* Leader questions (barbara)
** reflect on the structure of an organisation that you are familiar with – whether it is a factory, a school, church, or current employer. Is the structure hierarchical, matrix, horizontal/flat, divisional, team-based or other? Without getting into the details of your readings yet, how would you define organisational structure? What about organisational culture? How would you describe organisational culture and its importance in shaping employee behaviours?
** The main influence in my thinking is my workplace. It is a private company funded mostly by the government. It behaves like a university in many respects but also as a commercial entity in many aspects. It used to be less hierarchical up until we were 400 but now at 700 several middle management layers were introduced. Its split between 30 x 4 people customer facing cells supported by roughly 5 support groups. There are several cultural groups always in creative tension: production v delivery, staff v vontractors, life sciences v physical sciences. The core of the output are academic articles by the customers, which lag by about 2 years from the point of use. There is no fear of dismissal which in a few cases causes lack of accountability, but overall the funders miss opportunities for social impact by keeping intentional commercial development of ideas out of the equation. A lot is delivered but i suspect that is only a fraction of what could be delivered. Thr structure if very flexible and visuon and mission were not spelled out clrarly until a few years ago, hence a huge variability of experiences as staff.
inma: mullins ch11 then ch2
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Mullins Ch 11 org structure and design
. Structure as a feasible means of control and organisation rationalisation
. Good organisation structure does not by itself
produce good performance. But a poor organisation structure makes
good performance impossible, no matter how good the individual
managers may be. To improve organisation structure … will therefore
always improve performance.
. Rigidity v creativity - Lucas and argyris
. the technical level, the managerial
level and the community level.7
These last two levels are often referred to as middle management
and senior management.
. Rawson flags raising lack of mutuality between middle and senior management
. Creating structures: task and element functions
. Woodward on confusion btw task and element functions
. Telecommunications help spread locations but HRM had to provide support across all base
. Three of the more specific principles of general interest in the
structuring of organisations are: (i) the hierarchy; (ii) the span
of control; and (iii) the chain of command.
. Gratton and the democratic enterprise
. . despite the
widespread disparagement of hierarchy, most companies find it very
difficult to avoid it once they have grown beyond a very small
size’.15
. Graicunas and the span of control
. . Balanced structure is important, tailored to particular situation
. Fig 11.8
. Keohane: specialist v organisation interests v outcome focus
. Projects, matrix
. Jack Welch and boundary less organisation
.. socialisation and training are tricky
. Child on lack of structure. High on the list are (1) low motivation and morale, (2)
late and inappropriate decisions, (3) conflict and lack of
co-ordination, (4) a generally poor response to new opportunities
and external change, and (5) rising costs.25
. hile acknowledging that organisation charts have
some uses, Townsend likens them to ‘rigor mortis’ and advises that
they should be drawn in pencil.
. Woodward 1950's : Contingency design of structures acknowledges dynamic aspects of organisations
. that industrial organisations which design their
formal organisational structures to fit the type of production
technology they employ are likely to be commercially
successful.34
.Woodward − structure and production
technology
.Perrow − major dimensions of
technology
. Burns and Stalker − mechanistic and
organic structures
.Lawrence and Lorsch − differentiation and
integration
. Table 11.1
. Hunt and contingency. the contingency approach runs the
risk of concluding that ‘it all depends on everything’, and the
greatest danger is the over-emphasis on differences between
organisations and the exclusion of similarities. Thus,
modern theory uses a limited number of contingencies to help
explain structural differences between organizations.’41
. Fig 11.14
. Nine-to-five working is no
longer enough. Some businesses will be able to dispense with fixed
premises altogether.46
.Homeworkers may struggle to escape the strains of domestic life and
often report a feeling of exhaustion and increased conflict from
demands of balancing work and family.
. Fig 11.15
. 10 points to remember
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MULLINS AND CHRISTY CHAPTER 2: APPROACHES TO
ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT
.Taylor and scientific management
.history, impact, legacy
. Sticker on hierarchy
. Stopped on Bureaucracy, 8% of material
. Ad hocracy
. Hawthorne experiment
. Known Factors that prevent but not factors that improve.
. neo human relations
..Maslow needs pyramid
.. Herbert McGregor systems
..Systems approach 14%
. Technical - tavistok mining case transition from artisanal to new tech yielded less improvement than expected
. Socio-technical makes improvement in yield by creating teams that fulfill individuals' aspirations
Fig 2.2
. Leading writers and criticism to earlier approaches,/perspectives
.Barnard, Simon and Cyert and March. Economic models of decision-making, based on the
assumption of rational behaviour in choosing from known
alternatives in order to maximise objectives, can be contrasted
with behavioural models based not so much on maximisation of
objectives as on short-term expediency, where a choice is made to
avoid conflict and to stay within limiting constraints. Managers are more concerned with avoiding uncertainties than with the prediction of uncertainties.
.action theory gets the best of earlier aporoaches - bowey
. 10 points
_----------------------------
REDMAN AND WILKINSON CHAPTER 10: ORGANISATIONAL
AND CORPORATE CULTURE
A. Wilkinson and T. Redman, Contemporary
human resource management: text and cases (Pearson, 2013;
4th edition)
Alistair Cheyne and John Loan-Clarke
. Case: Strong culture allegiance and oil rig accident
. Fig 10.2
. organisation culture v corporate culture
. New hire initial experience impacts on culture change control culture
. Highlights in end of chapter.
. Very similar to article opinions Willcox millet
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Case study - Cadbury's merge with Kraft - discussion in tutor thread
. Starbucks note by inma - https://mba.elearning.london.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/41494/mod_forum/attachment/39226/starbucks-brandscape-and-consumers-experiences-og-glocalization.pdf?forcedownload=1
. Glocalisation is an interesting strategy. Arguably the Roman empire expansion relied a lot on this. Or the Portuguese/Catholic expansion also did that in Brazil where local cultures were merged and prevented destructive evolution. Granted, they also applied elimination of the competition in the process.
I come from where the biggest local competitor to nestle in Brazil (garoto) spent 10 years trying to merge with nestle. That was a painful one as well like Cadbury's and my other half reports the best products were withdrawn post deal.
I wonder an IT service is a good example. IT product cycles tend to be shorter than hardware ones and are better documented by definition almost. The recent acquisition of red hat by IBM has many cultural nuances. Red hat was a successful commercial arm of exploitation of open source code - a very loud non profit and organically structured clique, branched off at&t's bell labs Unix system in the 70s/80s. Now they are being absorbed by ibm, an icon of a monolithic corporation (or is it). How the culture and products/services evolve one wonders...
To conclude, the external stakeholders (like, the customers for instance) seem to be outside this loop. Or maybe they are in - I think that's what the Starbucks article is about? Got to read it. Growth is an illusion, it's all about shifts given we're in a closed system (this sounds familiar). We're in a lava lamp.
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After completing the study of this topic you should be able to:
1. Recognise the role of culture in contemporary organisations
2. Distinguish between different types of culture and identify their implications for managing people
3. Describe the role of organisational socialisation
4. Discuss the early forms of work design and their relevance in contemporary organisations
5. Explain how an organisation’s structure and design affect human behaviour in the workplace
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