Management and Organization Theory

• General Management and Organization Theory will be covered.

Course Content

• The course includes an introduction to the notion of organization, its principles, and definitions of management.
• Management and its components will be covered, including classification, approaches and environment from the notion of business.
• The different levels of Management strategically differentiate themselves from operational management.
• Hierarchical distance and social proximity will be outlined.
• Approaches and schools in Management, with a simple mechanistic view, will be taught alongside a systemic complex vision.
• Managerial processes and organizational theories will be looked at and planned, examining their approaches and processes.
• Organization: Design and organizational changes will be looked at alongside leadership styles and theories of motivation.
• The direction of the company as well as decision processes and models of decision-maker behavior will be assessed.
• You will learn to control and understand system control types and qualities.
• The roles, skills, and qualities of management will be taught within the course.

General introduction

• The rationalization movement happened between the 19th and 20th centuries and led to the emergence of organizations and management practices.
• The concept of organization is defined by these elements:
• Definitions of organization are diverse and attached to different theoretical frameworks.
• A common point among these definitions is placing the relations between the person and their task.

Evolution of Organisation

• Stage 1 highlights the relationships between individuals and the physical and administrative conditions of their work.
• Stage 2 emphasizes interpersonal connections between people at work.
• Stage 3 focuses on the socio-economic relationships established between workers, organizations, and the broader economic environment.
• H. Mintzberg defines an organization as a relatively stable collection of actors oriented towards common general objectives, employing a division of labor and coordination and control methods for their realization.
• An organization is a collective focused on pursuing relatively specific goals and exhibiting a highly formalized social structure or a coalition of varying interest groups that develop goals through negotiation. (W.R. Scott's definition).
• Being an organization entails cooperation.
• Organizations function based on calculations involving potentially divergent interests and a cost/benefit arbitration.
• Desires, objectives, and instincts play a key role.
• Organizations result from a compromise between actors.
• Organizations exist in a space with a division of labor, where activities are carried out and roles assigned.
• Organizations have collective coordination.
• Organizations need to go beyond individual effort, and can do so with division of labor and coordination.
• Organizations require voluntary action, involving choices, decision-making, negotiation, and arrangements.
• Rules must be created and applications controlled formally and informally.
• The organization is a system, being a set of interrelated elements whose complexity is greater than its individual parts, creating a specific effect from their interactions.
• Organizations must adapt to changing environmental conditions for survival.

Approaches/Schools in Management

• Classic School - mechanist conception of the organization: The organization is seen as a way to combine resources to reach a set objective, and work is treated as issues of adjustment.
• Taylor, Ford, Fayol, and Max Weber share the mechanist approach, which considers piloting organization to be an applicable technique not individual genius.
• Frederick W. TAYLOR(1865-1915), Scientific Organization Of Work (SOW) based his work on three main ideas: Task allocation, the dichotomy of labor, and compensation.
• Task allocation involves precisely describing the worker's activity.
• The dichotomy of labor conceptualizes work down to smaller details, giving the workers manual activities to execute.
• Remuneration considers that there is an exact time for each task and this determines how fairly the worker is to be compensated.
• H. Fayol (1841-1925), Administration principles: Develops administration principles with a decomposition of administrative activity into five fundamental components.

Fayols 14 Principles

• Division of labor leads to greater efficiency.
• The relationship between authority and responsibility must be respected
• Discipline is a critical factor.
• Unity of command involves an employee receiving orders from only one supervisor.
• Unity of direction: there must only be one goal.
• Subordination of individual interest to the general
• Compensation is the right balance between pay and contribution.
• The degree of centralization: Centralization depends on the organization's tasks.
• Hierarchy is essential, but lateral communication is also necessary.
• There is order, where there is a place for each man and a man in each place.
• Equity is the appropriate treatment of the employees by employees.
• Workplace safety is a vital aspect
• There is initiative, where staff can create for the company.
• Union of personnel: working together makes a strong company.
• The five universal principles developed by H.Fayol in his 1916 Book “Administration industrielle et generale”
• Pre-planning to rationally prepare for the future and allocate the materials and staff.
• Organize staff effectively, and allocate the resources that are vital to the company to function.
• The managers are there to command and make sure that the workers stay on task.
• It is important to ensure that there is enough coordination between staff members, to improve efficiency.
• Controlling helps ensure that the plan is going to plan.
• Max Weber rationalized the organization with his studies and his works include: The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism where he assessed how staff reacted to different types of authority.
• Webers work has allowed leaders to analyse staff authority styles. Weber identified 3 types of authority: rational authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority.
• Rational authority is the system set to help boost worker performance.
• Traditional authority is the authority usually related to family-based business.
• Charasmatic authority happens when the followers see a leader as a hero and want to follow them.
• For M.WEBER, bureaucracy is a general form of organization characterized by the preponderance of rules and procedures impersonally applied by specialized agents.
• The first theorists of the organization have not given importance to the workers, resulting in a decline in productivity and the emergence of new approaches with new concerns.
• Elton Mayo in the 1930’s created the human relation school, which in reaction to the the current workplace culture, but mainly was a complement to Taylorism, not a shift in strategy.
• E.MAYO and L’exparince Hwthorne looked to determine productivity with workplace conditions.
• Principals: Improved conditions and workplace relations help increase productivity in workplaces.
• K.Lewin has done research to analyse leadership to help identify the behaviours displayed within organisations.
• K.lewin identified the ways and styles a leader can display themselves; permissive, athouritarian and democratic.

Lewin Leadership Styles

• The leaders who are permissive have no precise authority.
• The athouritarian leaders are those to set up the structure of the role for the members, and usually make all of the decisions, without letting the staff have their input.
• The democratic leader will make decisions, but these are only completed after talks and the thoughts of other members are accounted for.
• K.Lewin discovered that to encourage individuals within a group, is easier than doing it individually.
• In summary, the most successful form of leadership is the democratic style.
• Hoomans was the scientist to look at Small groups
• Small groups are units of people able to engage and communicate with each other at the same time.
• Action and operations were identified among members of the groups.
• Maslow identified 5 levels of hierarchy for workers which are classified as ‘Needs”. The 5 classifications are:
• Psychological Needs
• Financial Stability
• Social Needs
• Self Esteem Needs
• Self-Acheivement Needs.
• Fredrick Herzberg looked at the sources of satisfaction, and what the sources of dissatisfaction were.
• Herzberg studied bad and good memories to help isolate how the staff felt while in a workplace. The research discovered two things: Suppression of causes of dissatisfaction does not give satisfaction or motivation.
• II- The organization has a complex systemic view acting as a system that acts in coordination with its environment which helps better target interaction and processes.
• As part of the systemic approach, the organisation does not just study analytically, but looks globally too.

Characteristics of the System approach

• Finalizing elements
• socio-technical components
• Structure, unifying those with different personality and competence.
• Acting as a system to the environment.
• Decision Process
• limited rationality.
• Internal and external coalitions.
• Contract work for duties to allow staff to delegate.
• The school of decision making is the idea of what an organisation is to make important decisions, and it’s activity.
• The classical approach considers an optimisation of economy and environment.
• 1.1- H.Simon studies limited rationality.
• Having information available to a decider is not always optimal, and capacity can also limit.
• 1.2- James March et le processus décisionnel: H Simon helped analyse that if a worker is to improve, they must have a satisfaction through receiving a sense of contribution and retribution, which helps to boost morale.
• 1.3- La Théoire du comportement de la firm: the firm’ has 4 core concepts,
• Conflict resolutions
• Removal of uncertainty.
• The quest for a problem in the neighbourhood for a symptom.
• School of systemic: the theory is a wide concept.
• The school of socio-technical analyses the behaviour and needs of staff whilst looking to identify any negative effect from modern machines.
• The school looks to provide the best environment to enable the staff to work most efficiently with their tools.

Contingency School

• Unlike traditional theory, contingency school looks to not set a certain way to conduct business and lets the workplace determine methods to follow.
• Depending on the workplace structure, there may be need to complete certain procedures.
• With a varied staff member experience, a company may face different challenges relating to diversity and understanding.
• There is the analysis of Psycho Sociology and the sociological and psychological norms.
• d’iribarne has looked at how the workplace must understand the culture around them to improve the work and conditions.
• The functioning of companies has been observed in France, the USA and parts of the Netherlands
• The USA have taken ways to try and provide a work environment where staff are expected to meet demands to earn the company revenue.

How is the workload organised?

• Each countries structure has a code for success which is measured on:
• Devoir- what is the best goal?
• Hierarchical reports- How do staff communicate?
• Perception du control- How can the workplace control the workload without affecting quality? La France displays traits that ensure there are not the same levels on workload and responsibility for the staff.