A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORGANIZATION THEORY

1
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ORGANIZATION THEORY

• Chapter 2

Mary Jo Hatch with Ann L. Cunliffe
2
Why A History of OT?

• Because it provides a basis for
• Understanding the current field
• Understanding how and why the three perspectives
  emerged
• Understanding the relationship between theory and
  practice
• Avoiding reinventing the theoretical wheel

3
Organization Theory At Its Inception

• Organization theory emerged as a recognizable
  field of study in the 1960s.
• Two major sources of thought that formed the
  prehistory of organizational theory were
  Sociological and Managerial.

4
Modes of Reasoning

• Inductive developing theory from practice.
• (interpretive epistemology)
• Deductive testing theory against practice.
• (positivist epistemology)

5
Adam Smith, Political-Economist (1723-1790,
Scottish)

• Looked at techniques of pin manufacturing to
  illustrate how
• the division of labor can produce economic
  efficiency.

Image from "The Warren J. Samuels Portrait
Collection at Duke University
6
Karl Marx, Philosopher-Economist and
Revolutionary (1818-1883)

• Regarded as one of the founders of sociology.
• Theory of Capital
• Managerial Control
• Exploitation
• Alienation

Image from "The Warren J. Samuels Portrait
Collection at Duke University
7
MARXS THEORY OF CAPITAL (1867)

• Humans interact with the physical environment
• Physical needs emerge
  Power relations
• 
  (capitalists/labor)
• Labor need for collective work
• Emergence of society culture

8
Emile Durkheim, Sociologist (1858-1917)

• - Informal (social needs) and Formal
  organization.
• - Development of objectivist research methods
  objective measurement, statistical description
  and analysis.

9
Max Weber, Sociologist (1864-1920)

• Types of Authority
• Traditional inherited
• Charismatic attraction
• Rational-Legal technical abilities

10
Max Webers Theory of Bureaucracy

• Bureaucracy can rationalize social order
• Formal Rationality - calculative
  techniques
• Substantive Rationality - desired ends

11
Frederick Winslow Taylor, Engineer (1856-1915)

• Founder of Scientific Management - applying
  scientific methods to work to maximize the
  benefits to employees, employers, and society.
• Developed work standards, uniform work methods,
  order-of-work sequences, methods of placing
  workers, methods of supervision, and incentive
  schemes.

12
Mary Parker Follett, Scholar, Social Reformer,
Consultant (1868-1933)

• Promoted employee involvement and democratic
  forms of organization.
• Developed the principle of self-government of
  groups.

13
Henri Fayol, Engineer, CEO, Administrative
Theorist (1841-1925)

• Developed administrative principles including
• Span-of-control number of subordinates
  supervised by a manager.
• Departmentation grouping similar activities.
• Unity-of-command one person - one boss.
• Scalar principle linking organizational members
  in a hierarchy.

14
Luther H. Gulick, Administrative Theorist
(1892-1992)

• Developed a science of administration
• - Organizational efficiency through the
  division of work
• into small, specialized segments clear
  task definition,
• instruction etc.
• Defined the work of the chief executive through
  POSDCoRB.

15
POSDCoRB

• Planning
• Organizing
• Staffing
• Directing
• Coordinating
• Reporting
• Budgeting

16
Chester Barnard, Executive and Management
Theorist (1886-1961)

• Organizations as cooperative social systems
• - the communication of goals
• - worker motivation

17
Modernism - Enlightenment (Kant, Descartes,
Locke)

• Replace superstition with reason
• Control the environment through scientific
  knowledge
• Human progress through scientific knowledge
• The modern organization

18
General Systems Theory (von Bertalanffy, 1968)

• General Systems Theorists focus on the law-like
  regularities underlying and uniting all phenomena
  across the various branches of science.
• Hierarchy of Subsystems
• Interdependence
• Holistic view

19
Table 2.1 Bouldings Hierarchy of Systems

• Level 1 Framework
• Level 2 Clock work
• Level 3 Control
• Level 4 Open (living)
• Level 5 Genetic
• Level 6 Animal
• Level 7 Human
• Level 8 Social organization
• Level 9 Transcendental

20
A System

• Environment
• System
• (input transformation
  output)
• Subsystem Subsystem
  Subsystem
• Subsystem Subsystem

feedback
feedback
21
Socio-Technical Systems Theory

• Human behavior and technology are
  interrelated, therefore any changes in technology
  will affect social relationships, attitudes, and
  feelings about work. Both need to be balanced.
• Autonomous work groups
• Psychological needs of individuals

22
Contingency Theory (1960s)

• Contingency theorists believe that the most
  appropriate way of designing and managing an
  organization depends upon the characteristics of
  the situation in which the organization finds
  itself.

23
Contingency Theory

• Identify contingent factors.
• Determine the best fit.
• If . then

Goals
Technology
People
Environment
24
Symbolic Interpretive Influences

1. The crisis of representation questions our
   relationship with our social world and the ways
   in which we account for our experience.
2. Social constructionism we construct our social
   world and our knowledge of that world in our
   everyday interactions.

25
Symbolic-Interpretivism

• Challenges objective science and modernism.
• Applies ethnographic and interpretive approaches
  to organizations.
• Uncovers multiple interpretations of
  organizational members.
• Emphasizes the role of context in shaping and
  interpreting meaning.

26
Symbolic-Interpretivists Explore

• How people create meanings in organizations
  through their interpretation of utterances,
  stories, rituals, actions, and so on.
• How individuals and groups create multiple
  meanings and interpret them from their own
  cultural contexts.
• How multiple interpretations of individuals and
  subcultures blend to socially construct
  organizational reality.

27
Social Constructionism

• Social reality is both objective and subjective
  -- an ongoing
• interaction of people and their social world.
• The process of social construction involves
• Intersubjectivity created between us
  via shared
• history and experience.
• Objectified reality seemingly objective and
  stable
• but continually reconstructed in
• actions.

28
Symbolic-Interpretive Theories Include

• Social Construction Theory (Berger Luckmann,
  1966)
• Sensemaking Theory Enactment (Weick, 1979,
  1995)
• Institutionalization (Selznick, 1949)
• Reflexivity (Clifford Marcus, 1986)

29
Berger Luckmanns Social Construction of
Reality (1966)

• Externalization
• (creating personal shared
  social meanings,
• routines etc
  intersubjectively)
• Socialization
• Objectification
• (stable interactions, meanings etc
• make the world seem real to us)
• Internalization
• (taking on social eanings,
• roles actions)

30
Sensemaking Theory (Weick, 1995)

• Organizations exist in the minds of
  organizational members in the form of cognitive
  maps, or images
• of experience.
• We make them real in our actions (reification).
• We talk and act organizations into existence
  (enactment).

31
Institutionalization

• Organizations compete and adapt to the demands
  and values of their environment, society, and of
  internal groups.
• Institutionalization occurs as actions are
  repeated.

32
Reflexivity - Constructionist Approaches

• Every view is a situated one - based on our
  interpretive community.
• We need to accept that we not only construct our
  realities, but also our knowledge of those
  realities.
• We should therefore explore how we construct
  social and organizational realities, and the
  influence our assumptions and practices have on
  the research process and on knowledge (critical
  self-reflexivity).

33
Some Postmodern Influences

• Critical Theory and the critique of
• - the Enlightenment Project (rational,
  universal knowledge)
• - the Progress Myth (progress through
  science).
• Poststructuralism and the critique of language as
  accurately representing reality and the idea that
  words have fixed meaning.

34
A Few Postmodern Ideas

• Language Games
• Grand Narratives
• Discursive Practices
• Deconstruction
• Simulacra

35
Language and Meaning (Saussure, 1959)

• Signifier
• Bird
• Fugl
• Oiseau .
• The bird is swimming on the water.

Signified
36
Language - A Postmodern View

• Modernism assumes words (signs) are a neutral
  medium for representing external objective
  reality
• Postmodernism takes a non-representational view
  language constitutes reality
• Saussure the meaning of words does not reside in
  what is signified words take their meaning from
  other words
• Thus, depending on which other words we use,
  different meanings will occur
• Therefore, meaning is undecidable and unstable
  and language constitutes a world in flux.

37
Language Games (Wittgenstein , 1953, 1980)

• The meaning of a word depends upon how it is
  used.
• Language use is influenced by rules - how words
  and responses are connected.
• Language and rules have stability but also change
  in practice.
• Meanings and rules are socially situated and vary
  across communities, i.e. language games.

38
Grand Narratives

• Postmodernists criticize Grand Narratives
  (progress myth, universal Truth, wealth creation)
  because they legitimize ways of thinking and
  acting that promote
• what is True
• what is good knowledge
• self-interest
• . and silence and marginalize others.
• 
  We need to give voice to silence.

39
Discourse and Discursive Practices

• Foucault argued that power/knowledge are entwined
  and influence / are influenced by discursive
  practices.
• Discursive practices are systems of rules that
  determine the rationality and legitimacy of
  particular forms of knowledge. These rules are
  powerful because they create and regulate
• - social institutions (the university,
  hospital)
• - good knowledge
• - who we are (expert or not)
• - what we say (discourse)
• - how we act.

40
Power/Knowledge

• Knowledge is produced and maintained through
  historical,
• cultural, and discursive codes and
  practices.
• Certain people or groups define what is normal
  and not
• normal by codifying knowledge.
• These groups use this knowledge to define and
  regulate
• who and what is normal.
• Thus power is exercised through knowledge as
• individuals are disciplined and
  controlled based on
• these definitions and codes.

41
Power/Knowledge

• In every society the production of discourse is
  at once controlled, selected, organized and
  redistributed according to a number of procedures
  whose role is to avert its powers and its
  dangers, to cope with chance events, to evade its
  ponderous, awesome materiality
• (Foucault, 1972
  216)

42
Différance

• Derrida suggested that meaning is subject to the
  play of différance, because meaning
• Defers is postponed because we explain words by
  using yet more words, and so move further away
  from
• the original.
• Differs words derive meaning from the interplay
  with their opposite, e.g., good/bad,
  organization/
• disorganization

43
Meaning Defers.

• ECONOMY thrifty management
• Powerful in action growing vigorously
• potent cogent as reasons etc
  

44

• Deconstruction exposes the many ways in which
  texts can be interpreted the silences, absences,
  and gaps. It exposes the instability of meaning
  makes visible the other and is suspicious of
  dichotomies.

45
Reflexivity - Deconstructionist Approaches

• Open up meaning and the relationship between
  author, text, subjects and reader to reflexive
  scrutiny.
• Question the assumptions underlying management
  ideologies, power relations, management theory,
  organizational practices, and surface their
  impact on social experience.

46
Simulacra
Copies of copies of which there are no
originals..
47
Hyperreality

• The collapse of reality into images. The
  production of simulations or fantasies of worlds
  that do not exist.