of data is gathered before the decision is taken.

When decisions are taken in a conceptual style all available alternatives are critically analysed and creative solutions are found to provide benefits on the long-term perspective. Behavioural decision-making style reflects great concern to other individuals as well. “Managers using this style like to talk to people on one to one and understand their feelings about the problem and the effect of a given decision on them” (Daft and Marcic, 2006, p.198).

In terms of employee motivation of UK events organisations behavioural decision-making style is considered to be the most efficient because it gives a sense of assurance to employees that their interests are taken into account when decisions are taken related to the various aspects of the business.

However, mostly the directive decision-making style is popular with UK event organisations for the following reasons. Firstly, usually there is a specific date for each event to be staged, and this fact gives a specific deadline for the decisions to be taken and therefore, most of the decisions taken by UK event organisation managers tend to be short-term.

Secondly, in event business attention to detail is significant and the managers of UK event organisations have a zero tolerance for ambiguity, and uncertainly is usually perceived as a potential for failure of the event.

Nevertheless, the directive decision-making system does not greatly contribute to the level of motivation of UK event organisation employees, because as stated above directive decisions usually have to be taken in a short period of time and this reduces the possibility of inclusion of employees in decision-making process.

 

Management and Decision Making Styles and Organisational Efficiency within Events Organisations in UK

The choice of a specific management style also greatly affects organisational efficiency along with the other important aspects of employment relationship. The autocratic management system tends to be effective in organisations where the power of the manager is challenged by staff and urgent actions need to be taken in a short period of time, however the serious disadvantages of this leadership style include short-term approach to management and a low level of employee loyalty (Oates, online, 2011).

The contribution of an autocratic management style to the organisational efficiency within events organisations in UK can be significant in occasions when the timeframe for the preparation for an even is short and the event is being managed by an experienced and competent manager. However, generally, an autocratic management style is facing increasing amount of criticism due to its serious disadvantages mentioned above.

It has to be stressed that democratic management style is the most appropriate in event management in term of obtaining organisational efficiency. Specifically, in democratic management style organisational efficiency can be generated through obtaining valuable input from employees and motivating employees to display initiatives in term of increasing the level of creativity.

The potential of the paternalistic management style in terms of increasing organisational efficiency in UK event organisations cannot be discussed in general terms because the success depends on the individual circumstances associated with each individual case such as the type of the event, competency of the manager, personalities and qualifications of the workforce etc.

The laisser-faire management style offers no or minimal contribution to the organisational efficiency within event organisations in UK, because the organisational efficiency cannot be achieved through minimal intervention of the manager in leading the workforce.

The impact of decision-making style to the organisational efficiency can be best explained in a case of UK-based events organisation Roselle Events. An effective decision-making style practiced by its CEO Jo Daley enabled the company to address difficult challenges faced by the company in an efficient manner and ensure a significant growth of profitability of the company (Case Study: Roselle Events, online 2011).

The impacts of decision-making style on the organisational efficiency in the context of UK event organisations need to be analysed as well as the last point of the current discussion. All decision making styles – analytic, conceptual, directive, and behavioural – have specific impact on the organisational efficiency depending on the type of the decision being taken, as well as other surrounding circumstances.

However, the type of the impact on UK event organisations depends on a greater extend on the quality of decisions being taken rather than the style in which the decision was taken. In other words, decisions taken in any of the above named forms can have positive, as well as, negative impacts depending on the quality of the decision.

Nevertheless, the directive decision-making style presents better potentials for creating organisational efficiency because it ensures the increased amount of factors to be taken into account avoiding ambiguity, and thus minimises the risks for the negative unforeseen circumstances that can arise during the events.

 

 Concluding Thoughts 

Today companies in all industries have to be proactive in terms of addressing employment relationship issues effectively in order to survive in a highly competitive marketplace. Some aspects of this issue have been analysed in a case of event organisations in UK within this paper.

The paper has established the impact of personality for employee motivation and organisational efficiency to be significant for event organisations in UK and this significance was found to be even greater for the personalities of people working in management positions.

Moreover, the analysis of autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laisser-faire management styles has revealed the impact of each style in terms of employee motivation and obtaining organisational efficiency. Analytic, conceptual, directive, and behavioural decision-making styles have also been analysed and they impact on employee motivation and organisational efficiency was found primarily to depend on the quality of decisions, rather than the choice of a decision-making style.

 

References

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