Understanding the

Study of
Organizations:
A Historical Overview
 Historical Review

❑ Major developments in research, theory, and thinking about

organizations and management have taken place over the past
century.
❑ Theories about motives, values, and capacities have evolved.
❑ Theories are not impractical abstractions but frameworks of ideas
that play a key role in trends, practices, and so on.
❑ Historical overview illustrates generic themes and also sets up
controversy for debate about distinctiveness.
❑ Managers need to be aware of key terms used in classic literature
(Theory X, Theory Y, span of control).
 Systems Metaphor

❑ Early classical approaches emphasized single form and one best

way.
❑ Recent perspectives emphasize a variety of forms that can be
effective under different conditions or contingencies. There is not
one best way.
❑ Trend borrows from system theory.
• Systems in nature have commonalities, which provide avenues for
learning and common language.
 Classical Approaches to Understanding
Organizations

❑ Frederick Taylor and Scientific Management

• Time motion studies

• Increase in workers’ well-being through productivity
• Highly impersonal
 Classical Approaches to Understanding
Organizations

❑ Max Weber: Bureaucracy as an Ideal Construct

• Advanced organizations are grounded in rational-legal form of

authority and are superior.
• Weber defined the basic characteristics of a good bureaucracy.
• Bureaucracies can develop problems of accountability.
 The Administrative Management School:
Principles of Administration

❑ Sought to develop principles of administration for all organization form

❑ Ideas reflected in Gulick’s POSDCORB and Mooney’s “Scalar Principle”
❑ Emphasis on hierarchy and specialization
❑ Division of work based on task, geographic location, interdependency
of work processes
❑ Coordination of work
• Span of control
• One master
• Technical efficiency
• Scalar principle
 Reactions, Critiques, and New
Developments

❑ The Hawthorne Studies

• These are widely regarded as the most significant demonstration of

the importance of social and psychological factors in the workplace.
• An experiment on the physical conditions (lighting) altered the social
situation.
• Employee output is also a function of attention being part of the
experiment.
• This is called the “Hawthorne Effect.”
 Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon

❑ Chester Barnard

• Barnard wrote The Functions of the Executive (1938)

• He studied the inducements-contributions equilibrium.
• Incentives include more than money. Employees are also motivated
by such factors as power, prestige, and self- fulfillment.
• The “executive” or manager has a key role in inducing behavior
through communication and persuasion.
 Chester Barnard and Herbert Simon

❑ Herbert Simon

• Simon made many contributions to the field, but his 1947 PAR article typifies
his reaction to management thinking of the time.
• “The Proverbs of Administration” critiques four then-accepted principles of
public administration that lead to efficiency:
• Specialization
• Hierarchy of command
• Limited span of control
• Group workers according to purpose, process, clientele, and place
• Simon was also concerned with complex decision making and the
assumption that humans are fully rational. He contended that administrators
“satisfice” rather than maximize.
 Social Psychology, Group Dynamics, and
Human Relationships

❑ Kurt Lewin’s Force Field Analysis

• Humans maintain a quasi-stationary equilibrium in their attitudes and
behaviors that results from a balance of forces pressing for change.
• Change occurs in phases:
• Unfreezing
• Changing
• Refreezing

❑ (1951) Social Psychology and Group Dynamics

• Lewin’s model becomes the conceptual frame for organizational
development.
 The Human Relations School

❑ Maslow’s “Needs Hierarchy”

❑ Five major categories of needs (bottom to top)

• Physiological
• Safety
• Love
• Self-esteem
• Self-actualization
 The Human Relations School

❑ Douglas McGregor
❑ (1957) “The Human Side of the Enterprise”

• Distills the contending traditional (authoritarian) managerial

philosophies into Theory X and Theory Y
• “X” employees basically lazy and resistant to change
• “Y” employees capable of self-motivation
 Open Systems Approaches and
Contingency Theory

❑ Joan Woodward

• She conducted research on the classical principles of management

in England between 1955 and 1964.
• In her survey of one hundred firms in south Essex, she was able to link
organizational structure to technology.
• She found that bureaucracy was the best form of organizational
structure for routine operations.
• On the other hand, temporary work groups, decentralization, and
emphasis on interpersonal processes worked best for nonroutine
operations.
 Open Systems Approaches and
Contingency Theory

❑ Burns and Stalker

• “The Management of Innovation” (1961)

• One of the first instances in which the environment is considered an
important variable of the organization equation
• Distinguishes mechanistic and organic systems
• Found that mechanistic organization was appropriate for stable
conditions while the organic type was better suited to changing
conditions
 Open Systems Approaches and
Contingency Theory

❑ Lawrence and Lorsch

• In 1967 recognized the importance of the environment in

organizations—introduced the concepts of differentiation and
integration
• Found that firms performed best when the differences between units
were maximized, as long as the integrating mechanisms were neither
strongly bureaucratic nor laissez-faire
 Open Systems Approaches and
Contingency Theory

❑ James Thompson

• “Organizations in Action” (1967)

• Thompson sought to close the gap between open and closed
systems theories by suggesting that organizations deal with
uncertainties in their environment by creating specific elements to
cope with the outside world, while other elements are able to focus
on the rational nature of technical operations.
• Dominant coalitions tend to set up closed systems, conditional and
rational decision processes.
• As complexities and uncertainties increase, organizations adapt by
adopting more flexible and decentralized structures and procedures.
 Open Systems Approaches and
Contingency Theory

❑ Peter Blau and colleagues

• (1971) Conducted a series of studies showing that organizational size
has an important relationship to structure

• New Topics

• TQM (Demming and Juran)

• Organization behavior
• Organization culture
• Diversity in organizations
 The Quiet Controversy over Distinctions

❑ The analysts in the historical review either concentrated on

industrial organizations or sought to develop generic concepts
and theories that applied to all organizations.
❑ There are still gaps in the literature, and the issues still tend to be
oversimplified.
❑ The next chapter turns to the challenge of formulating definitions
and drawing distinctions.