OS 9-16

strategic choice argument (John Child)

- Decision makers have more autonomy than that implied by those arguing for the dominance of environmental, technological or other forces. - Organisational effectiveness is a range, not a point, it is impossible to measure and state a maximum amount. - Organisations can often control or manipulate their environment. - Perception is key in the relation of environment and organisation. ...managers can be influenced by self-interests, a lack of information and a number of other things.

Differences in male and female management styles

- Females' operating style tends to be more cooperative, while male's is usually competitive; - Women's basic objective is quality output, while for men it is winning; - Problem-solving style is intuitive / rational for women, while it is rational for men.

bureaucracy revised

- Focusing management effort on key responsibilities. - Rethinking the centralisation-decentralisation balance. - Moving focus from internal processes to external adaption. - Greater use of market controls. - Improving communication flows. - Concentrating effort on core competencies. - Improving availability of information.

Disadvantages of bureaucracy are

- Goal displacement - that is, the displacement of organisational goals by subunit or personal goals (as specialisation and differentiation create subunits with different goals). o Obedience to the rules and procedures often becomes more important than the ends they were designed to service, resulting in goal displacement and loss of organisational effectiveness. o Rules and regulations not only define unacceptable behaviours but also define the level of acceptable performance, which is rarely exceeded. In other words, people will do just the bare minimum to get by. - Bureaupathic behaviour - high formalisation bureaucracy creates insecurities in those in authority that lead to what has been called bureaupathic behaviour. Decision makers use adherence to rules to protect themselves from making errors. Additionally, as people in hierarchical positions become increasingly dependent on lower-level specialists for achievement of organisational goals, they tend to introduce more and more rules to protect themselves against this dependence. That is, they use rules to maintain centralised decision making. -Inappropriate application of rules and regulations - Employee alienation - members perceive the impersonality of the organisation as creating distance between them and their work. Repetitive jobs with little challenge can easily lead to loss of motivation and dysfunctional employee behaviour. -Concentration of power -Inability to adapt to change -Overstaffing -Tendency towards large size and low productivity -Non-member frustration

Organizational change

- Government decisions in relation to: o Deregulation and privatisation o Promotion of competition - Growth of globalization, influenced by: o Introduction of technological innovations o Changes in expectations and society values

An organisation needs a structure which allows that:

- Implements strategies - Defines areas of responsibility - Provides control mechanisms - Facilitates the flow of production - Promotes coordination and information flows - Maintains and promotes organisational knowledge

Four different approaches to gender studies

- Liberal feminist theory, - Radical feminist theory, - Psychoanalytic feminist theory, and - Anti-capitalist feminist theory.

Means by which organizational innovation can be promoted

- Promotion of a supportive culture - Organizations need to have a culture which is: o tolerant of new ideas and risk taking, o promotes cross-disciplinary cooperation and open communication, o discourages politicking and defensive behaviour, and o stresses the importance of the organisation's goals and values over individual and departmental interests. - Implementation of appropriate reward systems - Reward systems must align behaviour with desired outcomes. This can be achieved through company-wide rewards, rather than departmental or divisional rewards (as they can remove the incentive to cooperate with others in the organisation). - Tolerance of ideas which are not implemented - If the message to workforces is that suggestions that are not implemented will be ignored or not recognised, or worse, those who propose them receive a negative reaction, then others will be discouraged from putting toward ideas. - Creation of boundary-spanning positions - Communication which flows across the organisation is important for innovation. In order to overcome blocks to the flow of information across the organisation, boundary- spanning roles are often created. Those in the position have the responsibility of gathering and consolidating cross-disciplinary information, promoting communication, sharing ideas and coordinating effort.

How does one gain power?

- Simply hierarchical power, a top level manager has more power than a middle manager. - Control of resources. - Being in a position of network centrality.

Functions of structure

- Structure must support the implementation of strategy. In other words, structure must support achievement of an organisation's goals. - Structure supports defining areas of responsibility, e.g. an organisational chart provides information about who is responsible for what in an organisation. - Structure provides control mechanisms. This maintains the unity of purpose of the organisation. - Structure is responsible for facilitating the flow production. By creating organisational forms, promoting efficiency, and using the latest technologies, companies facilitate their organisational competitiveness. - Structure should promote coordination and information flows. As production tends to flow across the organisation, it is important that the structure facilitates the necessary information flows which support the flow of production. - Structure should help to monitor and respond to environmental change. All organisations need to build the capacity to monitor environmental changes within their structure and to respond appropriately to them. - Structure supports the maintenance of organisational knowledge and learning. Structure determines how the specialised tasks are coordinated and brought together and information and knowledge distributed.

These days, the organisations tend to specialise in a small number of things, they emphasise teamwork, promote coordination, and exist as part of a network of suppliers and distributors. Some examples of these trends are:

- moving away from national focus to international focus, - moving away from lifetime employment to lifetime employability - moving away from emphasis on physical assets to emphasis on knowledge. ... these trends have led to these structural innovations: - an increasing use of boundary spanners, - an expanding use of adhocracies, - an emphasis on teamwork, - increasing divisionalisation, and - use of market controls.

A feminist may propose that methodologies used to study organizations should have the following research principles

- no researcher should be objective. Researchers should have a 'conscious partiality' to their subjects which allows them to empathise with their subjects' experiences and thus obtain a greater insight into their problems and experiences. - The values implicit in the research should be acknowledged and discussed along with the findings. - It should be acknowledged that there is inequality between the researcher and the subject, leaving the researcher in a position of power. - One should accept that organizational knowledge is socially constructed and that deconstructing this knowledge will permit new insight. - The researcher should proceed on the basis of the view from below in the organization, rather than the view from above. - Research should emphasize more of the social implications of structuring, rather than trying to make hierarchies and structures more effective.

Guiding scientific principles are the following assumptions

- objectivity and neutrality on the part of the researcher; - a lack of emotional attachment to the topic so that independence is not compromised; - replicable research methodology; - inquiry from a position of rational hypotheses or propositions; - lack of any political agenda; - no preconception as to how research is used.

The power- control view of structure predicts

- structures will be relatively stable over time - mechanistic structures will be the most numerous - Management would prefer, therefore to have low complexity - Those in power will influence the extent of rules and regulations controlling employees work. Because control is a desired end for those in power, organisations will have a high degree of formalisation - Centralisation is preferred when those in control want to make the decisions

Schools of thought through which to approach organizational learning

- the economic school (single loop learning), - the development school (double loop learning), - the managerial school (deutero learning), and - process school.

glass ceiling

- they are invisible and difficult to identify, but real. It is important to be acquainted with the research of Rosabeth Moss Kanter. She reported a classic study of organizational gender segmentation which identified many of the arguments as to why male management is self-perpetuating. The organization she studied had a bureaucratic approach to management, with a tall hierarchy of many management layers. Female jobs were concentrated on secretarial and lower grade management layers. She found that the senior management of the company, which was almost exclusively male, tended to reproduce itself because people tended to understand, and trust, people who were most like themselves. As the management team required such trust, the cloning of management from one generation to the next became common, leading to men promoting other men. In other words, managers were reluctant to take a risk in promoting someone who was different from themselves.

Facilitating knowledge management

-Establishing a supportive culture involves moving away from a traditional bureaucratic style to a more inclusive system of management. The key elements of such a culture are: - promotion of common goals, - balance between individual contribution and group effort, - removal of incentives to hoard knowledge, and - promotion of good interpersonal communications. -Introducing an appropriate structure to facilitate knowledge mainly involves removing barriers to communication and facilitating information sharing. Many organisations, particularly those providing professional services, have introduced the position of knowledge manager. Main tasks of knowledge managers are: -identification of corporate knowledge and the barriers that prevent its collection and utilisation, including cultural and organisational factors; -creation of infrastructure that facilitates and encourages individual development, group learning and corporate sharing; -introduction of processes to trap and interpret, package and present, and integrate into the work processes and culture the knowledge of the organisation. - Information technology can provide useful tools to categorise and make knowledge within an organization available. One of the responsibilities of the role of the knowledge manager is to select and introduce appropriate programs to tap into the existing database of the firm. In doing this, the information must be presented in a format which is of use to the person or group to whom it is directed. This process is called data mining.

The major structural innovations in the recent decades are:

-Focusing management effort on key responsibilities - The demands of competitiveness have led to greater management attention being focused on areas of importance in the environment (e.g. customers, providers of inputs). Structural changes are emerging with the creation of new divisions and units which are oriented around specialised segments. Thus, a divisionalised form, with each division concentrating on a product or area, becomes more and more popular. -Rethinking the centralisation-decentralisation balance - decentralized decision making is very popular these days. The combination of greater decentralisation and responsibility for customer satisfaction puts in place one of the structural elements that is important in rapidly changing, competitive environments. It allows for faster, more appropriate decision making. This does not mean that all decisions are made and implemented by lower level managers but that the ideas may be generated lower in the organisation to be approved by more senior managers. In turn, it may be the responsibility of lower level managers to implement them where they relate to matters close to the work flow. -Moving focus from internal processes to external adaptation - in bureaucracies, management has an inward rather than an outward focus. If organisations structure management responsibilities in such a way that their performance is assessed against customer- or market- focused criteria, they are likely to find that the nature of formalisation changes in order to better achieve the organisation's goals. -Greater use of market controls - in the past, the management hierarchy allocated budgets and overheads mainly on the basis of subjective assessment. These days, organisations are usually divided into mini- businesses, each with its own financial and performance goals. Managers are then made responsible for these. Where costs cannot be offset against revenue, then budgets are set in place and managers are expected to achieve them. This process is called moving from hierarchies to markets. In other words, monetary performance is used as a substitute for subjective assessment by management. -Improving communication flows - the emphasis on a clearly defined management hierarchy and high formalisation presupposes that there is little need for an organisation to change, that once it is set up it can continue for a long time doing much the same as it has been doing. These days it is necessary to improve communication flows and promote adaptability without (e.g. by investing in information technologies in order to increase organisation's ability to process information). -Working back from the customer - this involves monitoring customer needs and product perceptions, then designing the organisation to respond to these. -Concentrating effort on core competencies - A core competency can be defined as something that competitors have difficulty in replicating. As the level of competition increases, most businesses are finding that they can best maximise their returns by concentrating on just a few products where they have a comparative advantage. As a result, many "focused" organisations emerged in the last decades. The old conglomerates that had a wide range of businesses are much rarer than in the past. -Improving availability of information - the expanding use of IT permits information to be more widely spread throughout the organisation. This facilitates the flow of goods and materials and assists in serving customers.

managerial school

-considers that learning is dependent upon certain conditions or circumstances; left to their own devices, organizations will revert to lower level incremental learning of the economic type or perhaps fail to learn at all. Managers can overcome this tendency towards entropy (winding down) by creating the conditions necessary for higher level learning. -Argyris and Schon labelled this type of learnig as deutero-learning - it is a process where single loop and double loop learning combine. This is a form of learning which acknowledges the role of management in creating the conditions for organizational learning to take place. The learning organization is seen to possess: - a supportive culture, - a shared vision, - low power distances between members of the organization, - a team focus, and - an acceptance that there is mutual benefit in sharing information.

four basic tactics to implement change

-intervention tactic -participation tactic -persuasion tactic -edict tactic

developmental school

-links learning to the organizational life-cycle. Many organizations pass through a number of predictable stages, ranging from establishment, through growth and maturity, to decline and eventual dissolution. The development school focuses on the significance of each of these stages for organizational learning. As the firm grows and matures, it acquires experience, management depth and more resources for generating new ideas and problem solving. These are termed the firm's dynamic capabilities. -A further interpretation of the development school is the idea that the organization moves towards a goal or end state. As there are different goals and end states, no two organizations will follow the same learning path. Past behaviour and learning is also seen to influence, and restrict, strategic options available to the organization. The development school tends to reject the idea that learning is closely linked to managerial intervention. Rather it sees it as emerging from the autonomous activities of organization members as they solve problems associated with life-cycle issues. -Argyris and Schon labelled this type of learning as double loop learning. Higher level learning in organizations originates in a less structured environment in which the possibilities are both greater and more creative than for single loop learning. Such learning leads to changes in assumptions, norms, beliefs and theories that members apply in the organizational setting.

economic school

-views organizational learning as a tool to promote the efficiency of the organization. For instance, through application of continuous improvement techniques and technological innovation it is possible to reduce production costs. This is achieved through incremental gains in know-how, which adds to the stock of knowledge of the organizations. Managers often use the phrase 'moving along the experience curve' to describe this process. -Agrgyris and Schon labelled this type of learning as single loop learning. Single loop learning is learning that does not alter established practices and procedures of the organization and leaves the basic strategies of the organization unchanged. It is the simplest form of organizational learning. The product of this form of learning may be contained in formal rules, regulations, and established practices and procedures. The challenge for management is to facilitate conditions which contribute to individuals expanding their capacity to learn job-related matters.

Bureaucracy: Weber proposed seven principles which, when applied, would lead to rational and efficient operations. These are:

1)Division of labour (job specialization) - every employee's job should be broken down into simple, routine and well-defined tasks. 2)Well-defined authority hierarchy - organisations should have formal structure, with a hierarchy of positions. This helps to ensure that each lower position is under the supervision and control of a higher one. 3) High formalisation - in order to maintain uniformity and to regulate the behaviour of job holders, there should be formal rules and procedures. 4) Impersonal nature - as to avoid involvement with individual personalities and personal preferences of members, sanctions should be applied uniformly and impersonally. 5) Employment decisions based on merit - selection and promotion decisions should be based on technical qualifications, competence, and performance of the candidates. 6) Career tracks for employees - in return for career commitment, employees have tenure; hence, they will be retained even if they 'burn out' or if their skills become obsolete. 7) Distinct separation of members' organisational and personal lives - in order to prevent them from interfering with the rational impersonal conduct of the organisation's activities, personal lives are kept completely separate from work-related activities. Weber's model stipulates a hierarchy of offices, with each office under the direction of a higher one. Each of these offices is differentiated horizontally by division of labour. This division of labour creates units of expertise, defines areas of action consistent with the competence of unit members, assigns responsibilities for carrying out those actions and allocates commensurate authority to fulfil these responsibilities. All the while, written rules govern the performance of members' duties. This imposition of structure and functions provides a high level of specialised expertise, coordination of roles and control of members through standardisation. Other advantages of Weber's bureaucracy include: - the focus on merit when selecting employees; - security of employment to protect employees against the exercise of arbitrary authority and changes in skill demands; - rules and regulations to promote impartiality in decision making; and - the establishment of clear lines of authority and responsibility.

Weitzel and Johnson's 5 Stages of Decline

1. Blinded Decline: the organization fails to anticipate or detect internal or external influences which can threaten the organization's survival. Some of the signs that are often overlooked are the build-up of excessive numbers of personnel, tolerance of incompetence, cumbersome administrative procedures, disproportionate staff power, poor productivity, unclear goals and decision benchmarks, fear of embarrassment and conflict, loss of effective communication, and an outdated organizational structure. Decline may have set in long before it is evident in the data, so managers cannot only look at that. 2. Innaction: during this stage the signs of decline are apparent but the organization chooses to do little or nothing about them. These signs can include declining sales, stagnant profits, and surplus inventories. In older organizations, the inaction stage is likely to be more pronounced and longer lasting. This is not terminal because management can still turn the situation around. 3. Faculty action: this stage sees the multiplication of the external signs of decline even though action is being taken to stop it. Employees experience uncertainty and moral deteriorates. Staff turnover thus increases. There is often difficulty in determining the most appropriate course to return the organization to health. Management may also make the mistake of focusing on the indicators than than the causes of the decline. 4. Crisis: at this stage opportunities to ace the organization are starting to run out. Survival means that a major reorientation and revitalization is necessary. Customers and suppliers desert the organization. 5. Dissolution: decline at this stage is irreversible. The loss of capital, markets, reputation, and talented personnel takes its toll and eventually the organization collapses.

Indicators that change is needed

1. Decision making is slow or inappropriate. The problem likely is that adequate info. Is not reaching the right person or group at the right time. The organization may need to improve information flows and clarify areas of responsibility. It may involve hiring people with specific skills or removing superfluous people or departments. Job responsibilities may need reviewing. 2. The organization is not responding innovatively to environmental change. Indications of the stay be that the organization's products may be out of date or technologically inferior to competing products. Other companies may be able to bring products to market faster or more cheaply. All of this indicates that the structure is not adequately monitoring these changes or mechanics do not exist to incorporate environmental changes in the decision-making process. Structural changes may need to include aligning responsibilities with important organizational needs or improving communication channels. 3. All important tasks should have someone responsible for them. Environments change over time, and each important segment of the environment should have someone dealing with it.

Roads to Power

1. Hierarchical power: formal authority is a source of power. The manager's job comes with certain rights to reward and punish. Also the higher the manager is in the organization, the more info. They have access to. Management power is restricted by higher management. Those higher in the organization have greater power. 2. Control of resources and ability to reduce uncertainty: if you have something others want, it can potentially give you power over them. The resource must be both scarce and important to the organization. If a resource like so, its supply creates uncertainty, so those who can reduce uncertainty by ensuring supply of a scarce resource gather power to themselves or their group. Proximity of relevant substitutes should always be considered for this reason. Similarly union power relative to management's is largely a function of its member's ability to restrict management's options. The most powerful unions are those which control a choke point in a supply chain. 3. Network centrality: individuals or groups in a position of network centrality gain power because their position allows them to integrate other functions or to reduce organizational inefficiencies or uncertainties. It provides them with privileged access to wide sources of information which may be used selectively to influence decisions.

10 Key Characteristics Where Cultures Differ

1. Individual initiative 2. Risk tolerance 3. Direction 4. Integration: the degree to which units coordinate 5. Management support 6. Control: the number of rules and regulations 7. Identity:degree to which members identify with the organization as a whole rather than their specific work group 8. Reward system: degree to which rewards are based on employee performance 9. Conflict tolerance 10. Communication patterns

Why do organizations resist change?

1. Members fear losing what they already have. Those in power who are in the best position to initiate change typically have the most to lose. The greatest fear is loss of position and privilege by those in the managerial ranks. 2. Most organizations are bureaucracies. Such structures have built-in systems and procedures that work against change. Standardization, high formalization, and stability-based reward systems discourage risk-taking and change. 3. Organization cultures resist pressures for change. Once employees absorb their organization's culture they know the way things are supposed to be done. It created a consistency behavior.

Five areas in which structure creates political arenas in organizations

1. Position in the hierarchy: status and therefore influence is closely attached to the position of a apartment head in the organization's hierarchy. 2. Resource allocation: typically resources are allocated to departments or divisions as part of a budget. The better funded the department, the more status it has and the more likely it is to influence decisions. The allocation of resources also indicates its favor with senior management. 3. Interdepartmental coordination: relationships between departments are part of organizational life. At the lower level these relationships are often routine and characterized by established rules and practices. Further up the management hierarchy, relationships between departments are less well defined: conflict can easily arise, as there is a high level of uncertainty and many decisions are not routine. Political activity is often involved with seeking an acceptable outcome 4. Responsibility exceeding authority: a principle of sound management is that authority should always equal responsibility. Senior managers are far more likely to delegate responsibility but withhold the authority that should go with it. This creates a situation where managers are forced to engage in political behavior in order to achieve their goals because they lack the formal power which they need to discharge their responsibilities. 5. Structural change: all structural change leads to managers and departments redefining their authority and power relationships. This inevitably creates those who gain and those who lose. Intense political acitvity results as managers and departments seek to maximize their position after the change.

The virtual organisation:

An organisation having the characteristics of a formal organisation while not being one. It contains a smaller organisations which each contribute a part of production process. Boundaries between them are fuzzy, and control is by market forces.

The origins of organisational change:

Business and Organisation have changed rapidly over the past 25 years. A few changes have their origin in technological innovations and sical expectations. However many changes have their origin in changes of government policies. - Deregulation and privatisation - Promotion of competitions - Growth of globalisation - Introduction of technology innovations - Demands for profitability - End of the public service mentality - Changes in expectations and society values

Change matrix

Emergent/planned and revolutionary/evolutionary Adaptive: evolutionary and planned Systematic: revolutionary and planned Transitory: evolutionary and emergent Chaotic: revolutionary and emergent

Power control model

Impact from technology and environment on structure... The power-control model implicates that technology and environment influence managers choices rather than actually determining the structure.

Webers bureaucracy

In a bureaucracy the behavior of people is predetermined through high formalisation and centralisation what leads to an highly standardised output. - structure and function of the organization - rewarding effort - protection of individual members ...Bureaucracy theory has a downside as well, encouraging of goal displacements and the tendency towards large size and low productivity or the inability to adapt to changes for example.

Two general management strategies to manage environment

Internal strategies: they can adapt their organisation's operations to better accommodate the environmental uncertainties External strategies: they can try to influence the environment to adjust it to the firm's capabilities

Hierarchy

It can be said that: 1) The higher one moves in an organisation (an increase in authority), the closer one automatically moves towards the power core. 2) It is not necessary to have authority to wield power, because one can move horizontally inward towards the power core without moving up the hierarchy.

Structural compromises

Organisational structures are the result of compromise, with managers concentrating their design effort on addressing what they see as the most important problems. This does not mean the organisation faces only one problem. Each different problem needs addressing with different structural solutions, but it is not possible to have different structures at the same time. So compromises need to be made and difficulties need careful management.

Technology and organization change

classification that encompasses modifications to the equipment that employees use, interdependencies of work activities among employees, and changes that affect the interrelationships between employees and the technical demands of their jobs

Bureaucracy still exists in

Specialisation of labour fundamental to organised activity - Mass production of most goods and services. - A hierarchy of management. - High formalisation fundamental to activity. - a way of career tracks

Change Agents

These are the people that have the power to determine and implement change. In order to know what kind of change can be brought into the company, consultants get hired to interpret the problem and determine an appropriate response.

Emergent change

unplanned changes as a consequence of a sudden threat or event.

Revolutionary change

a big, nature altering change that occurs as a consequence of major changes in the environment or technology of an organization.

How a culture begins

an organization's current customs, traditions, and way of doing things are based on how its been done before. The founders of the organization usually have a huge impact on the culture.

Power Control Thesis

an organization's structure, at any given time, is to a large extent the result of those in power selecting a structure that will maintain and enhance their control. It does not ignore the impact of size, technology, or other contingency variables, but instead creates them as constraints that list what is otherwise a political process.

participation tactic to implement change

characterized by change agents delegating the implementation decision to those who will be affected. They stipulate the need for change or the opportunities change can provide, create a taskforce to do the job, assign members to the taskforce, and then delegate authority for the change process to the taskforce with a statement of expectations and constraints. Change agents who use this tactic give full responsibility to the taskforce for implementation and exercise no veto power over its decisions.

Implementation tactics for change plan

characterized by change agents selling their change rationale to those who will be affected. They argue that current performance is inadequate and cite comparable organizations or units with better performance. They also delegate the implementation decision to those who will be affected. Some change agents handle change by abdicating the decision to experts. They identify the need or opportunity for change. Top management may also make key decisions and use hierarchical authority to implement them.

edict tactic to implement change

characterized by top management making the key decisions and using hierarchical authority to implement them. This tactic is often used when implementing structural change. There is little or no participation and those affected are told what the change will be. When this tactic is used, change agents merely announce changes and use memos, formal presentations or the like to convey their decision.

process school

concentrates upon the centrality of information processing to learning. In this instance, information processing refers to the capacity and capability of the individual to learn, rather than its more common IT association. Individual learning proceeds through the cycle of information acquisition, dissemination, interpretation and memory. If organizational learning is to be enhanced, then the capacity of the individual to learn must be improved.

Radical feminism

considers that society, and the organizations in it, have been defined by men. It considers that men in society have formed a patriarchy which seeks to consistently exclude, subordinate and marginalize the role of women, and that this has become the norm in society. Further, the organizations that men create reflect the designated male values of hierarchy, competition, and obsession with winning and highly defined mechanisms to control behaviour. The designated feminist values of equality, community, participation and integration of form and content are not seen to be practiced in modern corporations, and consequently women will always be marginalized. Radical feminists say women will need to form their own organizations to be able to manage in ways that reflect their values.

Internal Fit (culture)

culture properly match to their technology. • Routine technologies: provide stability and work well when linked to a culture that emphasizes conformance to process, centralized decision making and limited individual initiative. • Nonroutine technologies: require adaptability and are best matched with cultures that encourage individual initiative and free-flowing communication and where control is de-emphasized.

Greiner Model

demonstrates the paradox that success creates its own problems. Greiner acknowledges that movement between the phases will vary both within and between organizations. The types of crises Greiner identifies are linked to growth, rather than emerging from environmental or technological changes. An increasing number of organizations are unsuccessful in responding to crisis

Greiner Model

demonstrates the paradox that success creates its own problems. Greiner acknowledges that movement between the phases will vary both within and between organizations. The types of crises Greiner identifies are linked to growth, rather than emerging from environmental or technological changes. An increasing number of organizations are unsuccessful in responding to crisis 1. Creativity phase: creativity of the founders. They typically devote their energies to the development of products and marketers. The organization's design tends to have the characteristics of the simple structure. Decision making is controlled by the owner-manager or top management. Communication between levels in the organization is frequent and informal. It eventually becomes difficult to manage by relying only on informal communication. 2. Direction: if the leadership crisis is resolved, new management will have been introduced. Communication will be formalized and accounting, budgeting, inventory, and other systems put in place. The structure will become increasingly bureaucratic. Lower level managers will become frustrated and seek greater influence in decisions that affect them. The new management however is reluctant to give up authority and wants to maintain centralized decision making. This causes a crisis of autonomy (conflict between centralized and decentralized decision making). 3. Delegation: if decisions are decentralized, the crisis of phase 2 will be resolved. A divisionalized structure will evolve and lower level managers will now have more autonomy to run their units. Top management will devote its energy to long-term strategic planning. Delegation causes a crisis of control, which means that top level managers fear that the organization is going in too many directions at the same time and that too many decisions are being made without their approval. 4. Coordination: the control crisis is solved by establishing staff units in head office to review, evaluate, and control operational management's activities and product groups to facilitate coordination. These coordination devices also create problems. Line-staff conflicts start to consume a lot of time. Lower level employees begin to complain that they are being overwhelmed by too many rules, regulations, and controls. A crisis of red tape occurs which can lead to goal displacement. 5. Collaboration: the solution to the red tape crisis is strong interpersonal collaboration among the organization's members. A strong culture acts as a substitute for formal controls. Task forces and other group devices are created to perform tasks and solve problems. The organization's structure moves forward towards the organ form at least at he top of the organization.

Learning the deeper aspects of a culture

in addition to training programs, culture is transmitted in stories, rituals, material symbols, and language.... • Stories • Rituals • Material symbols: an industry has arisen in recent times around generating image through office decoration and layout. The design of the store, the image of the brand, the types of cares management and CEOs drive all affect the culture and how new employees view it. • Observation and experience. • Language: many companies use jargon and terminology as a way to identify members of a culture or subculture. By learning the language in this way, members attest to their acceptance of the culture and help to preserve it.

Environmental causes of declines

events which occur in the firm's environment and over which the firm has little control; it must react as it sees fit. ‣ Mature markets: when the market is static and limited to replacement sales. ‣ Technological obsolescence: happens often to organizations where a single product dominates and then a new, more advanced technology makes it obsolete. ‣ Loss of market share: the total market for their product or services may not be shrinking, but their failure to sustain their share of that market creates the need to retrench. ‣ Globalization: it has had the effect of rising the levels of competition from both domestic and foreign businesses and of creating new opportunities overseas. ‣ Mergers and acquisitions: created redundancies in many companies. ‣ Institutional rigidities: refers to the existence in the environment of forces such as laws, agreements, or powerful groups such as unions, which are not under the control of management but which may be contributing to firms' decline by making change difficult to enact. ‣ Population density: the more organizations there are in a population, the more likely it is that failure will occur. This is associated with the carrying capacity of an environment. ‣ Organizational life cycle: this is because it is environmental factors that are the main contributors to the life cycle. The life cycle is seen to be inevitable and not easily amenable to managerial intervention. ‣ New and young: it is difficult for organizations to create new routines and management structures and they are more vulnerable than older companies which have already developed coping and adaptation mechanisms.

Transitory change

evolutionary/unplanned small, unplanned change only affecting some part of the company

Adaptive change

evolutonary/planned small planned change that doesn't affect entire organization

Dominant culture

expresses the core values that are shared by the majority of the organization's members. Macro-view of culture that gives the organizations its personality.

Social feminism

has as its core a belief in the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism. Socialist feminists further link capitalism to patriarchy and male dominance, which conspire to exploit and marginalize women.

A virtual organisation

has the characteristics of a formal organisation while not being one. It comprises a complex network of smaller organisations which each contribute a part of the production process. Boundaries between organisations are fuzzy; control is generally by market forces, reinforced by the certainty of long-term contracts.

Subcultures

tend to develop in large organizations to reflect common problems, situations, technologies or experiences that members face. Subcultures tend to be defined by department, occupation, or geographic location. • Vertical subculture: when one product division of a divisionalized form has a unique culture from that of other divisions • Horizontal subculture: when a specific set of functional specialists have a unique set of common understandings

Cycle of organizational learning (March and Olsen)

integrates individual and organizational learning. The cycle views organizational learning as a system in which the beliefs of individuals affect their behaviour. This behaviour transforms itself into organizational actions which produce environmental responses. These in turn affect the beliefs of individuals which in turn lead to individual's actions. The cycle is based upon the individual learning from experience. The cycle can be represented as follows: Individual beliefs à Individual action à Organizational action à Environmental response à Individual beliefs à ..... March and Olsen describe what may happen when this learning cycle is incomplete. They identify: - Role-constrained learning which occurs when the link between an individual's beliefs and an individual's actions is broken. This may occur when an individual is constrained by their role or their job description; they may want to act in certain ways but are not able to do so. - Audience learning which occurs when the link between the individual's actions and organizational actions is broken. The effect is that the individual fails to see a link between their own actions and the organization's actions. So whilst the individual has accumulated knowledge they are unable to modify organizational actions as a result of this knowledge. - Superstitious learning which occurs when the link between organizational actions and environmental responses in broken. Nevertheless, the individual perceives that the link is still in place and modifies their beliefs accordingly. Interpreting the results of advertising and marketing campaigns often involves superstitious learning. - Learning under ambiguity which occurs when the link between environmental responses and an individual's beliefs is broken. This happens when an individual fails to grasp the significance of what is happening in the environment and what it means for their job. Environmental change may be dimly perceived or it may not be interpreted as a threat. The individual may feel that the organization may be strong enough for environmental changes not to have any effect. Thus, this break in learning often occurs because of selective perception on the part of individuals or other cognitive limitations.

Interpretation of forces leading to change

interpreting changes in environment and the impact of new technology is not an exact science. There is always disagreement. Groups and individuals bias their interpretations in ways that favor them and their coalition. Consultants may be hired to advise on and implement change. Another function of consultants is to work with senior management as facilitators. ...this is where a change agent comes in

intervention tactic to implement change

is characterised by change agents selling their change rationale to those who will be affected. They argue that current performance is inadequate and that new standards and procedures must be established. To assess more fully inefficient or poorly designed procedures, change agents using this tactic often form taskforces made up of those subject to change. The taskforces can work backwards from a desired state, identifying the best means of achieving what is desired. This co-opting technique utilises the expertise of those who know the job best while reducing resistance to change.

persuasion tactic to implement change

is characterized by change agents handling change by essentially abdicating the decision to experts. Change agents identify the need or opportunity for change but they take a relatively passive role. What they do is to allow interested internal staff - or qualified outside experts - to present their ideas for bringing about change. The internal or external experts then use persuasion to sell their ideas. Change agents become active only after various ideas have been presented. They listen and often ask for supporting documentation. But those who will be affected choose the best ideas for implementing the change.

External Fit (culture)

its culture conform to its strategy and environment. • Market driven strategies: more appropriate in stable environments. The culture must emphasize individual initiative, risk-taking, high integration, tolerance of conflicts, and high horizontal communication. • Product-driven strategies: focus on efficiency, work best in stable environments, and are more likely to be successful when the organizations culture is high in control, minimizes risks and conflict, and emphasizes conformance to standards.

Psychoanalytic feminists

look more to the social arrangements associated with the upbringing of children as the means by which men and women experience different psychological development. Psychoanalytic feminists would see women as being socialized to be passive and to view themselves as victims rather than as agents in charge of their own destiny. They also lack the drive for mastery that characterizes men, and from this develops a female fear of success and the inconsistency between femininity and achievement.

Development of a change plan

minor changes may be accommodated as part o an ongoing process of adjustments to areas of authority and responsibility and the process of self-design. BUT large scale change programs require a plan. The plan needs to take into account whether the change is a one-off or wether it will be ongoing. The plan identifies the intervention strategies (which tend to fall into one of 4 categories: people, structure, technology, and organizational processes)

Evolutionary change

minor, ongoing changes not harming the organizational culture except for small adaptions.

Organizational innovations/trends

national focus --> international focus internal orientation --> external orientation Customers and suppliers at arm's length --> integrating down the supply chain emphasis on hierarchy --> teams admin. control --> market control hoarding knowledge --> spreading knowledge inspecting quality --> building quality in emphasis on physical assets --> emphasis on knowledge lifetime employment --> lifetime employability

Explicit knowledge

o codified knowledge, o easily transmitted in formal systematic language.

Tacit knowledge

o personal, o specific to a particular context, o difficult to formalise, and o not easy to communicate to others.

Keeping a culture alive

once a culture is in place, there are forces within the organization that act to maintain it by giving employees similar experiences. These four forces are organization's selection practices, the actions of top management, the organization's socialization methods, and the use of appropriate rewards and punishments. ◦ Selection practices: identifying and hiring individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and capabilities to successfully perform the jobs within the organization. When hiring, organizations also look for a "perfect fit" or someone who will fit in with the culture. ◦ Actions of top management: top management has a symbolic influence on an organization's culture. The actions and attitudes of the chief, or the divisional general managers, are closely observed for guides as to what behavior is acceptable. ◦ Socialization: through means of introduction courses and the like, new employees are given an understanding of what is expected of them. They then acquire further socialization from their coworkers. ◦ Use of appropriate rewards and punishments: send a powerful message to organizational members. Who is hired and fired, appraisal, as simple as tone of voice, who is promoted and why, etc.

Planned change

planned changes that are usually cheaper and involve less disruption.

Systematic change

revolutionary/planned affects whole company but it planned and organized by management

Chaotic change

revolutionary/unplanned huge unplanned change threatening the existence of the OG

Structure and organization change

structure changes affect the distribution of authority, areas of responsibility, allocation of rewards, alterations in the chain of command, degree of formalization, and addition or elimination of positions, department and division. Changing structure also changes the reporting relationships and communication flows which takes time to settle.

Liberal feminist position

take the structure of industry and the organizations in it as given. They do not seek to change the nature of industry or the economic system of private enterprise and market-based decisions by companies. Rather they seek to improve the access of women to appropriate conditions of employment and to remove barriers to promotion faced by women. Consequently, there has been extensive data-gathering and statistical analysis on the participation of women in various occupational groups and levels in the organization. The liberal feminist view assumes that attainment of high positions in organizations is the aim of most women. It emphasizes access to professional and management positions, and seeks to eliminate barriers to promotion that may act against women's interests.

Organisational slack

the resources an organization has in order to respond to environmental change without changing the organisation. The less slack an organisation has, the greater the pressure to have a wellfitting structure for the environment and the more limited the options to adjust the company to a changing environment.

Hank's Growth Model for High-Tech Organizations

they defined high-tech industries as those having a higher than average number of technology-oriented workers than for manufacturing industries generally, and whose research and development spending was at least equal to the average of all industries. He found that firms clustered into 4 main stages of growth. • Start-up Stage: consisted of small, young firms. They have a simple structure, art highly centralized around one or two people and have very low horizontal differentiation. They are oriented strongly towards research and development and their focus is on developing new products. • Expansion Stage: spending at the earlier stage on research and development has produced a salable product, and this stage is characterized by high rates of sales and employment growth. Firms at this stage have adopted a functional structure, that is one where there are identifiable departments. Decision making is still highly centralized, but higher formalization has crept in compared to the start-up stage. More staff are involved in sales and accounting, indicating that the firms are actively involved in the commercialization of their products. • Late expansion/early maturity stage: firms in this stage are still growing rapidly. They average four levels of management and have a fully developed functional structure, with clearly identifiable departments. There is quite a high level of formalization but the organization is becoming more decentralized. At this stage there is an increase in those personnel concerned with large-scale production such as quality control, purchasing, customer/product service stand, finance, shipping, production planning, warehousing, and payroll. • Maturity/diversification stage: firms at this stage have a mean of six organizational levels, and management is decentralized. Formalization is high. At this stage there is greater horizontal specialization, with the addition of personnel involved in such tasks as building maintenance, personnel, advertising, market research, and inventory control. Early moves towards a divisionalized structure are becoming apparent. The average number of employees at this stage was 495.

Solutions to Organizational Decline

• Aligning the organizations strategy with environmental realities, increasing communication, centralizing decision making, redesigning jobs and work practices, and developing innovative approaches to cutbacks. • Management must also meet the needs of the critical constituencies. • Management must communicate with employees. • Organizations need to sharpen their focus and clarify strategy. • Management should find innovative ways to deal with the problems inherent in the cutbacks like offering incentives to encourage early retirement or have outplacement services for laid-off employees. • Management must redesign jobs

How power will likely be exercised in the political arena

• Building coalitions: coalition building relies on developing and maintaining mutually strong relationships with other people. These may be based on liking, trust, and respect. • Defining the nature of the problem: all decisions are aimed at solving problems. But in many cases identifying the problem isn't easy. If a person, or coalition, can control the way a problem is defined, they are well on their way to determining the solution. • Enhancing legitimacy and expertise: a manager's or department's power is greatly enhanced when they do their job well. • Making preferences explicit, but keeping power implicit: politics requires that preferences be known to others. The best political players are those who have the courage to reveal their preferred outcome, then try to convince others that their point of view is correct. Power is better implied than overly exercised. • Expanding networks of influence: politics involves trying to boost the number of people who support you an minimize the number against you. It stands to reason that increasing your support can involve two measures: bringing additional managers on side, and minimizing the influence of those who may act against you. Alliances can be built or expanded by such means as hiring, transfers, and promotions, as well as relationship building.

Managing unplanned change

• Centralization of management: two reasons for this... the first is that authority rests with the top of the organization, so the CEO is normally the only person who can authorize an appropriate response. The second is that information needs to be processed rapidly, and this is best undertaken in the mind of one person. Unplanned change by its nature requires a quick response, and there is insufficient time to have proposals passed from committee to committee for evaluation. • Establishment of special task forces: a crisis normally requires a special task force to be established to deal with it. It gathers processes information and issues instructions and edicts for the organization to follow. It is composed of those managers who are sufficiently senior to commit to the organization to appropriate courses of action. • Active management of the environment: it times of change, the organization needs to keep close touch with its critical constituencies. • Management of resources: there may be loss of sales or revenue, shortages of inputs, extra expenditure for new plant or equipment, etc. They need to respond to this to minimize the impact. • Need for active leadership: critical constituencies required the commitment and facetoface presence of the chief executive.

How to Merge Cultures

• Dismiss most of the top managers in the weaker partner in the merger and replace them with managers from the dominant party. • Support from the top management of both countries • Selection of the best manager for the jobs available • Creation of integration teams not dominated by managers from one of the companies, which concentrate on issues relevant to each area of the combined business • Imposition of time limits aimed at limiting debate and promoting problem solving. • One organization should have a weaker, more malleable culture

Potential managerial problems when organizations decline

• Increased conflict: conflicts can be solved readily by expanding everyone's resources, but during the decline phase, conflict grows over resources evades there are fewer to divide up. If managed properly, it can be directed towards slowing the decline. • Increased politicking: less slack translates to less politicking. There will emerge many organized and vocal groups pursuing self interest. Structural change is more likely to be determined by which coalitions win the power struggle for organizational control than by rational determinants such as size, technology, or environment. • Increased resistance to change: an organization responds more slowly to environmental change in decline than in growth. In tis effort to protect itself, the dominant coalition fights hard to maintain the status quo and its control. There are intensified efforts to follow the old, established procedures and may result in slowing the declines... resistance should be reduced when it becomes clear that the decline is not temporary. • Loss of top management credibility: members of an organization will look to some individual or group on which to place the blame. Top management tends to become the scapegoat. Important stakeholders/shareholders often step in and insist on new management. • Change in workforce composition: retrenchment requires workforce cuts; a common criterion for determining who gets laid off is seniority. If the industry is mature, large-scale layoffs based on seniority can lead to a rise in the average age of the workforce, so recently companies have been using voluntary redundancy to reduce numbers. Early retirement schemes are also used to downsize. • Increased voluntary turnover: voluntary employee resignations. This can become a major problem during organizational decline because usually the first people to leave are the most mobile and skilled individuals. • Decaying employee motivation: during decline, there are retrenchments and reassignments of futures that often require absorbing the tasks that were previously undertaken by others, and similar stress-inducing changes.

Problems with the Contingency Approach

• Legacy systems and large size: legacy systems are existing rules, procedures, roles, responsibilities, and ways of doing things that are accepted practice within an organization. The word legacy is used to describe them because they have emerged from a stream of past decisions and become institutionalized. Once these systems are established, it take major management effort to change them. The combined effect of legacy systems and large size presents a challenge to the rationality assumption of the contingency theory.. the fact that an organization is getting by with an existing structure based on past environment proves that the most appropriate structure is but one of a range of possibilities. • Designing around people: the attitudes and capabilities of existing management and staff influence design outcomes. • Management fashions and fads: many managers no doubt tried to reengineer their organizations because they saw others attempting it and were reluctant to be seen to be ignoring its proposed benefits. There is a profound influence of social trends on management.

Implementation of change plan

• The change process: best to view implementation as a juxtaposition of two forces: those resisting change and those promoting change. After the change is implemented, it is important to ensure that the organization doesn't revert to its previous ways. There are several relevant factors that determine the degree to which change will become permanent: ◦ Reward allocation system ◦ Support of a sponsor ◦ Transmitting information about expectations ◦ Cultural change and group forces ◦ Commitment to the change ◦ Diffusion of the change efforts to all units.

Behavioral causes of decline

‣ Self-fulfilling prophecy: this means that if important groups elect that decline will happen, they will act in a way that promotes it. ‣ Groupthink: can blind management to potential problems and creative responses. Groupthink occurs when a highly cohesive team generates conditions in which high levels of unanimity are required. Strong autocratic leaders can also generate conditions in which alternative views and opinions are excluded. ‣ Management perceptions: some managers find it difficult to actually understand and interpret the sources and progress of decline. Summaries and reports lack richness and meaning. ‣ Selective perception: they only concentrate on certain parts of the environment to the exclusion of others, This may be sources of information which have been useful in the past, but have outlived their usefulness. Limited understanding of environment and technology is problematic. ‣ Rigidity effect: proposes that individuals, groups, and organizations tend to behave rigidly in threatening situations. ‣ Framing: once decline is perceived by important stakeholders, pressure for action builds. Managers come under pressure to do something.

External strategies to manage environment

● Bridging: managers can regulate environment through negation and cooperation with their critical constituencies (which form the environment), e.g. building personal relationships with suppliers. ● Contracting: mangers have the option to make long-term contracts in order to protect the organisation from changes in quantits or price of products. ● Co-opting and coalescing: managers can decide to absorb individuals/organisations that threaten the organisation's stability, or thes can merge with other organisations for joint action. ● Lobbying: managers can use their influence on an external parts to achieve better outcomes for their organisation by lobbying. ● Others: advertising, insuring, or hedging.

Internal strategies to manage environment

● Domain choice: managers can decide to change the domain in which the organisation operates, preferably to a domain that provides less environmental uncertainty. ● Recruitment: managers have the option to recruit staff with appropriate skills in coping with the organisation's environmental influences. They can provide expertise which the company lacks in their operations. ● Environmental scanning: managers could scrutinise the environment to get a clear view of different factors that affect their organisation. In this, the role of earlier discussed Boundary Spanners is very important: they act as interpreter between the firm and its environment. ● Buffering: managers can provide an input and output buffer to their organisation. Buffers protect the operating core from environmental influences in supply and demand. ● Geographic dispersion: managers have to consider their organisation's geographic dispersion, as environmental uncertainty can vars with location. ● Others: smoothing demand fluctuations, rationing products/services or improve on IT.

What factors are likely to influence a cultural change program

◦ A dramatic crisis: a shock that undermines the status quo. It calls into question current practices and opens the door to accepting a different set of values. ◦ A long-term slow decline ◦ Leadership Turnover ◦ Life-cycle stage: cultural change is easier when the organization is in transition from the formation stage to the growth stage and from maturity into decline. As an organization moves into growth, major changes will be necessary. ◦ Age of organization: the younger an organization, the less entrenched its values will be. ◦ Size of the organization: cultural change is easier to implement in smaller organizations ◦ Strength of the current culture: the more widely held a culture, and the higher the agreement of its values among members, the more difficult it will be to change ◦ Absence of subcultures: the more subcultures there are, the more resistance there will be to changes in the dominant culture. Changing more cultures will always be more difficult than changing one. ◦ What management techniques are available to change the culture? It is hard for managers to interpret or understand change because it is so intangible. Managers tend to try to change behavior rather than clues. ◦ Applying firm leadership: strong leadership is needed to drive cultural change. It is the role of a leader to raise fundamental questions in relation to the organization. Leaders should have a good understanding of the present state of the organization in order to do so. Leadership lies in creating conditions in which people are inspired to follow. ◦ Seeking political support: leaders cannot function without some political support in their organization. ◦ Changing key personnel: those associated closely to the old culture are generally moved aside and never managers are appointed. ◦ Implementing structural changes: managers can counteract the organization reverting to its original characteristics by making supporting structural changes. The structure of the organization allocates responsibilities, determines reporting relationships, defines tasks, and determines the size of the management hierarchy. Reducing the layers of management can reduce the checking mentality prevalent in many organizations. It can also reduce the numbers involved in making decisions, leading to faster decision making. Reallocation of responsibilities can decrease the number of managers who can say no but not ye. By creating divisions and other profit centers managers become more responsible for results. ◦ Avoiding micro-managing the details: it is not possible for senior managers to micro-manage the details of cultural change. They have little alternative but to create the conditions that establish and nurture the new cultural values. ◦ Applying appropriate management skills: the skills to introduce major cultural change are not usually possessed by managers, so they must be trained.

Forces leading to change

◦ Changes in objectives ◦ Purchase of new equipment ◦ Government regulations ◦ Globalization ◦ Changes in industrial relations ◦ Increased pressure from consumer advocate and environmental groups ◦ Mergers or acquisitions ◦ Actions of competitors ◦ Sudden internal or external hostility ◦ Decline in profits ◦ Reduction in layers of management