Theoretical Approaches to Organization and Administration - Research Paper Example

The Organization Theory Introduction Organizations are not a recent phenomena but organization theory is. Social and economic scientists, researchers and practitioners have periodically, beginning in the 19th century, formulated various principles relative to organizational structures and management. These various principles formulated and espoused by different writers in various periods are known collectively as the organization theory. Although some of these researchers observed that the term organization defy any single and uniform definition, organization theory is best described however, according to D. S. Pugh, as “the study of structure functioning and performance of organisations and of the behavior of groups and individuals working in them” (Murugan). These principles provide significant purpose to managers and members of such organizations as well as students of management, business and sociology courses. These principles are moreover, broadly categorised into the classical approach, the neo-classical approach, the modern approach and the post-modern approach. The distinctions among these different approaches lie on the primary focus with which they give importance to. In the classical approach, for example, what is given significant importance are the technical aspects of organizations like formal structures, management, and principles of organisation. Theorists belonging to this approach are Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber. The neo-classical approach, on the other hand, gives emphasis on the human aspects of organisations like motivations, behavior and conduct of people involved in the organization. Some of the theorists in this approach are Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, Mary Parker Follett and Douglas McGregor. The modern approach, on the other hand, combines the best of both classical and neo-classical approaches by giving emphasis both on the form and structures of organizations and the human factor. Researchers and writers who patterned their research along this model are Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, and Amatai Etzoini. Finally, the post-modern approach, the least rigid and the most flexible, does not subscribe to any particular form or rule of organizations but stresses that organizations should adapt to internal and external factors surrounding them. Post-modernist theorists are Tom Greenfield, Tom Sergiovanni and Gareth Morgan, among others (Mullins 1999). This paper will examine four theorists representing each of the different organization and management approaches: Max Weber, of the classical approach, and his conception of bureaucracy and its classifications according to the authority legitimating them; Abraham Maslow, a neo-classical approach theorist, and his Hierarchy of Needs which detailed the different human needs that purportedly motivate the behavior of people in organisations; Chester Barnard, of the modern approach classy and the important role of the executive in the organization, and; Gareth Morgan, a post-modernist, and his metaphorical approach at viewing organizations. I Classical Theorist: Max Weber Max Weber is regarded as the father of organizational theory largely because of the extensive and comprehensive study he did on the nature and characteristics of bureaucracy. Born in Germany and with law as educational background, Weber wrote in the 1920s. He particularly noted during his time the burgeoning of large-scale industries which inspired him to formulate his theories on bureaucracy which have become classic in organisation study. Although he did not formally give a definition of bureaucracy, Weber extensively discussed legitimacy, authority and selection pertinent to bureaucratic structures. It was his theory of authority structures which is considered his greatest contribution to the organisation theory (Pugh & Hickson 2007; Grint 2005). Weber was initially intrigued why people in organisations obey commands. This led him to distinguish and classify organizations in accordance to how authority in such structures is being enforced. Distinguishing authority from power as the ability to enforce orders from subordinates with voluntarily obedience from them and the latter as the ability to compel subordinates to follow orders despite resistance, Weber formulated the three types of authority: the rational-legal; the charismatic, and; the traditional (Pugh & Hickson 2007). These pure types of authority however, rarely occur alone but authorities, according to Weber, are mostly enforced in combination of these types of authorities (Miner 2005). The rational-legal authority, according to Weber, is the type of authority which has the most pervasive use in large-organizational structures called bureaucracies existing in most modern societies. This authority is based on rules which are consciously adopted either with the consensus of its members or by the highest echelon of authority in the bureaucracy. The characteristics of this type of authority are: consistency; impersonality and; applicability to all within the bureaucracy. According to Weber, this type of authority commands the highest kind of obedience – voluntary obedience. Thus, the person exercising and bearing the authority commands obedience because he or she is so designated by the rules to be empowered and his empowerment with such authority is made legitimate because it matches with the norms set by the rational-legal authority. The bottom line is that it is the rules rather than the person which is accorded the real authority and given obedience to (Miner 2005). Another pure form of authority, according to Max Weber, is traditional authority. This kind of authority is derived from customs and the traditional practice of power in a given society. Weber further subdivided it into sub-types: gerontocracy, the notion that the right to authority belongs to the oldest in the community; patriarchalism, the notion that authority properly belongs to the male head of the family, and handed down from generation to generation to chosen male heads, and; patrimonialism, or the authority that began to take shape when patriarchalism began to organise administratively. As opposed to the rational-legal, this type of authority has no fixed rules and therefore inconsistent and arbitrary and personal because the center of the authority is the person exercising it (Bealy et al 1999). Similarly, the charismatic type of authority is highly personal because it is dependent on the personality or qualities of an individual person perceived by the followers to be of exemplary qualities uncommon in all other men. However such a person’s authority ends the minute his followers perceived him to be no longer possessed of such extraordinary characteristics. Although charismatic authority, like traditional authority, is dependent on an individual, its primary distinction from that type is that it is the followers of the leader who conferred to him that authority on the basis of their perception of his extraordinary qualities. However, unlike the rational-legal type, this type could be arbitrary and inconsistent because of the absence of fixed rules as the charismatic leader himself makes up the rules. This type of authority has two characteristics according to Weber: it is typically anti-economic unlike the two other types because the purpose of the extraordinary character of the leader transcends ordinary and common problems, and; it is inherently unstable which is the primary reason that it will eventually evolve into a combination or mixed form of authority (Kronman 1983). In sum, the two essential points of bureaucracies which enabled it to become prevalent in modern societies, according to Weber is that they are both legal and rational: legal in the sense that they find basis on procedures whose correctness can be made subject to review or be compared against a pre-determined body of rules and rational in the sense that they are underpinned by the fundamentals of expert knowledge and their effects calculable (Grint 2005). II Neo-Classical Theorist: Abraham Maslow Abraham Maslow was a clinical psychologist whose work on the Hierarchy of Needs served as the foundation for all other theories of the motivation theory which emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs enumerated the human needs which he said were what basically motivated people to behave in a certain manner. This is significant to organizational structures because it arms managers with the knowledge to draw out the best possible maximum productivity from their workers. The motivation theory which belongs to the neo-classical theory focuses on human relation unlike the classical theory espoused by Weber and other theorists of the era whose works centered more on rules and organisational structures (Crowther & Green 2004). The Hierarchy of Needs enumerates five needs system that according to Maslow underpin man’s behavior. These five classes of needs were categorised by Maslow into a pyramidal structure ranging from the most basic needs at the bottom and going up to the most civilized and most mature needs (see Fig.1). These needs are: survival; safety or security; a sense of belonging; ego-status, and; self-actualization. Occupying the base of the hierarchical ladder is the survival needs which consist of a person’s biological and physiological needs like food, shelter, drink, air and other basic needs that are necessary for his survival. Going up the next rung are the safety needs like personal and family security, law and order and others which Figure 1 Hierarchy of Needs according to Maslow ensure a person and his family’s security from outside harm and interferences. The third rung is occupied by belongingness-and-love needs like stability of familial and co-worker relationships and the fourth rung going up are devoted to esteem needs or those which satisfies the esteem and ego of a person. At the topmost of the hierarchy are the self-actualization needs or those needs which allow a person to experience a sense of personal growth and fulfillment. Maslow theorized that the needs at the lowest level must be satisfied to a certain extent before the individual loses his preoccupation with them and transfers his attention to the satisfaction of the needs on the next higher level. The satisfaction of the needs at a certain level liberates the individual to fix his attention with the needs of the next level (Montana & Charnov 2000). III Modern Theorist: Chester Barnard Chester Barnard, a former president of big organizations like the New Jersey Bell Telephone and the Rockefeller Foundation, wrote the book The Functions of the Executive in 1936 which focused on leadership as the key role issue in organizational structures (Clegg et al 2005). It is not therefore surprising that Barnard’s work was mainly derived from his vast and extensive experience as an executive and he is known more as an empiricist rather than a logical positivist. Thus, Barnard’s work indicates a de-emphasis on intellectual ability and academic training and stresses intuition and know-how which can only be acquired from experience (Lynch 2006). Barnard pioneered the “cooperative system” perspective of organizations on the premise of the indispensability of the willingness of all people to cooperate in the workplace to ensure organizational goals. This willingness, according to him, must transcend grudging obedience or other common concerns like contractual compensation but must be the result of a commitment – a commitment to be bound with organizational group (Organ et al 2005). In this respect, Barnard put much emphasis on the role of the executive to draw out from the subordinates this all important commitment. He believed that the main role of the executive or the elite manager is to ensure that his subordinates work in accordance with organizational goals and that this task can be characterised as emotional. His basic principles of management included: the volatility of individual behavior; the existence of a “zone of indifference” in every individual which corresponds to an unquestioning obedience to order and which every good manager must find and try to broaden; the importance of communications in every organisation; the significance of informal groupings and finding the ability to manipulate and make it work for the organization rather than against it, and; authority is possible only if there is acceptance on the part of those upon whom it is imposed (Clegg et al 2005). IV Post-Modern Theorist: Gareth Morgan In 1988, Gareth Morgan published his book Images of Organization which broached the idea of metaphorical approach as a management tool in organizations. The Welsh born Morgan who earned his public administration degree in the University of Texas, held a teaching post and earned a PHD in organization theory in the University of Lancaster and presently teaches administrative studies at York University in Toronto, posited that since there is no single definition or theory that can fully capture the essence of organization then the best approach to studying organisation is to adopt a multiple metaphorical approach. He then formulated the eight metaphors of organization namely: organizations as machines; organizations as biological mechanisms; organizations as brains; organizations as cultures; organizations as political systems; organizations as psychic persons; organizations as flux and transformation; organizations as instruments of domination (Witzel 2003). The metaphor “organizations as machines” sees organizations in a mechanistic, classic perspective and is evinced by those organizations whose functions are to meet repetitive demands. Examples of this kind are factories and those in the fast food industries. The advantage of this perspective is that it simplifies things and therefore allows easy manageability and control over the various organizational aspects. Its disadvantage however is that it is rigid, lacks adaptability, and neglects or ignores the human factor. The metaphor “organizations as psychic prison” refers to conditions in an organization where its management has imposed rigid management policies as means of seeking punishment of members who do not follow rules imposed by the organisation. The “organization as an organism” is a biologically inspired metaphor and refers to organizations which focus on their ability to meet external demands through the creation of systems and subsystems. On the other hand, “organization as politics” is a metaphor referring to organization as a potential site for power struggles over various resources which could include human, financial, technological, strategic or creative. “Organizations as metaphor for brains” simply refers to the perspective that organizations are places of learning and knowledge, information processing and other activities which make use of mental abilities and capabilities. As a metaphor for cultures, organizations are places where the convergence of people results in the convergence of values and rituals. As metaphor for domination, this refers to organizations which have lost their original goals and have evolved into domination-focused system existing solely to dominate their members for survival as an alternative to dissolution. Finally, organization as a metaphor for flux and transformation refers to the state of instability that organizations often go through as a result of internal and external changes that often accompany their existence (Cameron & Green 2004; L’Etang 2007). Conclusion The various theorists above discussed reflect the principles typical of the approach to management and organization that they represent. Max Weber, for example, focused on the form and structure of bureaucracies and how their existence is made possible and maintained. His theories on bureaucracy and the types of authority enforced by these organizations are important not only because they give a glimpse of how bureaucracies sustain their life but also because they provide the ground with which organizations can build on their success. On the other hand, Abraham Maslow reflected the leanings of the neo-classical approach which is humanist by focusing on the motivations of persons. This too, is important because this knowledge can be used as a potent managerial tool to draw, sustain and enhance productivity of personnel. The modernist approach can be gleaned from Chester Barrnard’s work which cleverly combines the form and structure principle of the classical approach and the humanist approach of the neo-classical approach by focusing on the “cooperative system” of organizations, placing on the shoulders of the executive the responsibility of drawing out the best from his subordinates for topmost organizational productivity. Finally, Gareth Morgan’s metaphorical approach mirror the adaptability principle of the post-modern approach as it calls on a multiple perspective of organizations from being machine-oriented to flux and transformation ready. Despite the fact that each of these approaches, and theorists, have their critics, yet the significance of all these theorist and their approaches are not lost on managers, practitioners and students of organization theory. These different perspectives of organization as espoused by these theorists and approaches serve an important and pivotal role in the coming together of the organisation theory. Many of the contemporary theorists built their work partially on one or more of these theorists, amplifying and improving on them resulting in more refined and more fine-tuned principles of organization theory. References: Bealey, Frank and Richard A. Chapman, Michael Sheehan 1999, Elements in political science, Edinburgh University Press, p 23. Cameron, Esther and Mike Green 2004, Making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools & techniques of organizational change, Kogan Page Publishers, pp 86-94. 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