part 3: the behavior in organizations - zamaros.net ob 2 - exec.pdf · ob exec prof. dr. p. zamaros...

OB EXEC Prof. Dr. P. Zamaros 1

DAY 2

Part 3: The behavior in Organizations

Elements

1. Management theories across time

2. Management concerns

3. Design and structure

4. Knowledge and learning

5. Motivation and reward

6. Culture and change

7. Communication

8. Group and team building


Elements establishing behaviors in organizations:

Leadership style Management approach

Organizational design Learning competency

Degree of motivation Type of culture (ethos)

Communication Group and team building

Decision making systems Power relations


ELEMENTS


WHAT IS MANAGEMENT?

IS IT A RECENT CONCEPT?


MANAGEMENT THEORIES


Feature: With Fayol, management is seen to be a rational activity

concerned with finding the most effective and efficient ways

possible of deploying resources in order to achieve the

purposes of the organization.

Assumption: The rational perspective

considers humans as essentially lazy

– McGregor’s theory X


MANAGEMENT THEORIES

Rational perspective


Feature: With Mintzberg management is non-rational in the sense

that organizations like amoebas need to constantly change and

adapt to their environment and thus there are many possibilities

to achieve organizational goals.

Assumption: The non-rational

perspective considers humans

as essentially creative

– McGregor’s theory Y


MANAGEMENT THEORIES

Non-rational perspective


Purpose: understand what managers are mainly concerned with =

key issues (which can become a source of anxiety)

Process: summarise arguments/theories made about management

into unifying themes underpinning these arguments.

Method: experiencing the various descriptions about what

management is about


MANAGEMENT CONCERNS


Difficulty: Theoretical fragmentation.

2 Solutions:

Integrative perspective

Plural perspective

Perspective taken here: Integrative.

Result: There is a common thread that underlies descriptions: such

descriptions refer to management as action.


MANAGEMENT CONCERNS


Understanding management as action:

Management as “action” (actio) presents itself as a series of

existing and present experiences; it a ‘movement into the future’

that is temporary e.g. I am holding a meeting

But management is also an act:

Management as “act” (actum) consists in the terminated,

completed acts of management; it is ‘the reason for the

movement into the future’ e.g. the meeting is over: it is the point

of departure for a new action


MANAGEMENT CONCERNS


Relationship between management as action and act

Since action and act are causally related, action is meaningful: its

meaning stems from a particular concern during that action

The issue then is to discover such concerns (i.e. descriptive

contents).


MANAGEMENT CONCERNS


Management concerns:

Rational: a concern for processes, figures and tasks

Emotional: a concern for people perceptions

Cultural: a concern for unity

Power: a concern for politics

Discursive: a concern for describing and imaging

Turbulent: a concern with the business environment

IS THERE A CONCERN FOR CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY?


MANAGEMENT CONCERNS


Organizational structure: Formal pattern of interactions and

coordination designed by management to link the tasks of

individuals and groups in achieving organizational goals.

Elements: Organizational structure consists mainly of:

Assigned tasks and responsibilities

Clustered individual positions

Required mechanisms to facilitate coordination


DESIGN AND STRUCTURE


Requirement: Organizational structure must be effective; this is, a

strategic concern.

Effectiveness: The effectiveness of a particular type of structure

depends on:

The dominant type of technology used

The organization’s size

The methods for promoting innovation




Patterns: The most commonly used structures include:

Functional structure: similar expertise, skills and work activities.

Divisional structure: similarity of products or markets.

Matrix structure: Superimposes

a horizontal set of divisional

reporting relationships onto

a hierarchical functional structure.




Process: Developing an organizational structure is referred to as

organizational design.

Representational tool: An organizational

structure is shown by means of

an organizational chart that provides

a visual map of the chain of command.




Critique: Organizational charts tend to be rigid: fail to capture

micro-changes let alone the complexity of organizational

relationships.

They fail to show coordination: It refers to the linking of activities

within an organization in order to achieve organizational goals.




Principles: Designing organizations involves designing jobs

according to:

• Type of activities to perform

• Reducing repetition

• Making a job more challenging.

• Increasing job autonomy

Organizational design is premised on the myth-ology of self-

determination.




WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?

HOW ARE KNOWLEDGE AND MANAGEMENT RELATED?


KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING


Knowledge as action: Knowledge is never an end result, as act!

The very fact of forgetting attests to the non-complete nature of

knowledge. It is thus more appropriately viewed as action that is in

the process of completion but never complete.

Issue: Thus, if knowledge is action it requires understanding “how

one knows” or “how one comes to know”. The issue is prescience.




Means to acquire knowledge: following Bertrand Russell, through:

acquaintance, in that one is directly aware of a thing as it is,

description, whereby a thing is given by means of a description

independently the presence of the thing




Application: Thus, organizations may acquire:

Knowledge by description, that is, reports, views, opinions and

other data collected by carrying out analyses or formally put, audits

Knowledge by acquaintance, that is, by experiencing

organizational life and the various activities that characterize it




Organizational knowledge: Acquiring knowledge implies learning;

an organization is therefore thought of as a learning community

following Ouchi.

Features:

Consensual environment

Strong cultures of collaboration

Acknowledged common direction

Shared core values




The purpose of motivation: Typically, motivation is

associated with the long-term business purpose of the

organization in that ‘well-motivated employees are

productive and creative.


MOTIVATION AND REWARD


Cerebral approach: (Taylor), personnel are only motivated by pay.

Human relations approach: (Mayo), personnel

are motivated by social needs.

Neo-human relations approach: (Maslow), personnel are

motivated by various needs, the most important of which

being self-actualization. (Herzberg), personnel are

motivated by factors that are intrinsic to the job itself

(motivators) and those that surround the job (hygiene factors)




The traditional approaches to motivation assume a positive

correlation between motivation and organizational performance: an

increase in motivation will bring about improved organizational

performance.

Such a view, however, present a number of difficulties which

preclude that such a correlation be empirically proven:




Difficulties:

1. whatever motivational actions are carried out by the

organization to increase personnel (contractual) loyalty

renders personnel wholly dependent on organizational

structure and life,

2. motivation is fashionable in that it is expected that personnel is

motivated by virtue of their willingness to be employed in a

specific organization,




3. neglects that a determinant of organizational performance is

located outside the organization,

4. assumes that organizations will seek to motivate their

employees which, in some cases, may be far from the truth.

Consequence: It is necessary to approach motivation as a

discontinuous process that is more often emergent rather than the

consequence of organizational policy and culture.




AND WHAT ABOUT DEMOTIVATION?




Typical views on culture: Ball et al. for instance see culture to be

‘the sum total of the beliefs, rules, techniques, institutions, and

artifacts that characterize human populations’.


CULTURE AND CHANGE

Corporate culture: Considering the

total of beliefs, rules, techniques

and artifacts of business

organizations, such institutions

display corporate culture.



CULTURE AND CHANGE

Cultural community:

A cultural community is a

grouping, a cultural unit,

which is characterized by the

sum total of beliefs, rules,

techniques, institutions and

artifacts.


Formation: Such communities are formed through the:

Establishment of an essential identity that is based on similarity

and difference.

Representation and expression of such similarity and difference.

Construction of values, ideals of excellence, norms of behavior.

Consequence: These aspects allow distinctions between an “us” of

the cultural community and a “them” that which lies outside of the

community.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


Cultural strategies: Making distinctions between “us” and “them” is

the result of a number of cultural strategies adopted by the

organization which mainly includes:

A focus on “us”: imagining the community to have particular

endowments which give it a sense of superiority – “we are the

best” discourse.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


A focus on “them”: expressing the “other” as inferior by

naturalizing, stereotyping and objectifying the “other” as competitor

and arch-enemy


CULTURE AND CHANGE


Corporate culture seems to be

drawing exclusively on a structural-

functionalist myth-ology.

This is a mechanistic view of culture

as a precondition for success and

which requires from managers to fix

culture as a distinct entity, as a

monoculture.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


A top-down imposition of a

desirable culture makes that

collaboration and integration

are contrived and the values

to be shared are imposed from above.

Empirical findings tend to confirm this tendency and to conclude

that corporate culture as a management tool has not been as

impressive as one has been led to think.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


Culture revisited: Therefore, culture should be seen as a way of

perceiving, thinking and doing.

This view, consistent with an open systems perspective,

emphasizes the constitution of open, plural, and changing cultural

units that interact with their environment; what characterizes

cultures there is change and mobility.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


Classical approach: Change needs to be scientifically studied

and organized

Human relations approach: Change should be thought as

dependent on co-operative and social behaviors

Contingency approach: Change is about adapting to

environmental contingencies

Guru approach: Change as theorized by gurus


CULTURE AND CHANGE


Such approaches assume that change can simply be seen as

going from here to there i.e. from the current business condition to

a desired situation.

Nevertheless, if there is a desired situation this does not mean that

it is attainable let alone that it will be attained: there is a difference

between what is described and idealized and lived.


CULTURE AND CHANGE


WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

Communication: Typically, communication is considered to be the

exchange of messages between people for the purpose of

achieving a commonly understood purpose or meaning.


COMMUNICATION


Types: Typically, means of communication include:

Written communication

Oral communication

Non verbal communication

Body language

Proxemics

Paralanguage

Object language


COMMUNICATION



COMMUNICATION

Shannon-Weaver Model of communication

http://www.lucent.com/minds/infotheory/

http://books.nap.edu/books/0309037298/html/492.html


The occurrence of feedback loops

allows the distinction between:

One-way communication:

When the process does not

allow feed back. With this type

of communication there is a risk

that miscommunication may not

be corrected until it is too late.


COMMUNICATION


Two-way communication: When the process explicitly includes

feedback.


COMMUNICATION


Critique of the model:

1. the model places undue emphasis on what is exchanged

rather than what meaning is exchanged

2. the model considers communication as an exchange of words

and sentences whose meaning is assumed to be known

beforehand whereas communication is about the active

construction of meaning rather than the use of ready made

linguistic templates.


COMMUNICATION


Consequence: Communication should be seen as the attempt to

find or establish a commonality; it is about a ‘mise en commun’.

Effective communication occurs only when the organization and its

stakeholders have something in common – be it the business

purpose – and this is not only known but also understood as such.

It also acknowledges that if such a result is an ideal, in practice

language will not render communication effective.


COMMUNICATION


Groups: Following Bartol and Martin a group may be seen as two

or more interdependent individuals who interact and influence

each other in a collective pursuit of a common goal.


GROUP BUILDING


Roles: For Benne and Sheats common group member roles

include

Group task roles that help a group accomplish its goals

Group maintenance roles which help foster group unity

Self-oriented roles that are related to the personal needs


GROUP BUILDING



GROUP BUILDING

Groups Teams

→little communication

→no support

→lack of vision

→exclusive cliques

→plenty of opportunity for discussion

→plenty of support

→discovery supported by openness

→work groups combine easily into teams


Belbin roles


GROUP BUILDING

part 3: the behavior in organizations - zamaros.net ob 2 - exec.pdf · ob exec prof. dr. p. zamaros...

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