Organisational Behaviour and Design: Session 2

• Organisational Behaviour and Design
• Session 2
• License 2 (2024-25), Economics and Management, Université Côte d'Azur

Recap From Last Week

• Organisation defined as "a social structures created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of specified goals” - Richard Scott.
• Organisations affect culture, business, and therefore society, including what is acceptable or not.
• The 4 elements that define an organization are: having a goal, having leader(s), getting in actions, communications and/within members

Section 2

• Organisational Behaviour and Design:
• Looks at what are organizational behaviour and design
• Organisational design and structures leads down to and effects Organisational behaviour

Organisational Behaviour

• Organisational Behaviour defined as the study of the structure and management of Organisations, their environements and the actions and interactions of their members (individuals or group of members).
• In OB, considers questions and problems that Organizations face at 2 levels: the macro issues (the environments) and the micro factors (individuals or group of members).
• Fritz Roethlisberger first talk about OB in the 1950's, suggesting a wider scope than human relation in organizational actions
• Ford foundation research programme in Harvard started the first behaviour sciences program.

Case Study 1: Apple and Dell

• Apple beginnings: Steven P. Jobs created Apple Computer in 1977
• By 1985, Apple had sales of almost USD 2 Billion
• In 1985, S. Jobs was forced out of the company he helped to found
• S. Jobs Returned in 1997
• On returning as interim CEO, Steve Jobs reveals the company's massive quarterly loss of $161 million (September 1997).
• During a bleak period, Apple’s fortunes appraised by Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc. who said he would “shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders” (October 1997).
• Organisational Design at Apple involved control initially given to Apple's managers to oversee operations.
• Later, as Apple grew, Jobs demanded more control:
• Apple´s Type of Management initially meant Jobs was "playing favourites" (arbitrary style) & there being a Competition between teams
• Dell beginnings: Michael Dell established the Dell Computer Corp. in 1984
• By 1993, Dell´s Company had achieved sales of over USD 2 billion/ year
• M. Dell never lost control of his company
• Organisational design at Dell involved a participative Management approach with a close attention to operations
• The Type of management at Dell was one of Comradeship and cooperation among team members

Case Study 2: ACME and OMEGA

• ACME´s Initial leader position: ACME was bought by a Cleveland manufacturer but retained the original management et upgraded the general manager to president
• The Organisational design at ACME was one president with authoritary power
• The management type: John Tyler claimed to run a "tight ship” and was described as a “one-man band"
• OMEGA´s Initial Leader position: Hired a new president who has been director of a large electronics research lab and upgraded several existing personnel.
• The Organisational design at Omega: Participative management approach
• The Type of management at Omega: Jim Rawls said to not believe in organisational chart, felt business was small enough for people to talk directly.
• People can easily mode from one task to another, and most decisions were made as a management team

Lexique

• Participative management style emphasises listening to everyone's opinions, ensuring they feel heard when a decision is made, helping each employee can take ownership and invest in implementing the outcome.
• Arbitrary management: defined as ruling by absolute authority
• Competing management style defined as a confrontational method of handling disagreements.
• Competing management involves one person asserting their authority or insisting that their solution be followed.

Section 3

• Considers Organisation theories, delving into Authors and key ideas

Classical Management Theory Origin

• Classical Management Theory was created as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution
• Characteristics include:
• Larger companies
• People working with machines
• Rapid industry growth
• There was No existing model of management (professional managers did not exist yet), so needed to look how to organize resources and manage people

Founding Fathers of Classical Management theory

• Weber
• Tavlor
• Favol

Bureaucracy

• Max Weber and the concept of bureaucracy
• Bureaucratic Management examples include:
• 47-pages manual that gathered clothing and language requirement rules (2012) at Abercrombie & Fitch
• "Smile factory” principles at Walt Disney World requiring friendly smiles at all times with guests, friendly phrases (Walt Disney Productions)

Principles of Scientific Management

• Fredrick Taylor and principles of scientific management
• Aspects of Taylorism present today:
• Cases of «democratic taylorism » at Joint-venture (1984-2010) between General Motors and Toyota located in the US production line
• Management allowed team's work with rotation between tasks at - It kept Taylor's time and motion studies
• Also present in Taylor's motivation theory (e.g. motivation techniques in call centres and sales jobs)

Taylor´s principle

• Also present at McDonald's use
• Predictability, calculability and efficiency
• Planned limits on employee's creativity
• Standardized products beyond manufacturing industry

The Application of Taylorism

• Installation of single pourpose machine tools to manufacture standardized parts:
• the introduction of the mechalized assembly line.
• Criticism is that Taylorism and Fordism led to a considerable increase in productivity but the negative effects for workers were numerous such as de-skilling, passivation, alienation and ill-health. (Börnfelt, PO. (2023). Taylorism and Fordism.)
• Some of Henri Fayol and the administrative science:
• Managers' 5 functions: anticipate, organize, command, coordinate, control

Henri Fayol´s 14 principles

• Division of Work
• Authority and Responsibility
• Discipline
• Unity of Command
• Unity of Direction
• Subordination of Individual Interest to General Interest
• Remuneration of Personnel
• The Degree of Centralization
• Scalar Chain
• Order
• Equity
• Stability of Tenure of Personnel
• Initiative
• Esprit de corps
• Video Recap of the Origins of Classical Management Theory including:
• Hierarchical coordination and centralization of authority
• Standardization through division of labour
• Division between ownership and management