Modern and Post-Modern Views of a Great Company - Research Paper Example

? Modern and Post-Modern Views of a Great Company Table of Contents Introduction 3 General Dynamics Information Technology 3 Modern and Post-Modern Theories 5 Modern Perspective 6 Post-modern Perspective 10 Affirmative-Era Post-modernism 10 Skeptical-Era Post-modernism 11 Affirmative/Deconstruction 11 Skeptical/Deconstruction 12 GDIT Analysis 14 References 16 Modern and Post-Modern Views of a Great Company Introduction The two perspectives chosen to support my final assignment are Modern and Post-Modern. This assignment will include how these perspectives are put into practice in a company and their effects on the organization. Both perspectives are correlated by planning, organizing, influencing, leading and controlling. For the purpose of this assignment the organization chosen for the modern and post-modern theory analysis shall undergo scrutiny of its planning and organizational factors as these are the focus points of this assignment with expansion on the others, like technology as they become applicable. General Dynamics Information Technology The company selected for this assignment is General Dynamics Information Technology. It is the IT wing of General Dynamics and the world’s 5th largest defense contractor, provides information technology (IT) services, professional services and systems engineering services to customers ranging from federal and state governments, homeland security, defense, health, and commercial sectors. It is also involved in simulation and training with worldwide professionals accounting to approximately 17,000. A trusted name with over 50 years as a pioneer in systems integrator, this company manages large-scale and often mission-critical IT operations and enterprise solutions. The advent of information technology (IT) has resulted in changes in the U.S. military warfare and tactics thereby leading to a transformation in General Dynamics. General Dynamics Information Systems and Technology business segment has four business units and General Dynamics Information Technology is one of them. Earlier General Dynamics was known as provider of tanks, submarines and ships to the Department of Defense. Today General Dynamics leads the market in providing the United States government and its allies with technologies. It also is the market leader in mission-critical information systems. General Dynamics’ largest and fastest growing segment is its Information Systems & Technology group. Worldwide it boasts of employee strength of 91,700 approximately while the headquarters of GDIT is in Fairfax, Virginia. General Dynamics is the market leader in the following: information systems and technologies shipbuilding and marine systems armaments and munitions land and expeditionary combat systems Business aviation (General Dynamics Information Technology, 2011). John Philip Holland started the parent company of Holland Torpedo Boat Company (parent company of General Dynamics) which was responsible for developing the first submarines of US navy. The company after the acquisition of Canadair in 1946 and its subsequent expansion in aircraft production was then renamed to General Dynamics on 24 April 1952. The U.S. defense conglomerate is the world’s fifth largest defense contractor today. Although the company has now diversified and caters to a much wider variety of commercial businesses, from healthcare to mobile service networks, the company still remains principally a defense contractor, providing services and products to Army, State and Federal Governments. Modern and Post-Modern Theories One major difference between the two theories is their dates of inspiration-Modern 1960-1970 and Post-Modern 1990s (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006, pg. 6). The modernist feel that you must commit to limitations based on knowledge of our five senses (Hatch &Cunliffe, 2006, pg. 15). It is all in what a modernist call their reality based on the data form their five senses. According to Hatch &Cunliffe (2006) the post-modernist perspective commits to uncovering and challenging all forms of power, which includes knowledge. We hear the term “Knowledge is Power” and it seems to match with the post-modernist perspective. When planning, the modern perspective has the following short-term profit goals, mass production; worker is a cost, vertical planning, and top down focus, and planning that leads to order. The post-modernist perspective is long- term, horizontal planning, worker is an investment, flexible production, internal and external customer focus, planning leads to confusion and disorder (Bushe & Marshak, 2007). The methodological difference between the two perspectives is based on the opportunities of the selected company. As noted by Hatch & Cunliffe (2006) about the interplay between the perspectives of an organization which produces continuous change in each of them (p. 7). The company reacts to the Department of Defense and private sectors by either providing products or services which are associated with a desired outcome. GDIT tends to support their clients internally and externally with these products and services, and this gives the company a mixed approach for short-term and long-term profit goals that thereby support both theories. The variables forms that contribute to organizational effectiveness are organization and environment (Hatch & Cunliffe, 2006). The variables associated with an organization and environments are suppliers, unions, special interest, competitors, partners, and customers that relate to the two chosen perspectives. Modern Perspective The modern perspective of Organizational Theory, essentially, is one of progress through the use of technology and bureaucracy. It aims at abolishing class, caste and slavery based social structure to establish an advanced society. The modern perspective for an organization focuses on factory system of Taylorism together with administration by rules and offices of Max Weber’s bureaucracy. This gave rise to factory bureaucracy with salient features of performance, uniformity, surveillance, and control. Frederick Taylor (1911) had advocated the use of scientific methods to solve all managerial problems. Taylor stated four new duties of management: Science to replace the old rule-of-thumb methods for each element of human resource. Selection and training of workers on a scientific basis rather than the old practice of letting workers to select their own methods and tasks and train themselves as per their wisdom. Encourage cooperation between workers and management so that work can adhere to scientific procedures. Division of work between workers and management with each group carrying out the work it was best suited for so that managers take equal responsibility of a particular work. Points 2 and 3 give rise to the field of personnel management development. From point 4, managerial functions like planning and control, and the concept of functional organization were generated. So the modern era, also known as, the industrial era gave birth to a Scientific Organization. Here manual labor was replaced by automation. According to Ferguson (1984, p. 108) “Scientific organization classifies people into departments, functions, skill groups, levels, layers, and hierarchies. People fit into a system of little boxes, boring and repetitive jobs with no skills, hierarchy of subordination to the moods and prejudices of superiors”. Scientific management created the product bureaucracy in which the worker was freed from thinking, planning, innovating and quality control aspects of work and those responsibilities were given to the managers who specialized in this job. Scientific methods were also implemented in the human relation's movement, where workers were tested, examined and measured to make them what William H. Whyte Jr. (1956) referred to as a modern "organization man." An organization man can be identified as a bureaucrat, a technocrat, and a staff person who takes minimum risks and chooses the safety of working for a big organization rather than becoming an innovator or an entrepreneur. It is very easy for a modern organization to neglect the good aspects of scientific management and adopt the rigid hierarchical and capitalistic ways. Most modern organizations, through improper vision and understanding of scientific methods have institutionalized racism, sexism, euro centrism, colonialism and bureaucracy, and deemed the scientific methods as evil. Women have been the most exploited and neglected in a modern setup, our society predominantly being a male dominated social structure; hierarchy, dominance and exploitation became male category systems of control. Liberal feminism used to be, in Foucault's terms, a voice raised against the dominant discourse; it has now largely become a voice subservient to that discourse (Ferguson, 1984, p. 193). Bureaucracy as a system has always been rigid about categories. Our bureaucratic ways created categories like ‘workers’ and ‘managers,’ ‘blacks’ and ‘whites,’ ‘blue’ and ‘white’ collar, ‘women,’ and ‘men’ which defined people in a way that one group would always have more power over another. General Dynamics took its modern day shape after acquisition of Canadair in 1952. This period is considered to be the end of modern era. In spite of it, General Dynamics together with its IT wing incorporates most of the characteristics of such organization and retains a lot of that flavor even today. In May 1965, GD reorganized into 12 operating divisions based on product lines. The structural change was instrumental in institutionalizing the hierarchy within the organization. Also the appointment of David S. Lewis as CEO in 1970 was followed by moving of company HQ to St. Louis, Missouri in Feb 1971. The boss-centric leadership is evident here and control of the organization rested with him till his retirement in 1985. Such totalitarian control also gives rise to corruption and malpractices, and General Dynamics has not been immune to it. As per Hersh (1997) General Dynamics was involved in blackmailing top officials, including even the president to get lucrative government contracts. In his book ‘The Dark Side of Camelot’ he writes that few security operation personnel of General Dynamics broke into the apartment of Judith Exner Campbell, a mistress of JFK in August 1962 and used whatever they found there to blackmail JFK into making a controversial award of the TFX (Tactical Experimental Fighter) plane development to General Dynamics. JFK was involved in the controversy of awarding of contract which was earlier seen as going to Boeing, their rival organization. Also General Dynamics was U.S. government’s most preferred military contractors during the early stages of the Cold War (Kolar & Toporisic, 2007). In 1958, it obtained $2,239,000,000 worth of government business, higher than any of its competitors. More than 80 percent of the company’s business came from various government contracts (Mollenhoff, 1967). The narrow market vision of GD is evident here with them relying solely on government projects to remain profitable. On the other hand, their closest competitor Boeing was essentially a commercial aircraft and equipment manufacturer. Also, other businesses of GD, including IT, during late modern and early post-modern years were at a very nascent stage to have any major effect on its strategy. Another cause for embarrassment for GD was the financial misdealing and expense report scam of 1985 (Alexander et al., 1985). Post-modern Perspective There are as many approaches to post-modern as there are post-modernists (Rosenau, 1992, p. 15). The two important approaches to post-modern are - the era approach (Drucker, 1990, 1992; Boje & Dennehy, 1992; Clegg, 1990) and the other one being deconstruction approach (Derrida, 1978). Both era and deconstruction approaches can be viewed in an affirmative or a skeptical way (Rosenau, 1992). Affirmative-Era Post-modernism The message of this approach is that each era is a paradigm shift which gets better with each new era. It equates post-modernization with trade union, scientific management and human resource movements citing it as an historical event and symbolic for its time. The rigid and hierarchical structure of factory-bureaucracy in industrial era was often viewed as battleship. It is now slowly transforming into a flotilla where different smaller ships or business functions can align themselves to the changing environmental conditions. The post-modern organization now aims at granting equal rights and pays to women, reaffirms the individual and community, exposes the flaws in bureaucratic system and its ill effects and most of all empowers individual and encourages entrepreneurship spirit. The affirmative/era post-modernism concept also advocates the abolishment of management and procedural ways together with planning which it says leads only to confusion. Many post-modern companies now operate without an annual documented budget; the concept of ‘Beyond Budgeting’ has been gaining ground. Most notable example of a mega-corporation implementing BB is Toyota which has been working without a budget since 1995. Skeptical-Era Post-modernism The ideology behind it is the reverse of affirmative. It says that things only get worse in a new era and people become more controlled than the previous era and the so-called progress is a myth. It argues that pre-modern era could well have been better than that of modern era and there is no way of knowing for sure as history has many perspectives it can be seen through. It also says that many a good thing of previous era might have been lost in the myth of progress in modern times and its propaganda through thoughtless celebration. Skeptics also cite various examples, like the one of Nike which as a post-modern organization has a labor force of 500,000, mostly young female Asian workers with very low wages. Affirmative/Deconstruction It says that deconstructing the established bureaucratic, racist and sexist discourses shall be emancipating and shall free everyone from the exploitation. The deconstruction aims at destroying existing norms and story to reveal the suppressed voices and the hidden traps. This shall expose the true nature of a modern setup following which the affirmative post-modernists try to improve on the discourse, revise the dialogue, and strike a new balance of power in the relationships. Skeptical/Deconstruction This approach says that the post-modern deconstructions are often manipulated by organizations and become modernist discourses of even more command, control and exploitation. Hugh Willmott (1992) is skeptical of the excellence literature because "management is urged to become directly and purposefully involved in determining what employees should think, believe or value" (p. 61) by strengthening organizational culture along particular lines. The skeptics believe that Toyota, often cited as a successful post-modern organization with its flexible production along with propaganda of success, gives it total dominance and control over the individual. The Japanese model of management, like that of TOYOTA, considered superior in modern perspective, is not easily embraced by the American principles of management and organizations, as both are very different (Clegg 1990). Skeptics conclude that post-modern organizational dimensions such as empowerment and lean production are imprisoning. The post-modern organization is many times defined as a unit of diverse, self-managed, self-controlled teams with many centers of coordination which are brought into action as and when required (Burke, 1991). These teams have minimum hierarchy and are flat in design, team members have sufficient control and are influential, and the communication is fluent between the teams (Boje & Dennehy, 2008). Being post-modern means you are against racism, euro centrism, sexism, bureaucracy, and colonialism. Post-modernists try to listen to the voices of those excluded by organizations and exploited through the modernist agendas. Hatch (1997) is of the opinion that this post-modern viewpoint of organizations doesn’t necessarily bring about their downfall. Instead, it brings to light their maturity and broader perspective which can see through the different viewpoints and their extremities to powerfully maneuver around, between, or through them (p.366-369). The postmodern perspective has many challenges in front of it. First is that the managers still continue to implement modern principles and this might be resulting in lowering the performance among employees (Burke, 1991). Secondly, the traditional male-centric system of organization, which might be prevalent today, has to change, with more and more women entering the workplace. Third, the Postmodern will require more dialogue and discussions among diverse subcultures and all types of – men, women, Blacks, Asians, Whites and others. The Post-modern gives an opportunity to practice organizational theory by embedding management scholarship in broad post-modernist scholarly traditions. Multidisciplinary research is thus possible and linking of management theory to general theories of cultural organization can therefore be carried out. Qualitative methods for data collection, such as story analysis, which can complement present methods of qualitative research on management, are also put to practice. Second, cultural knowledge and the nature of social organization are also brought to light. The Post-modern thus provides a complete guideline to fully understand the management and the organization. In place of the specialized, tree-of-knowledge, divisions of knowledge, post-modernism argue for a rhizomatic approach. A rhizome forms interconnections among the roots of a tree, rather than the pattern of separated and specialized branches. The current frontiers of management scholarship are extended by making use of non conventional management research techniques -- rhetoric, anthropology, literary criticism, history, etc. A good and thorough understanding of the post-modernism approach is vital so that new theories of the management of social and organizational change can be developed. This will be needed to bring about a change in social structure of future organizations and overcome the significant problems which are plaguing them today. GDIT Analysis GDIT has had very limited influence of post-modern theory. The defense contractor still maintains its hierarchical ways, but the number of business units has now come down to just four. One change in the ways of the organization during this period though has been that of tying executive compensation to shareholder wealth creation, and subsequently implementing a strategy that included downsizing, restructuring, and exit (Dial & Murphy, 1994). In the post-Cold War era of 1991, GD faced declining demand in industry. Other contractors meanwhile made defense-related acquisitions or diversified into non-defense areas, GD adopted an objective of creating shareholder value through downsizing, restructuring and partial liquidation. By 1993, the shareholders gains reached $4.5 billion, showing a dividend-reinvested return of 553%. Another initiative of GDIT has been more investment into no arms and weapons operations. GDIT now provides MC4 (Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care) to the Army. GD and its IT division have increased their focus on presenting themselves as an ethical postmodern organization. For that purpose, the organization brings out an ethics handbook called the General Dynamics Standards of Business Ethics and Conduct guide (the Blue Book) and the “Doing Business with General Dynamics Information Technology”. These two texts clearly outline the high standards and principles of that General Dynamics wishes to maintain. The Blue Book lays out the building blocks for corporate behavior of GD. As per GDIT: “At core, we are in business to earn a fair return for our shareholders. In doing so, we must use our company’s assets wisely and we must deliver on our promises to our customers, partners, and employees. These are the fundamental business ethics principles that guide our conduct and decisions” (General Dynamics Information Technology, 2011). The other text: “Doing Business with General Dynamics Information Technology” is a guideline for its suppliers and vendors to follow. It talks about various aspects of anti harassment and corruption policies that the suppliers and vendors are expected to meet. It also gives an overview of the company’s policy on conflict of interests and its resolution, together with adherence to contractual & legal requirements. These efforts are made to present itself as an ethical postmodern organization of Affirmative/Era type. These efforts have helped and now GDIT has diversified to a much larger field of IT services provider catering to many commercial entities and not just the government or the military. Very recently, GD was able to renew its contract with CMS to continue to provide claims processing support. General Dynamics provides computer software services to support the Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics and Supplies (DMEPOS) system including maintenance. CMS through their use of General Dynamics Information Technology's VIPS Medicare System software processes approximately 240,000 claims every day. References Alexander, C. P., Redman, C. & Yang, J.E. (1985, April 8). General Dynamics under Fire. Retrieved may 2, 2011, from Time: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,965505,00.html Bushe, G. R., & Marshak, R. J. (2007). 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