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Samenvatting Organizational Behaviour, ISBN: 9780198724025 Organizational Behaviour
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Organizational behavior summary q4Chapter 1 – introducing
Introduction
- Running an organization can be difficult because they involve people. They are
unpredictable and complex because they have their own agendas, beliefs, identities
etc.
- 3 levels:
o Individual: their personality, motivation and learning.
o Group level: how they are managed through teams and groups.
o Organizational level: how they are led, impacted by power and politics.
- OB is also about how organizations are structured and run through systems and
procedures.
Importance of critical thinking
- People do not act in predictable ways, it is not controllable, so there is never a right
answer.
- Also ‘’real life case’’??
- Some of the requirements employers are looking for are:
o Professionalism / work ethic, oral and written communication skills, teamwork
and collaboration skills etc.
Chapter summary
- Organizations are fundamentally about people and they make it complex.
- There are never right answers.
- Goal: to understand different perspectives and to seek to challenge your own
assumptions.
,Chapter 2 – rational organizational design and
bureaucracy
Control: from small-to large-scale organizations
- Disorganized is when a company is not orderly places in which managers at the top
are in charge and staff do what is required of them.
- Fayrol laid the foundation for the view of what orderly managing and organizing is. 5
main functions of a manager:
o Planning: looking to the future and be able to respond to this.
o Organizing: building up necessary structures, resources and people.
o Coordinating: bring together structure, human and resource elements.
o Commanding: giving orders and directions to people to maintain activity.
o Controlling: checking and inspecting work-monitoring and surveillance of work
done.
- The personal style(know employee personal and by name and often in an informal
way) of management is only with small hotels. The bigger an organization becomes,
the more difficult it is to manage and organize in a personal and informal way.
- Few styles of approaching employees:
o Direct control: face-to-face control of workers by a manager. Opposite is
indirect so less personal.
o Impersonal control: control of workers that is not done face to face(e.g.
through rules and procedures).
o Rational organizational design: rational means logically and methodically so
it’s efficient. Bureaucracy means impersonal, ,rational forms of organizational
design and control.
Aspects of bureaucracy
- Bureaucracy = the formal structures and procedures that facilitate the management
of an organization. It includes the hierarchical organization structure, the rules and
procedures etc.
- 3 aspects of bureaucracy: hierarchy, rules and paperwork(records).
o Hierarchy: structure of offices. At the top trying to control the whole
organization. Represented as a chart. Each position is referred to as an
office(=defined role in an organization). An official is the person who fills in a
particular role. He/she works in official capacity.
o Rules, procedures and policies are instructions. They are written down.
o Paperwork: forms, records(=information held by organization) and timetables
is used in a bureaucratic organization to present information about its
people quickly and efficient!!
A double-edged swords?
- Max Weber saw the negative sites of bureaucracy: trapping people in monotonous
routines, taking away people’s autonomy and ensnaring us all in its ‘’iron cage’’.
- ‘’double-edged swords’’ because on the one hand, bureaucracy allows for great
achievements on the other hand it brings considerable problems and dysfunctions.
,Bureaucratic structure and hierarchy
- First element of bureaucracy is hierarchy. It’s a response to the problem of maintain
control over people in an organization.
- FIGURE 2.3 blz. 37
- The bigger the organization the bigger the span of control(number of workers
controlled by a manager). 5 is a maximum.
- Manager with a big span of control causes indiscipline, disorganization and is
inefficient.
- Delegate: pass a job, task or order down to lower levels of a hierarchy.
- When the span of control is too much, a further level of hierarchy can be introduced.
Between each level there is still personal, direct, fact-to-face control.
- Because each layer has control over the layer under it, there is more time for other
management tasks.
Vertical and horizontal differentiation
- Vertical differentiation: employees are separated and differentiated vertically fron one
level of the hierarchy to the next.
- Horizontal differentiation: if different branches are assigned different functions. So it’s
also known as functional differentiation. It specifies each role even further with
specific task associated.
- The structure shows who a worker is controlled by and who a worker has control
over.
Bureaucratic standardization-rules, policies, and procedures
- Rules, policies and procedures are formal instructions that govern how particular
activities are to be performed.
- E.g. finance(pay scales), equal opportunities, appraisal and promotion etc.
- Their aim is to standardize behaviors and activities so control is implemented. It is an
indirect and more efficient way.
- The risk is that the hierarchical control is lost. Who knows if the rules are being
followed? It can cause unrest and disruption.
- So control is delegated down the hierarchy but actions of the mangers also.
- For this system there is a department called Human resource(/personnel)
management: a part that concentrates on policies and procedures relevant to the
management of people.
Power of bureaucracy: large-scale control and rational design
Fayol, bureaucracy, and principles of management
- The bigger a company get, the harder face-to-face control is. Control is implemented
through impersonal elements(structure, rules and paperwork).
- Rational organizational design is about finding the most direct and efficient means to
achieve organizational ends.
- The power of bureaucracy is preventing disorder, make it possible to control on large-
scale what would be impossible without it.
, Chapter 3 – rational work design
Introduction
- Cost is a concern to all manager. They always try to cut the costs. Reduced costs can
mean lower prices or increased profits.
- One of the largest costs is labor.
- Rational work design is applied to the labor process in order to create workers who
are more cost effective. through the design of work itself, workers do more for the
wages they are paid(more efficient and productive).
o Rational work design = the design of work tasks to achieve maximum
efficiency and reduce costs.
o Labour process = how work is designed and controlled by management.
- Industrialists as Taylor and Ford are synonymous with rational work design. They
have key features of rational work design:
o Taylorism: the work process designed by Taylor, associated with the division
of labour into small tasks, which are then redesigned to be performed as
efficiently as possible.
o Fordism: the use of a moving assembly line to mass produce goods.
- Key features:
1. Work is seen as a means of achieving a clearly defined end.
2. Work is designed so as to achieve this end in the optimum or most
efficient possible manner for time and money.
3. Work is designed in a scientific manner, using measurement and
calculation.
4. Work is broken down into simple, repetitive tasks which take little or no
skill to perform, a division of labour(= breaking down a job into more
simple, individual tasks).
The capitalist working relationship: cost and control
- Means of production: tools, premises / equipment and other property used to
manufacture goods.
- Individual workers are exposed if equipment breaks down and needs expensive
repairs. They have a lot of freedom(sell what they want etc.).
- The freedom is not an advantage of economies of scale(= cost reduction that comes
from producing a product in large amounts). Not each piece of equipment or capital
investment is not used to its optimum.
- The factory system took advantage of economies of scale. They brought together a
group individual workers.
- Capitalist wage-labour(= the relationship between capitalists who pay wages, and
labour who work in return for those wages) relationship is an exchange. The capitalist
who owns and invest capital(investment in a business to set up the means of
production) in a company pays a wage to workers. In return for this wage, workers
supply their labour(person who works in return for a wage).
Tensions in the capitalist wage-labour relationship
- Capital and labour want different things and have different priorities. Capital has an
interest in getting the most work for the wages they pay(maximum efficiency).
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