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Management 710 Summer 2000 Syllabus
Dr. P. Michael McCullough
Office: 214 Jones Hall, Lambuth University
Phone: 901 425 3316
Fax: 901 425 3319
Email: mccullou@lambuth.edu or tangamc@aol.com
Texts:
W.S. Scott, (1998). Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems, 4 th ed. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of Organizations, 2 nd ed. Sage Publishing: Thousand Oaks, CA.
Readings:
Barrett, W.E. (1943). Senor Payroll. Southwest Review, 29, 25-29.
Ludema, J.D., Wilmot, T.B. & Srivatsva, S. (1997). Organizational hope: Reaffirming the constructive task of social and organizational inquiry. Human
Relations, 50, 1015-1052.
O’Connor, E.S. (1997). Discourse at our disposal: Stories in and around the garbage can. Management Communications Quarterly, 10, 395-432. [Appendices]
Rosenhan, D.L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 250-258.
Roy, D.F. (1959-60). Banana Time. Human Organization, 18(4), 151-168.
Calendar
Date
July 3
July 5
July 10
July 12
July 17
July 19
July 24
July 26
July 31
Aug 2
Night
Monday
Wednesday
Monday
Wednesday
Monday
Wednesday
Monday
Wednesday
Monday
Wednesday
Topic
Course introduction
Perspective
Paradigms
Culture
Politics and power
Pathologies
Complexity and Chaos
Effectiveness and Sharing
Sharing
Sharing
Reading Due
Chs 1-3 Scott, Chs 1-3 Morgan
Chs 4,5 Scott, Ch 4 Morgan
Ch 5 Morgan, Ludema, Roy
Ch 11 Scott, Ch 6 Morgan, O’Connor, Barrett
Ch 12 Scott, Morgan 7, 9; Rosenhan
Ch 9 & 10 Scott; Morgan 8
Ch 13 Scott
Notebooks due
Course Objectives
This course introduces the following concepts and challenges the student to understand their place in the profession of
organizational management.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
Theories of structure and design
Bureaucracy
Systems theory
Theories of behavior
How structure and behavior relate
Organizations and individuals
Motivation
Leadership
Organizational culture
Organizational learning
Diversity
Globalization
Gender issues
Organizations among other organizations
Environments
Effectiveness and efficiency
Communication
Informal versus formal organization
Hierarchical versus flat structures
Organizations and society
2
Grading
Take home midterm questions
Leading of discussion…participation in discussions led by others
Musings
10%
Extensions
5%
Question answers
20%
Questions asked
5%
Movie reflections
10%
Journal Total
Final Exam
20%
10%
50%
20%
Grades 90–100 A
80-89 B
70-79 C
60-69 D
Below 60 F
Journal
Musings from work and life
Write journal entries on the work you do, episodes from your work, relationships at work, projects around the house,
volunteer activities, the relationship between life at work and life away from work, your career aspirations, how your work
affects your relationships with others, how your work life is “turning out”, fitting this class in among the other things in your
life. Reflect meaningfully, humorously if you like, but be cautious to come back to important matters. Write in prose, poetry
or even draw pictures. Concern yourself less with structure than with a search for new personal meanings.
This section of the journal will be graded on:
Variety
20 points
OT-B Relevance 20 points
Insight
20 points
Creativity
20 points
Emotion
20 points
Extensions of class discussion
Write class-based journal entries on: that which is clearly relevant to your experience, how and why; that which
contradicts or challenges a notion you previously held to be true, how and why; something intriguing to you, a classmate or the
instructor said in class, why it intrigued you and what you would like to say as elaboration on the subject.
Richness
25 points
Originality
25 points
Level of thought 25 points
Elegance
25 points
Answer to questions on readings. Your notes will be judged using these criteria:
Coverage
Associations
Relevance
Examples
25 points
25 points
25 points
25 points
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Scott Chapter 1
1.
Consider the views of the purposes and effects of organizing, starting with C. Wright Mills on page four dealing with
the “power elite”, Norman Mailer’s view of how organizing alters our very existence on page five, the elaboration on
McLuhan’s statement regarding media (and how that applies to organizations) on page six, Coleman’s notions of
natural persons and collective or juristic persons on page seven, Homans’ ideas of rational effects of organizing on
page seven. Bear these ideas in mind for later when you are given Weick’s thesis for why organizations exist on
pages 97-99 in Chapter four. Discuss the purposes and effects organizing from each of these perspectives. (You may
add other perspectives you believe to be relevant, as well.)
2.
What are the basic differences among rational, natural and open systems definitions of organizations? In what ways
are they similar? Merge the definitions to articulate a new one.
Scott Chapter 2
1.
What contributions to organizational rationality do goals and formalization make?
2.
Compare and contrast Scott’s treatment of Taylor to that of Morgan.
3.
Evaluate to find the “best” of Taylor’s, Fayol’s, Weber’s and Simon’s perspectives. Discuss what makes each point of
view to some extent, “incomplete”.
Scott Chapter 3
1.
Assess the differences between a rational system perspective and a natural system perspective on the matters of goals
and formalization.
2.
What is functional analysis and what does it have to do with a natural systems perspective of organizations?
3.
What are the significant contributions of Mayo, Barnard, Selznick, Parsons and Marx, to the natural systems
perspective?
Scott Chapter 4
1.
How is Boulding’s (1956) work a precursor of Morgan’s book? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Boulding’s
typology?
2.
What does it mean to refer to organizations as open systems? What assumptions underly the view that organizations
as open systems?
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3.
How does the notion of “uncertainty” permeate the view of organizations as open systems?
Scott Chapter 5
1.
Compare and contrast the theoretical syntheses offered by Etzioni, Lawrence and Lorsch and Thompson.
2.
Fill in Table 5.1 (page 107) by elaborating on each of its 17 components.
3.
What has been the source of contention among theorists with respect to model development?
Scott Chapter 6
1.
Define these terms: (1) organization set, (2) organization domain, (3) organizational population, (4)
interorganizational community, (5) types of organizational environments, (6) types of organizational contexts and (7)
organization fields.
2.
Revisit the notions of certainty and uncertainty in the context of organizational evolution.
3.
What light does Morgan’s Chapter 3 shed on the issues in Scott’s Chapter 6?
Scott Chapter 7
[Omitted]
Scott Chapter 8
[Omitted]
Scott Chapter 9
1.
What is technology and on what dimensions can it be measured or evaluated? Why are these the interesting
dimensions?
2.
What have rational systems theorists said about the relationship between technology and organizational structure with
respect to basic coordination, information reduction, and capacity maximization? Overview the empirical evidence
from this perspective.
3.
What have natural systems theorists said about the relationship between technology and organizational structure with
respect to the shaping of technology, strategic connections between the two, and the role of the informal organization?
Discuss briefly why the term structure has come to be considered inadequate.
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4.
What are some key issues with respect to the relationship between technology and structure in professional
organizations?
Scott Chapter 10
1.
Discuss the relationship between organizational size and administrative size, formalization and centralization. How
does competence factor into this relationship?
2.
Discuss some structural reactions to environmental realities.
3.
What are macro structural adaptations? When and why are they used?
4.
What are core and peripheral structures? What are some strategies for connecting the core and peripheral structures?
Scott Chapter 11
1.
Discuss organizational goals in terms of the goal conceptualization problem and the development and impact of
dominant coalitions.
2.
Write an essay that integrates the notions of power, culture and organizational learning.
3.
What connections can you see between Morgan’s Chapters 5 & 6 and Scott’s Chapter 11?
Scott Chapter 12
1.
Discuss Morgan’s Chapters 7 & 9 as it relates to Scott’s Chapter 12, in terms of convergence and divergence.
2.
List and discuss some problems organizations can give participants.
3.
List and discuss some problems organizations can cause for their “publics”.
Scott Chapter 13
1.
How has organizational effectiveness been defined?
2.
What are some issues that must be considered when measuring effectiveness?
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3.
Glean some insight from Morgan’s book on the subject of organizational effectiveness as discussed by Scott?
Morgan Chapter 2
1.
Recall the folk legend of John Henry. The story goes that he was a physical railroad worker who staged a contest
against a spike-driving machine. John Henry and his mighty hammer beat the machine, but he died of exhaustion as a result.
Do you see any sort of allegorical connections between the story of John Henry and Chapter Two of Morgan?
2.
Frederick Taylor tells the story, in an article you are not reading for this class, of how to train a man to be a better coal
shovelor. He searched Bethlehem Steel for the best shovelor. He then took him to the side and studied his motions. Then he
experimented with this guy named Jim, by having him use different sized shovels for tiny pea-sized coal, all the way up to
large chunks of coal. Taylor found that if Jim was lifting the same weight each time he took the shovel across his body to
dump its contents, he would last longer, work more consistently and ultimately have a bigger pile of coal to show for his effort
at the end of the day. The way he accomplished this was to give Jim a short shovel for big chunks of coal, and a long shovel
for the tiny grains of coal. Fred Taylor recommended that Bethlehem Steel provide each shovelor with different sized shovels
to match the different sizes of coal they were shoveling. He also taught them the motions of the very best shovelor, Jim. Their
productivity rose dramatically. Here are the questions. How does this story relate to the machine metaphor brought up by
Gareth Morgan? Do you have any related stories from your experience?
3.
Perhaps, today, we are not as often required to work like machines in a physical sense, but in what ways are we
constrained to work like machines? What are these machines?
4.
Someone has said that the essence of production (of goods or services) is a two-step process, namely, innovation and
repetition. How has this help to perpetuate the machine-like nature of work?
5.
What are the implications of a manager thinking of people as machines rather than as human beings? Also, what are
the implications of us thinking of ourselves as machines as opposed to human beings? What evidence have you seen
that this mentality still exists? Is there any good in application of the machine metaphor? If so, what is it? Does the
good outweigh the bad?
6.
Of what value is this exercise of considering organizational life as compared to something else, that Gareth Morgan is
asking us to do? When you look around at various organizations of which you are aware, are you able to see
analogues across situations or between an organizational context and some other context?
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Morgan Chapter 3
1.
Some people argue that Abraham Maslow's hierarchical needs theory can be interpreted too literally, and as a result
found suspect. What do you suppose this means? How should it be taken?
2.
Why is it useful to think of human beings as constantly needful, in the context of studying organizations?
3.
Is it possible to apply Maslow's theory to organizations? To societies?
4.
What are the liabilities of using such relative terms as mechanistic and organic to describe organizational
structures?
5.
Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the organization as organism metaphor.
6.
Is it possible an organization totally aligned (strategically, technologically, culturally, structurally, and
managerially) with its environment could fail?
7.
Is it possible to have a company that is too democratic, organic, self-actualizing oriented, complex in its roles, and
proactive, for its environment?
8.
What does it mean to say that the population-ecology model my be a little too deterministic?
9.
What does it mean to say that organizations and their environments are involved in cocreation, as is said by those who
espouse organizational ecology?
Morgan Chapter 4
1.
In what way is a "bottom-up processor" more highly evolved than a "top-down" one?
2.
What insight about organizations can we get from considering the mobot, Ghengis?
3.
How have computers made organizations a little more sophisticated than Ghengis?
4.
How do microprocessing and just-in-time systems alter organizational boundaries?
5.
Why is a "system of intelligence" a good name for some organizations these days?
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6.
What would you need to add, to turn a household thermostat into a double-loop learning system?
7.
How might it occur that a majority of key people in a firm can see what needs to be done to adapt the
organization to its environment, but the changes are never implemented?
8.
What are defensive routines and what do they cause?
9.
What has been the downfall of many TQM programs?
10.
In what way is intelligent leadership like walking a wire high in the air, without a net?
11.
How do the five principles of holographic design contrast to the principles of bureaucracy?
Morgan Chapter 5
1.
What is Morgan implying when he suggests (implies) that the organizational society might cause you to have more
in common with someone in Vancouver than in Trenton?
2.
Is it possible for a mission statement or expression of corporate values to have a powerful effect on life in an
organization? How?
3.
What point is Morgan making about Japanese culture (rice farmers & Samarai warriors) and corporate culture in Japan
4.
What cultural differences relevant to organizations does Morgan point out in the cases of Japan, the U.K. and the
U.S.?
5.
How important is winning and losing in our culture?
6.
Comment on the excerpt from Handy's Gods of Management.
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7.
What is the essence of what Smircich learned at an American insurance firm?
8.
Comment on the significance of the H-P culture
9.
What is your reaction to Geneen's style at ITT?
10.
Discuss the case of Roddick and the Body Shop. Do you agree that "traditional female approaches to
management" might be better suited for organizations of the future? Why or why not?
11.
What do Garfinkel, Sudnow and Weick say about the development of culture?
12.
Summarize the point of the Picasso story as told by Hampden-Turner.
13.
What is the relationship between the holographic metaphor, enactment and corporate culture
14.
List and expand on strengths of the culture metaphor.
15.
List and expand on weaknesses of the culture metaphor.
Morgan Chapter 6
1.
How is it that in many workplaces, democracy is suspended?
2.
What important point did Aristotle make about politics?
3.
What are the different modes of political rule? Which one fits closest where you work or have worked?
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4.
What is the relationship between participation and "incorporation"? What are some alternatives that might be
preferred to participation?
5.
How are democratic executives and autocratic executives sometimes similar?
6.
What are the different types of interests and how do they interrelate?
7.
Describe and discuss the implications of situations brought up by W.F. White in Money and Motivation.
8.
Discuss the different sources of power.
9.
What are the differences among unitary, pluralistic and radical approaches to management?
10.
Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the political metaphor
Morgan Chapter 7
1.
If we break Plato’s cave metaphor into parts, in an effort to understand life in organizations, what would the cave be?
The fire? The back wall of the cave where the shadows are? The shadows? The person who leaves the cave and
learns that there is more than just shadows in the world? The insight of the difference between what’s real and what’s
a shadow?
2.
What role do you believe Freudian analysis should play in organizational analysis?
3.
What is sublimation and how might it explain high achievement in organizations?
4.
Are organizations more expressions of repressed sexuality, patriarchy, both or neither?
5.
What role does the fear of death play in how we organize ourselves?
6.
What is anxiety and how does it influence organizational life?
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7.
What are some adult versions of teddy bears or security blankets?
Morgan Chapter 8
Write journal reactions to the following:
David Bohm’s thoughts:
Implicate (enfolded) order - potential
Explicate (unfolded) order – realization of some or all of the potential
Maturana & Varela
Autopoiesis- the capacity for self-renewal through a closed system of relations. They believe the environment is part of the
organization
Autonomy, Circularity, and Self-reference are terms used to describe a systems actions
How the maintenance of oneself is combined with the maintenance of others, or the bee is part of the environmental system,
but the environment is also part of the bee.
How your brain understands through its own makeup, not independent of it.
Why is that if one really wants to understand one’s environment, one must begin by understanding oneself?
What is the point being made by the fact that analogue watch makers did not understand the environment because they did not
see digital technology as part of it…The same can be said of those in the typewriter business or those in the horse and carriage
business.
Pollution and health problems created by toxins can likely eliminate or severely constrain the operations of an industry over
time.
Attractors exist as part of the latent potential of a complex nonlinear system
Butterfly effect
Basketball example
Management’s role is to shape and create “contexts” in which appropriate forms of self-organization can occur.
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New contexts can break the hold of dominant attractor patterns in favor of new ones
Small changes produce large effects when they change the dominant attactor patterns
What Yin and yang have to do with balance
Paradoxes can create bi-furcation point, force the decision and cause great release and thus change
Dialectical reasoning forces a confrontation of opposites and powerful forces are released
[Look at the former Soviet Union and its evolving demise]
Morgan Chapter 9
1.
In general, do you think Morgan is too hard on organizations?
2.
What did Weber say were the three ways that people can be “dominated”? Describe them.
3.
What are some of the ways Morgan points out whereby organizations “exploit” their employees?
4.
How does Morgan say organizations help perpetuate class distinctions?
5.
Is working in many organizations physically dangerous? What are some ways this is so, according to Morgan? How
do his views fit with your experience?
6.
How big of a problem does Morgan believe stress and workaholism to be? What evidence does he offer?
7.
What are some ways the rapid increase of large multinational corporations has put workers, host countries and home
countries in disadvantaged positions?
8.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the “organizations
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Make notes on the following articles:
Donald Roy’s Banana Time
Ludema, Wilmot & Srivatsva on Organizational Hope
Rosenhan on Being Sane in Insane Places
Barrett on Senor Payroll
O’Connor on Stories in and around the garbage can
OT/B gleanings from a movie
View the movie of your choice and dissect it for meaning related to issues from this class
Symbols
25 points
Topics
25 points
Action
25 points
Theories
25 points
Movie possibilities
12 Angry Men
Apollo 13
Citizen Kane
Crimson Tide
Dead Poet’s Society
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Henry V
Hoosiers
Hunt for Red October
Lord of the Flies
Mr. Holland’s Opus
Norma Rae
The bridge on the River Kwai
The man who would be king
Twelve O’Clock High
Wall Street
Penetrating questions that occur to you throughout the term
Quality
Understanding
Insight
Clarity
Knowledge
20 points
20 points
20 points
20 points
20 points