Introduction to organisations
(Originally published on the OUBS Blog)
This is about what of and why corporations exist as well as how they work.
We are organisation people and the organisation where we work has most influence over our life but they also mean different things for different people and one view is not necessarily better than the other.
But organisations enable objectives to be achieved that could not be achieved by the efforts of individuals on their own and have three factors in common: people, objectives and structure.
You need to unite all the people by creating some kind of identity through purpose and co-ordinate their work and split it up at the same time.
Mintzberg and Van der Heyden created a dynamic understanding of organisations where structure is relatively stable and unchanging, whereas process refers to the faster-moving events that happen against the backdrop of the structure. Structure and process are interconnected and interdependent and at the same time formal and informal.
More recently quantum theory or rather chaos theory has been used to suggest the unpredictability of organisational life.
Although it can be helpful to view organisations as rational machines, capable of being diagnosed part by part and finely tuned, this is a limited view because organisations are also communities – inherently amorphous and changing as their component parts (that is, the people involved) and their environments change.
Differentiation and Integration is important, which is the same for all corporations. As animals become more complex they need to differentiate their cells and as the organisation grows it becomes harder to specialists to keep contact with others, resulting in the need for integrative mechanisms.
Lawrence and Lorsch (1967) asked why people build organisations and found that organisations enable people to find better solutions to the challenges of their environment. But:
\- It is people who have purposes or goals, not organisations
\- People have to come together to co-ordinate their different activities and thus create and organisations.
\- The effectiveness depends on whether people are satisfied by their planned transactions within their environment (sub-unit)
The more you differentiate the more you need to integrate appropriately! And differentiations is important as you need to incorporate very different perspectives and concerns (not everyone should think like production staff).
Organisations need a purpose and identity where Paton (1991) sees differences between sectors.
\- Commercial organisations => logic of profit
\- Public sector => logic of accountability
\- Social economy => logic of commitment (what needs to be done)
Organisational purposes are achieved by the strategic orientation to the outside world that an organisation adopts. And we are moving towards network organisations where instead of differentiation there are partnerships of several organisations. This can go as far as a virtual organisation.
All organisations are different is something else that is important.
\- size and life-cycle (birth, youth, midlife, maturity)
\- location
\- use of technology
Diagrams can help understand an organisations: Organigrams (an organisations in action).
Mintzberg and Van der Heyden argue that the traditional organisational chart with the managers on top has had a debilitating effect and gives managers a misleading perception of themselves.
\- sets of people doing their own thing.
\- Chains of connected activities in a process
\- Hubs of activities around a manager
\- Webs of fluid relationships and actions
Managing itself is everywhere, facilitating collaboration, energising the whole network, encouraging people who already do their job well.
To cope better with your organisation:
\- The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (helicopter view)
\- Complex and multiple interrelationships
\- Reframing (visualise some other way to see new ways)
\- Creating maps and models