OCTAPACE MODEL

PAPER: ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT

PAPER CODE: MBR3020T

SUBMITTED BY:
Gunjan Khanna (6)
Prerna Mehta (15)
Priyesha Saha (16)
Prionkur Bose (17)
Saulat Alam (33)
Tamoghna Dutta (37)
Yashvi Kumar (40)
Ushmita Saha (41)
Pratyush Gandhi (44)
Atique Ali (45)

ST. XAVIER’S UNIVERSITY

XAVIER BUSINESS SCHOOL

MBA (2018-2020)
 Introduction to the OCTAPACE Model

O • Openness

C • Confrontation

T • Trust

A • Authenticity

P • Pro-Action

A • Autonomy

C • Collaboration

E • Experimentation

Organizational Culture is the collective behavior of humans who are part of an organization and
the meanings that the people attach to their actions.

Organizational culture is composed of several characteristics that range in priority from high to
low. Every organization has a distinct value for each of these characteristics, which, when
combined, defines the organization's unique culture. Members of organizations make judgments
on the value their organization places on these characteristics and then adjust their behavior to
match this perceived set of values.Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture,
which provides guidelines and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization.
Let's explore what elements make up an organization's culture.

OCTAPACE CULTURE

OCTAPACE CULTURE includes ethics, values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, ethos, climate,
environment and culture. The eight dimensions of OCTAPACE culture are openness,
confrontation, Trust, Authenticity, pro-action, autonomy, collaboration and experimentation
which are essential for a strong and successful organization. A culture with OCTAPACE values
has the greater chance of achieving high involvement and satisfaction, team work, growth and
free flow of communication within the organization. The most important aspect of organizational
culture are the values it practices. Eight values usually examined to develop the profile of an
organizational culture that is called it octapace.
OCTAPACE was developed by Professor T V Rao. It stands for Openness, Confrontation, Trust,
Authenticity, Proaction, Autonomy, Collaboration and Experimentation. These values help in
fostering a climate of continuous development of employees in an organization. An optimal level
of these values is essential for facilitating HRD. The elements of OCTAPACE are as follows:

OCTAPACE
• Openness:
An environment where employees feel free to express their
ideas and the willingness of the organization to take risks and
to experiment with new ideas and new ways of doing things.
• Confrontation:
Employees face the problems and work jointly with others
concerned to find its solution. They face the issues squarely
without hiding them or avoiding them for fear of hurting each
other.
• Trust:
The extent to which employees individually and in groups
trust each other and can be relied upon to do whatever they
say they will do.
• Authenticity:
The willingness of a person to acknowledge the feelings
he/she has, and to accept him/her as well as others who
relate to him/her as persons.
• Proaction: Employees are action-oriented, willing to take
initiative and to show a high degree of proactivity. They
anticipate the issues and act or respond to the needs of the
future.
• Autonomy: The willingness to use power without fear, and
helping others to do the have freedom to act independently
within the boundaries imposed by their role/job.
• Collaboration: This involves working together and using one
another’s strength for a common cause. Individuals, instead
of solving their problems by themselves, share their concerns
with one another and prepare strategies, work out plans of
action and implement them together.
• Experimentation: This involves emphasis given to innovation
and trying out new ways of dealing with the problems in the
organization.

••••
 OPENNESS
Openness can be defined as a spontaneous expression of feelings and thoughts, and the sharing
of these without defensiveness. Openness is in both directions, receiving and giving. Both these
may relate to ideas (including suggestions), feedback (including criticism), and feelings. For
example, openness means receiving without reservation, and taking steps to encourage more
feedback and suggestions from customers, colleagues and others. Similarly, it means giving,
without hesitation, ideas, information, feedback, feelings, etc. Openness may also mean spatial
openness, in terms of accessibility. Installing internal E-mailing may be a step in this direction:
everyone having a computer terminal has access to information which he may retrieve at any
time. Offices without walls are another symbolic arrangement promoting openness. In some
organizations, even the chief executive does not have a separate exclusive cabin; floor space is
shared by other colleagues at different levels in the organization. This willingness to share and
this openness results in greater clarity of objectives and free interaction among people. As a
result of openness, there should be more unbiased performance feedback. Indicators of openness
in an organization will be productive meetings and improved implementation of systems and
innovations.
Organizational openness is an across organization philosophy which emphasizes transparency in
all areas and free unrestricted access to knowledge and information. It also incorporates and
promotes positive collaboration and cooperative management and decision-making with an
emphasis on learning as opposed to being right.
The main thrust of an open organization is free access to content and information. This means
that the managers and leaders need to be aligned with the philosophy as organizational openness
applies to all decisions and the reasons for those decisions.

How to deal with Openness?

There are different strategies to implement a greater degree of openness, efficiently use social
technologies and deal with the opportunities and challenges of being an open organization.

The first step to deal with openness is an analysis of individuals involved, the main pillar of an
open organization is the technological literacy and mentality of the organization’s stakeholders.
Even in very small organizations colleagues might have different perspectives on openness and
different attitudes when it comes to using social technology at work. Some would love to
participate in public discussion and to spend a lot of time in using new communication
technologies. These are usually a minority. And yet they are driving the use of social
technologies and they are generally most likely to support openness.
 1. Defining the Impact

After analyzing the individuals involved, the next step in dealing with openness is to define the
organization’s objectives of introducing a greater degree of openness. In addition to the ten
elements of openness described above, which could already serve as internal objectives for an
open organization, it is very useful to look at the general impact of social technologies.

2. Formulating Objectives

Once the desired impact is identified, the organization should clearly spell out the
objectives it wants to reach with the use of social technologies. It is important to integrate
openness directly into existing organizational functions. The following list of examples
should serve as an orientation of how objectives could be described:
An important vertical objective is called listening. Is it important that the management of
an organisation is always up to date about the latest developments in certain areas? Is it
difficult for management to find this information via the traditional communication
channels of an organisation?
 An important vertical objective is called listening. Is it important that the management of
an organisation is always up to date about the latest developments in certain areas? Is it
difficult for management to find this information via the traditional communication
channels of an organisation?
 A second vertical objective is open dialogue. An open organisation does not only enable
new possibilities to spread messages. Unlike Emails, others can write comments to the
original message and start an open dialogue.
 A classical lateral objective is to enable individuals to support each other. The
organization steps back. It does not focus on its own relationship with these individuals,
but it serves as an open platform for the exchange and collaboration of others. One
example are large tech companies that publish their software code, which allows user
communities or smaller companies to develop add-on applications or products. This turns
the original software code into an indispensable environment and massively increases its
value even though its owner has given it away for free.
 Finally, a mixture between vertical and lateral objectives is to engage internal and
external individuals, e.g. employees and partners, in solving problems that are usually
solved in-house only. In comparison to the concept of outsourcing, this last objective is
also known as crowdsourcing: Outsourcing to the crowd of users.
3. Taking small steps

Another question the organisation should answer before making decisions on the use of
technology: Where should the journey lead to in the long term? What is the desired
degree of openness in three or five years from now? Managers and employees should
imagine how their working day in an open organisation might look like in five years from
now and what role social technologies should play soon.
Looking at strategic planning two more recommendations can be drawn from practical
experiences with organizations that have been striving for more openness. First, the most
important people in the organisation must fully support the philosophy of openness.
Second, the plan towards more openness should be developed step by step. The strategic
success largely depends on the level of experience of the individuals involved. These
individuals should make their first experiences with small steps, before they increase the
pace.
 CONFRONTATION
Confrontation can be defined as facing rather than shying away from problems. It also implies
deeper analysis of interpersonal problems. All this involves taking up challenges. The term
confrontation is being used with some reservation and means putting up a front as contrasted
with putting one’s back to the problem. A better term would be confrontation and exploration
(CE).
Let us use the term confrontation in this sense of confrontation and exploration, i.e. facing a
problem and working jointly with others to find a solution to the problem. The outcome of
confrontation will be better role clarity, improved problem solving, and willingness to deal with
problems and with ‘difficult’ employees and customers. There will be willingness of teams to
discuss and resolve sensitive issues. The indicators, which are also outcomes, can be improved
by periodical discussions with clients, bold action, and not postponing sticky matters.
Confrontation meeting is an activity which allows entire management group, composed of
individual from all levels of the organization to take a quick reading on its own health and within
matter of hours to set action plan for improving it.

This activity is based on

a) Experience with an action oriented method of planned change.

b) It involves the entire in a joint action-planning programme.
c) The meeting can be conducted several times with one morning and one evening session
involving only two or more hours out of usual working days.

Where is it effective?

a) Where there is a genuine commitment to solving the problems on the part of top management.
b) Top management intends to improve the conditions rapidly.
c) There is adequate cohesiveness in the top management team to ensure follow-up.

Benefits of confrontation meeting

a) Direct communication is improved

b) Morale of employees increased.
c) Better work culture.
d) Improve inter department human relationship
e) Get solutions on day-to-day problems.
Elements of confrontation meeting

a) Climate setting
b) Information collection
c) Information sharing
d) Priority setting & grouping planning.
e) Organization action plan
f) Immediate follow-up by top team
g) Progress review.

A) Climate setting

It requires one hour.

In the very beginning, the top executive communicates to the entire management group his
objectives for the meeting and his concern for and interest in open discussion and problem
facing.

B) Information collection

It requires one hour.

The entire group of employees is divided into small heterogeneous units consisting of seven to
eight participants.
If there is top management group it meets as a separate unit.
No boss and subordinates are placed together.
Each unit consists of participants from each functional area.

The assignments to these units like:

1) Yourselves as an individual with needs and goals.

2) As a person concerned about total organization.
3) What are the obstacles?
a) De-motivators
b) Poor policies & procedures
c) Unclear goals
d) Poor attitude, which exists today.

4) What different conditions if any would make the organization more effective and make life in
the organization better?
Each unit is advised to choose to reporter to present its finding at a general information sharing
to be conducted an hour later.

C) Information Sharing

Each unit's representative writes his unit's entire results on a sheet paper, which is displayed at a
meeting hall.

Meeting leader provides some major categories in which all the data from all the sheets can be
classified.

E.g. If there are 100 items, the possibility is that these can be classified into 8-9 groups involving
heading such as communication difficulties, problem with top management etc.

The data sheet is duplicated for the purpose of circulation.

D) Priority setting and group action planning

It involves one hour or more.

The entire group engages itself in a 15 min general session.

With the meeting leader the participants go through the raw data on the duplicated sheets and
assign a category number to each element of data.

People assemble in their functional natural work units in for one or more hours.
Thus HR members drawn from all level assemble in one unit, in technical another and so on.

DH presides over the unit.

Each unit is assigned three specific tasks.

•It is required to discuss the problems and issues, which influence its areas of work, and to
ascertain the priorities and early actions to which the group is willing to commit itself.

•It is required to identify the issues and problems to which the management team should give
maximum priority.

•It is required to ascertain as how to communicate the findings of the session to their
subordinates.

E) Organizational Action Plan

It requires two hours.

Total group is assembled in a general session.

Each functional unit reports its commitments and plans to the total group.
Reports and enlists the items which its members believe the management team should deal with
first.

Top management is required to react to this list and make commitments for action where needed.

Each unit is required to share briefly its plan for communicating the results of confrontation
meeting to all subordinates.

F) Immediate follow-up

Requires 1-3 hours.

Top management team is required to meet immediately after the completion of the confrontation
meeting to plan first a set of follow up action which is to be reported ultimately back to the total
management group within a few days.

G) Progress Review

After specific intervals progress review of confrontation meeting is to be taken by top

management team.

Confrontation Meeting Provides

1) The top management with accurate information regarding an organization health and the
opportunity to make suitable action decision based upon proper information from the
organization.

2) The units with the opportunity to establish priorities for improvement, an increased
involvement in the organization objectives as well as a real commitment to action.

3) A basis for ascertaining other mechanisms for communication between levels and group,
proper direction of decision, problem solving within sub-units as well as the tool for upward
influence.
 TRUST
Trust is not used in the moral sense. It is reflected in maintaining the confidentiality of
information shared by others, and in not misusing it. It is also reflected in a sense of assurance
that others will help, when such help is needed and will honor mutual commitments and
obligations. Trust is also reflected in accepting what another person says at face value, and not
searching for ulterior motives. Trust is an extremely important ingredient in the institution
building processes.
The outcome of trust includes higher empathy, timely support, reduced stress, and -reduction and
simplification of forms and procedures. Such simplification is an indicator of trust and of
reduced paper work, effective delegation and higher productivity.
The outcome of trust in an organization is empathy improved timely support, reduced stress
levels, reductions and simplifications of the procedures and processes of the organization. Since
the traditional process needs to be augmented with new thinking, managing turbulent business
times requires navigating conflicting goals, new complexities require leaders to make a critical
shift, hence it is extremely important not only for individuals and teams but also for the total
organizational system to build and keep up the trust during such turbulence. The opposing goals
has always been a tradition – be it growth vs profit, centralization vs decentralization, short term
vs long term or work vs life balance, opposing goals has not only existed in the organization but
also in life in general – black vs white, slow vs steady, poor vs rich etc. It is very crucial to trust
the changes both on the individual’s part as well as on the organization. This is where the
concept of either – or is replaced by both – and. This is a new way of seeing and managing the
dynamic tensions in a complex world. This is where the sense of regard, faith, confidence and
assurance for one another plays the vital role. Unless the individuals in the organization build a
support system to combat and accept the change in the traditional system, it would become
increasingly difficult for the organization to deal with the turbulence and changing needs over
time. Thus, TRUST, as a part of the OCTAPACE MODEL is extremely crucial and important to
not only accept the change but also adjust with the new procedures and processes that may
change according to the changes in the corporate world.
 AUTHENTICITY
Authenticity is the congruence between what one feels, says and does. It is reflected in owning
up one’s mistakes, and in unreserved sharing of feelings. Authenticity is closer to openness. The
outcome of authenticity in an organization is reduced distortion in communication. This can be
seen in the correspondence between members in an organization.
It is the willingness to use power without fear and helping others to do the same. Employees
have some freedom to act independently within the boundaries imposed by their role or job. Each
employee is given a certain job which is associated with some specific roles and responsibilities,
a certain amount of power and authority is enjoyed by them. It is important to exercise such a
power in a right way.

If we relate to the given case, two polarities can arise from two different groups of people, say
regarding a single problem. This happens when there are major differences among their job roles
and the extent of power and authority that they have. However, having higher authority does not
mean forcing your perspective on the ones having less authority. With high authority comes high
responsibility and accountability. Each one with a certain level of authority has to be accountable
to every employee along the whole hierarchy for the powers exercised by him. Haste in decision
making without bringing a balance between two polarities will cause discontent and
dissatisfaction among groups and individuals. So, in order to balance contradicting and
conflicting goals in an organization, it is important to use the given autonomy in the right manner
and help all others so that they can do the same. Freedom is to be used responsibly for the benefit
of the entire workforce and the organization.
 PRO ACTION
Pro action means taking the initiative, preplanning and taking preventive action, and calculating
the payoffs of an alternative course before taking action. The pro action can be contrasted with
the term react. In the latter, action is in response to an act from some source, while in the former
the action is taken independent of the source. For example, if a person shouts back at his friend’s
accusation, he shows reactive behavior. However, if he does not use this pattern but responds
calmly and suggests that they discuss the problem together, he is showing proactive behavior.
Pro activity gives initiative’ to the person to start a new process or set a new pattern of behavior.
Pro activity involves unusual behavior. In this sense pro activity means freeing oneself from and
acting beyond immediate concerns. A person showing pro activity functions at all the three
levels of feeling, thinking and action.
 AUTONOMY
Autonomy is using and giving freedom to plan and act in one’s own sphere. It means respecting
and encouraging individual and role autonomy. It develops mutual respect and is likely to result
in willingness to take on responsibility, individual initiative, better succession planning. The
main indicator of autonomy is effective delegation in organization and reduction in references
made to senior people for approval of planned actions.
Authenticity is the congruence between what one feels and says. It is the value underlying trust.
Authenticity is reflected in the narrowest gap between the stated vales and the actual behaviour.
This value is important for the development of a culture of mutuality.

Sharing of feelings freely to improve interpersonal communication and reduced distortion in

communication. It is an important and critical aspect of teamwork environment. Authentic
behaviour involves one’s own and others acting in harmony with their values, preferences and
needs. If a manager and his employees have established highly authentic communication
opportunity ability, they are able to be building a positive teamwork environment, which in the
long run is reflected in owing up of mistakes, improves interpersonal communication and
reduces distortion in communication enhancing job satisfaction.

Authenticity among employee leads to optimism and enthusiasm with employee’s experience
while working in the organization. Therefore, there is a link between impacts of authenticity and
job satisfaction. Employee engagement can become significant, but there surely will be a
positive impact in the organizational culture.
 COLLABORATION
Collaboration is giving help to, and asking for help from, others. It means working together
(individuals and groups) to solve problems and team spirit. The outcome of collaboration
includes timely help, team work, sharing of experiences, improved communication and improved
resource sharing. The indication could be productivity reports, more meetings, and involvement
of staff, more joint decisions, better resource utilization and higher quality of meetings.
Collaboration involves working together and using one another’s strength for a common cause.
Individuals, instead of solving their problems by themselves, share their concerns with one
another and prepare strategies, work out plans of action, and implement them together.
Collaboration is nothing but team work which is essential in every sphere of organizational
culture, behavior, development and well-being.

Collaboration is very relevant and appropriate in the given case. During most of the times, there
are differences of opinion and polarities in thinking and behavior among employees. However, if
there is collaboration and team work within employees, they will share their views and take into
consideration the other perspectives. They would indulge in healthy debates and discussions and
work together for joint decision making. Collaboration of two polarities would bring out the best
of both the viewpoints. Even if both the polarities have faults, two negatives are bound to make a
positive. The positive elements of both the conflicting goals will become the essence of the joint
balanced decision. It is the role of manager to boost team spirit and encourage team work in all
situations.
 EXPERIMENTING
Experimenting means using and encouraging innovative approaches to solve problems; using
feedback for improving, taking a fresh look at things, and encouraging creativity. We are so
caught up with our daily tasks that we often only use traditional, tried and tested ways of dealing
with problems.
While these methods save time and energy, they also blind us from perceiving the advantage of
new ways of solving a problem. The more we work under pressure, the less is our inclination to
try a different approach as the risk seems to be too high. And yet, complex problems require new
approaches to their solutions. Organizational learning does not imply repetitive action; it implies
applying experience to current problems to reach beyond. This can be called creativity. Other
terms such as innovations, experiments, new approaches, etc. also convey the same meaning.
There are several aspects of creativity in an organization. Creativity is reflected in new
suggestions generated by employees, attempts at improving upon previous ways of working,
trying out a new idea to which one has been exposed, innovating new methods, and thinking
about a problem while ignoring so called constraints. The last one is also called lateral thinking,
i.e. thinking aimed at generating alternatives. There is enough evidence that such thinking
contributes towards the development of new products, new methods and new processes.
Managers in today’s world need to involve and encourage its subordinates to come up with
innovative approaches to solve different types of problems coming in day to day working in an
organization. In order to become a successful manager, the traditional problem-solving process
needs to get augmented with new thinking as the business world is getting more volatile,
uncertain and complex. Many a times opposing goals can possibly arise in an organisation
because of the todays volatile, complex nature of the market and so in order to overcome these a
manager should decide and choose among all the options which one will be the best-fit through
which the problem can be solved in the most efficient way. Experiments is the best way across
all sectors through which managers can learn to experiment which would help them to decide
what elements of HRS should be introduced in what sequences in the organization.
 CONCLUSION
In the given article, Sujaya Banerjee gives us an insight into today’s organizational complexities.
As long as organizations continue to use work teams, conflict cannot be avoided since it is an
inevitable aspect of work teams. Conflict is an outcome of behaviors. It is an integral part of
human life. Whenever there is interaction there is conflict. Conflict means expression of
hostility, negative attitudes, antagonism, aggression, rivalry, and misunderstanding. It is also
associated with situations that involve contradictory interest between two opposing groups. It can
be defined as a disagreement between two or more individuals or groups with each individual or
group trying to gain acceptance of its view over others.

Goal alignment plays a key role in effective goal management. Every employee's role and every
employee goal should be tied to the organization's overall strategy, not just to their manager's
success. That way you can rationalize conflicting priorities, based on a higher-level common
goal. Without alignment, everyone is managing their own personal goals in a discrete way.
While an individual may be successful in meeting all their personal goals, their work may not in
fact contribute to the success of the organization overall; it might even work against it. Goal
alignment helps to ensure that everyone's individual contributions move the organization forward
in the right direction.

Different actions and decisions may have different consequences in different settings. The
contingency anchor requires an awareness that no single solution will work in every situation and
that organizational solutions to problems need to take the specifics of a given situation into
account. There is a need to evaluate specific situations and select a solution that fits the situation
to which it is to be applied.

The eight dimensions of OCTAPACE culture are openness, confrontation, Trust, Authenticity,
pro-action, autonomy, collaboration and experimentation which are essential for a strong and
successful organization. A culture with OCTAPACE values has the greater chance of achieving
high involvement and satisfaction, team work, growth and free flow of communication within
the organization the most important aspect of organizational culture are the values it practices.

Dealing with human beings is a sensitive area for any organization to handle. No matter what
innovations are made and what opportunities are provided there are likely to be frustration.
People tend to feel frustrated when they are not consulted in matters in which they have enough
knowledge and information. Design matters in which they have enough knowledge and
information. Design of HRS or any of its subsystems must give adequate weightage to the ideas
and existing resources of people. It should attempt maximum participation or representation.

Any HRS should aim at the development and multiplication of Human Resources. Every human
being has certain capacities and potential to do certain things. Human beings are not very often
aware of their own strengths. It requires another human being to point out one's own strengths.
HRS should provide enough opportunity for each individual to become aware of his potential
and thus make maximum possible contribution in his various organizational roles. It is certainly
not possible for any organization to provide scope for complete exploration of individuals' talents
and potential. However, HRS should offer maximum opportunity through appraisals, feedback,
counselling and experimentation in various roles.

We would like to conclude with the quote:

“Culture is the soul of the organization — the beliefs and values, and how they are manifested. I
think of the structure as the skeleton, and as the flesh and blood. And culture is the soul that
holds the thing together and gives it life force.”

Henry Mintzberg