Organizational Theory - Essay Example

These standards have arisen without sound testing of whether these standards are, in fact, objective measures of quality (Eichler 1988). Wilson's views are in part countered by Stephen Linstead who while acknowledging the quality of Wilson's work argues that it does a disservice to the main thinkers who laid the theoretical groundwork of the modern O.T. This paper will raise the arguments of these two views and attempt to evaluate them on their respective merits . Wilson's review goes over a great deal of research in the field of O.

T and consistently finds evidence of gender blindness in O.T. In covering the research and challenging the assumptions of the studies from the perspective of her thesis of gender blindness she raises many questions for further research. Sometimes the questions raised contradict one another such as the indexing of absolute standards to male attributes and not to the consideration of the objective value of such indices's and whether sometimes so called female attributes may in some cases be the true standard(Eichler 1988); then she later calls into question the whole debate of the study of differences as a pursuit without rationale in light of changing workforce patterns, but to draw this out as a structural flaw in her argument is really not fair since she is challenging individual research conclusions on their original assumptions and not trying to make overarching conclusions about gender differences but rather asking researchers to at least adopt paradigms that allow for new questions(Wilson 1996).

This spirit of valuable inquisition runs through her article. In an important highlight of this work She brings many strongly held notions to task such as the idea of assertiveness in itself being a virtue and asks why the relational aspect of O.T has rested on the male idea of hierarchy structures being based on power and authority rather than the attribute valuation emphasized in the female style of management( Rosener 1990) . This is in essence summed up as the difference between a hierarchal schema and a web based organization where relational values are emphasized(Crawford and Maracek 1989).

Later she makes the strong argument that the traditionally thought of distinctions of male assertiveness is based more in power relations than in the notion of gender(Snodgrass 1992). To dismiss her review as a reflexive call to focus solely on the gender inequities is do her an injustice as she herself denigrates the notion of analysis based on that approach. Rather she calls for an actual consideration of gender in Organizational Theory especially in light of the increasing role of women in the workforce.

This is especially important since the researchers such as Richard Brown (1976) and Janet Wolff (1977) have noted the inequities that Wilson argues for some time without much change. Stephen Linstead acknowledges the quality of Wilson's review and agreeing that the modern technical studies of OT are guilty of the gender blindness that Wilson claims but he disagrees with Wilson about the early theorists such as Laslow and Weber , Taylor and Mayo. These men he argues were not gender blind but rather suppressed gender as they did other variables to arrive at a theoretical framework that was applicable in a