Organisation & Management
CHAPTER 1: ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
ORGANIZATION: the study of the structure and management of organizations, their environments, and
the actions and interactions of their individual members and groups. Organization has a ‘practical’ side & a
‘theoretical’ side.
Some critics don’t find the managerial perspective very accurate, because of the following four reasons:
Power inequalities: Managerial functions have better access to certain information and power over
their employees.
The subject agenda: Managers have a different agenda than individuals and groups. Only the
manager’s agenda is important in this perspective and the rest is pushed aside.
Multiple stakeholders: An organization has multiple stakeholder groups, but only management is
represented. They are very important as they give money from the outside, necessary for the
organisation.
Fashion victims: Managers are prone to follow the latest trends in thinking and technique, but an
informed assessment can only be made if we take the history into consideration. Managers follow
‘guru’s’ vocabulary and topics; alignment, on boarding, ESS (employee self-service system, where
employees can ask for different approvals, like days off), constructive alignment, wicked problems.
ORGANIZATION: a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals:
Social arrangement: people you have to work/interact with & how they behave; everybody is different.
Collective goals: shared objectives (making profit: one of the most important goals) & to be
sustainable.
Controlled performance and cybernetics: checking what they are doing & working according to a plan;
Managing the pursuit of goals (setting standards, measuring performance, comparing actual with
performance standard and taking corrective action if necessary);
Scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine (regulative systems).
Example: A transport company: Their goal is to deliver goods within 24 h. They have set a standard: 95% of all
deliveries must be delivered in time. They measure their performance by asking the drivers to record the time at
which they make a delivery. Next, the organisation checks if the standard of 95% is actually met. When the standard
is not met, the organization needs to change its way of working. The organisation could decide that more drivers
should be hired. The next month, the organisation again measures if the standard is met. This is what they call
“Controlled Performance”.
What is an organization? – 8 METAPHORS (Gareth Morgan)
A machine A political system
A living organism A psychic prison
A brain Flux/Change & transformation
A culture An instrument of domination
REGULATIVE SYSTEM
Sometimes input/output is provided with feedback.
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, How do organisations work?
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR: the study of the structure and management of organizations, their
environments, and the actions & interactions of their individual member and groups.
ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN: identifies dysfunctional aspects within the organization and corrects them;
helps individuals reach their goals.
ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMA: how to reconcile inconsistency between individual needs and aspirations
and the collective purpose of the organization.
Different functions have different goals how to solve this while also focussing on the management
goals?
The idea is that the goals pursued by individual members of an organization can be different from the
purpose of their collective activity. Organizations are political systems in which some individuals exert
control over others. Managers have the power to make the decisions, while lower-level employees have to
comply or leave. This is called HIERARCHY OF AUTHORITY.
From an organisational perspective, sometimes bosses force workers to do their work and to reach the
organisational goals at all costs. On the other hand, from the employee’s perspective, employees try to do
as little as they can to earn their salaries. Neither of these perspectives are completely true.
ORGANIZATIONS can mean different things to those who use them and who work in them, because they
are significant personal and social sources of:
• Money, physical resources, other rewards
• Meaning, relevance, purpose, identity
• Order, stability, security
• Status, prestige, self-esteem, self-confidence
• Power, authority, control
Management decisions should be based on evidence instead of habits, bias or false assumptions.
Evidence-based management means systematically using the best available research evidence to inform
decisions about how to manage people and organizations. This also led to an evidence-based
management movement (EBMgt). One should bear in mind that there is no ‘best practice’ (solutions
depend on local circumstances).
Evidence-based best practice means doing what worked in the past. To respond effectively to new
challenges, we need to focus on ‘next practice’.
A key organizational capability is the ability to adapt as context, opportunities, and challenges change.
HUMAN RESOURCES
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT: the function responsible for establishing integrated personal policies
to support organizational strategy. It is taught separately from organisational behaviour.
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