Chapter 2/3/4

Question 1

Fayols 5 functions of management

Answer 1

• Planning/forecasting; focussed on predicting future circumstances and acting to respond to these
• Organising; building necessary resources and people to meet objectives
• Coordinating; bringing together structure, human and resource elements of the organisation to act in harmony
• Commanding; giving orders and directing the people in the organisation
• Controlling; checking and inspecting/surveying work being done

Question 2

Bureaucracy definition

Answer 2

A system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.

Question 3

3 aspects of bureaucratic control

Answer 3

• Hierarchy/organisational structure
• Rules, procedures and policies
• Paperwork and records

Question 4

Contrasting views of bureaucracy

Answer 4

• Fayol; bureaucracy as technical efficient design

- Weber; negative effects and the iron cage

Question 5

Bureaucratic rules policies and procedures

Answer 5

• Standardising behaviour across structure is problematic (do all managers treat subordinates the same way)
• How does bureaucracy fit with managerial discretion?
• Standardisation occurs through rules, policies and procedures such as pay, appraisal, recruitment.

Question 6

Bureaucratic paperwork and records

Answer 6

• Information needed to facilitate bureaucratic rules and procedures e.g. hours worked for pay procedures
• Proforma with pre defined fields – standardises info about employees
• More efficient recording and retrieval of info through standardised records
• Control and surveillance by monitoring stored info
• Made easier by computers

Question 7

Max weber and the critique of bureaucracy

Answer 7

• Weber was a sociologist not a manager or management theorist
• Noted technical efficiency of bureaucracy but critical of its effects on society
• Formal and substantive rationality
• Formal; technically most efficient means of achieving the end but does not mean the most rational in ethical terms
• Substantive; takes account of the effects of rational actions in human and ethical terms
• From traditional and charismatic authority to rational-legal authority
• The iron cage of rationality

Question 8

Dysfunctions and inflexibility of bureaucracy

Answer 8

• Red tape; bureaucracy gets in the way rather than making work more efficient
• Bureaucratic personality – the jobsworth or computer says no
• Bending the rules to get work done
• Exercising discretion; street level bureaucracy
• Mock bureaucracy; policies exist but are ignored

Question 9

Types of organisation structure

Answer 9

• Rigid bureaucratic structure
• Bureaucratic structure with senior management team
• Bureaucratic structure with cross functional teams
• Matrix structure
• Project structure
• Loosely coupled organic structure

Question 10

Evaluating bureaucracy

Answer 10

• Efficient means of keeping order and control
• Creates clear roles and responsibilities
• Info easily stored and retrieved
• Rules and policies create impersonal fairness
• Technical efficiency may not be ethically desirable
• Negative human effects; dehumanisation and disenchantment
• Inflexibility
• Impersonal, iron cage

Question 11

The future for bureaucracy

Answer 11

• Inflexibility makes bureaucracy obsolete in a dynamic, post bureaucratic world
• Prevalence in contemporary organisations

Question 12

Frederick winslow taylor; efficiency and control

Answer 12

• Pioneer of rational work design; scientific management
• Industrial engineer in early 20th century
• Designing organisations like machines
• Designed efficient work but obsessive with controlling workers
• Taylorism; techniques still in evidence in contemporary organisations

Question 13

Taylors problems of control over labour

Answer 13

• Labour is non standard and unpredictable
• Craft knowledge and expert power
• Labour organized in gangs
• Labour inherently lazy and unmotivated
• Soldiering
• This meant that people did not behave like, nor could they be controlled like machines

Question 14

Taylors five principles of scientific management

Answer 14

• A clear division of tasks and responsibilities between management and workers
• Use of scientific methods to determine the best way of doing a job
• Scientific selection of the person to do the newly designed job
• The training of the selected worker to perform the job in the way specified
• Surveillance of workers through the use of hierarchies of authority

Question 15

Control through Taylorism

Answer 15

• Standardisation
• Individualisation
• Facilitates surveillance
• Knowledge resides with management
• Removal of craft skill

Question 16

Fordist standardisation

Answer 16

• Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black
• The assembly line; each worker has an individualised task to repeat over and over

Question 17

Critiques of Fordism

Answer 17

• Intense control due to speed of line
• Dehumanising work
• Deskilling
• Workers reduced to cogs in a machine

Question 18

Economies and diseconomies of work specialisation

Answer 18

• Productivity increases as work specialisation increases to a certain point, until work becomes too highly specialised and therefore productivity decreases.

Question 19

Differences between Taylorism and Fordism

Answer 19

Taylorism
- Organized labour around existing machinery
- Took production process as given and sought to re organize work and labour processes
- Pace of work set by workers or supervisor
Fordism
- Eliminated labour with new machinery
- Used technology to mechanize the work process; workers tended to machines
- Pace of work set by machinery

Question 20

In favour of rational work design

Answer 20

• Increases participation in labour market e.g. unskilled workers
• Fairness and standardisation in the workplace
• Good in a stable, unchanging context where precision is important