Annalies Schep
Organization & Power
College 1. Introducing organization sciences
College 2. Bureacracy, efficiency & forms of control
College 3. Culture & paradox
College 4. Structure & agency
College 5. Power & (dis)organization
College 6. Identity regulation
College 7. Organization & networks
College 8. Organization theory in context 1: Consultancies & collaboratives
College 9. Contingency theory resource dependence & organizational ecology
College 10. Institutional theory
College 11. Organization theory in context 2: Gender & diversity
College 12. Leadership, complexity, and power
College 13. Organization theory in context 3: Normal accidents and high reliability
College 14. Wrap up/preparing for the exams
HC 1. Introduction Organization Sciences
Literatuur:
- Handel – Introduction (pp. 1-4); Handel intro part II
- Bartunek, Rynes, & Ireland, 2006.
Organizations
Organizations are everywhere and have a meaning and their own story. All kind of organizations
became active, in the pandamic for example. If you study organizations and activities of people
within organizations, then covid-19 period is interesting.
Business takes new shapes enabled by new technologies, do old theories still apply? The example of
a new enabled technologies is Gorillas. It is built on the economy and rely on the internet. This is a
new type of organization, sort of a hybride organization. Yes, old theories still apply. For example,
Gorillas: article about the logistic system, this organization is flexible from the outside and the front-
side activities is dynamic. At the same time their logistic system is almost tailorized. Taylor is well
known for his ideas on straight organizations of productions, his theories are hundred years old, but
they still apply to nowadays.
Although most of us ‘’know an organization when we see one,’’ the diversity and complexity of
organizations and their activities is difficult to capture in a single formal definition, Joel Baum.
à sounds lazy but there are a lot of organizations and the way they organize.
As a result, multiple, sometimes contrary, conceptions of organizations exist, each one highlighting
particular features of organizations, but necessarily providing only partial and incomplete views, Tim
Rowley.
There are so many ways to organize. If you talk about a organization, you know it is an organization
when you see it, it is a lazy definition. But there are so many organizations, and many ways to
organize. Depending on the way you see and approach an organization, how you describe what an
organization is.
Example: Dead Poets Society
It is a boring subject; the teacher was standing on the table because: I stand upon my desk to remind
myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.
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That is interesting scholarly work: It disconfirms some (but not all) of the assumptions held by its
audience (Bartunek, Rynes and Ireland, 2006).
What kind of discources is this poem reffering too? This we need to do when we are reading a text.
Challenge to think about my interpretation.
Think about the connection between the theories and my own interpretation, that’s important when
you look at an article. Think in a deeper layer when you read things. What is this theory referring
too? What is the background of the information?
The objectives of organization and power
• Aims to deepen your knowledge about organizations, organizational processes and power
• Sets the stage for researching, analyzing and theorizing processes of organizing in a variety of
contexts
• Raises the awareness that power in, outside and between organizations is important to
understand how they function, and what role they play in society
• Builds on original texts and their application through the analysis of classic, contemporary and
critical texts (and some case studies).
Three challenges
• Original text
o What exactly did authors want to make clear?
o What was special to their contribution?
• Link ‘originals’ to current studies
o how to apply these insights in recent practice?
o What has changed over time?
• What is the use of theorizing on organizations and power?
Organization sciences is built on many sciences, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics,
history e.g. There are various theories.
What is theory? – part 1
A theory is:
‘’a set of interrelated contructs (concepts), definitions, and propositions that present a systematic
view of phenomena by specifying relations among variables with the purpose of explain and
predicting the phenomena’’.
à this meaning is based on concepts that are connected to one and another to understand
relationships between variables. With the purpose to predicts and explain. `theory with concrete set
of variables, survey/questionnaire with a statistics hypothesis for reject H1 or reject h0.
Social identity is a person's sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). Tajfel (1979)
proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, soccer team etc.) which people belonged to were
an important source of pride and self-esteem.
How can you measure self-esteem? You need
to find variables and do you analyse. At the
end you come up with results that explain
self-esteem.
Systems and life world perspectives. How can
we understand what the VU is? You can use
the theories to actually do research, but you
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can also start from what we called the life world who are a part from de organization (VU).
Life world perspective à participate in the actions and activities that are part of the Vrije
Universiteit. They change overtime.
What is a theory? – part 2
It is not predefined but when you are doing research you find things that are important. When you
read articles you find thing that are important.
Grounded theory is a complex iterative process.
The research begins with the raising of generative questions which help to guide the research but are
not intended to be either static or confining. As the researcher begins to gather data, core theoretical
concept(s) are identified. Tentative linkages are developed between the theoretical concepts and
data.
A theory is not a set of fixed variables and hypothesis. It is a way of looking at the world.
Organization and power as a social sciences discipline
• The focus is not so much on efficiency and effectiveness (or management tools), but on
understanding (‘Verstehen’):
o Different social scientific themes, methods and theories are useful
o Embedding in social phenomena and depeloments is curcial
• Common sense, various definition, biases
Organizations – part 1
“Organizations are social entities that are goal-oriented; are designed as deliberately structured and
coordinated activity systems, and are linked to the external environment” (Daft, 2004)
Organization is “a system of consciously coordinated personal activities or forces” (Chester Barnard)
Organizations – part 2 (more based on the grounded approach)
See organisations as a field, organisations are arenas of power where discursive struggles take place
(Maguire & Hardy, 2006)
Or authors deny the existence of ‘organisations’ and prefer to talk of processes of ‘organizing’
(Tsoukas & Chia, 2002).
This makes the field more dynamic, to understand change. To bring the time-prespective.
Organizations: a view
This is a suggestion for a definition, and you will come across more definitions.
The view we adopt in this course comes close to Baum and Rowley’s (2002: 2):
“Most words ending in “-tion” are ambiguous between process and product – between the way one
gets there, and the result. Our word, organization, shares this ambivalence, itself referring to the
process of “organizing,” or, to the result of organizing.
Although the range of definitions can create confusion, together, they also provide a means of
capturing the full breadth of organizational life.”
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HC 2. Bureaucracy, efficiency & forms of control
Literatuur:
• Handel intro part I and chapters 1 and 2; Handel intro part III, chapter 8;
• Ball, 2010.
Hungergames: behaviour is beging whatched, what they’re doing is being watched. Taking this as a
metaphor for the way of we see organizing. This is not a prison, participants to the game do that on a
voluntary base. Their behavior all they do, the interaction is being controlled, at least watched
centrally.
What does this mean for people in an organization? Being watched on their behavior.
About this lecture
... know about various forms of control
… authority-based organizations
… efficiency driven solutions (and big data)
… surveillance as of form of control
Handels book
Rational: part 1 and 2 (the idea that you can from the outside use your analytical….)
Natural: part 3 and 4 (more related to the life-perspective)
Open: part 7
Devolopments and topics: cultures, power, networks, deviance, trust and gender
Control as power (central issue)
Social control refers to societal, organization (and political) mechanisms or processes that regulate
individual and group behavior in an attempt to gain conformity and compliance to the rules of a
given society, state, or social group – and in our case: an organization.
Forms of control
• Hard coercion (forma control): regulation, sanctions (leave this room on the basis of my
autorithy. If you don’t leave the room you will not pass the exam)
• Soft coercion (informal control): socialization, norms and values (now online college, there is a
reason idea that we can do lecture online. Almost instantly (a year ago) there were ideas of how
that will be. We became socialized in an online class (form of social).
To understand the hard coercion, you need to know Weber.
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