1 The Subject Is Organizations I. What is a Formal Organization? Special type of secondary group designated to allow a relatively large number of people to accomplish complex goals. –clearly stated operating principles –special mechanisms to coordinate the activities of their members –clear lines of authority and communication –identifiable leaders –unambiguous boundaries.

2 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (1) Organizations are ubiquitous. We live in the age of formal organizations. In modern industrialized societies, we do find large numbers of organizations engaged in performing many highly diverse tasks.

3 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (2) organizations and their bureaucracies let us “get things done.” An organization is designed to accomplish routine tasks by large numbers of people as efficiently as possible. Most contemporary formal organizations take the form of bureaucracies. –(1) an extensive division of labor –(2) explicit written rules and regulations –(3) written records –(4) a hierarchy of authority –(5) hiring and promotion on the basis of objective qualifications –(6) impersonal, universalistic treatment

4 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (2) organizations and their bureaucracies let us “get things done.” All of these characteristics ultimately serve a single purpose: to make the organizations as efficient and rational as possible. By rationality Weber means consciously using the most effective means to pursue a chosen end.

5 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (3) Formal organizations become responsible for many social ills. A. Power Elite and Oligarchy Formal organizations have contributed to intensifying the structured social inequality. Formal organizations have created many elite positions such as corporate executives, high-ranking public officers, etc who retain and exert great power on society. “iron law of oligarchy” –Bureaucracies often fall under the control of a small number of top leaders.

6 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (3) Formal organizations become responsible for many social ills. A. Power Elite and Oligarchy C. Wright Mills (1956) –“power elite” in the state bureaucracy, the military, and the large corporations Ralf Dahrendorf (1959) –the basis of the class structure was no longer the ownership of the means of production but the occupancy of positions that allowed the wielding of organizational authority.

7 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (3) Formal organizations become responsible for many social ills. B. Damaged Personalities and Psyches Alienation: the state of our feeling that we are ruled by the impersonal forces of the market and the inhumane decisions of bureaucracies. overconformity and stunting of normal personality development

8 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (3) Formal organizations become responsible for many social ills. C. Trained Incapacity and Deskilling Trained Incapacity: a kind of tunnel vision that keeps individuals from responding effectively to new situations. Deskilling refers to the breaking down of jobs into smaller units, each to be tackled separately, so that low levels of skill are required for restricted tasks.

9 The Subject Is Organizations II. The Importance of Formal Organizations (4) Organizations are collective actors.

10 The Subject Is Organizations III. Five Elements of Organizations (1) Social Structure the patterned or regularized aspects of the social interactions and relationships existing among participants in an organization

11 The Subject Is Organizations III. Five Elements of Organizations (2) Participants Organizations require participants and are also fundamentally shaped by them. (3) Goals Conceptions of desired ends serve as direction, constraints, identification and motivation, and symbolic functions.

12 The Subject Is Organizations III. Five Elements of Organizations (4) Technology the physical combined with the intellectual or knowledge processes by which materials in some form are transformed into outputs (5) Environment the physical, political, technological, social and institutional (cultural) context to which an organization must adapt

13 The Subject Is Organizations IV.The Benefits of organizations Organizations are durable. Organizations are reliable. Organizations are accountable.

14 The Subject Is Organizations V. Three Definitions of Organizations (1) Organizations as Rational Systems Definition: Organizations are collectivities oriented to the pursuit of relatively specific goals and exhibiting relatively highly formal social structures. purposeful and coordinated agents. goal specificity Formalization e.g. Scientific Management Approach

15 The Subject Is Organizations V. Three Definitions of Organizations (2) Organizations as Natural Systems Definition: Organizations are collectivities whose participants share a common interest in the survival of the system and who engage in collective activities, informally structured, to secure this end. goal complexity (as opposed to goal specificity) informal structures of organizations (as opposed to formalization of organizations) e.g., The Human Relations Approach

16 The Subject Is Organizations V. Three Definitions of Organizations (3) Organizations as Open Systems Definition: Organizations are systems of interdependent activities linking shifting coalitions of participants; the systems are imbedded in – dependent on continuing exchanges with and constituted by – the environments in which they operate. Organizations are open to and dependent on flows of personnel, resources, and information from outside. Environments shape, support, and infiltrate organizations. e.g., Contingency Theory: Lawrence and Lorsch (1967)