Bahçeşehir University
Social Science Institutions
Ph D. Business Program
Management & Organization
Organizational Theory
Prof. Dr. Atilla DİCLE
Organizations as Natural System
Prep. by: İlhan ÇİFTÇİ
28 December 2009
1
Evolution Of Management Thought
Classical Approaches
1890
1900
Systematic
management
1910
1920
Administrative
management
Scientific
management
Contemporary Approaches
Quantitative
management
Human
relations
Bureaucracy
1930
1940
Systems
theory
Organizational
behavior
1950
1960
Contingency
theory
1970
Current and
future revolutions
200
Organizations as Natural System
(Selected Schools)
 Mayo and Human
Relations School
 Selznick’s Institutional
Approach
 Parsons’s AGIL Schema
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Organizations as Natural System
Basic vs. Distinctive Characteristics
Difference from Rational Approach:
Organizations are collectivities (not existed to
rational)
Specificity and Formalization as characteristics
differentiating organizations from other types of
collectivities (rational) but shared with the social
group (natural)
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Organizations as Natural System
Basic vs. Distinctive Characteristics
Goal Comlexity:
Organizational goals and their relation to the behavior of
participants are much more problematic.
Two general themes characterize of organizational goals:
There is frequently a disparity between the stated and the “real”
goals pursued by organizations.
When the stated goals are actually being pursued, they are never
the only goals governing participants’ behavior
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Organizations as Natural System
Basic vs. Distinctive Characteristics
Two Types of Explanations have been proposed to account for
the survival instincts of organizations:
The Organizations are social systems charecterized by a
number of needs that must be satisfied if they are to survive.
Other theorists reject such assumptions as being
anthropomorphic at worst and unnecessary at best. They
suggest instead that one does have to posit a survival need for
the collectivity it self.
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Comparison
of the Natural
and the
Rational
System
Scholoars:
The main
difference
between the
two
perspective
scholars
background
Classical
(Rational)
Theorist
Natural
System
Managerial
Experince
(Pratical)
Fayol

Mooney

Urwick

Industry
Engineer
(Pratical)
Academic
Background

Taylor

Mayo
Weber

Gullick

Roethlisber
ger

Selznick

McGregor

Parsons

Bendix

Dalton

Gouldner

Dahrendorf

Barnard

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Comparison of the Natural and the
Rational System Scholoars
The rational and the natural analysts
concentrated on different types of organizations
The rational system analysts were more likely to
investigate industrial firms and state
bureaucracies, while the natural system analysts
tended to focus on service and professional
organizations-schools, hospital, and voluntary
organizations
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Comparison of the Natural and the
Rational System Scholoars
Rational system theorists
only selected aspects of behaviors of participants are
relevant to the organization.
Natural system theorists:
Such behaviors have an impact on the task behavior of
participants and hence are emprically relevant to an
understanding of organizational behavior
Organizations as social contexs affect the participants’
well being, a situation that has normative significance to
anyone concerned with bettering the human condition.
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Barnard’s Cooperative System
Barnard stressed that organizations are essentiallay
cooperative systems, integrating the contributions of
their individual participants.
Organizations rely on the willingness of participants to
make contributions.
Many ideas that are consistent with a rational system
conception of organizations what sets them apart is his
insistence on the nonmaterial, informal, interpersonel,
and, indeed moral basis of cooperation.
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Barnard’s Cooperative System
 The most critical ingredient to successful organization
is the formation of a collective purpose that becomes
morally binding on participants. Developing and
imparting a mission is the distinctive “function of the
executive.”
The necessity of survival can override the morality of
purpose.
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”Hawthorne effect”
 Between 1924 and 1932, at a factory called the Hawthorne Works, (a
Western Electric manufacturing facility outside Chicago IL, U.S.A.), a series
of experiments on factory workers were carried out.
 Hawthorne Works had commissioned a study to see if its workers would
become more productive in higher or lower levels of light. It was found that
the workers' productivity seemed to improve when changes were made
and slumped when the study was concluded. It was suggested that the
productivity gain was due to the motivational effect of the interest being
shown in them.
 However, it was then found that subjects improved their performance in
response NOT to changes in experimental manipulation in illumination of
their task area BUT simply in response to the fact that they are being
studied. In 1955, the term was coined by Henry A. Landsberger when
analyzing the experiments from 1924-1932.
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”Hawthorne effect”
 In a 2009 reassessment of the original data,
University of Chicago economists John List and Steven
Levitt found that productivity varied due to other
factors such as the weekly cycle of work or the
seasonal temperature and so the initial conclusions
were overstated and the effect was weak or illusory.
 Although illumination research of workplace lighting
formed the basis of the Hawthorne effect, other
changes such as maintaining clean work stations,
clearing floors of obstacles, and even relocating
workstations resulted in increased productivity for
short periods of time.
 In appropriate sense, the Hawthorne effect is a term
used to identify any type of short lived increase in
productivity.
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Parsons’s AGIL Schema
He developed a very
explicit model detailing
the needs that must be
met if a social system is to
survive. The model is
identified AGIL.
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Parsons’s AGIL Schema
Adaptation: The problem of acquiring sufficient resources
Goal Attainment: The problem of setting and implementing goals
Integration: The problem of maintaining solidarity or coordination
among the subunits of the system.
Latencey: The problem of creating, preserving, and transmitting the
system’s distinctive culture and values
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Parsons’s AGIL Schema
Social Function
Organizational Type
Examples
Adaptation
Organizations oriented to
economic production
Business Firms
Goal Attainment
Organizations oriented to
political goals
Goverment agencies,
other organizations that
allocate power, such as
banks
Integration
Integrative organizations
Courts and legal
profession
Political parties
Social – control agencies
Latency
Pattern – maintenance
organizations
Cultural organizations,
such as museums
Educational organizations
Religious organizations
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Selznick’s Institutional Approach
He was a student of bureaucrarcy under Merton
at Colombia but an intellectual descendant of
Michels and Bernard, developed his own unique
system model, one that has recently been
refurbished and elaborated to constitute an
influential approach to the analysis of
organizations known as institutional theory.
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Selznick’s Institutional Approach
“The important thing about the organizations is that, though
they are tools, each nevertheless has a life of its own.”
He agrees rational system except:
individuals who participate in the organization as “wholes”
rather than acting merely in terms of their formal roles
Organizational structures that include the formal aspects
but also the complex informal systems that link participants
with one another and with others external to the official
boundaries
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Selznick’s Institutional Approach
Institutionalization: The process by which an organization
“takes on a special character” and “achieves a distinctive
competence or, perhaps a trained or built – in
capacity”(Selznick 1996)
Thus institutionalization refers to a morally neutral
process: “the emergence of orderly, stable, socially
integrating patterns out of unstable, loosely organized or
narrowly technical activities” Selznick argued that teh
most significant aspect of institutionalization is the
process by which structures or activities become “infused
with value beyond the technical requirements at hand”
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Selznick’s Institutional Approach
He views organizational structure as an adaptive
organism shaped in a reaction to the
characteristics and commitments of participants
as well as to influences from the external
enviroment
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Questions and Explanations
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