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Industrial Practice 442 Summary Notes
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Industrial Practice NotesOrganisational Behaviour
Students:
Harry Potter
Teacher:
Andre The Useless
Course:
IP442
, WEEK 1: CHAPTERS 1&2
CHAPTER 1: FOUNDATIONS OF ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
AND RESEARCH (IGNORE FOR TEST WEEK – A WASTE OF
TIME)
Learning Outcomes:
• Give an overview of the different views that were a source for the development of
the organisational behaviour (0B) field
• explain Taylor's principles
• describe the five key tasks of a manager according to Fayol
• give Barnard's view on co-operation
• explain Simon's ideas about motivating workers and bounded rationality
• describe the four alternative views on organisation studies
• contrast McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y assumptions about employees
• describe Morgan's eight organisational metaphors
• define the term 'organisational behaviour'
1.1 The history of organisational behaviour
People Management is critical.
Further analysis uncovered the following seven people-centred practices in successful companies:
• Job security (to eliminate fear of losing a job).
• Careful hiring (emphasising a good fit with the company culture).
• Power to the people (via decentralisation and self-managed teams).
• Generous pay for performance.
• Lots of training.
• Less emphasis on status (to build a 'we' feeling).
• Trust-building (through the sharing of critical information).
1.2 A rational-system view of Organisation:
We now focus on the early days of organisational behaviour in the beginning of the twentieth
century, based on the works of Frederick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Chester Barnard.
Frederick Taylor
Frederick Taylor is one of the best-known figures in the rational-system view of
organisations and is the founding father of scientific management, a scientific approach to
management in which all tasks in organisations are analysed, routinised, divided and
standardised in depth, instead of using rules of thumb.
Taylor made the work of labourers more efficient by increasing the speed of work and by
organising the work differently. He studied each task by comparing how different workers
performed the same task. Each of the studied tasks was divided into as many subtasks as
possible. The next step was eliminating the unnecessary subtasks and timing the fastest
performance of each task. The whole task with its subtasks was then described in detail and
,an optimal time was attached to each task. Workers were asked to do the task in exactly this
manner and time.
Applying the ideas of Taylor resulted in the following consequences for the factory owners
and workers:
• Higher output.
• Standardisation.
• Control and predictability.
• The routine of the tasks allowed the replacement of skilled workers by non-skilled
workers.
• Thinking is for the managers, workers only work.
• Optimisation of the tools for each worker (such as size and weight of the tools).
However, Taylor did neglect some important organisational behaviour aspects, such as the
importance of job satisfaction (see Chapter 3), non-financial work incentives (see Chapter 6)
and the positive role of groups and teams (see Chapters 7 and 8). Taylor saw groupings of
workers as the basis of 'soldiering'.
Henri Fayol
His management principles were proposed as general principles and based on rationality, in a similar
way to Taylor, who also took a fundamentally rational view on management. The reason for its
success is that Fayol was the first to describe management as a separate profession and activity in
companies, practically inventing the concept of management.
Henri Fayol made management visible by defining it and describing in a normative way what
managers should do. There are a number of general principles that managers should follow and
basic tasks that they should execute. Table 1.1 describes the five main management tasks identified
by Fayol:
Table: 5 Basic Management Tasks According to Fayol
To execute these five basic tasks of management well, 14 general management principles
should be obeyed. These are:
, 1. Division of labour.
2. Authority and responsibility.
3. Discipline.
4. Unity of command.
5. Unity of direction.
6. Subordination of individual interest to the general interest.
7. Fair remuneration of personnel.
8. Centralisation.
9. Hierarchy.
10. Order.
11. Equity.
12. Stability of tenure of personnel.
13. Initiative by every employee.
14. Unity among the employees
Although Fayol puts the stress on centralisation in the organisation, he recognises that we
should not overreact but find an optimal balance between centralisation and
decentralisation. The same goes for hierarchy, which should not be too strict since it makes
the organisation inflexible. Direct communication between two persons of the same
hierarchical level but from different departments should be possible with the permission of
their two direct bosses. Fayol took a very mechanistic view of management and a lot of
what he considers management refers to organising and structuring organisations.
Fayol's major concern was the lack of management teaching, although management is the
most important task for directors. Lack of teaching had three causes. First, there was no
management theory or management science and, therefore, this could not be taught like
other sciences. Second, mathematics was considered for decades as the best and highest
possible development for engineers who will run a company. Third, in France, the most
highly regarded schools were the schools that educated engineers.
Fayol identifies six important skills a good manager or director needs. These are physical
qualities, mental qualities, moral qualities, general education, specific education, and
experience.
Fayol admired Taylor, although he disagreed with two very important aspects of Taylor's
ideas. Fayol did not totally separate thinking and acting. Every employee has some
management tasks and should be able to take initiatives within his or her area of
responsibility and within the rules of the company. Unity of command (i.e. one employee
should only receive orders from one boss — see Chapter 10) is a very important principle for
Fayol but does not fit in with the principles of Taylor. According to Taylor, there should be
functional management instead of military management.
Chester Barnard
Chester Barnard is less well known than the other authors mentioned in this overview, but
his ideas are no less important. He found that previous organisation theories had
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