This document provides a summary of the textbook for the subject Organization Theory, which is taught in the first year of IBA. The summary is for the final exam, and includes chapters 13-16. The textbook these notes are based on is Managing & Organizations (Clegg et al.), fourth edition.
Organization Theory Textbook Notes – Final Exam Vrije Universiteit
ORGANIZATION THEORY
TEXTBOOK NOTES – FINAL EXAM
Emma van der Voort – 2646319
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,Organization Theory Textbook Notes – Final Exam Vrije Universiteit
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 13 – managing social responsibility ethically..................2
Stakeholder management.....................................................................................................................3
corporate greening................................................................................................................................4
critical management..............................................................................................................................4
Doing CSR..............................................................................................................................................5
the challenge of managing ethics..........................................................................................................7
approaches to business ethics...............................................................................................................8
Chapter 14 – managing bureaucracy.........................................10
Origins.................................................................................................................................................10
management theory: foundations.......................................................................................................10
exporting modern management ideas.................................................................................................15
contemporary management models...................................................................................................15
Resisting management: labour process theory....................................................................................16
summary..............................................................................................................................................17
chapter 15 – managing bureaucracy.........................................17
introduction.........................................................................................................................................17
rethinking bureaucracies.....................................................................................................................17
Authority and delegation.................................................................................................................19
isomorphism....................................................................................................................................20
summary..............................................................................................................................................22
chapter 16 – managing organizational design............................22
introduction.........................................................................................................................................22
contingency theory..............................................................................................................................22
Structural adjustment to regain fit, or sarfit....................................................................................27
new organizational forms....................................................................................................................28
M-form.............................................................................................................................................30
matrix organizations........................................................................................................................32
shamrock organization....................................................................................................................32
networks..........................................................................................................................................33
Summary..............................................................................................................................................34
CHAPTER 13 – MANAGING SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ETHICALLY
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,Organization Theory Textbook Notes – Final Exam Vrije Universiteit
STAKEHOLDERS, RESPONSIBILITY, SUSTAINABILITY.
Learning objectives:
Understand the importance of stakeholders for organizations
Know what is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Understand issues around climate change
Manage sustainability
Introduction to managing CSR ethically
A risk society is one in which the life-threatening disasters that we might be subject to cannot be
controlled within specific territory: Chernobyl or global warming are good examples
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be defined as the explicit attempt by an organization to
signal that it exceeds minimum legal obligations to stakeholders that are specified through regulation
and corporate governance, often by extending the notion of stakeholders to be more inclusive.
CSR is considered very fashionable
Key question for managers are why organizations should be concerned about sustainability and how
they should deal with the issue
Asking the why question can be used to differentiate ethical concerns from instrumental
concerns
The how question differentiates between techno-centric approaches, in which sustainability
is seen as a technical problem, and power-sensitive approaches, in which the pressure of
stakeholder interest makes sustainability a political issue
There are 2 extremes ethically:
1. Caring for a variety of stakeholders and the externalities created by your operations
2. A resource dependency and institutional perspective need legitimation to operate, a concern
for other stakeholders is a means of acquiring legitimation
There are 3 levels of analysis implicit in a CSR discussion:
1. Institutional level assumptions about legitimation of organizational actions
2. Organizational level can they be held legally accountable?
3. Individual level managerial discretion presumes morality of ethics of members
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
Stakeholder Theory develops frameworks within which relevant stakeholders can be identified and
defined differ per company, e.g. Walmart do not recognize the legitimacy of trade unions as
stakeholders because they seek to maintain union-free operations, therefore their definition of a
stakeholder is very similar to that of a shareholder
You have both voluntary and involuntary stakeholders
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, Organization Theory Textbook Notes – Final Exam Vrije Universiteit
Austria and Germany believe companies should be seen as a ‘social partnership’ built upon a tacit
and informal agreement between government, the major employers’ associations, and various
employee interest groups (referred to as corporatism)
Stakeholder approach is always an implicit theory of power relations in which some interests will be
given a more legitimate status than others
People:
Unilever executive Harish Manwani (2013) argues environmentalists etc. are also stakeholders
Vogel (2005) suggested it may well be standard business case that the primary responsibility of
companies is to create wealth for their shareholders but, emergence of CSR and activists
associated with it adds a twist: in order for companies to do well financially they must also act
virtuously
Höllerer (2010) focus (1) of CSR is PPP: Profits, People, Planet. Focus (2) is on good corporate
governance and enhanced transparency, (3) stakeholder management, and (4) corporate values
Steve Howard (CEO of IKEA) believes that the environment should also be factored in as a client
CORPORATE GREENING
Corporate Greening is a process that involves trying to adopt green principles and practices in as
many facets of the business as it is possible to do so
Less waste can equal more profit as you use all your resources saving materials, wastage &
resources = less money wasted
Advantage of corporate greening is that companies have to become and stay innovative
At a certain point you have gotten all the ‘easy’ advantages one additional step could be to make
suppliers standard compliant as well
If a firm projects itself as being socially responsible, it can deepen and strengthen its reputational
capital and pre-empt risk, as suggested by Utting (2003)
Jermier (2006) suggests several factors characterize a successful green learning organization:
Lifelong learning
Developing critical thinking skills
Building citizenship capabilities
Fostering environmental literacy
Nurturing ecological wisdom
Three things need to come together to build green learning in organizations:
1. Creation of a public sphere
2. Development of communicative rationality
3. Discursive design
Greenwashing
Common critique is that CSR is often a tool of corporate ‘greenwash’ – a rhetorical device employed
by corporations to legitimize the corporate form and accommodate the social consciences of its
consumers to be credible, claims to CSR need to be audited to be legitimate
Organizations frequently promote themselves in the best possible light while not being consistent in
their ecological commitments = greenwashing
CRITICAL MANAGEMENT
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