TA&MIU Week 1 Management Thought and Organizational Theory Discussion Discuss the general evolution in management thought and organizational theory highlig

TA&MIU Week 1 Management Thought and Organizational Theory Discussion Discuss the general evolution in management thought and organizational theory highlighting the contributions
of at least one major scholar from the classical theories, human relations and psychological theories, and
relatively recent developments. (The powerpoint might help you). UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
THE CHALLENGE OF EFFECTIVE PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
• The study of organizational behavior has its roots in industrial and social psychology
and concentrates on individual and group behaviors in organizations, analyzing
motivation, work satisfaction, leadership, work-group dynamics, and the attitudes
and behaviors of its members.
• Organizational theory deals with the organization as a whole including its
environment, structure, and design.
• Management involves paradoxes that require organizations and managers to balance
conflicting objectives and priorities
• Public management often involves particularly complex objectives and especially
difficult conflicts among them.
EVOLUTION OF MANAGEMENT THOUGHT AND ORGANIZATIONAL THEORY
•
Classical Theories
– Weber, Taylor, Administrative Management School
•
Human Relations and Psychological Theories
– Hawthorne, Maslow, McGregor, Lewin, Barnard, Simon
•
More recent developments
– Adaptive and Open Systems Theory and Contingency Theory
CLASSIC APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZATIONS
• Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management – systematic analysis of “every little act” in tasks
to be performed by workers.
• Max Weber – Fully developed version of bureaucracy had the following characteristics:
•
Fixed, official jurisdictional areas are established by means of rules.
•
There is a hierarchy of authority, involving supervision of lower offices by higher ones
•
Administrative positions in the bureaucracy usually require expert training and the full working capacity of the
official
•
Management of subunits follow relatively stable and exhaustive rules, and knowledge of these rules and
procedures is the special expertise of the official
•
The management position serves as a full-time vocation, or career, for the official.
• Guilick – two fundamental functions of management: the division of work and the
coordination of work.
•
Division of work – need to create clearly defined specializations allowing the matching of skills to tasks and the
clear delineation of tasks
•
POSDCORB – planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting
HUMAN RELATIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES
• Herbert Simon – “proverbs of administration” and “administrative behavior”
•
Classic administrative recommendations or useless proverbs that contradict each other
•
Challenged the “economic man” who makes rational decisions
 Bounded rationality – administrative man is subject to cognitive limits on rationality in complex situations with uncertainty
 Rather than maximize efficiency, administrators “satisfice” which involves choosing the best of a limited set of alternative so as to
optimize the decision within the constraints of limited information and time.
• The Hawthorne Studies
• Chester Barnard – Functions of the executive
•
Definition of an organization – “a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more
persons”
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, GROUP DYNAMICS, AND HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
• Kurt Lewin – studied power, communication, influence, and “cohesion” within groups
and developed a conception of change that has been used by researchers and
analysts
• Maslow – developed a theory of human needs arranged in a hierarchy of prepotency
• McGregor – Theory X and Theory Y
•
Theory X – held that employees were basically lazy, passive, resistance to change and responsibility, and
indifferent to organizational needs.
•
Theory Y involved a different view of employees. Drawing on Maslow’s hierarchy, Theory Y is the view that
employees are fully capable of self-direction and self-motivation. Management based on this assumption
would be more efficient. McGregor advocated management approaches that would allow more worker
participation and self-control, such as decentralization of authority, management by objectives, and job
enlargement
RELATIVELY RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
• Criticisms of the human relations schools centered around the lack of empirical
evidence in support of its findings and recommendations.
• General systems theory – the idea that there are various types of systems in nature
that have much in common.
•
A system is an ongoing process that transforms certain specified inputs into outputs; these in turn
influence subsequent inputs into the system in a way that supports the continuing operation of the
process.
•
Systems have subsystems
•
Distinguish between closed systems and open (or adaptive) systems
• Open-systems Approaches – Depicted the organization as a system with
interdependent social and technical subsystems that tend to maintain an equilibrium

Purchase answer to see full
attachment