PEOPLE AND PEOPLE AND ORGANAZATIONSORGANAZATIONS

Farhad Muhammad RajabCyprus International UniversityFaculty of Education / ELT Dep.Management in ELT Course (617)2015

Key Words:Key Words:

1) Organizations 2) Needs and the organizations3) The structure of organizations4) Organizational cultures5) Styles and functions of management6) A systematic approach to management7) Conclusion8) Related articles

Aims Defining some key management terms and concepts. Reviewing the main characteristics of the

organizations. Setting up scheme of organizational needs. Identifying elements of structure in a school

organization. Evaluating different approaches to organizational

structure. Considering management styles and functions.

Q: What is the relationship between people and organizations?

What is meant by “Organization(s)”? -Two or more people working together to achieve

something that often cannot be accomplished alone .Or A collection of people working together in a coordinated

and structured fashion to achieve one or more goals.That means:- Consist of relationships between people who have come

together for a purpose.- Without people, there is no organization- just as,

without students, a school has no existence as a living and functioning organization.

- Organizations are strongly influenced by the people that form part of them.

- Organizations can take in part of the personality of the people within them and their attitudes, perceptions and behaviors affect how an organization will operate.

Why so? Because all of us as individuals combine a mixture of the rational and irrational, so , too, organizations contain both rational and irrational elements.

- Beside people, there is another vital aspect of an organization: its technology by which various operations are carried out to achieve organizational goals including hardware and software.

- In addition to all these important things, in educational technology of a school, the curriculum is considered as an important part since it embodies not only the pedagogical aims of the school but also the methods and materials employed in realizing those aims.

- Finally Organizations are characterized by belief and value systems which influence the relationships, practices and achievements.

Organizations Role in Society Organizations exist to allow

accomplishment of work that could not be achieved by people alone.

As long as the goals of an organization are appropriate, society will allow them to exist and they can contribute to society.

Needs and the organizations

A figure is depicted by Adair 1983 and Bacie 1978;They pointed out that a school as an organization would have to fulfill and maintain in balance three board sets of needs as follows:

1. Task Needs: are those needs which have to be satisfied in order successfully to carry out the work of the organization.

Such needs like:- Planning, - allocating, - providing, - contacting, - monitoring.

2. Group Needs: are vital needs to meet task needs for the organization, such group functions as:

- Setting standards - Marinating discipline- Building team spirit- Encouraging and motivating- Appointing sub-leaders- Training members of the group and ensuring

communication with it.

3. Individual or personal needs: the lack of these needs will be a loss of morale and motivation among the individuals who make up the group or team. These needs involve:1.Attending to personal problems.2.Praising individuals.3.Giving status4.Recognizing and using abilities5.Training the individual.- A successful organization is one which people feel worthy as an individual member as it has been given appropriate attention just like a good educational practice that advocates the students apply equally well to teachers and other staff.

- But what Maslow proposes in his theory of individual development in 1943 is against these individual needs, according to his theory people are wanting beings, they always want more but what they want depends on what they have, in addition, human needs are arranged in a series of levels starting from the lowest level of physiological needs to the highest level of self-actualization as a hierarchy or pyramid figure of needs.

The structure of organizations- The term is defined by some writers as:

1.The deliberate patterning of relationships between organization members. (Paisy,1981:64)

2. The pattern of relationships among positions in the organization and among members of the organization. (Mullins, 1985:72)

- The notion “structure” is the fundamental concept of organizations. It’s a list of what has to be organized.

- There is a diversity in models of structure. Some models attempt to provide prescriptions for what should be done, While others try to account for what is believed to happen.

What is the purpose of the structure in organizations according to Mullins?

A. Dividing of work among members and co-ordination their activities .

B. Creating a framework of order and command through which the activities can be planned, organized, directed and controlled.

Elements of Structure:

- Paisy points out, when we ask the question, ‘ what is the structure of a school?’, we are trying to understand the distribution of jobs, authority and position within the organization. In other words, the questioner is interested in finding out who is who, who does what, and what the limits of their power are.

Formal models of organization also emphasize the official and structural elements of organizations. They assume that organizations are hierarchical systems in which managers use rational means to pursue agreed goals. ( Bush, 1986:23)

But Bush and Paisy discuss the weaknesses of formal models for:

1. They are focusing on the organization as an entity and ignore or underestimate the contribution of individuals within organizations.

2. Formal approaches are based on the implicit assumption that organizations are relatively stable, but as Bush observes it can be argued that assumption of stability are unrealistic in many organizations and invalid in many schools and colleges.

3. Its unrealistic to characterize schools and colleges as goal-directed organizations because few educational organizations actually have a formal or even informal statement of their objectives.

4. A central assumption of formal models is the power that resides at the apex of the pyramid but in school there is an inherent tension between the teacher’s claim of autonomy in pedagogical matters and the responsibility and accountability of the principle for the quality and efficiency of the work carried out by the school.

-In view of the criticisms of formal models of organizations and management, alternatives such as democratic, political, subjective, and ambiguity models have been proposed.

-But non of these models is fully accounted for organizational structure and management processes. Bush (1986) suggests that the validity of the various models depends on 5 overlapping considerations which are:

The size of the institution. The nature of the organizational structure Time The availability of resources The nature of rate of change in the environment.- Following Enderud, Davis and Morgan in 1980 to 1983, Bush

outlines a four – phase model for policy information which bring together many of the characteristics of the models just described. The phases are:

A. The anarchic phase

B. The political phase

C. The collegial phase

D. The formal phase

Organizational cultures

All organizations have the history and traditions, rules and regulations, ways of doing things, and conventions governing relationships, which together constitute the culture of that organizations.

Organizational culture is defined as shared philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, feelings, assumptions, expectations, attitudes, norms and values.

Characteristics: Observed Behavioral Regularities Norms Dominant Values Philosophy Rules Feelings

Charley Handy in 1984 points out that ( there are no wholly bad cultures and no wholly good cultures; all cultures are OK, in the right place, because each culture is good for some things, and less good at others), later he has suggested four types of organizational cultures and has applied his classification to the characterization of schools as organizations.

His discussion is concerned with looking at the way in which attitudes and relationships give rise to a climate or culture that can be highly successful in achieving the goals of organizations and the very unsuccessful in working productively towards shared aims.

The four organizational cultures by Handy’s are:

1. Power or club: is characterized as a spider web with a power source at the hub, surrounded by concentric circles of intimates and influence. The lines radiating out from the center indicate the lines of responsibility and functions of the organization. Handy (1984) observes that organizations based on this principle have very personal cultures. Communication within a club culture tend to be informal and personal. But if the spider is not strong and capable the organization will reflect the head’s weakness, therefore, selecting a group of compatible people is an important consideration in such an organization. Handy also suggests that power ( power or club cultures) are a convenient way of running things when the organization is small around 20 persons.

2.Role: this is quite different, resembling a pyramid of boxes. These job boxes joined together in a logical and orderly fashion so that together they discharge the work of the organization. Handy (1984). Communication within a role culture, in contrast to that within a club culture, will follow prescribed conventions, and memoranda go from role to role, and not to individuals. 3. Task: is a job or project oriented, its members are able to respond to change in a less individualistic way than members of a club culture and more quickly than occupants of a role culture. It provides an exciting work environment and it may well be the case that a good school is one in which a task culture predominates Handy suggests that the ‘organizational idea’ of the task culture is ‘ that a group or team of talents and resources should be applied to a project, problem or task. In that way each task gets the treatment it requires, and the group can be changed, disbanded or increased as the task changes.

4. Person: in this last type the priority is the individual’s talents rather than the organization’s purposes and it must be serviced by some sort of minimal organization. ( Handy 1984)- The evolution of a person culture in a school could give rise to conflict since it would tend to be identified with the setting up of differentiation among people who would otherwise regard themselves as peers. - size, work flow, environment, and history are the factors of the cultural mix which characterizes any organization, in general, large size and role cultures go together. When work is organized on an interdependent sequential basis a role culture is typical, as handy says ‘ a lot depends on what the job of the organization is seen to be’ , in addition the environment will have an important influence on the development of organizational culture. A stable environment promotes the evolution of a role culture.

Culture conflict

Culture is a set of values and beliefs that has been defined

by community and society. Organizational culture is a

system of shared beliefs, values, assumptions and rituals

which has been defined by organizational people.The conflict arise within the large organizations because different sections may have quite different cultural characteristics from one another.

Examples: -Administration of a school deals with aspects as financial management, registration and examinations will usually be characterized by a role culture.-Teachers concerned with the operations side of the organization such as curriculum development, course design, and actual teaching will tend to se themselves as operating within a task culture.

Styles and functions of management Social psychologist Douglas McGregor studied the general

behavior of human beings and classified such behavior into two parts which is popularly known as Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X revolves around the traditional assumption

about the human behavior that they are pessimistic in nature. The basic assumptions of Theory X about worker’s

behavior are – they dislike the work, they are unwilling to assume responsibility, they are dull and not ambitious, they avoid any assigned work and so should be supervised closely. Douglas McGregor through his research support challenged these assumptions because they are untrue in most of the circumstances.

Theory Y in contrast, He propounded an alternative theory which poses optimistic behavior patterns of the workers. These assumptions highlights that workers are ready to do hard work, they are ready to assume responsibility, they exercise self-imposed disciple avoiding the need of close

supervision, they possess the capacity to innovate, they get psychic pleasure in doing the work and consider work

as rest or play.

By making such a distinction between managing and doing, Mullins suggests that management can be seen as:

(The planning of work, organizing the distribution of activities and tasks to other people, direction of subordinate staff and controlling the performance of other people’s work.).

In additions to these functions, Everard and Morries (1985) believe that the manager’s mission should be:

- Utilizing and integrating resources economically.- Facilitating beneficial change.- Maintaining and developing resources.

A systematic approach to management

Management is the activity of getting things done with the aid of people and other resources.

No business in the world has ever made more money with poorer management.

System in simple terms in respect to management, it’s a set of different independent parts working together in interrelated manner to a accomplish a set of objective.

- For example:

1. The human body is a system with all the organs.

2. In a company a group of division people working for a common goal or success.

The term system is derived from Greek Word “synistanai,”

which means to bring together or combine.

- System Approach is the most acceptable approach in the

modern management. The major contributories are

Herbert A. Simon. George Homons, Philip Selznick etc.

This approach considers organization as a unified, directed

system of integrated parts. It emphasized that every

organization is composed of different parts and one part

part affect all other parts in a varying degree.

Types of system

Closed System View of Organizations : According to Louis

E. Boone and David L Kurtz, “Closed system are sets of

interacting elements operating without any exchange with the

environment in which they exist. This definition implies that closed system require no inputs – human, financial etc..

from the external environment in which they exist. But no organization can be totally closed system.

The two basic characteristics of a closed system are :

(1) It is perfectly deterministic and predictable

(2) There is no exchange between the system and the

external environment.

If one college campus converts into deemed university,

then it becomes closed system. To some extent, you can

predict styles of exam, schemes, and syllabus as there is

no exchange with any affiliated university. So rules and

norms somehow remain predictable.

Open System View of Organizations : Traditional closed

system views ignored the influence of the external environment.

This sometimes led to the failure of plans and inefficient

handling of resources. Boone and Kurtz define an open system as “A set of elements that interact with each other and the environment, and whose structure as a result of interaction”. For example, If one college is affiliated with some

university, then it is an open system because there is

exchange with external environment.

Conclusion- As we have seen from the explanation that there is no theory

or model of management provides a complete explanation of how an organization works. And no theory of management give a fool-proof for success, because management above all else is concerned with people who are themselves so diverse and varied that no two combinations of individuals will ever be the same.

- All managers have a responsibility to be as well-informed and provide adequate resources and facilities for carrying out agreed aims. Some follow the processes like setting objectives, planning, controlling and delegating but above all the successful managers will attempt to involve everyone in the organization in decision making, planning, implementation, and provide conditions for the action to be flourished.

Related ArticlesRelated Articles

1. Responsibility in organizationsWritten by three researchers Royakkers, Grossi, and Dignum from Utrecht

and Eindhoven universities, The Netherlands.

- The main aim of their research is to provide a formal analysis of the connection between collective obligations to individual responsibilities, for example which individual agent in a group should be held responsible if an obligation directed to the whole group is not fulfilled?.

- Since the collective obligation is beyond the capacity of an individual agent, the agents have to communicate, cooperate, coordinate and negotiate with each other to achieve the collective task, for this purpose several theories have been developed about joint goals, plans, and intentions.

- In the research the three researchers offered a glance of some observations and they hope to extend this area in the future work.

The research comes to an end of conclusion that the researchers have provided some notions of responsibility that are useful in the process of designing an organizational structure, and conversely in understanding how a given organization is structured.

In addition to notions, the researches have shown that responsibilities have an impact both on what agents should do within an organization and to whom to turn when things go wrong.

The research results ( observations) are shown :- The organizational structure plays an even greater role in the

monitoring and control of execution of the tasks for which the agent is responsible.

- The logical framework that are presented by them offers a semantics for the notions of responsibility.

- Giving some insights into when an agent can really be held responsible for when tasks are not performed.

2. Conflict in Organizations: Beyond effectiveness and performance. ( Written By: Carsten and Bianca) , University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In this article the researchers do three things.

First , they briefly review the insights about conflict that conflict management research and theory have revealed thus far.

Second, and more importantly, they provide an overview of the variables and processes that are key in organizational psychology yet isolated from conflict theory and research.

Third, they briefly introduce the four articles that follow

this introductory article and that each in their own way try to redress the problems.

Two perspectives surface in literature an information processing perspective and a conflict typology framework are proposed the ways that employees manage conflict at work conflict researchers have examined the possible effects conflict has on individual and work-team effectiveness and productivity

The information-processing perspective implies that the relationship between conflict and information processing is curvilinear so that performance benefits from moderate levels of conflict, but not from either low or high levels of conflict.

The conflict typology framework relies on the distinction between task conflict and relationship conflict. In essence, it argues that relationship conflict interferes with performing tasks, and thus lowers effectiveness and innovativeness. Task conflict, however, is thought to trigger information processing and to lead participants to consider multiple perspectives and various problem solutions.

OverviewEach in its own way, and together, they shed light on how

conflict theory and research can be connected to con temporary work in organizational psychology on job satisfaction (and related constructs such as commitment and motivation), well-being, and occupational health. The results of their study reveal that within

both organizations relationship conflict was negatively related to job satisfaction and well-being. Further more, task conflicts were negatively related to job satisfaction and well- being in the private ,high goal orientation organization but not in the public, low goal- orientation culture. In the latter organizational culture, supporting relations appeared to play a much more important role than goal orientation.

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