SHB2034 – Management Guru & QualityChapter 5: Organizational Behavior

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OBJECTIVES........................................................................................................2ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................25.1 INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................35.2 HERBERT ALEXANDER SIMON...................................................................45.3 OLIVER SHELDON........................................................................................55.4 HENRY MINTZBERG......................................................................................65.5 CHRIS ARGYRIS............................................................................................85.6 CHARLES HANDY.........................................................................................95.7 BURT NANUS...............................................................................................115.8 BENJAMIN SEEBOHN ROWNTREE...........................................................155.9 EDGAR H. SCHEIN......................................................................................17Additional Materials.............................................................................................19

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this topic, you will be able to: Enable learners to understand the lives, philosophies, ideas and contributions of

Organizational Behavior Gurus and Thinkers Enable learners to assess and evaluate the importance and impact of those ideas in

organizations and society Enable learners to relate the ideas to other management gurus from other disciplines of

knowledge Enable learners to apply the best and the most relevant concepts formulated by

management gurus and thinkers in behaviors and practices in daily lives.

ABSTRACT

Organizational Behavior is a contemporary management approach that studies and identifies management activities that promote employee effectiveness by examining the complex and dynamic nature of individual groups and organizational processes.

5.1 INTRODUCTION

The organizational behavior theory is a study that concerned with the actions of people at work. Personal characteristics of organizational members such as abilities, attitudes, personality, and culture are identified and examined to understand how these factors influence the effectiveness of organizations and their members.

Significant time is devoted to frameworks for understanding motivation and behavior in organizations and theories that provide direction for managing organizational members effectively. The management gurus then explored the theories with a focus on understanding how and why people react to organizational change and identifying the effective implementation of change. These gurus include Herbert Simon, Oliver Sheldon, Henry Mintzberg, Chris Argyris, Charles Handy, Burt Nanus, Benjamin Rowntree, and Ed Schein.

5.2 HERBERT ALEXANDER SIMON

Herbert Simon has made a major impact upon our understanding of the processes of management. In place of a super-rational economic model of man assumed by classical economics, he advocates an administrative model, a person of much more modest ability who is incompletely informed about available options and their outcomes and who therefore 'satisfices'. Satisficing is accepting a satisfactory out-comes rather than striving to maximize utilities through ever more comprehensive search and involved computations. It is a process whereby decision-makers take short cuts, use rules of thumb and a whole range of intuitive methods.

The associated psychological condition is 'bounded rationality', a condition whereby it is accepted that perfect knowledge about options can never be achieved in complex decision making. However, minimum performance standards can be set and once this minimum performance standard is reached an appropriate choice is made and search for further options stopped.

Herbert Alexander SimonSimon was born in Milwaukee. He majored in political science at the University of Chicago, but was also interested in cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, as well as economics and decision making. In the late 1940s he moved to the Carnegie Institute of Technology which was just establishing a Graduate School of Industrial Administration (his dissertation became Administrative Behavior).

Apart from his interest in artificial intelligence, Simon is most often associated with the phrase "bounded rationality" which indicates that decision making is subject to limitations and acknowledges that we live in a 'satisficing' world (a neologism coined from 'satisfy' and 'suffice'.) He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1978, the National Science Medal in 1986 and published over 600 articles on a variety of subjects.

5.3 OLIVER SHELDON

Oliver Sheldon, who spent his entire career working for the well-known British Quaker company. Sheldon was born in 1894 and died in 1951. According to him, it was the responsibility of the company towards the society. It thought that the company had to serve the society and that the ethics and the values were so indispensable in administration as in economy. The goods and services had to be offered to the compatible lowest prices with a good quality level.

In 1923 Oliver Sheldon published the book; "The Philosophy of Management". He pointed out, that management has a social responsibility. A business has a "soul", "as a major partner the community'', and ''alongside capital and labour".

Responsibility of the Company Towards the SocietyAccording to Sheldon, a company should be responsible to the well being of the society. This is based on his main principles which were:

The policies, conditions and methods of industry shall conduce to communal wellbeing. Management shall endeavor to interpret the highest moral sanction of the community as

a whole, to give practical effect to those ideas of social justice, which would generally be accepted by the most unbiased portion of communal opinion.

Management shall take the initiative in raising the general ethical standard and conception of social justice.

5.4 HENRY MINTZBERG

Mintzberg through his observation on the manager characteristics at work identified 10 managerial roles that are divided into three areas; interpersonal, information and decision making. Understanding these roles are very useful in working with managers in assisting them to examine what they do with their time, is it appropriate for what they need to do or not.

His work on organization structures divides them into 5 categories - simple, machine, professional, divisional and adhocracy. Within each of these the functions are further sub divided into 5 groups - strategic, technical, operating, middle line, support. The value of each varies depending on the task of the organization.

Henry MintzbergHenry Mintzberg, a Canadian academic born in 1939 is one of the most interesting of management thinkers. His breakthrough ideas: strategy as craft, roles of managers and management education makes him a great debunker of received wisdom.

Mintzberg is Professor of Management at McGill University, Montreal and Professor of Organization at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. He graduated in mechanical engineering from McGill University in 1961 completed a general arts degree in the evenings. Between 1961 and 1963, Mintzberg worked in the operational research branch of Canadian Railways before going onto MIT's Sloan School from where he has a PhD in management.

The Manager Characteristics at WorkMintzberg identified the characteristics of the manager at work by:

1. Performs a great quantity of work at an unrelenting pace.2. Undertakes activities marked by variety, brevity and fragmentation3. Has a preference for issues which are current, specific and non-routine4. Prefers verbal rather than written means of communication5. Acts within a web of internal and external contracts6. Is subject to heavy constraints but can exert some control over the work

On the other hand, in defining ' strategy as craft, Mintzberg stated the following characteristics of strategy making:

Derived from synthesis Informal and visionary, rather than programmed and formalized Relies on divergent thinking, intuition and using the subconscious. This leads to outbursts

of creativity as new discoveries are made Irregular, unexpected, ad hoc, instinctive. It upsets stable patterns Managers are adaptive information manipulators, opportunists, rather than aloof

conductors Done in time of instability characterized by discontinuous change Results from an approach, which takes in broad perspectives and is therefore visionary,

and involves a variety of actors capable of experimenting and then integrating.

Interpersonal Roles Figurehead: representing the organization/unit to outsiders Leader: motivating subordinates, unifying effort Liaiser: maintaining lateral contacts

Informational Roles Monitor: of information flows Disseminator: of information to subordinates Spokesman: transmission of information to outsiders

Decisional Roles Entrepreneur: initiator and designer of change Disturbance handler: handling non-routine events Resource allocator: deciding who gets what and who will do what Negotiator: negotiating

5.5 CHRIS ARGYRIS

Chris Argyris believes that humans need to be integrated into their organizations in a way that allows them to realize their full potential and at the same time lets them contribute to making their organizations more effective. He has designed new organizational structures and policies that enhance this integration.

Since 1970's together with Donald Schon, he writes about learning organizations. They are interested in two related problems that inhibit both individual and organizational learning and propose remedies for both problems in terms of two types of learning skills that need to be developed.

Chris ArgyrisArgyris was born in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Clark and Kansas University before completing his Ph.D. at Cornell in the early 1950s. He is a director of the Monitor Company, the James Bryant Conant Professor of Education and Organizational Behavior at the Graduate School of Business, Harvard University.

He was awarded a degree in Psychology from Clark University (1947); M.A. degree in Economics and Psychology from Kansas University (1949); and Ph.D. degree in Organizational Behavior from Cornell University (1951). From 1951 to 1971, he was a faculty member at Yale University, serving as Professor of Administrative Sciences and as chairperson of the Administrative Sciences Department during the latter part of this period. He is the author of thirty-one books on organizations and the people in them.

ProblemsTwo related problems that inhibit both individual and organizational learning:

1. Our failure to recognize and challenge the mental models that control our actions.2. Our failure to make our assumptions clear to others and to help them do the same.

Learning SkillsTwo types of learning skills those need to be developed:

1. Reflection - slowing down our thinking process to become more aware of our mental models.

2. Inquiry - being more open about the assumptions behind our actions and helping others do the same.

5.6 CHARLES HANDY

Charles Handy is an independent writer and broadcaster with a psychological and philosophical focus. He tries to bring management a spiritual and ethical dimension.

His concepts in the 'Gods of Management' is concern about the implications to the society and to the individuals of the dramatic changes in technology and economics that are interjected to the workplace and to all our lives.

Charles HandyHandy was born in Kildare, Ireland in 1932, the son of an Archdeacon, and was educated in England and the United States. He graduated from Oriel College, Oxford, with first-class honors in an intellectual study of classics, history and philosophy. Handy has said that these disciplines "gave me the ability to think".

After college, Handy worked for Shell International as a marketing executive, an economist and a management educator, in South-East Asia and London before entering the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After only one week at Sloan, Handy already met Warren Bennis, Chris Argyris, Ed Schein and Mason Haire, among others, people who fired his fascination with organizations and how they work. When he received his MBA from Sloan in 1967, he returned to England to design and manage the only Sloan's Program outside the United States, at Britain's first Graduate Business School, in London.

In 1972 Handy became a full Professor at the school, specializing in managerial psychology. From 1977 to 1981, Handy served as Warden of St. George's House in Windsor Castle, a private conference and study center concerned with ethics and values in society. He was Chairman of the Royal Society of Arts in London from 1986 to 1988, and holds honorary doctorates from four British Universities. He is know to many in Britain for his "Thoughts for Today" on the BBC's Radio Today program.

Handy and his wife Elizabeth, a portrait photographer as well as his business partner, have two grown children and live in London and Norfolk in England, and in Tuscany in Italy. They live what Handy has termed a "portfolio" life, balancing their skills and their time to make the most of their independent careers.

Gods of ManagementArchetypes drawn from the classical past of Europe which seek to serve as metaphors for organizational culture, and the 'shamrock organization', which describes the new decentralized or 'federal' organization of the future. He focuses on themes such as discontinuity and human dynamics, and sees the organization of the future as being smaller and more networked, with core teams handling essential functions and contracting out work to skilled employees.

His famous books include ''The Empty Raincoat'' (The Age of Paradox in the U.S), is a sequel to his earlier best-selling ''The Age of Unreason'', which first explored these changes, and was named by both Fortune and Business Week as one of the ten best business books of the year.

In total, his books, which include the popular ''Gods of Management'' (Business Books 1992) as well as the standard textbook ''Understanding Organisations'', have now sold well over one million copies around the world. His article for the Harvard Business Review, ''Balancing Corporate Power: A New Federalist Paper'', won the McKinsey Award for 1992, and his next article for the Review, ''Trust and the Virtual Organisation'', won the second McKinsey Award in 1995. ''The Empty Raincoat'' (Age of Paradox in the U.S) was awarded the JSK Accord Prize in 1994. ''Beyond Certainty'', a collection of his articles and essays, was published in 1995 (1996 in the

U.S), as was ''Waiting For The Mountain To Move'', a collection of his radio "Thoughts" over ten years.

''The Hungry Spirit'' was published in the UK in September 1997 and in the USA in January 1998. In it he surfaces his doubts about the consequences of free market capitalism and questions whether material success can ever provide the true meaning of life. The latest book have combined his and his wife's - ''The New Alchemists'' - a photographic and literary portrait of Londoners who have "created something out of nothing", published in 1999.

5.7 BURT NANUS

Burt Nanus provides a four-step process consisting of a series of questions that you and your visioning team can answer to construct a vision for your organizations.

These four processes are:1. Taking stock - understanding the current status of the organization2. Testing reality - drawing the boundaries for the vision3. Establishing the vision context - positioning the organization in its future external environment4. Choosing the vision - defining and packaging the new vision

Taking Stock - Understanding the Current Status of the Organization

What business are we really in?

How do we operate The vision audit

1. What is the current stated mission or purpose of your organization?

2. What value does the organization provide to the society?

3. What is the character of the industry or institutional framework within which your organizational operates?

4. What is your organization's unique position in that industry or institutional structure?

5. What does it take for your organization to succeed?

1. What are the values and the organization culture that govern behavior and decision making?

2. What are the operating strengths and weaknesses of the organization?

3. What is the current strategy, and can it be defended?

1. Does the organization have a clearly state vision? If so, what is it?

2. If the organization continues on its current path, where will it be heading over the next decade? How good would such a direction be?

3. Do the key people in the organization know where the organization is headed and again on the direction?

4. Do the structures, processes, personnel, incentives, and information systems support the current

Testing Reality - Drawing the Boundaries for the Vision

Who are the major stakeholders and what are their needs?

How should the new vision be bounded?

1. Who are the most critical stakeholders - inside and outside the organization - and these, which are the most importance?

2. What are the major interests and expectations of the five or six most important stakeholders regarding the future of your organization?

3. What are the threat or opportunities emanate from these critical stakeholders?

4. Considering yourself a stakeholder, what do you personally and passionately want to make happen in your organization?

1. What are the boundaries (time, geographic, social) to your new vision?

2. What must the vision accomplish? How will you know when it is successful?

3. Which critical issues must be addressed in the vision?

 

Establishing the Vision Context - Positioning the Organization in Its Future External Environment

What future developments are likely to influence your vision statement?

Which future developments are likely to have greatest impact on your organization's future direction if they were to occur as expected?

What three or four scenarios are possible given the occurrence of the developments with the highest impact (Priority One developments) 

1. What major changes can be expected in the needs and wants served by your organization in the future?

2. What changes can be expected in the major stakeholders of your organization in the future?

3. What major changes can be expected in the relevant economic

Priority One = Greatest impactPriority two = Next greatest impactPriority Three = Third greatest impactPriority Four = Least impact

Write four or five narrative descriptions of the future. Either start with the present and describe what will happen chronologically up to the future time or pick a future period and describe what it is like, especially as to how the world got to the way you envision it.

environments in the future?

4. What major changes can be expected in the relevant social environments in the future?

5. What major changes can be expected can be expected in the relevant political environments in the future?

6. What major changes can be expected in the relevant technological environments in the future?

7. What major changes can be expected in other external environments in the future?

Choosing the Vision - Defining and Packaging the New Vision

What are the several alternative visions? Which of the possible visions best fit the criteria for a good vision?(Nanus suggests a method for scoring and weighting alternatives on pages 121-126 of his book Visionary Leadership.) 

Of all of the possible directions you could take over the next five to seven years, which one offer the greatest promise of dramatically improving your position and achieving the greatest success for you and for your key stakeholders?

1. Is the vision future oriented?

2. Will it lead to a better future for the organization?

3. Does it fit with the organization's history, culture, and values?

4. Does it set standards of excellence and reflect high ideals?

5. Does it clarify purpose and direction?

6. Will it inspire enthusiasm and encourage commitment?

7. Does it reflect the uniqueness of the organization, its distinctive competence, an what it stands for?

8. Is it ambitious enough?

5.8 BENJAMIN SEEBOHN ROWNTREE

Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree was inspired by his father's work and the study by Charles Booth, author of ''Life and Labor of the People in London'', which then he carry out his own investigations into poverty in York.

Rowntree spent two years on his first study, Poverty - A Study of Town Life. It was published in 1901.

In the 1930's Seebohm Rowntree carried out a second survey of York in Progress and Poverty (1941).

Rowntree published a third study of York in Poverty and the Welfare State in 1951.

Benjamin Seebohm RowntreeRowntree was born in York on 7th July 1871. He was the third child of Joseph Rowntree and Emma Seebohm. He was educated at the York Quaker Boarding School and Owen College, Manchester. He died on 7th October 1954.

In 1897 Rowntree was appointed as a director of his father's successful business in York. Like his father, Seebohm believed it was his duty to help the poor and disadvantaged. On Sundays, he taught at the York Adult School. He also visited the homes of his students and obtained first-hand knowledge of their problems.

Poverty, A Study of Town LifeRowntree distinguished between families suffering from primary and secondary poverty. Primary poverty, he argued, was where the family lacked the earnings sufficient to obtain even the minimum necessities, whereas families suffering from secondary poverty had earnings that were sufficient, but were spending some of that money on other things. Whereas some of these were "useful". Others, like spending on alcohol, were "wasteful".

Rowntree's study provided a wealth of statistical data on wages, hours of work, nutritional needs, food consumed, health and housing. The book illustrated the failings of the capitalist system and argued that new measures were needed to overcome the problems of unemployment, old-age and ill-health.

Rowntree, a strong supporter of the Liberal Party, hoped that the conclusions that he had drawn from his study would be adopted as party policy. David Lloyd George, president of the Board of Trade, met Rowntree in 1907 and the two became close friends. The following year Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer and introduced a series of reforms influenced by Rowntree, including the Old Age Pension Act (1908) and the National Insurance Act (1911).

David Lloyd George asked Rowntree to carry out a study of rural conditions in Britain. His report, ''The Land'', published in 1913, argued that an increase in small landholdings would make agriculture more efficient and productive. In 1913 Rowntree also published, ''How the Labourer Lives'', a detailed study of fifty-two farming families.

Seebohm Rowntree believed that healthy and well-fed workers, were also efficient workers. Working closely with his father, Joseph Rowntree, Seebohm introduced a series of reforms at his own company. One change was an increase in wages for the 4,000 people the company employed. Seebohm argued that employers who refused to pay decent wages to their workers should be put out of business as their existence was bad for the "nation's economy and humanity".In his book, ''The Human Needs of Labour'', (1918), Rowntree argued strongly for a government enforced minimum wage and the introduction of family allowances. Moreover, in ''The Human Factor in Business'', (1921), Seebohm urged employers to abandon their preferred style of autocratic management in industry. However, few companies followed Rowntree's example of establishing industrial democracy by the use of Works Councils.

Progress and PovertyRowntree argued that the city had experienced a fifty per cent reduction in poverty since his first study. He also pointed out that in the 1930's the main cause of poverty was unemployment, whereas in the 1890s it had been low wages.

However, he argued that there was still much to be done and the conclusions of his report helped influence the policies of the post-war Labour Government. As a person said at the time, Rowntree's work made him the "Einstein of the Welfare State".

Poverty and the Welfare StateRowntree argued that the measures introduced by the Labour Government between 1945 and 1951 were dealing successfully with the worst aspects of poverty that he had recorded in his earlier studies.

5.9 EDGAR H. SCHEIN

Ed Schein, a social psychologist, is one of the originators of the field of organizational psychology. His thinking on corporate culture and careers has proved highly important.

Key to the creation and development of corporate culture are values embraced by organization. Schein identifies three stages in the development of a corporate culture. More recently Schein's work on culture has identified three cultures of management, which he labels 'the key to organisational learning in the 21st century'.

Ed ScheinEd Schein was born in 1928. He was graduated from Chicago in 1946 and then studied at Stanford. He completed a PhD in social psychology at Harvard and after graduating in 1952, carried out research into leadership as part of the Army Program.

In 1956, upon the invitation of Dauglas McGregor, he joined MIT Business School and remained there ever since. Schein's first paper was entitled 'Management development as process of influence', which applied the brainwashing model from prison camps to the corporate world. In addition, the ability of strong value to influence groups of people in a strand, which has continued through out Schein's work.

Corporate CultureSchein's work on corporate culture culminated in the book ''Organizational Culture and Leadership'', (1985). Schein describe culture as a pattern of basic assumptions. These basic assumptions can be categorized into five dimensions:

1. Humanity's relationship to nature - while some companies regard themselves as masters of their own destiny, others are submissive, willing to accept the domination of their external environment.

2. The nature of reality and truth - organizations and managers adopt a wide variety of methods to reach what becomes accepted as the organizational 'truth' - through debate, dictatorship, or through simple acceptance that if something achieved the objective it is right.

3. The nature of human nature - organizations differs in their views of human nature. Some follow McGregor's Theory X and work on the principle that people will not do the job if they can avoid it. Others regard people in more positive light and attempt to enable them to fulfil their potential for the benefit of both sides.

4. The nature of human activity - the West has traditionally emphasized tasks and their completion rather than the more philosophical side of work. Achievement is all. Schein suggestion alternative approach - 'being-in-becoming' - emphasizing self-fulfillment and development.

5. The nature of human relationships - organizations make a variety of assumptions about how people interact with each other. Some facilitate social interaction, while others regard it as an unnecessary distraction.

Stages in the Development of Corporate CultureThree stages in the development of a corporate culture:

birth and early growth organizational mid-life organizational maturity

Cultures of ManagementThree cultures of management are:

1. Operator culture (''an internal culture based on operational success'')2. The engineering culture (created by ''the designers and technocrats who drive the core

technologies of the organization'') 3. The executive culture (formed by executive management, the CEO and immediate

subordinates)

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS

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