17/10/2017
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
BE400-4-FY
BE400
INTRODUCTION
TO MANAGEMENT
AND MARKETING
Lecture 2. Managing
Sensemaking
Dr Simon Carmel
Essex Business School
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Lecture Structure
Organizing and Managing
•
What do managers do?
Organizations
•
•
•
•
Characteristics
Repositories of rules
Identity, change and stasis
Professional institutions
Sensemaking
•
•
•
Characteristics
Sources
‘Rational’ sense-making
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BUSINESS
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Ubiquitous organizations
• From cradle to grave - organizations manage us
•
•
•
•
•
Hospital
State registration of birth
Religious institutions
Educational institutions
Businesses which sell to us
Companies which employ us
• Are there differences between organizations?
•
•
E.g. by sector? (Public, private, voluntary)
(See Bromley and Meyer, Administration & Society,
2014)
• Organizations constrain and manage us
•
•
Identity versus roles, routines, reports
Surrendering autonomy
“Man is born
free, but
everywhere he
is in chains”
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, c 1762
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BUSINESS
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Framing Managing
• A frame
• Defines what is relevant
• Excludes the irrelevant
• Managing and organizations
• Managing as a practice
• Communicating, Co-ordinating, Accomplishing action
• Organizations as goal-oriented collectivities
• What managers do contributes to the achievement of the goals
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What do managers do? (i)
• Henri Fayol (1916/1949) – The Functions
of Management:
–
–
–
–
–
Planning
Organizing
Commanding
Coordinating
Controlling
• A rational (and normative) approach to
management
What do managers do? (ii)
• Henry Mintzberg (1975/1990) – What do managers do?
• Informational roles:
– Monitor
– Disseminator
– Spokesperson
• Decisional roles
–
–
–
–
Entrepreneur
Disturbance handler
Resource allocator
Negotiator
• Interpersonal roles
– Figurehead
– Leader
– Liaison
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What do managers do? (iii)
•
From Mintzberg (1978) The Nature of Managerial Work, as cited in Handy 1990, p.323-4
Chief Executive –
small company
Chief Executive –
large organisation
Number of activities per day
77
22
Number of desk work sessions
22
7
35%
22%
Proportion of time at desk
Average duration of each desk work session
6 minutes
15 minutes
Scheduled meetings – proportion of time
21%
59%
Unscheduled meetings – proportion of time
15%
10%
Proportion of activities lasting less than 9
minutes
90%
49%
100%
99%
Proportion of time spent in some kind of verbal
contact with others
What do managers do? (iv)
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BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Rhetoric and Reality
• Overwhelmingly, the skills of managers are skills related to discourse
and communication
• Rhetoric: the tools of persuasion and argumentation
• Framing organizational reality
• Appearance of rationality
•
•
Rationality: action that is produced according to some rule (not random)
To be rational is to be systematic in the application of certain techniques,
towards some goal
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BUSINESS
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Organization Characteristics
• Organizations and their actions are:
• Shaped by design (routine practices and structure)
• Not static: changes in routine practices
• Future-oriented
• Hierarchy and division of labour
• Responsibilities for actions and roles
• Revision in light of experience
• Rules
• Organisations are built on rules
• Rules provide for rationality
• Rules may be formal or informal
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BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Bureaucratic Organizations
• Bureaucratic organizations are huge repositories of rules
• “Red tape”
• Formal rules
• Professional rules
• Legal rules
• Standards
• Informal social rules
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BUSINESS
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Hierarchy and professionalised institutions
•
Institutions (formal organisations) shape the way that people behave
•
Professional values and institutional norms may be in conflict or may
reinforce one another
•
•
Enron (2001); Tesco (2014); VW (2015)
“Tesco to pay £129m fine over accounting scandal” (The Guardian, 28 March
2017)
•
Hierarchies may be usurped by professional, or other sectional (e.g.
Departmental) interests
•
The challenge for top management teams is to align interests
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BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Organisational identity, change and stasis
• Organizations both have identities and are a source of personal identity
• Organizational identity
• legal entity, corporate branding, etc.
• Business alliances blur identities
• Organizational change and stasis
• Organizations go on while members change
ESSEX
BUSINESS
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Theory and Practice in Organizations
• Theory:
• A systematic way of making sense of phenomena
• Scientific theories may lead to technological developments (e.g.
internal combustion engine)
• Social, political and economic theories can lead to understand social
and organisational reality
and how to organise it!
• Theories may be explicit or implicit
• Which has more power?
• Theories seek to make sense of Practice(s)
• Theories (implicit or explicit) frame organizational contexts
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17/10/2017
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
BE400-4-FY
INTRODUCTION
TO MANAGEMENT
AND MARKETING
Sense-making
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
To get you thinking…. (reprise)
• Discuss with a neighbour your decision to come to this
university.
• Why did you decide to apply to university?
• What are the reasons for choosing Essex and your course?
• Identify also the processes by which you made these decisions.
• Discuss with a neighbour the last two weeks (or since you first
arrived on campus)
• What are some of the new everyday practices you have learned,
negotiated, thought about, experienced?
• After discussing them, write down your answers to these
questions
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BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Sense-making (Karl Weick)
•
A common frame, a common sense, of the
organisation can be set up by a systematic
use of sense-making
•
Seven characteristics of sense-making:
• On-going
• Retrospective
• Plausible
• Images
• Rationalise
• People
• Doing
•
See Clegg et al, 2016, pp 33ff
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Why are organizations interested in Sense-making?
• Organizations have an interest in the common sense of their members
•
•
•
‘On message’
Singing from the same hymn sheet
Shared understanding
• Managers need to produce common sense
•
•
Common frames of meaning – difficult in an individualistic age
Analogy of driving
•
•
Signs and symbols: visual clues
Developing ‘know-how’
• Examples of visual cues for common sense
•
•
Uniforms (fast food restaurants, coffee shop chains, police, shop assistants,
Event Essex, etc.)
The bridge to the Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall
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ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Further aspects of sense-making
• Further aspects of sense-making in organizations: sense-making as
related to organizational stories (narrative)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Social context
Personal identity
Retrospection
Salient cues
Ongoing projects
Plausibility
Enactment
Drafting and redrafting emerging stories
Doing
ESSEX
BUSINESS
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Sources of Sense-making in organizations (i)
• Managerialism:
•
A belief in the right and knowledge of managers to be able to manage. It
occurs when a special group… claims a monopoly of decision-making power
and justifies this on the grounds of education, possession of specialised
knowledge and know-how
• In modern societies managerialism is closely related to right-wing
ideologies, and can itself said to be ideological
• Ideology
•
A coherent set of beliefs, attitudes and opinions, often related to practical
application
• Managerialism example: “New Public Management” in public sector
organisations
•
•
Targets and The Audit Society
Ranking organisations (e.g. The Times Good University Guide)
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BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Sources of Sense-making in organizations (ii)
• Capital
•
•
•
•
Financial
Human
Social
Cultural
• Management tools
•
•
•
•
Strategic Plans
Designs
Structures
Theories
• Wider society and institutions
•
•
Professional societies
Trades Unions
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Your seminar this week
Getting to know your fellow students:
•
•
A sociable class: where learning is
enjoyable
A university: a lively learning
community
Getting started on the Group Project:
•
Which theorist would you prefer to
investigate?
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ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Further reading: What do managers do?
Within the next two weeks:
• Read the article “The Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact” posted up on moodle
• Prepare answers to the following questions:
1.
According to Mintzberg what are the four myths about the manager’s job?
2.
In your opinion should management be regarded as a profession (like doctors,
lawyers, accountants)? Why? Why not?
3.
In what ways does Mintzberg’s view of managerial work differ from that of
Fayol? How do you explain the difference?
4.
This article originally appeared in 1973 (and was updated in 1990). What do you
feel are the significant changes in the job of the manager between then and now?
ESSEX
BUSINESS
SCHOOL
Personal study: this week and next
Belbin’s Team roles:
1.
Complete the DIY Team Role Inventory (posted on moodle) –
useful for group project and essential for Coursework!
Essential Reading:
2.
3.
4.
Finish reading (..3R) Clegg et al., Chapter 2
Start reading (SQ..) Clegg et al., Chapter 4 (preparation for
lecture next week)
Read Clegg et al., pages 449, 461-465 (useful for seminar this
week)
Further reading:
5.
Read and prepare answers to Mintzberg’s article “The
manager’s job – folklore and fact…”
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