Chapter 2,3,4 ...... Flashcards
Key theorists rational organisational design and bureaucracy
Max Weber - sociologist, observed increasing dominance of bureaucracy, noting technical achievements and negative impact on people
Henri Fayol - industrialist known for outlining rational, structured approach to bureaucratic organisational design and administration
Bureaucracy
official aspects of an organisation, such as the hierarchical structure, rules, procedures and paperwork which allow control to be exerted over the whole organisation
Rational organisational design
championed by Fayol, the design of bureaucratic features in the most technically efficient way so as to achieve the organisation’s goals
Iron cage of bureaucracy
phrase that summarises Weber’s critique of bureaucracy and rationality, suggesting it is inescapable and leads to monotonous, dull routines
Fayol’s five functions of management:
Planning/ forecasting - looking forwards, responding to future predictions
Organising - building structures, resources etc to meet needs of organisation
Coordinating - bringing together above, act in harmony towards goals
Commanding - giving orders and direction towards achieving goals
Controlling - checking/ inspecting work, monitoring
direct control and impersonal control
On small scale informal management works (direct control), on large scale need indirect control (impersonal control), using bureaucratic structures which make up rational organisational design.
Aspects of bureaucracy:
Hierarchy - different levels of management, each position in hierarchy known as an office, person holding office is an official
Rules, procedures and policies - govern activity of organisation, all officials act in accordance relating to office they hold
Paperwork - forms, records and timetables used to present and collate information about people and processes or organisation, done on computers more now
Development of organisational structure and hierarchy:
Levels of management between owner and other workers
Day to day tasks delegated to managers level below
Commands passed down hierarchy, need only be given to ones below
Owner no need to see/ have contact with workers at bottom
Owner and managers return to manageable span of control of five
Vertical and horizontal differentiation:
Vertical - the process whereby a hierarchy creates a number of different layers of management within an organisation
Horizontal - the process whereby different parts of the hierarchy are grouped according to criteria, such as function performed
Rational legal authority
according to Max Weber this is power that is legitimated by rules and procedures associated with an office rather than by traditional or charismatic means.
Weber ideal efficient bureaucracy characteristics
Functional division of labour (horizontal differentiation)
Hierarchical structure (vertical differentiation)
Rules and regulations
Impersonality (separation of working and personal lives)
Unbiased decision making (in recruitment, selection, promotion)
Formal rationality
technically efficient means of achieving particular ends without thinking of the human or ethical consequences.
Substantive rationality
rationality from a human and ethical perspective - if something is formally rational and efficient, it may not be substantively rational.
Disenchantment
for Max Weber the loss of ‘magical elements’ in society, suggests some dehumanising elements of bureaucracy. Occurred as movement from traditional to rational views.
Iron cage of bureaucracy
Max Weber’s observation of the increased presence of bureaucracy in society and its potential to trap people in its routines and procedures.
Dysfunctions of bureaucracy
red tape
the bureaucratic personality
mock bureaucracy
inflexibility of bureaucracy
Red tape
suggests negative connotations of rules and regulations getting in the way of an organisation working efficiently. Where rules and procedures create extra paperwork.
The bureaucratic personality
a tendency to follow rules to the letter rather than seeing the wider picture and making more common-sense judgements. Trained incapacity describes a person so reliant on rules they become inflexible.
Mock bureaucracy
situation where policies and rules exist but are ignored. Workers sometimes bend or ignore rules, make informal adjustments, if it helped get the job done or formal requirement were getting in the way.
Inflexibility of bureaucracy
examples above show distinction between ideal type of bureaucracy and bureaucracy in practice whereby rules, structures and paperwork are used more flexibly.
Advantages of bureaucracy:
Allows Fayol’s five aspects of management to take place and efficiently on a large scale
Solves problem of keeping order in organisation as it grows
Creates clear roles and responsibilities, outlining authority and their limits
Allows for information about individuals to be stored in a form easily manageable
Ensures impersonal fairness within organisation, equal opportunities
Disadvantages of bureaucracy:
What might be rational in formal terms may not be substantively rational, bureaucracy is ethically neutral
Can create negative human consequences, routines and procedures dehumanising and disenchanting, encases people in iron cage
Inflexibility creates inefficient dysfunctions, red tape, bureaucratic personality, unable to adapt to change like law and competition
Key theorists rational work design
Frederick Winslow Taylor - industrialist and one of the prominent pioneers of efficient, rational work design, Taylor developed the system of ‘scientific management’
Henry Ford - industrialist and pioneer of rational management techniques, Ford created systems of mass automobile production with his innovation of the moving assembly line
Frank and Lillian Gilbreth - contemporaries and associates of Taylor, known particularly for developing the time and motion study and ergonomic work design
Karl Marx - a political philosopher who commented on the inequalities of power between capital and workers and the negative, alienating effects of capitalist work upon workers
Harry Braverman - from a Marxist perspective developed the deskilling thesis that criticized the loss of craft skills under rational production methods
rational work design/rational production
the techniques developed by Taylor and Ford, among others; work is designed to achieve maximum efficiency, and organisations and workers are the tools used to achieve this efficiency
Capitalist working relationship
relationship between capitalists, who pays wages, and labour, who work in return for wages
scientific management, Taylorism
techniques pioneered by Taylor whereby work is broken down into small tasks which are then measured precisely and designed to be performed in the most efficient manner possible
Fordism
rational work design, pioneered by Ford, where work is designed for maximum efficiency; the worker remains stationary in front of a moving assembly line and repeats the same task
deskilling
from Braverman, loss of craft skills and expert knowledge experienced by workers when their jobs are simplified to fit in with rational work design
alienation
from Marx, this a number of ways in which rational work design impacts workers negatively, isolating them from their skills, final product and co-workers
Key features of rational work design
Work is seen as means of achieving a clearly defined end
Work is designed so as to achieve this end in the optimum or most efficient possible manner, both in terms of time and cost
Work is designed in a scientific manner, using measurement and calculation, as if designing a machine
Work is broken down into simple, repetitive tasks which take little or no skill, as if designing a machine
Waste is designed out of the work process
pre rational work design
Workers owned their own means of production
Workers were independent and autonomous
Comes with risk, equipment breaks, orders drop
It is inefficient, no economies of scale
Shift to factories
Workers no longer owned their own means of production. Factory owners or shareholders were capitalists, providing outlay and owning means of production.
Capitalists paid wages, workers lost independence and autonomy
Relationship between capital and labour has fundamental problem, they want different things. Marxist perspective is relationship of battle of control, workers taking industrial action, capitalists using rational work design to assert control.
Taylors problems of control over labour
Non-standard and unpredictable labour - workers were different, from different places with different skills, not standard units that would behave and be controlled components of a machine would be
Craft knowledge and power - craft knowledge is where workers have specialist expertise in the work they do. Workers held power over Taylor, he relied on them being truthful. Workers control work process by giving estimates.
Soldiering - techniques used by workers to create time for themselves during the working day. Soldiering means that workers are not working at the most efficient level possible.
‘one best way’
Taylor believed that for any job there was one best way to perform it. He outlined four principles of scientific management to increase efficiency and give power to management:
Work is broken down into small, repetitive actions - division of labour
Workers are selected scientifically
Work is divided between management and workers, managers manage
Management and the workforce cooperate
control through Taylorism
Standardisation - work was standardised, minimising the variable nature of human labour
Individualisation - workers given one task to do by themselves, bypassed soldiering and control from workers
Surveillance - easy to see workers who are slacking as they each have one job
Knowledge - atomising work process took control away from workers over pacing and other aspects they previously decided
Skill - skill required diminished greatly by scientific management, previously managers relied on craft skill, replaced by simple task, takes away power
ford, mass production and the assembly line
Assembly line is an automated conveyor that moves a product in front of workers who perform a small, repetitive task on each product that passes before them.
Taylor was interested on specific task performed by individual, Ford interested in a whole sequence of tasks which went into the manufacture of finished product.
Fordist system only works under mass production, the production of a large volume of a standardised product often making use of an assembly line, with economies of scale.
Ford needed society to change to mass consumption, large scale purchasing or a product by consumers in a society.
Speed of work controlled by speed of assembly line.
Ford understood the work was monotonous and dehumanising and gave over double standard wages.
Marx’s critique of capitalist production
Marxist view suggests capitalists striving for efficiency and reduced costs to create high returns on investment causing conflicts as it is at the expense of workers.
Marx believed capitalist working relationship produced surplus value, profit that capitalists gain over and above the wages they pay their workers.
He believed workers created profits enjoyed by capitalists and saw the relationship as unequal.
alienation
Workers are alienated from the product, no defining role in planning and creation process, play small part in production process, no role in selling product and seeing profits
Workers alienated from production process, work is dull series of repetitive, meaningless tasks, performed for money, no intrinsic rewards, craft skills redundant, labour deskilled
Workers alienated from their human essence, work is dehumanising, workers cog in a machine, natural human desire for creativity taken away
Workers alienated from other humans, work economic transaction in return for wage rather than social activity, workers individualised and separated from management
Braverman and deskilling
Braverman wrote a deskilling thesis highlighting the waste of human potential. Degradation in nature of work, workers have highly valuable craft skills reduced to performing monotonous tasks. Suggested two areas of deskilling:
Organisational deskilling represents overall knowledge of production process being held by management, taken away from workers
Technological deskilling represents the means by which the design of tasks removes need for workers skills
Conflict in the capitalist working relationship:
Marx’s conclusion is alienation and inequality of capitalist working relationship leads to conflict between workers and capitalists.
Formation of trade unions which able to take collective action like strikes, attempt to reintroduce collective power to workforce.
Ford had a labour turnover rate of 370%, his factories plagued with industrial unrest, unionisation, strikes and sabotage.
Parts of process in factories interdependent, one cog stops whole thing stops.
Benefits of standardisation and simplification of work:
Simplifying opens work up to people who have been unable to participate in the job market. Taylor and Ford employed unskilled work.
Gilbreth’s work attempted to design work for disabled people from World War I.
Rational working methods bring in fairness. Conditions of work, pace and standard of work expected standardised instead of decided by individual managers.
Advantages of rational production techniques:
Increase in production efficiency when simple, standardised product produced
Increase control over large number of factory workers
Workers participate in labour market without discrimination
Provides efficient goods and services in times of need
Disadvantages of rational production techniques:
Inefficient and inflexible for products with variation or where market conditions require rapid changes
Workers lose craft skills and expertise
Work is dull, monotonous and unfulfilling
Workers lose autonomy and control over day to day activities
key theorists rationalisation in contemporary organisations
Daniel Bell - American sociologist who suggested that the economy was moving away from manufacturing towards a post-industrial society
George Ritzer - American sociologist who examined the hyper-rationalised techniques of the fast-food restaurant, using the term ‘McDonaldisation’ to describe their use in many contemporary organisations
Michael Foucault - French philosopher who used the prison metaphor of the Panopticon to examine how power is exerted through the surveillance methods that rational management techniques in organisations produce
rationalisation
methods increasing the efficiency of work, drawing on techniques of bureaucracy and rational work design, such as Taylorism and Fordism
post industrialism
a perspective that suggests that, in response to a more changeable and unpredictable environment, organisations are moving away from rationalisation to more flexible forms of managing and organising; encompasses both post-bureaucratic and post-Fordist perspectives of management
mcdonaldisation
a perspective which recognises the continued use of rationalisation in contemporary organisations, as typified by the work design of the fast-food restaurant
Panopticon
based on a seminal prison design, a metaphor for the levels of control and surveillance in contemporary rationalised organisations
Examples of contemporary rationalisation:
Ritzer noted McDonalds is hyper-efficient, using rationalised techniques with roots in scientific management, bureaucracy and the assembly line
Organisations employ own models of cost-cutting and minimisation; we will see examples of contemporary efficient organisation like no-frills and value engineering
Computer technology allows contemporary organisations to exert control over workforce extensively, Foucault used metaphor of Panopticon
Organisation and its environment:
PEST model - model which breaks an organisations environment into four sectors:
Political - government policies and law
Economic - state of economy, demand, exchange rates
Social - consumer tastes, fashion, opinions
Technological - current technology and innovation
Contingency theory
suggest that the best structure for an organisation is determined by factors such as environmental uncertainty, organisations size and the technology it uses, counter arguing the one best way approach
Post-industrial
a move in society and economy away from the dominance of manufacturing, towards a more flexible, service-based economy
Post-bureaucracy:
Post-bureaucracy - trend away from rigid, bureaucratic rules and structures in organisations towards more flexible and less hierarchical, rule-driven organisations
Matrix structure - an organisational structure that combines a traditional functional hierarchy with separately managed project teams that draw people from across different functional departments
post fordism
a break away from Fordism and towards management techniques which use the skill of workers and grant autonomy to workers, emphasising communication and competencies, rather than command and control. Seen as a break with the deskilling and highly controlled nature of Fordism and Taylorism, instead valuing the skills and knowledge of workers and allowing them autonomy in how they organise work.
neo fordism
a form of rational organisation which combines Fordist efficiency and control with the ability of computer technology to introduce flexibility into the work process. Workers generally have better working conditions and often have a wider variety of tasks, engaging in job rotation and job enlargement compared to Fordism.
Post-bureaucracy, post-Fordism and Neo-Fordism
Post-bureaucracy and post-Fordism suggest retreat from rationalisation, movement towards flexible organisations with skills and autonomy given to workers
Neo-Fordism achieves flexibility through technology, used to make work processes more efficient and exert precise control over tasks workers perform
McDonaldisation
The principles of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control by which fast food restaurants are managed and organised, as applied by Ritzer to other contemporary organisations.
Efficiency - getting something done in optimum manner, reduced waste as much as possible in shortest time with least cost inputs, basis of Taylorism and Fordism
Calculability - emphasising what can be measured and calculated to achieve efficiency, Taylor’s time and motion studies
Predictability - eliminating variability and unpredictability, standardised products, work processes, bureaucratic rules and procedures, like Taylorism and Fordism
Control - commanding workers through bureaucratic rules and hierarchy, making work as simple as possible, replacing humans with technology
Ritzer supports Weber’s view of disenchantment, deskilling, and iron cage of McDonaldisation.
McJobs - deskilled jobs found particularly in-service industries
Contemporary models of rationalisation:
No-frills - a model of organisation cost reduction which offers a basic product, charging customers for anything extra to this basic offering
Value engineering - a firm of cost analysis that compares the cost of an item or process against its perceived value
Flat-pack rationalisation - IKEA designing packaging as small as possible, universal standardised components, pictures for instructions
Barcode technology - tracking person or product, calculating price of basket of goods, reduced time scanning, calculating inventories, self-service
Panopticism, surveillance, and control:
Surveillance - the observation of people to gain information about them or to exert order and control over them
Panopticon - a prison design that allows surveillance to take place efficiently over all prisoners, used as metaphor for surveillance and control in organisations:
It allows for control to be exerted over organisation, where otherwise chaos and unpredictability might ensue
It allows for it to be done in a highly efficient manner
Foucault stated factories, schools and hospitals resemble prisons, referring to how organisations exert power and control through surveillance
Modern-day Panopticon:
Call centre referred to as operating similar to Panopticon
- physical layout of call centre, leaving booth obvious
- possibility supervisor listening, operator internalises power and control
- call data recorded electronically, reviewed and targets set
Dataveillance - surveillance brought about by examining electronic data which is held about individuals
Electronic Panopticon - the ability to monitor our lives through the amount of electronic data and records held about us
Such control and surveillance have two important aspects:
- anything we do is recorded on computer system and potentially discoverable
- data used to make decisions about us, insurance, credit
