Are organizations rational - Essay Example

A rational organization is characterized by the desire of the organizational personnel to be efficient to their optimal tendency. The theory of rational organization considers the organization as a multipart mechanism (Sarfin, 2014). Managers need to regularly monitor the progress of work as well as the organizational culture and tweak any part whose functionality is lesser than maximum in order to increase the efficiency. An organization’s long-term development can be controlled and modified to achieve the goals.

Two major elements that help characterize the rational systems include goal specificity and formalization (Monappa and Saiyadain, 1996, p. 5; Simon, 2001, p. 27). Goal specificity promotes the display of rational behavior in the organizations because specific goals guide the structural design so that the management can delineate the activities that need to be executed and the resources that have to be arranged (Triplett, 2007, p. 4). The attempt to increase the predictability of behavior through regulation and standardization is called as formulation.

Formalization makes the organizational culture conducive for stable expectation that is rationality’s precondition. Rational system perspectives are related to four organizational theories’ schools, including Taylor’s Scientific Management, Fayol’s Administrative Theory, Weber’s Theory of Bureaucracy, and Simon’s Theory of Administrative Behavior. “Rational models are best thought of as descriptions of actions that will usually be compelling for most organizational audiences…but they are not necessarily the best basis for determining what managing actually consists of” (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2011, p. 30). Through the scientific analysis of the activities executed by the organizational personnel on individual level, Taylor (2007) realized the best method that can be