 Efficient organizations operate “like clockwork”


Pervasive Philosophy
Routinized, efficient, reliable machines
 Humans must be made to fit the machine
 Characterised by 2 main types of organization


Bureaucracies
Organizations based on Taylor’s Scientific
Management (often but not always manufacturing industry)

 Dominant View of Human Nature: Theory X
(McGregor, 1960) Ordinary people are inherently:
 Lazy, self-centred, lacking in ambition/willingness to take responsibility, passive and conformist, resistant to change, gullible and not very bright, motivated by “sticks and carrots”
 Managers must therefore:
 Organize, direct, persuade, punish, reward and control workers to meet the needs of the organization
 Consequence or cause of industrial practices???








Nothing new?
Use of machines to make labour easier: ancient
Egyptians, Roman engineers
Organizing large workforces: ditto Egyptians, ancient Chinese, Stonehenge!
Bureaucracies: Romans armies and civil administration, Medieval Church
Factories/Mass Production: Romans again eg pottery works
But...
Before Industrial Revolution most manufacturing activity was Home based, involved family groups, often self-employed, small scale, highly skilled, often part-time/intermittent

 Large expensive machinery and plant: Return on investment
 Water/Steam power/mass production methods: concentrated work in factories, required large labour force close to plant




Work involved: long hours, repetitive jobs, division of labour
(much use women and children)
But...
Before 20 th Century many jobs were still highly skilled and craftsmen worked at own pace
Problems for employers: how was labour to be organized and controlled?
 All change: Taylorism and Scientific Management (time and motion studies); Fordism (moving assembly line)





Original idea philanthropic: means to regulate arbitrary power of owners over the workforce
Weber: Definition
“A form of organization which emphasizes precision, speed, clarity, regularity, reliability & efficiency achieved through the creation of a fixed division of tasks, hierarchical supervision and detailed rules and regulations”
Hallmarks: rational and quasi-legal system people derive authority from fixed roles in hierarchy roles and procedures clear – what to do and how regulations curbed arbitrary exercise of power

 Weber: Criticisms


Bureaucracy had the potential to routinize and mechanize every aspect of human life, eroding human spirit, capacity for creativity, flexibility and human action
Leads to alienation and “not my job’s worth” attitudes
 Still a major problem! Public services: accountability,
“bean counting”, paperwork: police spending 50% of time form filling!
 Does it stifle creativity and innovation?














Unity of command : orders from 1 superior only
Scalar chain : line of authority from top to bottom, channel for communication and decision making
Span of control: not too large to hinder communication etc
Staff & line: staff can advise but not violate line authority
Initiative: encouraged at all levels
Division of work: specialization to achieve goals efficiently
Authority and responsibility: power to give orders & exact obedience
Centralization (of authority): top-down; varies
Discipline: obedience, application etc adherence to rules
Subordination of individual to general interest
Equity: fair treatment
Stability of tenure of personnel
Esprit de corps: harmony as basis of strength







Grew out of Classical Management Theory (dating back to Frederick the Great’s Prussian army)
Still permeates management practices eg
Management by Objectives has strong element of
“mechanistic” management
Top Management controls organization by setting goals – those lower down achieve performance targets
(Depends on degree of control at each tier of the hierarchy and discretion to achieve goals)
Compare eg. targets in NHS, national literacy standards, participation in HE – control begets more!
Stipulating goals but not means – US Space programme

1.
Shift all responsibility for the organization of work from the worker to the manager: managers should do all the thinking relating to the planning and design of work, leaving workers with the task of implementation
2.
Use scientific methods to determine the most efficient way of doing work: design the worker’s task accordingly; specify the precise way in which work is to be done
3.
Select the best person to do work thus designed
4.
Train worker to do it efficiently
5.
Monitor worker performance to ensure procedures are followed and targets are met








Standardize work activities to achieve maximum efficiency, effort and time
Eg. Schmidt (pig iron handler) see video
Production increased 280% (12.5 to 47.5 tons per day)
Time and motion = observing & analysing tasks into simplest components and working out most efficient way to perform them
So worker forced to behave like a machine in very precise and regular ways
Tasks split to simplest components become deskilled, routinized and monotonous
People thought to be motivated by extrinsic rewards
– pay and fear of sack









Henry Ford: huge boost by invention of moving assembly line
Complete control of organization and pace of work
Control over workforce achieved by:
Management setting speed of line
“Stick and carrot” motivators: no Trades Unions so threat of job loss; high wages; perks eg “buy your own car” schemes: Easy to replace unskilled workers
Huge increase in productivity achieved at human cost
But..
Created affluent Western consumer societies; great increases in standards of living
See video: “On the Line”







Strengths: reliable & consistent products at low cost; high productivity and profitability
Despite worker empowerment, smarter automation and autonomous work groups principles remain (increasingly overseas)
Wright & Lund (1996) Computerised Taylorism): introduction of new engineering standard systems
Adler & colleagues (1993, 1998): Democratic
Taylorism: worker participation in job analysis for new systems of performance measurement
More subtle control: “hearts and minds” of HRM; but also coercive control eg call centres & fast food
Warhurst & Thompson (1998); Mabey et al (1998);
Herriot (2001) for references





Motivators: salary and perks; the privilege of having a job; performance related pay; reinforcement theories but extrinsic reward systems often backfire because they reward the wrong things and punish the right things
See Kerr (1974) “The folly of rewarding A whilst hoping for B” & Komaki et al in Steers, Porter &
Bigley (1996)
Leadership Style: Transactional (traditional management:
Dealing with the given: planning, organizing, staffing, budgeting, problem solving, creating procedures and systems for maintaining order and predictability –
Doing things right (Guest 1996)


Alimo-Metcalfe (1997) Transactional Leadership
“limited to manager’s ability to provide a quid pro quo reward or negative feedback to a follower who responds to his or her instructions or agreed objectives”
 Design of Work: “machine minders” (increasing automation); deskilling (eg. call centres); increasing use of shiftwork; Total Quality Management; targets, audits, governance
 All strategies have at their core:
 People can be shaped to become part of the machinery of the organization
 Is this a bad thing???

 Origins: Von Bertalanffy (1950) a biologist
 Living organisms are seen as a collection of parts interacting and functioning as a harmonious whole in a continuous process of exchange and interaction with the environment
 Living organisms are thus complex open systems
 Ideas explicitly applied to organizations by Katz &
Khan (1978)
 But ideas had been developing throughout 1950s,
60s & 70s

 Organizations as Complex Open Systems
Organizations can be thought of as being complex systems like biological organisms such as the human body, made up of thousands of interacting parts which take inputs from the environment, transform them in some way and produce outputs back into the environment. Since the parts are interdependent, changes in one part can have profound and unpredictable effects on the other parts of the network.The system must adapt to the demands of its external environment but at the same time it must preserve its internal stability whilst engaging in constant change.
Complex systems can be analysed at many levels from the total organism within its environment to the workings of an individual cell. Similarly, understanding a work organization and people’s behaviour within it can range from the analysis of the historical, political, economic and cultural environment in which it operates, through the social interactions within work groups to the goals, aspirations and abilities of individual workers.










Theory Y (McGregor, 1960)
People are not by nature passive, lazy etc but they become so because of experience of organizational life
People naturally want:
Challenge, development, achievement and recognition and will work hard to get these in the right conditions
People can learn to want:
Responsibility & self direction; commitment to organizational goals
People are:
Naturally motivated to work for goals that they value (including organizational goals); intelligent and capable of imagination and innovation in solving organizational problems
Management must align individual and organizational goals

 Boundaries:


Where does a large company end and its community begin?
What is the relevant environment – Society in general, all companies in the same market, economic and political system, global economy???
 Need to specify environmental origin of forces which act on organizations
 Stakeholders: suppliers, customers, publics, shareholders

 Multiple Purposes and Functions



Primary: product or service for profit; public service
Secondary: eg security and meaning for a community via jobs; consumers for local businesses
Equals conflicting demands: Eg. HE – manifest functions such as teaching and research vs latent functions eg. sorting talent for society, promoting social cohesion and inclusiveness, providing local employment, contributing to local & national economy, what else???

 Representatives of External Environment
 Employees are members of society, community, other groups eg. professional bodies, unions, consumer, religious and family groups
 Multiple roles
 Bring demands, expectations, cultural norms etc that can conflict with organizational norms
 Partial involvement of workforce
 Coalitions, factions, interest groups, sub-cultures within organizations










Rapid Environmental Change
Technology
Economic sector
Socio-political
Cultural values
“Turbulent”
Requires different capacity to respond: need to be proactive not reactive
Result: mechanistic organization – ordered hierarchy of roles etc seen as too simplistic
More complex theories of organization needed to explain what researchers and practitioners actually find in organizations








Importation of energy, throughput and output (often involves knowledge in contemporary work)
Negative entropy – constant change to avoid
Negative feedback – correcting for errors
Dynamic equilibrium – adaptation and stability
Differentiation – enough internal complexity to cope with external complexity
Integration and Co-ordination – harmoniously functioning whole
Equifinality – no-one can predict the final outcome(s)








Von Betalanffy (1950)
Homans (1950) organizations exist in a 3 part mutually dependent environment
Physical
Cultural
Technological
Environment specifies activities & interactions that engender feelings and sentiments . Changes in any one of these produces changes in the other two
New sentiments, norms and activities, not necessarily specified by external environment, leads to development of an informal system within the official, formal system









Talcott Parsons (1960s)
Social systems have 4 basic needs:
Adaptation, Goal Attainment, Integration, Pattern
Maintenance
Khan et al (1964)
Organizations composed of overlapping role sets
Role overload, role ambiguity, role conflict – related to stress and job dissatisfaction
Cyert & March (1963)
Organizations composed of coalitions & organizational life a process of negotiation, bargaining & power play between shifting coalitions in accordance with environmental demands

 Scott (1987)


Defines an open system organization as:
“a coalition of shifting interest groups which develop goals through negotiation. The structure of coalitions, their activities and outcomes are strongly influenced by environmental factors”
 Openness is not an absolute value but is determined by the extent of its transactions with the environment

Turbulent Environments Stable Environments
Open-Rational Open-Natural Closed-
Rational
Closed-
Natural
Capitalist enterprises eg
IT industry
Socialistic eg service organizations.
Eg NHS
Capitalistic enterprises with little need to interact with environment. rare
Socialistic eg religious communities

 Tavistock Institute (Rice, 1963; Trist, 1963)


Socio-technical systems
All organizations are composed of a social system – the people – and a technical system – machines etc
 These 2 systems need to be in harmony and the technical system must meet the needs of people
 Important ideas:
 system imports information from the environment
 Partial involvement of the workforce emphasized
 Led to shop floor democracy & autonomous work groups





Motivators: social factors, needs satisfaction, self actualization
Work as its own reward
People want challenge, autonomy, interest & recognition in their work
Leadership Style: Transformational Leadership
“Creating the conditions for adaptive change to meet the demands of an uncertain and turbulent environment – doing the right things ” (Guest, 1996)
Manager as female??? Connectedness, cooperation, teamwork, mutual support: Manager as facilitator and servant!

 Design of Work: Job enrichment, autonomy and responsibility, Self-directed (autonomous teams), worker participation and control, socio-technical systems harmony
 Dominant Theme
 People work best when their physical, psychological and social needs are met: work and work organizations must be designed to fit people rather than vice versa






Have these 2 traditions merged? Do employers
“want it all” – compliant, obedient workforces plus intelligent, innovative, committed, self-starters?
“Hard” HRM – treats the workforce like the plant and machinery – commodities to be deployed efficiently
“Soft” HRM – employees deserve respect, care and development
What about “hearts and minds” so workers control themselves? (Thought police – attempts to control attitudes as well as behaviour?)
Does rhetoric of empowerment & job satisfaction really mean more work, more responsibility and more stress for no more reward?