Arab Open University
Bahrain Branch
Faculty of Business Studies
T205 – Systems Thinking: Principles and Practice
T205A Revision
1234567-
SUDA Concepts, and holistic way of thinking
What it means to be a good systems practitioner
Two sorts of situation: difficulties and messes
Two sorts of complexity: hard and soft
Definition of a system &heap & Boundaries
Why do people use diagrams?
Spray diagrams, System maps, and multiple cause diagrams
Rational, unitary, goal-seeking (RUGS) view of organizations
Three central ideas to this view (Scientific Management approach):
 Organizations exist primarily to achieve their goals
 Organizations are rationally designed to achieve these goals
 People in organizations form an identifiable, coherent whole, and work together
on the different aspects of the shared organizational task in a coherent, unified,
mutually interdependent way
Different sorts and classifications of objectives and goals




Mission, goal, objective
Economic, non-economic, strategic
Official, official operative, unofficial operative
Goal displacement: the shift of attention away from the overall purpose towards
the means of achieving it
 Pluralism: organizations are better thought of as having a rich variety of
individuals and groups with distinct attitudes, interests and concerns
Performance-related pay (PRP)
PRP may encourage people to work harder at the goals they have been set, these
goals often turn out not to be the most useful ones. They may be efficient (‘doing the
job right’) but not effective (‘doing the right job)
The effect of PRP on motivation and performance is, at best, neutral and, at worst,
adverse
Maslow’s and Herzberg’s theories of motivation suggest that while enough money is
necessary to satisfy basic needs, additional money beyond that is not necessarily a
motivator
Six reasons why PRP schemes are bound to fail
 Pay is not a motivator
 Rewards are a covert form of punishment
 Rewards disrupt teamwork
 Other things affect performance
 PRP discourages risk-taking
 Rewards undermine interest
The use of PRP becomes self-sustaining, because it damages longer-term
performance but produces short-term gain
Put in more ‘Systems’ way, PRP treats the problem of motivation as a difficulty:
‘Employees are motivated by pay so their performance will improve if we offer them
pay related to their performance’. But motivation and performance are clearly much
messier than this simple approach can address. As is usual with messes, they only
get worse if they are treated as if they are difficulties
fundamental
belief in pay as
motivator
employees’
temporary
compliance
some employees
get rewards
managers’
belief in
PRP
jealousy,
bitterness, rivalry
reduced intrinsic
motivation
declining employee
performance
use of increased
PRP incentives
Performance-related pay: the long-term prospects
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Unintended consequences: The ‘job description’ story
 The research into role conflict and role ambiguity strongly reinforced the need for
clearly specified roles within organizations. This led to the practice of devising
formal ‘job descriptions’
 The more precise the job description became, the less freedom the employer had
to change the content of the work.
 Managers had begun to see written job descriptions as a two-edged sword, giving
as much control to the employee as to the employer
 Job descriptions were also static documents. Any changes in work methods,
priorities or the scope of activity called for renegotiation, revision and rewriting
 In recent years, job descriptions have become less precise and are no longer
compulsory. Both employees and employers now expect employment to be much
more flexible, within a concept of ‘ongoing career development’
 Organizations at any point are the outcome of complex processes, not simply the
embodiment of rational plans for achieving desired ends
From ‘scientific management’ to personal empowerment
Two key principles lying behind the work of Taylor and Gilbreth
 Each job is broken down into simpler component tasks, with detailed
specifications of how each task is to be accomplished and how long it should take
to complete. This spawned the specialist area known as ‘work study’
 Planning work becomes completely separated from doing work. This spawned the
area often called ‘O&M’ (organization and methods)
 Taylor and Gilbreth’s approach involved three methods of control
o Planning
o Linking the individual worker’s pay to his or her productivity
o Adjusting the speeds or capabilities of the machines to control the work of
those whose jobs are linked to them
 Drawbacks of Taylorism
 Downplays the human aspects of work
 Forms of reaction, resistance and ‘spanners in the works’ may occur
 Result in a mindless, unquestioning bureaucracy with strict adherence to
standards and rules, stifling creativity and flexibility
 Prevent input from employees about improvement or innovation, leading
to organizations that can’t manage uncertainty and change
Alternative approaches
The larger the overlap between the individual’s, and organization’s goals, the larger
the possibility that the individual will work for the organization as a volunteer
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Organization’s
goals
Area where formal controls
provide incentive
Individual’s
goals
Area of congruence
Overlap between individual and organizational goals
The continuum of control mechanism: At the extreme left is tight formal control by
direct supervision and correction of every action. At the extreme right is total
independence. In between lie:
 Standardization of the work process (e.g. tight specifications of the tools and the
way that the task is to be done, as in scientific management)
 Standardization of the outputs (where targets for outputs are set but the means of
achieving them are left to the individual or work group)
 Standardization of skills (where the organization selects only those people who
have been trained in a particular way, or provides in-house training, and then
relies on these people to use their training to judge the best way of achieving
organizational goals)
 Independence, subject to negotiation and mutual adjustment with colleagues
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direct
supervision
standardized
processes
DECREASING FORMAL CONTROL
standardized
outputs
control
standardized
skills
mutual
adjustments
total
independence
autonomy
The continuum of control mechanisms
The following six sections look at a series of alternatives to scientific management,
which illustrate a gradual progression from left to right in the continuum of control
mechanism:
 Direct supervision: early experiences of job redesign
To increase productivity
To cut the volume of work in progress
To increase the flexibility of production department
Note: giving some autonomy to work groups & enabling them to take responsibility
for a whole process can in effect improve morale and increase productivity & job
satisfaction
 Standardized processes: job enlargement
The simpler form of job redesign
By increasing the number & variety of the operations each person or group is
required to do
By rotating people through 3 or 4 separate but similar tasks in a day
Reduced stress & increased output but temporarily
 Standardized outputs: job enrichment
More radical form of job redesign
To give people more jobs of the same kind
To give more discretion over how & when to work a whole series of tasks
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Is represented by the shifting from standardization of processes towards the
standardization of outputs
Extra tasks are often done by skilled & responsible people by those higher up in
the organizational structure
Control exercised via shared goals rather than via imposed practices
Organization should take attention to secure staff commitment to organizational
goals
 Standardized skills: semi-autonomous work groups
To achieve job enrichment by the development of semi-autonomous work groups
Workforce should accept greater levels of responsibility
Work-group manager’s role changed from supervision & control to leadership,
encouraging, enabling, acting as a channel for information between the work
group & other part of the organization
 Mutual adjustments: team working
Is one way of giving greater freedom of action to people who possess a great level
of skills, without the risk of a loss of control
It cuts across existing structures & lines of control
Involves skilled people or expertise from a number of different departments to
work on a specific project
Main purpose of setting such a project is to tackle a pressing organizational issue
with a team provided with overall objectives & given the responsibility for
choosing the best option to achieve the goal.
Is the creative stimulus of discussion between people with different perspectives
from different areas
Remains too long together to become an established group with its own particular
perspective & way of working to achieve their initial objective
Giving greater freedom of action to individuals creates some risks of loss of
control to the organization as a whole.
becoming specialized to respond quickly & adapt easily if organizational goals
change
Control is achieved by standardization of skills, by negotiation & mutual
adjustment
 Skunk works team: Skunk works team is a radical form of team working designed
to encourage entrepreneurs & innovative ideas in large companies where normal
structure doesn’t support creativity
 A small group of unconventional imaginative people drawn from any part of the
structure grouped together given a challenge that stimulates & excites them &
allowed total freedom to do what they want to come up with solutions
 Formal controls of the group are minimal
 Control is enforced by keeping the size of the group small, by restricting their
work to crucial problems, and by insuring frequent and informal communication
with top-management.
 Total independence: splitting off altogether
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There is total independence
Workgroup is autonomous (no longer part of parent company)
Has the freedom of the team or skunk works
Has lost security & support of belonging
Has acquired ultimate responsibility for its own survival
Old in house was simply split off
Large companies began to get rid of all non-core activities preferring to buy at
competitive rates from external suppliers rather than have them in house
Mutual causation
Mutual causation occurs whenever one variable, A, affects another variable, B, and is in
turn affected by B.
A
B
A
simple causation
B
mutual causation
Two types of causation
Negative feedback:
 Can be ‘good’ as a self-stabilizing mechanism for helping a system survive in a
changing environment
 Can be ‘bad’ when you want to change a system, and you find that it has built-in
self-stabilizing mechanisms that make it resist your efforts
Positive feedback:
 Can be ‘bad’ when it is a ‘vicious circle’ as when one failure triggers further
failures (spiraling out of control)
 Can be ‘good’ when ‘success breads success’
List of readings and resources:
1. Concept file 4 (Organizations):
- Introduction to Section I
- Readings 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 36 & 37
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EXAM QUESTIONS
QUESTION 1 – Estimated Time 40 minutes
Managing organizations is changing. Over the years the interest in externally imposed
control has diminished in favor of autonomy and empowerment (a form of internally
imposed control).
This change in organizations reflects a trend aimed at empowering employees to accept
and embrace changes in their current business environment. The purpose is to transform
individuals, teams, and organizations from a current (undesirable) conditions to a more
(desired) future state.
Discuss how managing within organizations ahs changed by explaining the principles of
the scientific management approach, and comparing them to those of the alternative
approaches of job redesign. Indicate how organizational control is changing with each of
the new forms of job redesign (25 marks).
QUESTION 2 (30 marks)
There are different approaches for managing organizations
A- Describe what is meant by RUGS view of organizations? (10 marks)
B- Discuss the main difference between a RUGS view of organization and system view of
organizations? (10 marks)
C- Taking organizational management as your system of interest, draw a system map diagram to
show the components of these two approaches. Pay attention to the grouping and the hierarchy (10
marks)
Question Three (25 marks; Estimated Time: 20 minutes):
To be effective organizations need to have a high degree of coherence in their activities.
The way for achieving this efficiency has changed over the years. Briefly list the
principles of the scientific management approach and discuss the new approaches which
emerged as an alternative (job enlargement, and job enrichment). (25 marks)
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