Question

1. Identify and describe the following topics and persons:
A. Systems theory and the systems metaphor in organization theory,and it's relation to contingency theory.
B. Scientific management and Frederick Taylor and Max Weber
C. The administrative Management School ( POSDCORB,"principles")
D. Hawthorne studies
E. Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon
F. Group dynamics movement
G. Human Relations School/ Abraham Maslow/ Douglas McGregor
H. Sociotechnical School ( Trust and Bamforth)
I. General idea or meaning of contingency theory

Answer 1

A:  

The Systems Theory was developed in the early 60s. With a conceptual and analytical base, it attaches a great significance on empirical research data.

In simple terms, the theory considers organizations as systems. ”A system is an organized or complex whole – an assemblage or combination of things or parts which form a complex unitary whole”.

The different parts of the system are called sub-systems, which are interrelated. Further, various sub-systems are arranged according to a scheme so that the complete system is more than just a sum of its parts.

This ensures the efficient functioning of the system as a whole. Also, every system has a boundary which separates it from its environment.

Inputs are energy, information, and materials which the organization takes from the environment. It then transforms then with the help of people and machines and supplies the output to the environment.

Further, the reaction of the environment to the output is the feedback mechanism using which the organization can evaluate and correct itself.

Organization and its Environment

There are two types of systems:

1. Open Systems – which interact with their environment. Also, all living systems are open systems.
2. Closed Systems – which have no interaction with their environment. Also, all non-living systems are closed systems.

An organization is an Open System as it continuously interacts with its environment. Therefore, in order to understand an organization, one must identify its boundary. We can understand an organization’s interaction with its environment as an input-output model.

The contingency theory is simply an extension of the systems organizational theory. According to this theory, there is no particular managerial action or organizational design that is appropriate for all situations.

In fact, the design, as well as the managerial decision, depends on the situation. In other words, it is contingent on the situation and circumstances. Therefore, the Contingency Theory is also referred to as a situational theory.

An organization has several sub-systems like technical sub-system, social sub-system, etc. Some of these sub-systems are independent and don’t need interlinking through any process.

Hence, the Systems Theory involves the study of an organization and identifies:

1. Its strategic parts
2. The nature of the interdependency between these parts
3. If there are any processes or systems which link the parts together and
4. The list of goals that the system is trying to accomplish.

An organizational metaphor is a figurative comparison (that is, a metaphor, simile, or analogy) used to define the key aspects of an organization and/or explain its methods of operation.Organizational metaphors provide information about the value system of a company and about employers' attitudes toward their customers and employees.

The organizational metaphor is a well-known way in which organizational experiences are characterized. We have come to understand organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, instruments of domination, etc. (Llewelyn 2003). The metaphor is a basic way in which human beings ground their experiences and continue to evolve them by adding new, related concepts that carry aspects of the original metaphor.

B: The scientific management movement produced revolutionary ideas for the time—ideas such as employee training and implementing standardized best practices to improve productivity. Taylor’s theory was called scientific because to develop it, he employed techniques borrowed from botanists and chemists, such as analysis, observation, synthesis, rationality, and logic. You may decide as you read more about Taylor that by today’s criteria he was not the worker’s “friend.” However, Taylor must be given credit for creating the concept of an organization being run “as a business” or in a “businesslike manner,” meaning efficiently and productively.

Before the Industrial Revolution, most businesses were small operations, averaging three or four people. Owners frequently labored next to employees, knew what they were capable of, and closely directed their work. The dynamics of the workplace changed dramatically in the United States with the Industrial Revolution. Factory owners and managers did not possess close relationships with their employees. The workers “on the floor” controlled the work process and generally worked only hard enough to make sure they would not be fired. There was little or no incentive to work harder than the next man (or woman).

Taylor was a mechanical engineer who was primarily interested in the type of work done in factories and mechanical shops. He observed that the owners and managers of the factories knew little about what actually took place in the workshops. Taylor believed that the system could be improved, and he looked around for an incentive. He settled on money. He believed a worker should get “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work”—no more, no less. If the worker couldn’t work to the target, then the person shouldn’t be working at all. Taylor also believed that management and labor should cooperate and work together to meet goals. He was the first to suggest that the primary functions of managers should be planning and training.

In 1909, Taylor published The Principles of Scientific Management. In this book, he suggested that productivity would increase if jobs were optimized and simplified. He also proposed matching a worker to a particular job that suited the person’s skill level and then training the worker to do that job in a specific way. Taylor first developed the idea of breaking down each job into component parts and timing each part to determine the most efficient method of working. Soon afterward, two management theorists, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, came up with the idea of filming workers to analyze their motions. Their ideas have since been combined into one process (called time and motion studies) for analyzing the most productive way to complete a task.

Max Weber, a German scientist, defines bureaucracy as a highly structured, formalized, and also an impersonal organization.

He also instituted the belief that an organization must have a defined hierarchical structure and clear rules, regulations, and lines of authority which govern it. Max Weber bureaucracy ideally has the following characteristics:

• Specialization of labor
• A formal set of rules and regulations
• Well-defined hierarchy within the organization
• Impersonality in the application of rules

C:

POSDCORB stands For

It was the American political scientist Luther Gulick and the British management consultant Lyndall Urwick who elaborated Henri Fayol‘s management ideas in their management paper Notes on theory of Organisations, which they published in 1937.

Their result was the acronym POSDCORB, which stands for Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Coordinating, Reporting and Budgeting. In doing so, they built on Fayol’s previous 14 management principles. It should be noted that, in 1937, prevailing thinking still dictated a separation between politics and policy. Gulick and Urwick realised that governments were gaining an increased role in the public sphere at this time. With the POSDCORB concept, they demarcated the various important tasks of supervisors, managers and directors. The concept lists all the tasks that managers have to deal with on a daily basis. As such, POSDCORB is still relevant today.

POSDCORB : Planning,Organising,Staffing,.Directing,Coordinating, Reporting, Budgeting, Organisational structure

Planning: It is the task of managers not only to decide what to do, but also to plan this in the agenda. Planning has to do with foresight. This includes short-term planning (weekly, monthly and quarterly), medium-term planning (annual) and long-term planning (looking ahead with a timeline of 3 years). Planning determines the direction of the organisation. On the other hand, a predetermined timespan means that when time runs out, whatever result one has at the time must suffice. The development of this timeline must be closely monitored.\

Organising: Managers not only have the task of assigning activities, but also have the task of allocating these tasks to their respective departments and employees. To achieve an end result, the manager needs the necessary resources, including budget, raw materials, personnel and their expertise, technology and machines. He/she will have to organise all sorts of things to achieve the end result. To get started as efficiently as possible, it is important that the employees’ division of labour suits the end goal and end result as well as possible.

Staffing: This section relates to the personnel policy and all related activities within an organisation. Good and competent personnel is crucial for an organisation to function optimally. It is the task of the manager to first identify the expertise, skills and experiences required for certain positions. Based on this, job profiles are drawn up and personnel can be recruited. The entire recruitment, selection and training procedure falls under this staff policy and ensures that the right type of employee is in the right place.

Directing: Direction, of course, lies in the hands of the manager; he/she is the person with final responsibility and is held accountable for this. In practice, this means that the manager maintains control over all functions. In addition, the manager monitors but also motivates his employees. He/ she tells them how best to do their work, encourages them and drives them to take on certain challenges.

Coordinating: With this concept, it is the task of the manager to connect different sections and to achieve cooperation. A good manager has a so-called helicopter view, which gives him/her an overview of what is happening and what still needs to be done. From this perspective, he/ she is able to coordinate tasks and manage his employees. It is his/her task to synchronise different departments and to bring them together with the right end goal in mind.

Reporting: Without reporting, there is no evidence. A clear report keeps communication open throughout the entire organisation. Managers are the linking pin between the management team and their own employees, who form the constituency. Reporting provides insight into the progress and agreements can also be recorded in this way. Other essential information—such as problems with employees, new processes, performances interviews and sales figures—is also made transparent through reporting. Involved parties can also quickly find archived reports.

Budgeting: Finance is the lifeblood of any organisation. The manager is responsible for the management, expenditure and control of the department’s budget and also has to keep an eye on tax details. In addition to employee wages, it is the task of the manager to also properly monitor other expenditures such as materials and investments. If wasteful spending, overruns, errors or even fraud are discovered, the manager is responsible for taking action.

Organisational structure: According to Gulik and Urwick, the design of an organisation is very important. A poorly-organised structure leads to dysfunctional departments and, by extension, organisation. This is why different activities must be grouped together in the right way, so that departments can be created, each with their own specialisms. If tasks overlap, this is indicative of an illogical, wasteful and inefficient design. There must also be clarity about responsibilities and hierarchical layers.

D:

The Hawthorne studies were conducted on workers at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company by Elton Mayo and Fritz Roethlisberger in the 1920s. The Hawthorne studies were part of a refocus on managerial strategy incorporating the socio-psychological aspects of human behavior in organizations.

The studies originally looked into whether workers were more responsive and worked more efficiently under certain environmental conditions, such as improved lighting. The results were surprising: Mayo and Roethlisberger found that workers were more responsive to social factors—such as the people they worked with on a team and the amount of interest their manager had in their work—than the factors (lighting, etc.) the researchers had gone in to inspect.

The Hawthorne studies discovered that workers were highly responsive to additional attention from their managers and the feeling that their managers actually cared about, and were interested in, their work. The studies also found that although financial motives are important, social issues are equally important factors in worker productivity.

There were a number of other experiments conducted in the Hawthorne studies, including one in which two women were chosen as test subjects and were then asked to choose four other workers to join the test group. Together, the women worked assembling telephone relays in a separate room over the course of five years (1927–1932). Their output was measured during this time—at first, in secret. It started two weeks before moving the women to an experiment room and continued throughout the study. In the experiment room, they had a supervisor who discussed changes with them and, at times, used the women’s suggestions. The researchers then spent five years measuring how different variables impacted both the group’s and the individuals’ productivity. Some of the variables included giving two five-minute breaks (after a discussion with the group on the best length of time), and then changing to two 10-minute breaks (not the preference of the group).

Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. Researchers concluded that the employees worked harder because they thought they were being monitored individually. Researchers hypothesized that choosing one’s own coworkers, working as a group, being treated as special (as evidenced by working in a separate room), and having a sympathetic supervisor were the real reasons for the productivity increase.

The Hawthorne studies showed that people’s work performance is dependent on social issues and job satisfaction, and that monetary incentives and good working conditions are generally less important in improving employee productivity than meeting individuals’ need and desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making and work.

E: Herbert A. Simon is known as a successor to Chester I. Barnard. In his letter of October 23, 1947 to Andreas G. Papandreou, Barnard recommended him to read Simon's Book entitled, Administrative Behavior. Barnard noted that this book developed his concept of organization, as "a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons." At the same time, Barnard expressed a critical opinion about Simon's views in his conversation with W.B. Wolf.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between Barnard's and Simon's understanding of the concept of organization equilibrium.

Barnard's Organization Equilibrium Theory According to Barnard, when an individual tries to satisfy his needs or motives, in many cases he cannot get enough satisfaction due to many types of human limitations. In order to overcome these limitations, especially physiological limitations which are common, the individual develops cooperative systems. This is because cooperative systems can produce more satisfaction than the sum of individual satisfaction.He thinks that the equilibirum of organization means the capacity to maintain the efficiency of an organization. This capacity is not the same in all situations for obtaining individual efficiency. That is, a situation in which all participants are obtaining net satisfaction and providing their contributions to a cooperative system does not automatically mean efficiency of the cooperative system.Efficiency of the coCiperative system refers to the capacity of continuance of the system. Therefore, the cooperative system requires a balance in the organization economy.

"The equilibrium of the organization economy requires that it shall command and exchange sufficient of the utilities of various kinds so that it is able in tum to command and exchange the personal services of which it is constituted. It does this by securing through the application of these services the appropriate supplies of utilities which when distributed to the contributors ensure the continuance of appropriate contributions of utilities from them. In as much as each of these contributors requires a surplus in his exchange, that is, a net inducement, the organization can survive only as it secures by exchange, transformation, and creation a surplus of utilities in its own economy. If its operations result in a deficit, it is less and less able to command the organization activities of which it consists. The organization must payout material utilities and social utilities. It cannot payout more than it has. To have enough it must secure them either by exchange or by creating them.

F: Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (intragroup dynamics), or between social groups (intergroup dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decisionmaking behavior, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. Group dynamics are at the core of understanding racism, sexism, and other forms of social prejudice and discrimination. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, business, and communication studies.

Kurt Lewin is commonly identified as the founder of the movement to study groups scientifically. He coined the term group dynamics to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances. Group dynamics can be defined as a field of enquiry dedicated to the advancing knowledge about the nature of groups, the laws of their development and their interrelations with individuals, other groups and larger institutions. Based on their feelings and emotions, members of a group form a common perception. The interactive psychological relationship in which members of a group form this common perception is actually "Group Dynamics". The phrase "Group Dynamics" contains two words- (i) Group- a social unit of two or more individuals who have in common a set of beliefs and values, follow the same norms and works for an establishable common aim. The members of the group share a set of common purpose, tasks or goals. (ii) Dynamics- the flow of, coherent activities which as envisaged, will lead the group towards the establishment of its set goals.

G: Human Relations School: The human relations theory of management began development in the early 1920’s during the industrial revolution. At that time, productivity was the focus of business. Professor Elton Mayo began his experiments (the Hawthorne Studies), to prove the importance of people for productivity – not machines.

The human relations management theory is a researched belief that people desire to be part of a supportive team that facilitates development and growth. Therefore, if employees receive special attention and are encouraged to participate, they perceive their work has significance, and they are motivated to be more productive, resulting in high quality work. The following human relations management theory basics became evident during human relation studies:

1. Individual attention and recognition aligns with the human relations theory.

2. Many theorists supported the motivational theory.

3. Studies supported the importance of human relations in business.

Abraham Maslow: Abraham Maslow is one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century. His biggest contributions to psychology were his contributions to humanistic psychology as well as his development of the hierarchy of needs. Maslow’s career in psychology greatly predated the modern positive psychology movement, but it might not look the same were it not for him.

Douglas McGregor:  Douglas Murray McGregor was a management professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954.He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices.

McGregor was a student of Abraham Maslow. He has contributed much to the development of the management and motivational theory, and is best known for his Theory X and Theory Y as presented in his book ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’ (1960), which proposed that manager's individual assumptions about human nature and behavior determined how individual manages their employees.

H: Sociotechnical School ( Trust and Bamforth): in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term also refers to the interaction between society's complex infrastructures and human behaviour. In this sense, society itself, and most of its substructures, are complex sociotechnical systems.

The term sociotechnical systems was coined by Eric Trist, Ken Bamforth and Fred Emery, in the World War II era, based on their work with workers in English coal mines at the Tavistock Institute in London. Sociotechnical systems pertains to theory regarding the social aspects of people and society and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes. Here, technical does not necessarily imply material technology. The focus is on procedures and related knowledge, i.e. it refers to the ancient Greek term techne. "Technical" is a term used to refer to structure and a broader sense of technicalities. Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organization or the society as a whole.

Sociotechnical theory is about joint optimization, with a shared emphasis on achievement of both excellence in technical performance and quality in people's work lives. Sociotechnical theory, as distinct from sociotechnical systems, proposes a number of different ways of achieving joint optimisation. They are usually based on designing different kinds of organisation, ones in which the relationships between socio and technical elements lead to the emergence of productivity and wellbeing.

I: General idea or meaning of contingency theoryThe basic premise of Contingency Theory is that there is no one best way to lead an organization.The basic premise of Contingency Theory is that there is no one best way to lead an organization. There are too many external and internal constraints that will alter what really is the best way to lead is in a given situation. In other words, it all depends upon the situation at hand as to what will be the best course of action. [Related Content: Popular Management Theories Decoded (INFOGRAPHIC)]
Fred Fiedler is a theorist whose Contingency Trait Theory was the precursor to his Contingency Management Theory. Fiedler believed there was a direct correlation to the traits of a leader and the effectiveness of a leader. According to Fiedler, certain leadership traits helped in a certain crisis and so the leadership would need to change given the new set of circumstances. Fiedler's Contingency Theory proposes the following concepts:

1. Fiedler's Contingency Theory says there is no one best way to manage an organization.

2. Fiedler's Contingency Theory of leadership says that a leader must be able to identify which management style will help. achieve the organization's goals in a particular situation

3. The main component of Fiedler's Contingency Theory is the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale which measures a manager's leadership orientation.

A contingency theory is an organizational theory that claims that there is no best way to organize a corporation, to lead a company, or to make decisions. Instead, the optimal course of action is contingent (dependent) upon the internal and external situation. A contingent leader effectively applies their own style of leadership to the right situation. Contingent leaders are flexible in choosing and adapting to succinct strategies to suit change in situation at a particular period in time in the running of the organization.