MAKING SENSE OF ORGANISATIONS.
Introduction:
In this essay, the objective will be to attempt to make sense of organisations through the means of critically analysing organisational management metaphors based on my personal perceptions, and back them up with personal experiences and also some contemporary examples.
Furthermore, I will be attempting to decrypt how much our understanding of organisations and management has developed and progressed since the beginning of the 20th century in theory and practice and how they are being applied.
So firstly, what is progress? Progress can be said as “the development towards an improved or more advanced condition” (Lane et al, 2009) in the context of organisations and management theories, progress basically refers to the improvements of previous theories or the development of new theories through the means of new research.
Organisations as machines:
Organisation theory is to a great extent commanded by the view that organisations can be considered through the metaphorical lens of organisations as machines (Cummings andThanem,2002) The machine metaphor draws upon nineteenth century understanding of energetic and classical mechanics and Taylor’s formulation of scientific management. The effect of this is that organizations act in accordance with rational economic principles. They possess a hierarchy in the company structure, the main goal is to increase profits, the functions and employees within the organizations are determined to be mechanical parts to be used accordingly, the organization is more or less closed and the external environment of the company is ignored. This metaphor or view point also pays no attention to human emotion and how it affects their productivity. The main need which Taylor promoted was efficiency and profit maximization. “As such the organization is considered a subject, an entity and its needs are promoted over those of the humans that actually constitute and create the organization” (Tsoukas, 1991). Thus, the workers in the organization are essentially dehumanized. The biggest drawback of organizations as machines is that “it treats workers as mindless, emotionless, and easily replicable factors of production…” (Nick & Sally, 2013).
Scientific management seems to be an attractive choice of efficiency through the specialization which enables to maintain the economic growth (Pollard, H.R., 1974) this is the reason why this form, of management has been a huge success in the Fast food industry (Mcdonaldization). The procedure of McDonaldization takes a task and separates it into littler undertakings. This is rehashed until the sum total of all tasks have been separated to the smallest conceivable level. The subsequent tasks are then legitimized to determine the absolute most effective strategy for finishing every assignment. Every other strategy are then esteemed wasteful and disposed of. The outcome is an effective, consistent succession of strategies that can be finished in a similar manner every time to deliver the required result. The result is unsurprising and all parts of the procedure are effortlessly controlled.
Furthermore, in my experience of working in the hospitality where Taylorism is largely employed. I was very miserable and never enjoyed my job this was due to the fact that we as workers were treated like machines, none of our emotions or feelings were taken into consideration. If you were upset, angry, stressed or whatever the problem might be it wasn’t taken into account by the organization as we were all viewed as easily replaceable parts of a machine. This led to lack of motivation and work ethic, most of us just did the bare minimum required of us and went home.
Organisations as organisms:
The development of management theories led researchers to improve further on Taylor’s view of organisations as machines but rather as living organisms.
Not the same as a bureaucratic type of organisation, the organismic analogy offers a remarkable point of view for us to view companies as living frameworks, which infers that the survival and improvement of organisations rely upon its outside surroundings (Morgan, 1998). The organismic illustration beats the confinement of the machine point of view and discharges managers from narrow minded intuition ensnared by the machine representation that there is just a single most ideal method for management, which is frail and delicate in adjusting to the changing environment (Morgan, 1998). In actuality, the organismic allegory sees associations as “open frameworks ” and accentuates the significance of organisational needs and their capacities to adjust and get by in shifting environment. Particularly , as indicated by Morgan ( 199) , ” the metaphor recommends that distinctive environment support diverse types of organisations in view of various strategies of organizing and that consistency with the surroundings is the way to success ”
In view of my experience picked up from working for an advertising organization in London over the mid-year, I think there are no less than two levels of environment that are diminish to companies as living organisms. The principal level is the macro environment of companies, which is parallel to climate, air, temperature and other fundamental living conditions for people. For companies, the macro environment incorporates economic, social, technological, political and cultural variables. Look at the media business for instance, the emergence of the Internet has gigantic effect on daily paper companies and the best way to survive is to adjust to the change. Seattle’s most seasoned business , the 146 years of age Seattle Post – Intelligencer halted its distributing , rather , moved to the Internet and turned into an absolutely computerized news system( Seattlepi.com, 2009 ); The subsequent level is the micro environment , which alludes to elements that are particular to associations’ operation fields , including the business sectors , the suppliers, the rivals, the clients and more, among which the attention to understanding clients is progressively reinforced that different strategies are used in researching clients ,, for example, feedback , questionnaires etc. ( Kotler and Armstrong , 2006 ) .
Moreover, the organismic metaphor underscores the imperative part played by individuals inside organisations. As suggested by Lewis (2007), “in the event that you take the perspective of an organisation as a living organism, then individuals are its backbone. To survive, a living organism needs to re-establish and reinvent itself or it will stagnate and kick the bucket ‘. The General Electric’s change in human asset administration gives a fantastic case. GE re-aligned the estimations of execution with a rank-based work assessment framework called the Vitality Curve. The new assessment framework relates prizes to administrators’ execution keeping in mind the end goal to expand their inspirations to enhance their execution. This change to some degree helped GE to re-create itself to get by in a more competitively aggressive world “(Welch, 2009).
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