public services information management 8: organisations and information

Public Services Information Management

8: Organisations and Information

Public Services Information Management8: Organisations and Information

Weber’s ‘ideal-type’ of of bureaucracy:

• Job specialisation

• Authority hierarchy

• Formal rules and regulations

• Impersonality

• Formal selection

• Career orientation


To this, we would nowadays add the following:

• Importance of the ‘informal organisation’

• Organisations as ‘constructed by practical rationality of their members’ (Silverman)


Burns and Stalker(1961) The Management of Innovation

• Mechanistic

• Organismic

organisations


Mechanistic form ( 1 of 2)

• appropriate to conditions of relative stability.

• highly structured, members have well-defined, formal jobdescriptions/roles, and precise positions vis a vis others

• direction is from the top - down through the hierarchy. Communication is similarly vertical.


Mechanistic form (2 of 2)

• The organisation insists on loyalty and conformity from members to each other, to managers and to the organisation itself in relation to policies and methods.

• members need sufficient functionary ability to operate within organisational constraints


Problems? ( 1 of 2)

• organisational creativity and effort can focus on internal problems only - systems and procedures.

• heavy administrative overhead - internal procedures consume more resources than external customer- focused operations.

• slow in responding to external change - lose touch with customers and external stakeholders.


Problems? (2 of 2)

• Parochialism, defend-my-patch behaviours occur. Organisational members can develop unhelpful, bounded mind-sets - perceptions of external and internal. Job and departmental boundaries can lead to the rational-legal organisation becoming bogged down in a spaghetti of tortuous processes and "need-to-consult" everyone and anyone.

• The status quo is defended rather than changed to meet new circumstances.


The organic/organismic form (1 of 2)

• suitable to unstable, turbulent and changing conditions.

• The organismic firm tries to re-shape itself to address new problems and tackle unforeseen contingencies

• rather than a rigid, highly specialised structure – a fluid organisational design is adopted which facilitates flexibility, adaptation, job redefinition


The organic/organismic form (2 of 2)

• departments, sections and teams are formed and reformed. Communication is lateral as well as vertical – with emphasis on a network rather than a hierarchy.

• organisational members are personally and actively commitment to it beyond what is basically operationally or functionally necessary.


McGregor: Theory X Propositions

A manager holding to these would be inclined to believe and state that:

1.On average my staff really do not want to work.

2.. Even though I provide good rewards - many of my staff are still disinclined to apply consistently the kinds of effort the organisation needs.

3. Indeed most people prefer to be directed. They do not really wish to carry the burden of responsibility indeed they tend to avoid this. They have little ambition and prefer a secure, steady life.


A Theory Y manager tends to believe that

• Given the right conditions for employees, their application of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as rest or play. Work is play, offers satisfactions and meaning.

• There are alternatives to reliance on external controls, pushing and threats - implied or real. These are not the only means for linking individual effort with organisational objectives. If people feel committed, they will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of the firm's objectives.

• Their objectives will complement the firm's and commitment is a function of the "intrinsic" rewards associated with their achievement i.e. not just extrinsic rewards/punishments.


A Theory Y manager tends to believe that .

•The Theory Y manager recognises the influence of learning. He/she believes that if the right conditions are created the average person learns not to accept and seek responsibility.

•The capacity to exercise imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organisational problems is widely not narrowly distributed in the work force

•In modern organisations, the intellectual potential of the average person are only partially utilised. People are capable of handling more complex problems.


‘Line’ management is vertical

‘Staff’ or ‘professional’ allegiance is horizontal

<-Professionals->


Putting it all together…

Bureaucratic ‘Personal’

Mechanistic Organismic

Theory X Theory Y

Line (Vertical) Staff (Horizontal)


Working in smaller groups, consider the appropriate communication policies and strategies for

(a) Upward (b) Lateral (c) Downward

communication flows in :

Mechanistic v. Organismic organisations


Then consider…..

How do we move from mechanistic to organismic models of organisations (with 1-2 years) ?

public services information management 8: organisations and information

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