Transcript Management 9e - Kreitner

Knowledge Objectives
1. Describe the four characteristics common to all
organizations.
2. Explain dynamic equilibrium and equifinality in
open-systems models.
3. Explain the ways in which organizations learn
and decline (fail to learn)
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What is an Organization?
• Common Characteristics of Organizations
1. Coordination of effort: multiplying individual
contributions to achieve results greater than those
possible by individuals working alone.
2. Common goal or purpose: having a focus to
strive for something of mutual interest.
3. Division of labor: dividing tasks into specialized
jobs that use human resources efficiently.
4. Hierarchy of authority: using a chain of
command to control and direct the actions of
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others.
Organizing
• Max Weber’s Bureaucracy
– The most rationally efficient form of organization
1.
2.
3.
4.
Division of labor
Hierarchy of authority
Framework of rules
Impersonal management
– Problems with overly “bureaucratic” organizations
• Slow
• Insensitive
• Inefficient
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Organizing
• Open systems perspective
– The organization’s principal goal is survival in
an uncertain environment.
– The organization is an open-system interacting
with its environment.
– The organization’s surrounding environment is
composed of variables that are difficult to
predict or control.
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Organizing
• Characteristics of Open Systems
– Interaction with the external environment
through permeable boundaries.
– Dynamic equilibrium in maintaining internal
balances with help from the external
environment.
– Equifinality in achieving similar ends through
different means.
– Management of the Technical Core &
Boundary Spanning units
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Extending the Systems Model:
Learning Organizations
• Learning Organization
– An organization that is skilled at creating,
acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at
modifying its behavior to reflect new
knowledge and insights.
• Stages of Organization Learning
– Cognition (learning new concepts)
– Behavior (developing new skills and abilities)
– Performance (actually getting something done)
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Learning Organizations
• Five Critical Learning Skills
– Solving problems.
– Experimenting.
– Learning from organizational
experience/history.
– Learning from others.
– Transferring and implementing.
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Decline
• Organizational Decline
– The weakening of an organization by resource
restrictions and/or mismanagement.
– Sources of decline
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•
•
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Complacency/Simplification
Unsteady macroeconomic environment
Resource shortages
Global competition
– Reactions to decline
• Downsizing, demassing, reengineering
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Decline
• Characteristics of Organizational Decline
– Decline Dilemmas
• Exit of leaders from the organization.
• Control that suppresses participation and morale.
• Preference for short-term thinking and risk
avoidance.
• Intense conflict, preventing teamwork.
• Strong resistance to change.
– Counteracting Organizational Decline
• Kaizen: the philosophy of continuous improvement.
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