Dr. Rensis Likert has examined different types of organizations and leadership styles, and asserts that to achieve maximum profitability, good labor relations and high productivity, every organization must make optimum use of their human assets.
The form of the organization which will make greatest use of the human capacity, Likert contends, is highly effective work groups linked together in an overlapping pattern by other similarly effective groups.
Organizations at present have widely varying types of management style and Likert has identified four main systems:
Management Styles
The exploitive - authoritative system, where decisions are imposed on subordinates, where motivation is characterized by threats, where high levels of management have great responsibilities but lower levels have virtually none, where there is very little communication and no joint teamwork.
The benevolent - authoritative system, where leadership is by a condescending form of master-servant trust, where motivation is mainly by rewards, where managerial personnel feel responsibility but lower levels do not, where there is little communication and relatively little teamwork.
The consultative system, where leadership is by superiors who have substantial but not complete trust in their subordinates, where motivation is by rewards and some involvement, where a high proportion of personnel, especially those at the higher levels feel responsibility for achieving organization goals, where there is some communication (both vertical and horizontal) and a moderate amount of teamwork.
The participative - group system, which is the optimum solution, where leadership is by superiors who have; complete confidence in their subordinates, where motivation is by economic rewards based on goals which have been set in participation, where personnel at all levels feel real responsibility for the organizational goals, where there is much communication, and a substantial amount of cooperative teamwork.
This fourth system is the one which is the ideal for the profit oriented and human-concerned organization, and Likert says (The Human Organization, Mcgraw Hill, 1967) that all organizations should adopt this system.
To convert an organization, four main features of effective management must be put into practice:
The motivation to work must be fostered by modern principles and techniques, and not by the old system of rewards and threats.
Employees must be seen as people who have their own needs, desires and values and their self-worth must be maintained or enhanced.
An organization of tightly knit and highly effective work groups must be built up which are committed to achieving the objectives of the organization.
Supportive relationships must exist within each work group. These are characterized not by actual support, but by mutual respect.
The work groups which form the nuclei of the participative group system, are characterized by the group dynamics:
Members are skilled in leadership and membership roles for easy interaction.
The group has existed long enough to have developed a well established relaxed working relationship.
The members of the group are loyal to it and to each other since they have a high degree of mutual trust.
The norms, values and goals of the group are an expression of the values and needs of its members.
The members perform a "linking-pin" function and try to keep the goals of the different groups to which they belong in harmony with each other.
Work defines self - intrinsicBonus pay - extrinsic
Affiliation
Relational affiliation with coworkers
Safety
Non-threatening working conditions
Physiological
Making a living
McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y
Theory X Assumptions
The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can.
Because of their dislike for work, most people must be controlled and threatened before they will work hard enough.
The average human prefers to be directed, dislikes responsibility, is unambiguous, and desires security above everything.
These assumptions lie behind most organizational principles today, and give rise both to "tough" management with punishments and tight controls, and "soft" management which aims at harmony at work.
Both these are "wrong" because man needs more than financial rewards at work, he also needs some deeper higher order motivation - the opportunity to fulfill himself.
Theory X managers do not give their staff this opportunity so that the employees behave in the expected fashion.
Theory Y Assumptions
The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
Control and punishment are not the only ways to make people work, man will direct himself if he is committed to the aims of the organization.
If a job is satisfying, then the result will be commitment to the organization.
The average man learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.
Imagination, creativity, and ingenuity can be used to solve work problems by a large number of employees.
Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average man are only partially utilized.
Frederick Herzberg - Hygiene & Motivation
Frederick Herzberg contributed to human relations and motivation two theories of motivation:
Hygiene Theory
Motivation
Herzbergs' first component in his approach to motivation theory involves what are known as the hygiene factors and includes the work and organizational environment. These hygiene factors include:
The organization
Its policies and its administration
The kind of supervision (leadership and management, including perceptions) which people receive while on the job
These factors do not lead to higher levels of motivation but without them there is dissatisfaction.
The second component in Herzbergs' motivation theory involves what people actually do on the job and should be engineered into the jobs employees do in order to develop intrinsic motivation with the workforce. The motivators are
Achievement
Recognition
Growth / advancement
Interest in the job
These factors result from internal instincts in employees, yielding motivation rather than movement.
Both these approaches (hygiene and motivation) must be done simultaneously. Treat people as best you can so they have a minimum of dissatisfaction. Use people so they get achievement, recognition for achievement, interest, and responsibility and they can grow and advance in their work.
Therefore, the hygiene and motivation factors can be listed as follows:
Hygiene
Company policies and administration
Supervision
Working conditions and interpersonal relations
Salary, status and security
Motivators
Achievement
Recognition for achievement
Interest in the task
Responsibility for enlarged task
Growth and advancement to higher level tasks
Effects on Individuals of Working Environment
It will provide at least sufficient for his basic needs and often much more. For example, 50 years ago in the United Kingdom, food and shelter were a person's basic needs. Today, most families will consider that the basic needs also include a car, television, overseas holiday, etc.
It may or may not provide adequate security. Again, most individuals seek a secure job, there are others including some men on oil rigs, who seek high pay for a limited period but with limited security.
It provides an individual with an identity. As a member of an organization, he carries out a specific function.
It also gives the worker comradeship, freedom from boredom, and an interest during his working life.
It also provides self-fulfillment for individual where consideration has been given to ensure that the job is creative and gives job satisfaction.
It provides the individual with status. There is a status in all jobs providing the job content is investigated to make the work more interesting.
Effects on Work Groups of Working Environment
Rensis Likert has already described how the various management styles in an organization can effect the groups in an organization.
While the working environment will affect individuals, it will undoubtedly have a greater effect on working groups, since whilst an individual may have certain needs, he will not obtain those needs if the working environment does not provide the needs of the working group.
The working group is the instrument of society through which in large measure the individual acquires his attitudes, opinions, goals and ideals, it is also one of the fundamental sources of discipline and social controls.
So, the working environment has an effect on groups as follows:
It will affect the morale of the group.
It will determine whether the group achieves the objectives set by the organization.
It will determine whether the degree of cooperation provided by the group
It will motivate the group to give of their best.
It will determine whether the human relations within an organization are good or bad.
It will also affect the relations between management and trade unions.
From http://www.kernsanalysis.com/sjsu/ise250/history.htm
Frederick Taylor - Scientific Management
Description Frederick Taylor, with his theories of Scientific Management, started the era of modern management. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Frederick Taylor was decrying the "awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men" as a national loss. He advocated a change from the old system of personnel management to a new system of scientific management. Under personnel management, a captain of industry was expected to be personally brilliant. Taylor claimed that a group of ordinary men, following a scientific method would out perform the older "personally brilliant" captains of industry.
Taylor consistently sought to overthrow management "by rule of thumb" and replace it with actual timed observations leading to "the one best" practice. Following this philosophy he also advocated the systematic training of workers in "the one best practice" rather than allowing them personal discretion in their tasks. He believed that "a spirit of hearty cooperation" would develop between workers and management and that cooperation would ensure that the workers would follow the "one best practice." Under these philosophies Taylor further believed that the workload would be evenly shared between the workers and management with management performing the science and instruction and the workers performing the labor, each group doing "the work for which it was best suited."
Taylor's strongest positive legacy was the concept of breaking a complex task down in to a number of small subtasks, and optimizing the performance of the subtasks. This positive legacy leads to the stop-watch measured time trials which in turn lead to Taylor's strongest negative legacy. Many critics, both historical and contemporary have pointed out that Taylor's theories tend to "dehumanize" the workers. To modern readers, he stands convicted by his own words:
" … in almost all of the mechanic arts, the science which underlies each act of each workman is so great and amounts to so much that the workman who is best suited to actually doing the work is incapable of fully understanding this science, without the guidance and help of those who are working with him or over him, either through lack of education or through insufficient mental capacity."
And:
"to work according to scientific laws, the management must takeover and perform much of the work which is now left to the men; almost every act of the workman should be preceded by one or more preparatory acts of the management which enable him to do his work better and quicker than he otherwise could."
Environment Taylor's work was strongly influenced by his social/historical period. His lifetime (1856-1915) was during the Industrial Revolution. The overall industrial environment of this period is well documented by the Dicken's classic Hard Times or Sinclar's The Jungle. Autocratic management was the norm. The manufacturing community had the idea of interchangeable parts for almost a century. The sciences of physics and chemistry were bringing forth new miracles on a monthly basis.
One can see Taylor turning to "science" as a solution to the inefficiencies and injustices of the period. His idea of breaking a complex task into a sequence of simple subtasks closely mirrors the interchangeable parts ideas pioneered by Eli Whitney earlier in the century. Furthermore, the concepts of training the workers and developing "a hearty cooperation" represented a significant improvement over the feudal human relations of the time.
Successes Scientific management met with significant success. Taylor's personal work included papers on the science of cutting metal, coal shovel design, worker incentive schemes and a piece rate system for shop management. Scientific management's organizational influences can be seen in the development of the fields of industrial engineering, personnel, and quality control.
From an economic standpoint, Taylorism was an extreme success. Application of his methods yielded significant improvements in productivity. Improvements such as Taylor's shovel work at Bethlehem Steel Works (reducing the workers needed to shovel from 500 to 140) were typical.
Human Relations Movement - Hawthorne Works Experiments
Description If Taylor believed that science dictated that the highest productivity was found in "the one best way" and that way could be obtained by controlled experiment, Elton Mayo's experiences in the Hawthorne Works Experiments disproved those beliefs to the same extent that Michelson's experiments in 1926 disproved the existence of "ether." (And with results as startling as Rutherford's.)
The Hawthorne Studies started in the early 1920's as an attempt to determine the effects of lighting on worker productivity. When those experiments showed no clear correlation between light level and productivity the experiments then started looking at other factors. Working with a group of women, the experimenters made a number of changes, rest breaks, no rest breaks, free meals, no free meals, more hours in the work-day / work-week, fewer hours in the work-day / work-week. Their productivity went up at each change. Finally the women were put back to their original hours and conditions, and they set a productivity record.
This strongly disproved Taylor's beliefs in three ways. First, the experimenters determined that the women had become a team and that the social dynamics of the team were a stronger force on productivity than doing things "the one best way." Second, the women would vary their work methods to avoid boredom without harming overall productivity. Finally the group was not strongly supervised by management, but instead had a great deal of freedom.
These results made it clear that the group dynamics and social makeup of an organization were an extremely important force either for or against higher productivity. This caused the call for greater participation for the workers, greater trust and openness in the working environment and a greater attention to teams and groups in the work place.
Environment The human relations movement that stemmed from Mayo's Hawthorne Works Experiments was borne in a time of significant change. The Newtonian science that supported "the one best way" of doing things was being strongly challenged by the "new physics" results of Michalson, Rutherford and Einstein. Suddenly, even in the realm of "hard science" uncertainty and variation had found a place. In the work place there were strong pressures for shorter hours and employee stock ownership. As the effects of the 1929 stock market crash and following depression were felt, employee unions started to form.
Successes While Taylor's impacts were the establishment of the industrial engineering, quality control and personnel departments, the human relations movement's greatest impact came in what the organization's leadership and personnel department were doing. The seemingly new concepts of "group dynamics", "teamwork" and organizational "social systems" all stem from Mayo's work in the mid-1920's.
Max Weber - Bureaucracy
Description At roughly the same time, Max Weber was attempting to do for sociology what Taylor had done for industrial operations. Weber postulated that western civilization was shifting from "wertrational" (or value oriented) thinking, affective action (action derived from emotions), and traditional action (action derived from past precedent to "zweckational" (or technocratic) thinking. He believed that civilization was changing to seek technically optimal results at the expense of emotional or humanistic content.
Viewing the growth of large-scale organizations of all types during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Weber developed a set of principles for an "ideal" bureaucracy. These principles included: fixed and official jurisdictional areas, a firmly ordered hierarchy of super and subordination, management based on written records, thorough and expert training, official activity taking priority over other activities and that management of a given organization follows stable, knowable rules. The bureaucracy was envisioned as a large machine for attaining its goals in the most efficient manner possible.
Weber did not advocate bureaucracy, indeed, his writings show a strong caution for its excesses:
"…the more fully realized, the more bureaucracy "depersonalizes" itself, i.e., the more completely it succeeds in achieving the exclusion of love, hatred, and every purely personal, especially irrational and incalculable, feeling from the execution of official tasks"
or:
"By it the performance of each individual worker is mathematically measured, each man becomes a little cog in the machine and aware of this, his one preoccupation is whether he can become a bigger cog."
Environment Weber, as an economist and social historian, saw his environment transitioning from older emotion and tradition driven values to technological ones. It is unclear if he saw the tremendous growth in government, military and industrial size and complexity as a result of the efficiencies of bureaucracy, or their growth driving those organizations to bureaucracy.
Successes While Weber was fundamentally an observer rather than a designer, it is clear that his predictions have come true. His principles of an ideal bureaucracy still ring true today and many of the evils of today's bureaucracies come from their deviating from those ideal principles. Unfortunately, Weber was also successful in predicting that bureaucracies would have extreme difficulties dealing with individual cases.
It would have been fascinating to see how Weber would have integrated Mayo's results into his theories. It is probable that he would have seen the "group dynamics" as "noise" in the system, limiting the bureaucracy's potential for both efficiency and inhumanity.
Henri Fayol - Administration
Description With two exceptions, Henri Fayol’s theories of administration dovetail nicely into the bureaucratic superstructure described by Weber. Henri Fayol focuses on the personal duties of management at a much more granular level than Weber did. While Weber laid out principles for an ideal bureaucratic organization Fayol’s work is more directed at the management layer.
Fayol believed that management had five principle roles: to forecast and plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to control. Forecasting and planning was the act of anticipating the future and acting accordingly. Organization was the development of the institution's resources, both material and human. Commanding was keeping the institution’s actions and processes running. Co-ordination was the alignment and harmonization of the groups’ efforts. Finally, control meant that the above activities were performed in accordance with appropriate rules and procedures.
Fayol developed fourteen principles of administration to go along with management’s five primary roles. These principles are enumerated below:
Specialization/division of labor
Authority with responsibility
Discipline
Unity of command
Unity of direction
Subordination of individual interest to the general interest
Remuneration of staff
Centralization
Scalar chain/line of authority
Order
Equity
Stability of tenure
Initiative
Esprit de corps
The final two principles, initiative and esprit de corps, show a difference between Fayol’s concept of an ideal organization and Weber’s. Weber predicted a completely impersonal organization with little human level interaction between its members. Fayol clearly believed personal effort and team dynamics were part of a "ideal" organization.
Environment Fayol was a successful mining engineer and senior executive prior to publishing his principles of "administrative science." It is not clear from the literature reviewed if Fayol’s work was precipitated or influenced by Taylor’s. From the timing, 1911 publication of Taylor’s "The Principles of Scientific Management" to Fayol’s work in 1916, it is possible. Fayol was not primarily a theorist, but rather a successful senior manager who sought to bring order to his personal experiences.
Successes Fayol’s five principle roles of management are still actively practiced today. The author has found "Plan, Organize, Command, Co-ordinate and Control" written on one than one manager’s whiteboard during his career. The concept of giving appropriate authority with responsibility is also widely commented on (if not well practiced.) Unfortunately his principles of "unity of command" and "unity of direction" are consistently violated in "matrix management" the structure of choice for many of today’s companies.
Conclusion It is clear that modern organizations are strongly influenced by the theories of Taylor, Mayo, Weber and Fayol. Their precepts have become such a strong part of modern management that it is difficult to believe that these concepts were original and new at some point in history. The modern idea that these concepts are "common sense" is strong tribute to these founders.
Reference:
Print: 75 Years of Management Ideas and Practice, David Sibbet, September/October 1997 Supplement, Harvard Business Review, Reprint number 97500
The Hunters and the Hunted, Swartz, James, 1994, Productivity Press, Portland OR
What You Can Learn from 100 Years of Management Science: A Guide to Emerging Business Practice, Stauffer, David, January 1998, Harvard Business Review, Reprint number U9801A
Requisite Variety The law of Requisite Variety states that the variety within a system must be at least as great as the environmental variety against which it is attempting to regulate itself (Weick, Social Psychology of Organizing, 1979, pp 189-193).
Putting it simply, organizations need to have the capacity and flexibility to respond to social and market changes and demands.
In the early '70s my father was the CEO of a snack food division of Del Monte, Maple Leaf Potato Chips in Montreal, Canada. He was transfered there from California to take over the recent acquisition and increase the bottom line. At the same time in Quebec a growing social movement was changing the face of communication and language, Quebecois (Canadian French). Most of ML's workforce was French-speaking and my father had to work through an interpreter to manage the company, though he made great effort to learn the language.
Legislation was being passed at the time for all products and marketing to be done bilingually. Up to that point, English was the default language of the Quebecois Province, a language spoken only by the minority of its citizens. As the movement grew, consumers began to boycott English-only packaging and goods and then eventually any commerce that was managed outside the economy of Quebec, a one-two punch for Maple Leaf Potato Chips. After a couple of years and a collapsing economy due to this cultural shift, along with a terrorist coup attempt on Quebec administration, my dad stepped down and we moved back to California.
Requisite variety would have been a response, even an anticipation to the cultural, social and economic demands of the market, realizing the variety of factors this organization was dealing with at the time. The requisite, the demand to treat these factors such as bilingual packaging and managing in a native language, was failed and the company was sold.
Times, they are a changin'. Requisite variety, though is morphing as organizations evolve culturally and socially. Organizations used to be defined as a social collective that had organizational (and later individual) goals that resulted in some level of coordinated activity. Take GM for example.
This definition is changing, with much influence from abroad, and now considers how the organization is structured and socially integrates. Again, take GM for example.
Definitions are expanding to include service organizations as business becomes sensitive to the influences of humanity on marketing, and virtual organizations that are more organic and dynamic than the real ones. Witness Google.
Late Work and Missing Tests I don't accept late work. Papers are due by the beginning of class. If you should miss a class due to medical reasons, you must provide documentation that states you were otherwise occupied at the time or in the general vicinity of class time. All excused absences must be presented right after the absence, and will be verified. I will determine what is excused. Any missed exams will only be made up with appropriate excused documentation.
Plagiarism This is the use of another source’s words, ideas or statistics without their permission and/or proper citation. Anyone who plagiarizes material in my class will receive a grade of zero on that assignment. I also reserve the right to assign you an “F” for the course and/or refer you to our chair for further sanctions. Please keep in mind that one can be expelled from the college for academic dishonesty.
Electronic Devices Pagers and cellular phones that go off during lectures and presentations are a huge distraction. All electronic devices are to be SILENCED during class, either off or in the vibrate mode. Please do not leave class to answer pages. You may be asked to leave class if I hear these devices. You will be asked to provide pizza/doughnuts the next class period in consideration for bothering your peers.
Students with Disabilities If you are a student with a medical, psychological or a learning difference and requesting reasonable academic accommodations due to this disability, you must provide an official request of accommodation to your professor(s) from the Disability Resource Center within the first two weeks of the beginning of classes. Students are to contact the center on the main campus to follow through with, and receive assistance in the documentation process to determine the appropriate accommodations related to their disability.
You may call (435) 652-7516 for an appointment and further information regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 per Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The office is located in the Student Services Center, Room #201 of the Edith Whitehead Building.
The item pool for this course consists of four response papers, an organizational analysis, one presentation and two term assessments.
The Response Papers are your responses to each part of Miller's text. Each paper is worth 50 points and should be 2-3 pages in length. 200 points total.
Part A: Looking over the first three chapters, pick the management style approach you feel your manager or organization subscribes to….be detailed and use examples and support why you feel it fits with your experience.
Part B: Using one of the three approaches: Systems, Cultural, or Critical, take a look at your current organization or a past one and analyze it from that perspective.
Part C: Taking a look at these four chapters, pick how new employees are brought in, how decisions are made, how conflict is dealt with, or how change is approached in your current or past work experience…again, provide examples and be detailed.
Part D: For this last response paper you can look at the emotionality of work, the diversity training, the use of technology or the changes taking place in your industry and tell me what your perceptions are of one of these aspects. Be detailed and provide examples.
The Organizational Analysis is a study of communication approaches within a specific organization. This is the heaviest weighed project of the and demands appropriate time for its successful and comprehensive completion. See the rubric for directions, suggestions and evaluation. 300 points.
The Presentation is an integrated oral presentation of your research on a specific organization that is struggling from effects of the recession. Resolve the question: How did this company communicate its objectives to its employees relating to downsizing, filing for bankruptcy, and/or reducing its workforce? Discuss the ethical considerations of the communication. 100 points. The Term Assessments cover the text. Due to the condensed nature of Summer semester, these assessment will cover seven chapters each, so keep up with your reading. These assessments are multiple choice, true/false, 50 questions each. 200 points each.
Evaluation Criteria Summary Organizational Analysis - 300 points Response Papers - 200 Presentation - 100 Term Assessments - Two at 200 points Total: 1000
Grading scale: A 940-1000 A- 900-930 B+ 870-890 B 830-860 B- 800-820 C+ 750-790 C 700-740 C- 650-690 F 000-490 D+ 600-640 D 550-590 D- 500-540
Requirements - Reading/Research This course requires completing regular reading, writing and research exercises both in class and out of class. Your organizational analysis alone will require a great deal of research and source citing. Be sure to dedicate the time needed for successful achievement.
Attendance It is imperative that you be present each week and of course for exams. Attendance and participation is worth a portion of the final grade. The only time an absence will be excused is with proper and verifiable documentation.
Coming to class late more than 2 times will also result in an absence. Coming in late is always a distraction for everyone.
Any student who misses 4 or more classes will need to come and speak to me about either dropping the course or whether or not the student can even pass at that stage.
Writing 1. Review and follow the guidelines regarding plagiarism. Submitting an assignment that includes plagiarized material can earn you expulsion from the college at worst, a grade of “0” at best or just an F in the course. 2. Submit all formal writing word-processed, double-spaced, in 12-point type. 3. Conform to a standard academic citation style, American Psychological Association (APA). 4. Use standard word-processing fonts (Arial, Times Roman without italicizing except for foreign words or the names of publications.)
There is widespread agreement among experts from a variety of disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, business, and human communication) concerning the importance of studying Organizational Communication, how to recognize the organizational strategy prevalent in a given organization, and how to function within the organization.
For many individuals substantial and significant moments and events of their lives revolve around membership and participation in one or more organizations. Whether it is deciding upon membership, determining one’s role within an organization, facilitating one’s efficiency and progress within an organization, and the professional and social behaviors and expectations that compose the politics within an organization: they all are part of the organizational experience.
This course is designed to give you practical and theoretical insights into the many varied strategies of organizations and to apply your knowledge and understanding in practical, personally helpful ways. The primary goal for the semester is to understand the effects of an organization on you as well as how you affect the organization and the other participants within it.
Course Outcomes
Understand the importance of attending and listening to the other person, and portray listening behaviors that demonstrate your understanding.
Transfer an understanding of organizational communication fundamentals to the social contexts experienced in both your everyday and professional lives.
Recognize the important, meaningful roles that non-spoken behaviors fulfill during our communication interactions within the organizational setting.
Understand the axioms of organizational communication as well as its principles and ethics.
Evaluate the various strategies by which organizations function.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the perceptual process of communication within the rubric of organizational communication.
Apply active listening and its principles in your organizational communication.
Explain the nature of trust and be able to define and build that trust both within and across organizations.
Distinguish between different organizations by correctly analyzing their needs, values,
general tendencies, goals, strategic design, and all ethical considerations applicable to a specific audience.
July 7, 8, 9 Chapter ten: Change and Leadership Process Chapter eleven: Process of Emotion in the Workplace Part C Response paper due
July 14, 15, 16 Chapter twelve: Organizational Diversity Process Chapter thirteen: Technological Process Chapter fourteen: The Changing Landscape of Organizations Part D Response paper due Exam review
