Organizational Behaviour Summary
Chapter 2
The larger an organization becomes, the more difficult it is to mange and organize in a personal,
informal style. bigger = more indirect, impersonal control using rational organizational design
Rational organizational design: The design of bureaucratic features in the most technically efficient
way so as to achieve the organization’s goals.
These impersonal, rational forms of organizational design and control are termed bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy: Official aspects of an organization, such as the hierarchical structure, rules, procedures,
and paperwork which allow control to be exerted over the whole organization.
It standardizes information about people + organizational processes and as such becomes a form of
tool/technology which is used as a means of controlling, managing, and ordering people/populations.
Fayol’s five functions of management:
1. Planning: Looking to the future, calculating and predicting circumstances.
2. Organizing: Building up necessary structures, resources and people to meet the needs/goals
3. Coordinating: Bringing together the structural, human, and resource elements of the
organization to act in harmony in working towards the goals
4. Commanding: Giving order and directions to maintain activity aimed at achieving goals
5. Controlling: Checking and inspecting work -- monitoring and surveillance of work done,
rather than direct command
When businesses get bigger the span of control (number of employees a manager supervises)
increases. To solve this problem, managers delegate, by passing a job to lower levels of hierarchy
thus creating bigger organizational chart.
Weber concluded: power and authority in society were moving from a grounding in tradition and
religion towards bureaucratic forms of authority (rules/hierarchy) = Rational-legal authority
Formal rationality: the most efficient means to achieving ends (not human)
Substantive rationality: takes the effects of action in human and ethical terms in account
A other theory instead of the ‘one best way’ was contingency theory: different ideal types of
bureaucratic structure and functioning, depending on the environment facing the organization.
Environment: uncertainty, technology used, size.. still quite rational in focus.
Post-bureaucratic structures are more flexible and less hierarchical removed rules and regulations.
They overcome dysfunctions of bureaucracy, such as red tape and trained incapacity.
Organizations can operate relatively independently from geographical location when exploded into
computer networks where begins an organization and where does it end? blurs boundaries of
organizations between: organizations/customers + work/home + different organizations.
Such organizations can be understood as rhizones.
Rhizones: decentralized structures with random connections (opposite of bureaucratic, hierarchical
structure)
, Chapter 3
The capitalist wage-labour relationship. Aka you work for money.
Taylorism is often seen as being simply about efficiency, minimizing waste, and increasing output.
However such attempts at efficiency are directed within the capitalist wage – labour relationship at
people rather than machines. And, while Taylor wanted to design organizations like machines, people
do not necessarily behave in the same precisely controllable manner.
Craft knowledge is where workers have specialist expertise in the work that they do. Workers would
use their craft knowledge to create a rule of thumb (how long a job would take). This was the
workers controlling the work process.
Taylor believed that workers were naturally lazy, he thought people engaged in soldering, creating
time for themselves during the working day and not work as efficiently as possible.
Taylor believed in the ‘one best way’:
1. Division of labour and scientific design of work.
Breaking down a job down into a series of simple repetitive tasks (a division of labour).
2. Scientific selection of employers
Defining the precise characteristics of the ideal candidate for a job and training individuals for
particular jobs.
3. Workers work, managers manage
A separation of planning and doing, separation of mental work (thinking) and the physical work.
4. Workers and managers cooperate
Control through Taylorism
Standardization
Individualization
Surveillance
Knowledge
Skill
Fordism can only operate under large economies of scale, aka mass production. assembly line
dehumanizing.
Karl Marx took a different view. Workers were naturally creative. According to him, there are a
number of negative effects upon workers: alienation. From the product, the production process,
from the human essence and other humans.
Advantages and disadvantages on p. 89!!
