Ch 2: Unmanageable organizations

Question 1

Describe the situation for unmanageable organizations (1950-1970).

Answer 1

• Large and complex organization
• No focus on the customers and environment
• Strict management control
• Strikes
• Complex bureaucracies
• Lifetime employment

Question 2

Describe the Peter Principle.

Answer 2

Promotion until incompetence.
Peter researched large organizations and suggested that people get promoted on the regular basis until they become incompetent. So the decision was to move managers horizontally by giving them longer job titles

Question 3

Describe Parkinson´s law.

Answer 3

• Work expands to fill the time available for its completion
• Expansion of the number of administrators compared with workers
• Time spend on any item on the agenda is in inverse proportion to its importance

Question 4

Describe Simon Herberts theory about satisficing decision-making in complex organizations.

Answer 4

• There is no possibility to fully processed all the information available in their organization
• Rational decision-making (“economic man”) was replaced by satisfying decision-making which was good enough (“administrative man”)

Question 5

Describe Marchs garbage can of choices.

Answer 5

• Organization had problems with coordinating the flow of information in constantly changing external environment
• Garbage can of choices means that decision-making process was unlikely rational