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Organization
What is an Organizational Theory?
In the organizational sciences (e.g., organizational behavior, organizational psychology), one of the more misunderstood terms is organizational theory. To some, organizational theory is a field of study; to others, it is the process of using metaphorical language to describe organizational processes (e.g., McKenna & Wright, 1992; Morgan, 1986), or it represents an attempt to determine the best way to organize work organizations. The term is used to indicate all of these things, but an organizational theory is really just a way of organizing purposeful human action. Given the diversity of purposeful human endeavors, there are numerous ways to organize them, and, hence, a great many organizational theories.
Major Organizational Theories
Having provided a brief overview of the field of organizational theory, we now move on to a consideration of the major organizational theories themselves. Organizational theories simply represent ideas or models of the form in which human activity can be organized. Obviously, there could be an almost infinite number of ideas about organizing human activity; however, over the years, three general types of organizational theories have been developed....
These three types are described next.
Classical Organizational Theories
Historically, the term classical organizational theory has been used to denote models of organizing that were developed from approximately the early twentieth century until the mid-1940s. The best known of these classical theories were scientific management (Taylor, 1911), ideal bureaucracy (Weber, 1947), and administrative management (Fayol, 1984). Each is discussed briefly in the following paragraphs.
The term scientific management was first introduced in describing the history of organizational psychology (see Chapter 1) and was examined further in our discussion of job design (see Chapter 9). We resurrect this term yet again because it also has implications for the ways organizations are designed. As might be remembered from our earlier discussion, a fundamental principle of scientific management was that those who design the work should be separate from those who actually perform the work. The implications of this approach for organizing work are quite important. For example, it implies that there should be distinct status or hierarchical differences among employees. In Taylor's writings, it is fairly obvious that those who design the work occupy a higher…
References
McKenna, D.D., & Wright, P.M. (1992). Alternative metaphors for organizational design. In M.D. Dunnette & L.M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 901 -- 960). Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organization. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Taylor, F.W. (1911). Principles of scientific management. New York: Harper.
Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization (A. M. Henderson & T. Parsons, Trans.) New York: Free Press.
Organizational Theory #2 What core competences give an organization competitive advantage? What are examples of an organization's functional-level strategies? Core competencies are those capabilities that are critical to a business achieving a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Typically, core competencies can be identified by certain common characteristics -- offering a benefit to the customer, difficult to imitate, uniquely identify the organization and easily leveraged to create many products or operate in many
Organizations in the perspective of political systems: in organizations, influence and power are derived from various sources and could be vested in teams of people more than in individuals. Sometimes, teams with a common interest form an alliance and become a coalition to exert a further influence. For example, individuals asserting civic rights by the power of majority used labor unions as traditional approaches. Nevertheless, influential teams are a source
Organizational Theory #1 Create a code of ethics for an organization of your choice. For each point in the code of ethics, describe an ethical dilemma that would be resolved using the code of ethics. All employees will conduct business honestly and ethically. We will constantly improve the quality of our services, products and operations and create a reputation for honesty, fairness, respect, responsibility, integrity, trust and sound business judgment. (Provides a
Organization Theory Design Daft, (2010) defines organization as a diverse corporate affair, a bank or a government agency that make up of people setting policies and procedures and interact with one another to perform essential functions in order to attain organization goals. Daft, (2010) further ague that organizations cannot exist without external stakeholders like customers, suppliers and competitors. Thus, organizations are very important because they create values for customers, owners and
The theory sees human organizational behaviors and conceptions culturally bound, rather than natural, unlike advocates of systems theory. Systems theory has been more influenced by sociology and linguistics than the natural sciences. Analyzing symbolic interpretations may be more useful in organizations serving diverse populations: if a public health organization wants to alleviate the prevalence of diabetes in an area, it is not enough to more effectively disseminate information through the
Even more, strong theory should approach micro processes, if necessary. In certain situations, strong theory leads to directions that cannot be observed without the help of theory. Regarding organizational theory, contributors to building the basis of strong theory in this field include: Frederick Winslow Taylor (who studied human behavior at work using a systematic approach), Elton Mayo (who focused on the emotional side of employees and how it affects their