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Organizational THeorizing. MGT 6381- Advanced Organizational Theory. Author: Mike Reed. Professor and Associate Dean Cardiff Business School (Wales) Research Theoretical development in organizational analysis Managerial/professional/expert work - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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ORGANIZATIONAL THEORIZINGMGT 6381- Advanced Organizational Theory
Author: Mike Reed Professor and Associate Dean Cardiff Business School (Wales) Research
Theoretical development in organizational analysis
Managerial/professional/expert work New forms of work organization and control Changing forms of organization and
management in UK public services
Early organization literature Viewed organizations as rational,
streamlined structures Separate out the values + emotions in
organizations Like Frederick Taylor “The One Best Way”
Fused the individual and the collective Somewhat utopian? Do we still see organizations in this light?
We are at a juncture We are in a period of “revolutionary”
science Normal – puzzle solving Revolutionary – Assumptions being
challenged, internal conflict, critique, reevaluation
Three possible responses Retreat to orthodoxy Embrace diversity and discontinuity Retell the history of OT
Time and theorizing Theory
Historically located Constantly evolving Acceptance and impact depends on
receptiveness of the academic community Theory making
“assembling and mobilizing ideational, material and institutional resources to legitimate certain knowledge claims and the political projects that flow from them”
Dynamism in theorizing Despite ongoing debate, still a basis for
evaluating new knowledge “Grounded Rationality”
Negotiated rules and norms for generation of new knowledge
Vocabulary and grammar of organizational analysis
Perhaps not as ubiquitous as in hard sciences
Is the academic community an institution?
Historical Themes Rationality Integration Market Power Knowledge Justice Network
Rationality Logic of organization
Technical function defines socio-economic location, authority, behavior of everyone
Social order based on organization Not randomly assigned, birthright, etc
Basically, a rationally constructed artifice Frederick Taylor’s “One Best Way” approach
Is this true everywhere? Dictatorships? Family businesses?
Rationality “Human beings become the raw material to be
transformed by modern organizational technologies into well-ordered productive members of society unlikely to interfere with the long-term plans of ruling classes and elites”
What do you think? Is this a reasonable theory given what you know of
modern organizations?
Challenges to Rationality Simon (1945): Bounded rationality
Author Reduced to rationality to individual cognitive processes “Politics, culture, morality, and history are significant
by their absence of bounded rationality” Do you agree with this de minimis statement
about bounded rationality? Inability to deal with dynamism Instability of complex organizations Doesn’t address problem of social integration
and maintain social order
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Integration Why do people cooperate in organizations?
HR perspective Management as benevolent and socially
skilled Didn’t like tunnel-vision of rationalism
Organizations adapt to changes in environment to help restore equilibrium where rational model pitches “one best way”
Organizations help integrate individuals into wider society
Integration Borrowed Systems Theory from natural
sciences Structural functionalism
Internalist focus on Org Design... But external concern on env. Uncertainty Need the right fit between the two to survive
Conflicts over valued means and ends into technical issues that can be solved through effective design and management Frictional elements in an otherwise perfectly
functioning system?
Integration Can organizations’ ills really be fixed
through socio-organizational differentiation/ functional systems analysis?
Major output: Contingency theory Use social engineering and flexible org
designs to solve major institutional and political problems.
Drawbacks Social, economic and political reality didn’t
comport to the theories.
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Market If markets behave in neoclassical ways…
…then there’s no need for organizations. Fortunately for us, they don’t
Organizations form when markets fail Market theory tried to integrate rational
and integration approaches Rational: Bounded Rationality,
Efficiency/Effectiveness Integration: Organizations must respond to
their environment
Market Two major theories arose
Transaction Cost Economics Organizations formed by internalizing transactions
based on transaction costs Organizations respond to environment to maximize
efficiency Population Ecology
Competitive pressures influence organizational design Both:
design, functioning and development as outcomes of universal and immanent forces – can’t be changed by strategic action
Market More attention to resource allocation as a
determinant of organizational behavior and design Shortcomings
Doesn’t talk much of social power or agency Unitary social and moral order in which individual and
group interests and values are simply derived from overarching “system interests and values” uncontaminated by sectional conflict and power struggles.
No emphasis on community, public service, and social concern – all you have to do is respond to market demands
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Power Most overused and least understood Roots (interplay of both)
Social power Human Agency
Former theories Too deterministic Too unitary
If deployed properly, creates and recreates a hierarchy of autonomy and dependence
Power Two perspectives
Max Weber – Theory of domination (Institutional)
Machiavelli – Organizational Politics (Processual)
Key difference between the two approaches: Processual (bottom-up)
asks how people lower on the totem pole sway/gain power over those above them.
Examples: unions? collective bargaining?
Power Three faces of power:
Episodic - observable conflicts of interest between identifiable social actors with opposing objectives
Manipulative – behind the scenes activity through which powerful groups manipulate decision-making agenda to screen out issues that may threaten their control
Hegemonic – strategic control of existing ideological and social structures in constituting and limiting the interests and values (and thus action options) available No longer a human phenomenon, now ideas have power
Power Field tried to synthesize institutional and
processual perspectives by looking at ‘expert’ discourses and practices Which particular patterns of organizational
structuring and control are established in different societies/sectors?
A key shortcoming: Doesn’t deal with the material cultural and
political complexities of organizational change
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Knowledge Previous approaches
Too deterministic Totalizing logic of explanation
More micro-level than previous approaches
Less rationalist/functionalist/positivist Organizing as a temporary patterning of
interactions and alliances Shifting networks of power Always prone to internal decay and
dissolution
Knowledge Organizations are
Preserves of specialist/expert groups Localized knowledge stores Means for sharing and acting on knowledge
Knowledge is key cognitive and representational resource
for the application of a set of techniques from which disciplinary regimes can be constructed
A strategic resource to be produced, codified, stored, and used to generate power
Knowledge Theoretical approaches drawing on knowledge
Ethnomethodology Postmodernist approaches to org culture and
symbolism Neo-rationalist decision making theory Actor-network theory Post-structuralist/modernist theory
A Key Shortcoming Perhaps too localized – what happened to
external environment?
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Justice Bring field back to the macro level Attention to global issues Discussion of governance and control and
“fairness” Several theories using justice approach
Neo-institutionalism Political economy of organization Organizational democracy and participation
in governance
Justice Neo-institutionalism
More than just an aggregation of individual actions
Looks at rules that bind organizations Emphasis on entities that penetrate organizations
state, social class, professions, industry Central concern:
“cultural and political processes through which actors and their interests/values are institutionally constructed and mobilized in support of certain organizing logics rather than others.” (Structure)
Justice Neo-institutionalism (cont’d)
Secondary concern “complex overlapping organizational discourses
in which institutionalization is practically grounded and precariously realized” (agency)
Attempted to reconnect Local with the global Organizational practices/policies with
institutional rationalities and structures Negotiated order with strategic power and
control
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
Network Has a major influence on the literature
Multiple definitions/approaches taken Has explained many changes in OECD
countries Has been applied to many settings (see p.
35) Talk more to system-wide changes than
specific phenomena The big picture
emergence, development and impact of discontinuous or disjunctive change
Network Three major research approaches
Macro Wide-ranging and broadly focused studies - theory of network-
based organizations and societies as a whole Mid-range
Uses network-based theories to understand dynamics and outcomes of change within and between specific institutional fields/sectors
Attempts to explain new, different organizational forms Micro
Identify, map and describe the highly complex networking activities and relations that lie beneath the surface level of institutionalized orders and regimes
Workplace restructuring
Network Can be seen as a lever of control / power Shortcomings
Very different from older OT literature Are they irreconcilable?
Organizations have resisted the logical change in organizational form Highly centralized Distant from local needs Unable to change rapidly
Big OT questions: Why do organizations exist? Why are firms the same/different? What causes changes in organizations? Why do some firms survive and others
don’t? Emerging issue?
The intersection A highly contested domain
Advocates from each approach Thus “Revolutionary” period
Ontology/Epistemology How is reality defined?
Positivism? Socially constructed? Critical Realism?
Fundamental assumptions in approaches
The intersection Agency/Structure
How are creation and constraint related through social activity?
How do creation and constraint coexist? Agency – Humans create and reproduce
institutions Structure – Institutions constrain human
actions
The intersection Local/Global
At what level should organizational analysis/theorizing take place?
Is there one “right” level? Individualism/Collectivism
Is all organizational action/behavior just a sum of it’s individual parts?
Can organizations “act”?
Where do we go from here? Two options from the beginning
Retreat to orthodoxy Embrace diversity and discontinuity
Or both?
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