How Organisations and Management Have Continued to Progress since the Beginning of 20th Century - Coursework Example

ANALYSIS OF MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION SINCE 20TH CENTURY Prepared by (Name) Course Name Professor’s Name Date There is a great deal of researched social evidence that supports the fundamental observation that people will always go ahead to form groups that include; work groups, businesses families as well as distinct professional associations. It is noted that any given successful manager will recognise the overall impact of organisational environment on different members of an organisation (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). Organisations never exist in static world but rather it is solely focused on engaging directly with the underlying operational environment. Taking into account that that organisations operate under open systems, it certainly receives inputs from the immediate environment and acts on them to generate outputs that relate to either products or services (Scott, 2004). It thus means that organisations form a crucial part of human interaction through management. The focus of this paper is providing an overview of how organisations and management have continued to progress since the beginning of 20th century. The social and cultural aspects of organisations would tend to involve the different set of discourses of organisations that are deemed to be basically found in fields of management and organisation studies that focuses on behavioural psychologies as well as the economics of a firm (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). It is important to note that all of these modern-based discourses of the 20th century are merely attributed to the rationalisation thesis of differences between them altogether. From a sociological point of view, the task of understanding organisations lies in establishing their relationships especially between social institutions and their relative historical actions. For instance, it can be established that BP, in its quests to restore the prior social trust it had gained over time, committed to ensuring that the oil spill would be conducted in a more robust manner. The firm’s management is seen to have involved most of the stakeholders that range from different government institutions to civil groups to ascertain that they were indeed obliged to restore the flora and fauna. The perspective also perceives organisations as being social systems composed of firms for which both people and production processes are organised (Scott, 2004). In fact, it is established that this latter perspective has continued to attract a broader sense of adherences as well as practical appeal amongst notable organisational theorists in the period commencing 20th century. It is common for some organisational analysts to invoke the Weberian social action theory while others adopt a neo-rational strategic management technique to analyse organisations. Research indicates that throughout the entire 20th century and as a result of modern situations of functional utility; there has been expansion of the aspects related to division of labour and differentiation of specific circumstances (Scott, 2004). In essence, the institutionalisation process of policy-useful societal approaches tends to overlook the politically approaches to solving definite social organisation problems. In due course, the level of crucial approaches to the practices of organisation, production and work were greatly associated with sociologies of work. Basically, organisations are a fundamental social unit that are created for the mere purpose of accomplishing specific distinctive goals like in the case of such NGO as World Vision whose mandate lies in helping the needy societies with fighting poverty and injustices while profit-making organisations like Apple and Tesla are in the business of maximising shareholders’ wealth (Scott, 2004). For most cases, organisations are characterised by such aspects as common goal; a distinct set of shared values; a continual base of goal-oriented interaction model as well as notable system of authority or rather chain of command (Drucker, 2007). To effectively understand the rapid development facing major organisations today, it is important to analyse a set of different management theories. Under the scientific management school, it is noted that Taylor started and commenced the modern era of management whereby he focused on replacing the rule of thumb with actualised and timed-based observations that resulted to the single-perfect set of practice (Drucker, 2007). He emphasised that immediate transformations amongst organisations should adopt a systematic training of its underlying workforce as opposed to allowing them personal discretion in their immediate relative tasks. This school of thought ascertained that the workload could be fairly and evenly shared amongst workers and management so that the latter would be execute science-based tasks while workers conduct labour-related activities thus each of them doing what they are best suited to do. In the period commencing the late 19th centuries and the beginning of 20th century, organisations enjoyed Taylor’s contributions especially in relation to breaking of complex tasks into a given set of sub-tasks while still optimising the set of these duties (Drucker, 2007). A perfect example can be seen in a manufacturing organisation like Ford that has its tasks effectively broken down so that engineers and designers are allowed the opportunity to execute science-based duties while the sales representatives and logistics sections handling labour-related tasks. It is important to understand that Taylor was focused on revolutionising autocratic management style that was the order of the day in the course of industrial revolution to a science-based solution to inefficiencies that faced workers then. It should further be noted that from an economic perspective, Taylor’s model of work approach was indeed a success given that the application for the different methods his emphasis resulted to significant amount of improvements in production capacity amongst modern organisations. Taylor came up with four distinctive set of principles of management (Drucker, 2007). Taylor indicated that there was a need to formulate a definitive science of work that would be necessary for replacing the old rule of the thumb technique; whereby pay and other form of rewards are directly connected to the accomplishment of optimum set of goals and objectives and overlooking them would result to significant loss of earnings (McKenna, 2006). Consequently, he noted that workforce was to be scientifically chosen and thereby developed even further. He further noted that the science of work was to be supposed to be integrated with scientifically selected and trained personnel for purposes of accomplishing the best of outcomes. Finally, he also advocated for the division of both work and responsibility in an equal and fair manner amongst the workers and management that work together and thus, prompt a degree of interdependence (McKenna, 2006). In Addition to Taylor’s school of thought, there was Gilbreth motion study that emphasised on the need for centrality of efficiency within organisations. Moving forward to efficient contemporary organisation, Gilbreth focused on ascertaining how he would reduce the level of unnecessary motions that was a common phenomenon in construction projects. A Classical organisation theory is another category of model that is used to expound on the correlation between management organisations growth and development in the modern era (McKenna, 2006). This school of thought explores the aspect while adopting Max Weber’s bureaucratic theory and Fayol’s administrative theory as well. Weberian theory indicated that the modern organisation was now shifting from a value-oriented thinking framework; affective and conventional actions to technocratic model of thinking. In relation to the modern organisation philosophy, Weber noted that the activities related to western civilisation was now shifting to adopt a technical-based outcome while still overlooking conventional elements related to emotional and humanistic tendencies (McKenna, 2006). On the other end, Fayol’s administrative theory was focused on management now identifying personal duties at a distinct level. The theory was in fact set towards realising the aspect of management whereby five set of roles were identified being; forecasting and planning; organisation; chain of command; control and co-ordination capabilities (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). It is worth noting that the elements related to forecasting and planning was directly related to the anticipation of ascertaining the future and acting in accordance with the set out rules and regulations. Organisation was focused on developing an institution’s level of resources. Fayol’s five set of principles of management is definitely being actively engaged in the today’s world. For instance, spirit de corps is one such principle put forward by Fayol that defines the feeling of pride and mutual loyalty amongst certain members of an organisation. Such organisations as Amazon and Apple have managed to achieve this principle as there is union between management and employees who feel proud of what they do and as a result, attracted lots of loyalty from end users. In consequence, the philosophy attributed to giving necessary authority with responsibility is still widely commented on and is fairly-practiced in modern organisations (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). On the contrary, however; the principles attributed to unity of command and direction is for most cases violated in the matrix management structure of today’s organisations. Notably, the behavioural school of thought is yet another form of theory that fostered the influence on management and how organisations operate. It is used to identify and expound on the revolutionary period that management of organisations experienced. In fact, it is the same period for which the Nobel Prize winning critic of administrative theory; Herbert Simon as well as the Hawthorne Experiment gained much recognition in regards to human relations set up of bureaucratic leadership model (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). Certainly, it also represents a period when the first ever female organisational-based theorist; Mary Parker Follett made contributions in relation to how management of organisations should be conducted. In essence, Booth, and Rowlinson (2006, p.18) notes that beyond the Taylorism, the immediate history of management thought has continued to experience a distinct set of crucial revisions. Mary Parker; for instance, is now that never before; being acknowledged as an influential management thinker whose set of contribution to the field of management remains imperative. It is a significant matter to note that the behavioural movement is a school of thought that arose out of the fact that there was an increase in the level of interactions and motivation of specific individual organisations within the 20th century (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). Most of the management principles were formulated and implemented in the classical period and merely put on hold from dealing with the many management situations of the time and would not pre-establish the exact behaviour course of employees. Of particular interest to note, within this period, the principles of classical management theory were deemed to be very crucial in assisting with the placement of management objectives in the overall perspective of an organisation (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). However, it is ascertained that they indeed failed miserably to accomplish their imminent set of goals and objectives that rested with provision of management tools that could be used for the purpose of dealing with organisational personal challenges. There are however recent developments in management theories into the current modern organisations that include; systems approach; contingency theory and Japanese management style theories. First, it can be noted that the system theory has contributed immensely in the understanding of management and organisations as a whole. While the theory has been so fundamental; research indicates that substantial level of training and practices within the workplace have somehow overlooked its overall importance (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). The immediate importance of this theory in the act of management lies with the fact that it allows managers to perceive organisations from many different angles. It has further allowed them to interpret distinct operational trends and events within the overall workplace in general since it seeks to recognise and inter-relate different parts of an organisation as a whole (Weatherbee, Durepos, & Mills, 2012). System theorists note that a single system is made up of interacting and interrelated subsystems. This systematic level of integration fosters immediate interactions with other notable systems that are continually adapting to the ever-changing internal and external environmental processes. A good application of this theory can be seen in system engineering whereby application of engineering models are applied directly to the engineering systems. System engineering seeks to incorporate other notable disciplines and specialty groups into the aspect of team effort thereby resulting to structured development processes that commences from concept to the production levels within an organisation. The Japanese management is the most noted styles of management that encompasses notable stipulations as theory Z and the M-Form society. This form of management has continued to attract lots of attention given its level of capacity to improve on the level of productivity. In fact, it is considered to be the current backbone of American management styles within different set of organisations. Considering the fact that most of American-based organisations like Intel and Google have all focused on implementing this style; it has been widely accepted within the continent as a whole (Stinchcombe & March, 1965). It is crucial to understand the mechanisms that relate with why this management model has continued to bear success immensely. It is indicated that the model prompts a certain degree of trust for its existing employee base; and as a result of this, it has ensured to allow the employees to enjoy a significant level of decision-making authority. Most notably, the model further emphasises on the need for adopting a certain level of intimacy in its overall managerial relationships so that individual-based relationships are highly valued; revered and rewarded. From an organisational point of view, it can be said that large Japanese companies depict a distinct balance between elements of teamwork as well as personal-based approached. This is certainly identified as the M-Form organisation since it links an extensive set of decentralised organisation so that each single unit is able to compete with every other unit for purposes of obtaining a budgetary resource base while still ensuring to depict a definite centralised form of corporate service (Stinchcombe & March, 1965). Indeed, it is a loose-tight level of organisation whereby personal-based initiative is rewarded while it is controlled through a centralised corporate management processes. To effectively ensure that there is improved level of productivity, the Japanese distinctively possess a social set of memory. In this regard, the previous efforts of individual workers are allowed to enjoy a set of future rewards even though this particular worker can be inactive at the moment. Their past contributions lay a fundamental foundation for future organisational-based endowment. As a result of this, workers will then guarantee their loyalty to the organisation and at the same time act as meaningful role models for present employees (Stinchcombe & March, 1965). Following this line of argument, the Japanese model posit that personnel policies avail a favourable platform for conducting investment in human capital thereby endowing organisation with resources that are deemed to be appropriate for accomplishing improved productivity. To sum up the discussion above, it can be noted that the evolution of management and organisation has continued to adhere to notable societal trends of the period after 20th century. The scientific school of thought is fairly put forth by Taylor who ascertained that the workload could be fairly and evenly shared amongst workers and management so that the latter would be execute science-based tasks while workers conduct labour-related activities thus each of them doing what they are best suited to do. During this period, Fayol came up and identified organisation processes through an administrative management school. He possessed a profound effect on a great deal of administrative theory in the course of the early 20th century. Positively, the paper has noted that the Japanese school of management is a recent development in the existing organisational-arena that focuses on providing a comparatively newer way of improving productivity. References List Booth, C. & Rowlinson, M., 2006. Management and organizational history: prospects. Management & Organizational History, vol.1, no.1, pp.5-30. Drucker, P.F., 2007. Management challenges for the 21st century. Rutledge. McKenna, C.D., 2006. The world's newest profession: Management consulting in the twentieth century. Cambridge University Press Scott, W.R., 2004. Reflections on a half-century of organizational sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, vol.30, pp.1-21 Stinchcombe, A.L. & March, J.G., 1965. Social structure and organizations. Advances in Strategic Management, vol.17, pp.229-259. Weatherbee, T, G, Durepos, G & Mills, J, H. 2012. Theorizing the past: Critical Engagements. Management & Organizational History, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 194-202 Read More