Organizational Theory

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Organizational Theory

• Winter 2004
• Gail Johnson

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Organization

• Greek Organon
• meaning a tool or instrument.
• So, organizations are tools or instruments to
  meet goals, objectives, to carry out tasks.

3
Theory and Paradigms

• Theory
• A coherent group of general propositions used as
  principles of explanation or
• A proposed explanation whose status is still
  conjectural
• Paradigm an example or pattern

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Theory and Paradigms

• To help us understand how organizations work
• To help us think about how we understand
  organizations
• To help us think about we approach others within
  the organization based on our theory.
• To help us determine more effective ways of
  organizing to get work done.

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Organizational Theology?

• Each offers scripture and preaches its own
  version of the gospel to modern managers. Each
  has a vision of how organizations are and should
  be.
• Boleman and Deal, p.3

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Theories as Frames

• Frames or Windows
• filter
• order the world
• Structural Frame
• Human Resource Frame
• Political Frame
• Cultural
• Systems

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Mindsets

• Blue Red Black Green
• Black Blue Green Red
• Green Black Red Blue
• Blue Green Red Black
• Red Black Blue Green

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Guidelines for Leading Paradigm Shifts

• Introduce anomalies and help people perceive them
• Provide a clearly defined new paradigm
• Build faith in the new paradigm
• Help people let go of their old paradigm
• Give people time in the neutral zone
• Give people touchstones
• Provide a safety net
• Osborne and Plasterik, Banishing
  Bureaucracy, p. 265.

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Open Systems

• Organizations can be seen as open systems, like
  organisms which constantly adapt to their
  internal and external environment
• Image organism
• Words flexible, responsive, fluid, changing

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Systems Paradigm

• What endures is process
• dynamic
• adaptive
• creative
• Leader maintains focus, guiding principles, and
  vision.

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Wheatley

• I have observed that the search for
  organizational equilibrium is a sure path to
  institutional death, a road to zero trafficked by
  fearful people. (P. 76).
• Life is an open system Open systems that engage
  with their environment and continue to grow and
  evolve. (P.77)

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Assumptions

• External conditions influence the flow of inputs,
  outputs and can affect the internal operations.
• Organizations use many of their products,
  services, and ideals as inputs to organizational
  maintenance or growth
• Organizations are influenced by their members as
  well as their environments.

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Assumptions

• Subsystems are all interrelated and influence
  each other
• Organizations are constantly changing.
• An organization's success depends on its ability
  to adapt to its environment
• Any level or unit within an organization can be
  viewed as a system.

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Environment
Goals Culture
Behaviors Processes Technology Structure
Inputs
Outputs
Environment
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Open Systems

• Inputs
• Outputs
• Technology
• Environment
• Goals and strategies

• Behavior and processes
• Culture
• Human resources
• Structure

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GAO

• Inputs People and money some technology
  knowledge
• Outputs reports and testimony
• Technology brains, analytic thought,
  rational model, computers, printing
• Environment political

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GAO

• Goals and
• Strategies vision statement but no
  strategic plan to get there.
• Behavior and
• processes command and control, accounting
  model

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GAO

• Culture 100 accuracy inspect accuracy
  checkers checking the
• checkers.
• Human resources few careers rewards based on
  writing, not rocking the boat.
• Structure flat at the bottom very steep
  hierarchy at the top.

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Colleges/Universities

• Inputs
• Outputs
• Technology
• Goals and Strategies
• Behavior and Processes
• Culture
• Human Resources
• Structure

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Application Senges Learning Organizations

• Systems Thinking
• big picture, interconnections
• Personal Mastery
• personal vision, patience, reality
• Shared Vision
• picture of the future

• Team Learning
• Group IQ
• dialogue
• greater than sum of the parts
• Mental Models
• question assumptions, internal images

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Wheatley

• We are capable of ...transformations when we
  trust that new thoughts and ideas can
  self-organize in the environment of our minds and
  our organizations. And we should do well to take
  clouds more seriously
• After all, how do you hold a hundred tons of
  water in the air with no visible means of
  support? You build a cloud.
• (Cole, in Wheatley, p.99)

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Wheatley

• Wheatley asks Why are we afraid of what happens
  if our boat gets rocked?

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Structural Paradigm

• Image A machine
• Pyramid
• Words Efficient
• Impersonal
• Goal-driven
• Phrase The One Best Way

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Structural Paradigm

• Max Weber
• Structure strives to achieve
• calculability of rational results,
• precision, stability, discipline, and
• reliability.

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Structural Assumptions

• Exist to accomplish its goals
• Problems usually reflect an inappropriate
  structure
• Work effectively when the norms of rationality
  prevail.
• Specialization permits higher levels of
  individual performance.
• Coordination and control are accomplished best
  through the exercise of authority and impersonal
  rules, and centralized oversight.

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Structural Paradigm

• Control
• Control
• Control

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Structural Frame
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Margaret Wheatley

• If organizations are machines, then control
  makes sense. If organizations are process
  structures, then seeking to impose control
  through permanent structure is suicide.
• Wheatley, p. 23

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Truth or Fiction?

• Bureaucracy is the single best form of
  organization of organization yet devised for
  providing consistency, continuity,
  predictability, stability, deliberateness,
  efficient performance of repetitive tasks,
  equity, rationalism and professionalism.
  (Cooper, p. 201)

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Bureaucracy Does Not Mean Government

• In organizational theory, we are talking about
  how organizations are structured.
• This is not to be confused with discussions about
  government, even though government is often
  referred to as bureaucracy.
• The overall governance is not easily explained by
  the principles of the Webers ideal bureaucracy.

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Meditation

• Rules promote fairness and accountability in the
  conduct of public business.
• Rules are also the enemy of progress and
  dispatch.

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Sabotage Exercise

• You have been brought into a public organization
  to sabotage it.
• However, you can't tell anyone that is what you
  are doing
• You have to make it appear that you are trying to
  improve the organization.
• Using the structural model, what changes would
  you make to the structure so that the
  organization would be unable to function.

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Political Paradigm

• The political frame views organizations as
  'alive and screaming' political arenas that house
  a complex variety of individuals and interest
  groups.

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Political Paradigm

• Image smoke-filled room
• battle
• Words wheeling and dealing
• My way or no way.

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Political Paradigm

• It is a world not of angels but of angles, where
  men speak of moral principles but act on power
  principles a world where we are always moral and
  our enemies always immoral.
• Saul Alinsky, 1971

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Political Paradigm

• "Power is the medium through which conflicts of
  interest are ultimately resolved. Power
  influences who gets what, when, and how."
  Morgan
• "Power involves an ability to get another person
  to do something that he or she would not
  otherwise have done." Dahl
• "Power might be defined as simply the ability to
  make things happen, to be a causal agent, to
  initiate change. " Follett

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Assumptions

• Important decisions allocation of scarce
  resources.
• Organizations are coalitions composed of a number
  of individuals and interest groups
• Individuals and interest groups differ in their
  values, preferences, beliefs, information, and
  perceptions of reality

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Power Assumptions

• Goals and decisions emerge from ongoing processes
  of bargaining, negotiation, and jockeying for
  position among individuals and groups.
• Because of scarce resources and enduring
  differences, power and conflict are central
  features of organizational life."

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Power Assumptions

• Its all a game.
• Who ever has the most toys wins.

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Political Paradigm

• "The political frame says that the pursuit of
  self-interest and power is the basic process in
  organizations.
• Organizational change is always political--it
  occurs when a particular individual or group is
  able to impose its agenda on the
  organization...and you need to be prepared for a
  conflict as a part of the process.

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Human Side of Power

• The decision as to whether an order has
  authority or not lies with the persons to whom it
  is addressed, and does not reside in 'persons of
  authority' or those who issue these orders.
  Chester Barnard
• Our job is not how to get people to obey orders,
  but how to devise methods by which we can best
  discover the order integral to a particular
  situation. Mary Parker Follett

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Human Side of Power

• Power Over
• power is scarce and limited
• giving orders
• punish non-compliance
• negative beliefs about people

• Power With
• power increases when shared
• orders are determined by the situation
• participatory problem-solving
• positive beliefs about people

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Powerlessness

• In organizations, it is powerlessness, not power
  that corrupts. When people feel powerless, they
  behave in petty, territorial ways. The become
  rules-minded and they are over-controlling
  because theyre trying to grab hold of some
  little piece of the world that they do control
  and then over-manage it to death. Kantor

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Forms of politicking

• Pad budgets to get more resources
• Pick easy tasks and build them into mountains
• Image management
• Appear busy
• Manage to stay until after the "boss" leaves, so
  you appear to be hard working.

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More malignant forms

• Sabotage co-workers, or competitive work units,
  so you appear to look good.
• Create "problems" which only you can solve.
• Take credit for the work of others.

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Ways to handle conflict

• Avoidance--denial moose on the table
• Compromise deals, temporary
• Competition win/lose
• Accommodation giving way, submission
• Collaboration win/win, integrative

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Kritek Masks of Manipulation

• Praise and Flattery
• Lying and Deception
• Helpfulness and Generosity
• Trickery and Secret Deals
• Attacking and Threatening

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Masks of Manipulation

• Deliberate Stupidity
• Cuteness and Flirtatiousness
• Persevering
• Withholding

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Mary Parker Follett

• the law of the situation
• Both leaders and followers are guided by the
  law of the situation, guided by the larger
  purpose--the vision.
• When we are guided by the law of the situation,
  the need to give orders is reduced.

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Follett Dealing with Conflict

• Bring the conflict into the open
• denial is dsyfunctional
• Make agendas visible
• dont pretend you dont have personal motives
• Lay your cards on the table
• Listen to the issues and concerns of all parties.

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Follett Dealing with Conflict

• Break issues and concerns into their constituent
  parts
• Seek areas of agreement
• Seek solutions on the smaller issues.
• Understand the symbolic value of the issues.
• Respect and trust are essential.

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Follett Dealing with Conflict

• Not all problems will have win-win solutions.
• But all parties should feel they have been heard
  and that their views were seriously considered.

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FollettObstacles to Integration

• Lack of intelligence and inventiveness
• Unwillingness to take responsibility
• Enjoyment of domination
• Fight addict
• Tendency to theorize rather take action
• Language of "war"
• The manipulation by the unscrupulous leaders
• Our lack of training in the "art" of cooperative
  thinking and action

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Obstacles to Integration

• Tendency to theorize rather take action
• Language of "war"
• The manipulation by the unscrupulous leaders
• Our lack of training in the "art" of cooperative
  thinking and action

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Covey Personal Influence

• Refrain from saying the unkind or negative thing
• Exercise patience with others (and self)
• Distinguish between the person and the behavior
• Perform anonymous service
• Keep your promises
• Assume the best of others

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Covey Personal Influence

• Seek first to understand
• Reward open, honest expressions
• Give an understanding response
• Admit your mistakes, apologize,
• Let arguments fly out open windows
• Go one on one
• Renew your commitment to things you have in
  common

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Sources of Power

• Authority
• Expertise
• Control of Resources
• Control of Process
• Control of decision processes

• Information
• Personal
• Associational
• Coercive

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Exercise

• Who has power in your organization?
• What are your sources of power?

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Human Relations Frame

• Image Family
• Words Caring, Nurturing, Supportive
• Spirit
• Concepts motivation, empowerment,
  development, communication

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Human Relations Assumptions

• Organizations exist to serve human needs
• Organizations need the ideas, energy, and talent
  that people provide
• People need the careers, salaries, and work
  opportunities that organizations provide.
• Fit is crucial
• When poor, one or both will suffer.
• When good, both benefit.

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Human Relations

• Chester Barnard
• The key limiting factor to organizational
  success is in getting people to cooperate in
  accomplishing the organization's purpose.

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Chester Barnard

• The functions of the executive are to
• articulate the mission and purpose
• establish the communication systems
• provide incentives to induce cooperation for
  organizational success.

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Incentives

• To get them to cooperate you must induce them to
  join the organization and then induce them to
  contribute.
• The organization depends upon the motives of
  individuals and the inducements that satisfy
  them.

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Incentives

• List all the things that motivate you at work

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Incentives

• Material money, compensation, bonuses
• Personal prestige, distinction, power
• Values pride of workmanship, altruistic
• service, loyalty, patriotism
• Associational social compatibility, social
  status
• Opportunity participation, efficacy
• Security job security, support

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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
Self-Actualization
Esteem
Belonging Love
Safety
Physiological
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Follett Different Vision

• Circle, Not Pyramid
• Belonging and Relatedness would be the top.
• Self-esteem and self-actualization would be
  lower-order needs
• Mary was not big on individualism.

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Follett Different Vision

• We cannot put the individual on one side and
  society on the other, we must understand the
  complete interrelation of the two. Each has no
  value, no existence without the otherThere is no
  such thing as a self-made man. (p. 257)
• Of what then does the individuality of a man
  consist? Of his relation to the whole, not (1)
  of his apartness nor (2) of his difference alone.

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Follett Different Vision

• I am an individual not as far as I am apart
  from, but as far as I am part of others.
• Non-relation is death. (257)

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Theory X and Theory Y

• Theory X
• childlike
• passive
• lazy
• resists work
• want to be led
• bare minimum

• Theory Y
• adults
• desire to achieve
• committed to work
• responsible
• lead, control their work
• want to do a good job

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Where is your organization?

• Does it value people?
• Does it treat people like adults?
• Does it develop people?
• Do managers treat employees as customers?
• Should it?

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Mary Says

• Even if it is true that people want to be told
  what to do--and I dont think it is true but even
  if it is--
• I dont think there is any reason to encourage
  that desire. As a parent, you teach your
  children to make decisions, even if they would,
  at least initially, prefer you to make the
  decisions for them.

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Mary Says

• We all have to learn to take our share of
  responsibilityand leaders should make us feel
  our responsibility, not take it from us. (p.
  214)

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Peter Block

• the mindset that there is a population waiting
  to be told what norms and values they are to live
  by expresses a loss of faith in human capacity.

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Cultural Paradigm

• A pattern of basic assumptions, invented,
  discovered, or developed by a given groups as the
  correct way to perceived, think and feel

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Cultural Paradigm

• The basic assumptions and beliefs shared by
  members of an organization that operate
  subconsciously.
• Culture affects how each member thinks, feels and
  acts.
• Leaders create culture and manage cultureit is
  the only thing of real importance that they do.

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Cultural ParadigmAssumptions

• What is most important is the meaning of what
  happens
• The meaning is determined by how people interpret
  what happens
• Much of what happens is ambiguous and uncertain,
  and undermines rational approaches

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Cultural ParadigmAssumptions

• When faced with uncertainty and ambiguity, people
  create symbols to reduce ambiguity and to resolve
  conflict

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Cultural Paradigm

• Attempts to change organizations without
  understanding its culturenorms, beliefs, and
  valuesare bound to fail.
• Reorganizations should not be prescribed as a
  cure for personality problems.--Harold Seidman

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Seidman Agency culture and personality

• Agencies have "distinct and multidimensional
  personalities and deeply ingrained cultures and
  subcultures, reflecting institutional history,
  ideology, values, symbols, folklore, professional
  biases, behavior patterns, heroes, and enemies.

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Seidman Agency culture and personality

• It would be as unthinkable for a secretary of
  agriculture to question the innate goodness of
  the rural way of life and the inherent virtues of
  the family farm as it would be for an OMB
  director to be against economy and efficiency

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Seidman Agency culture and personality

• As the leader of a rugged 'outdoors-type'
  department, a secretary of the interior is not
  out of character when he climbs mountains, shoots
  the Colorado River rapids, or organizes
  well-publicized hiking and jogging expeditions.

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Seidman Agency culture and personality

• Identical conduct by the secretary of the
  treasury would shake the financial community to
  its core." pp. 166-167

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Cultural Paradigm

• Myths
• provide explanations
• maintain group cohesion
• anchor the present in the past

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Cultural Paradigm

• Some myths we live by
• Authority must always equal responsibility
• Planned organizational change
• The objective, neutral expert
• Managerial control
• One best way

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Cultural Paradigm

• Some rituals and ceremonies
• presidential conventions
• performance appraisals
• award ceremonies
• committee meetings (with no outcomes expected)
• management training programs

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Your Culture Exercise

• Take out a piece of Paper
• When you first started working there, what was
  first story you heard?

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Your Culture Exercise

• List 3 words that describe Evergreen.
• Now imagine Evergreen 5 years from now, after it
  has initiated a successful culture change. Write
  3 words to describe as it might exist 5 years
  from now after the culture change.

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Your Culture Exercise

• Think of your experiences at Evergreen in the
  past 6 months
• What has surprised you?

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Your Culture Exercise 2

• Who tells the jokes in your organization?
• What do people call you--nicknames. Or the names
  they call your project or work unit?
• If you could change one thing, what would that
  be?

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Humor

• If you dont know who is telling the jokes, you
  need to get out more.
• What kind of humor healing? Self-deprecating?
  Sarcastic? Hurtful?

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Clues to Organizational Culture

• Passion
• Pictures
• Habits
• Humor
• Stories
• Surprises

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Cultural Artifacts?

• GAO Blue Book
• Schools

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Twelve Lessons for Leaders of Culture
Transformations

• Winning minds, changing habits, touching hearts
• 1. Dont control employees--involve them.
• 2. Model the behavior you want.
• 3. Make yourself visible
• 4. Make a clear break with the past.
• 5. Unleash--but harness the pioneers.
• .

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Twelve Lessons for Leaders of Culture
Transformations

• Winning Minds, Changing Habits, Touching Hearts
• 6. Get a quick shot of new blood--and a slow
  transfusion
• 7.Drive out fear--but dont tolerate resistance.
• 8. Sell success.
• 9. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

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Twelve Lessons for Leaders of Culture
Transformations

• Winning Minds, Changing Habits, Touching Hearts
• 10. Bridge the fault lines in the organization.
• 11. Change administrative systems that reinforce
  bureaucratic culture.
• 12. Commit for the long haul.
• Osborne and Plasterik, Banishing Bureaucracy

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Working with Paradigms

• The assumptions you hold about an organization
  influences how you assess its performance, what
  you look at, and what you think needs to be
  changed.

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Structural Frame

• Organizations should
• Have clear lines of communication
• Have a specified chain of command
• Rules for all decisions
• Impersonal decision-making
• Authority should be assigned to a position
• Job descriptions should be specific and no one
  should do work outside of that description

100
From a structural paradigm

• Teams would represent a problem in terms of
  clarity of roles, responsibility, and authority
• Collaboration across work units would be
  problematic if the chain of command was no longer
  clear
• Email is a problem because people can communicate
  to anyone without approval, clearance or
  following the chain of command
• Conflict represents poor communication or
  problems in the structural elements of the
  organization

101
From a structural paradigm

• Change should be resisted if it upsets
  established operating procedures and routines
• Informal authority and power outside the
  structure are problems

102
Structural Frame

• Works best when you are dealing with a stable
  environment and routine work
• Works worst when you are dealing with a rapidly
  changing environment and non-routine work, where
  adaptability and flexibility are essential

103
Political Frame

• Organizations are seen in terms of political
  forces
• Awareness of who has power
• Who gets what?
• Who has what source of power?
• Who belongs to which coalition?
• What is the game?
• What are the rules?

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From a Political Frame

• The lifeblood of public administration is
  power. Long.
• Power is the ability to get things done, so you
  need to look at your sources of powers, including
  your alliances.
• Conflict and coalition building are natural

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The Political Frame

• Conflict seen as good
• Training in conflict and negotiation
• Strategic alliances are important
• No permanent enemies
• Use informal structure and power
• Downside trust is difficult, decisions based on
  persuasive power rather than whats best for the
  organization.
• Without structure, the political frame
  predominates

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Machiavelli Views of Power

• Disguise and deception are essential to rulers
• Always speak in terms of
• mercy, faith, integrity, humanity, religion
• If the masses believe your appearance, the ruler
  can safely ignore them and pursue policies in the
  interest of the ruling class.

107
Bolman and Deal

• Artistry
• The leader as artist relies on images as well as
  memos, poetry as well as policy, reflection as
  well as command, and reframing as well as
  refitting. p. 17

108
Exercise

• 8
• 5
• 4
• 9
• 1
• What comes next?

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Exercise

• Eight
• Five
• Four
• Nine
• One
• What comes next?