Modern Organizations

Organizations are tools to exercise power.

QUESTION: In which theoretical approach does power play a central part?

• Symbolic Interactionism?
• Functionalism ?
• Conflict Theory?
  
  

Overhead

Three ways to exercise power:   

1. Rational Bureaucratic: legal rulership

2. Traditional: traditions give authority to rule

3. Charismatic: charisma of a person

Ideal Types                                    

Rational Bureaucratic, traditional and charismatic leadership are ideal types of leadership. Ideal types are theoretical examples that illustrate reality. Real empirical examples are usually a mixture.

To what extent do T.V. evangelists use

• rational bureaucratic organizations?
• traditions to justify their authority (Christian traditions)?
• their charisma?
  
  

Question: What is a rational bureaucratic organization?

An instrument of legal rulership.

Overhead

A hierarchical institution that controls information to exercise the will and values of the top leader.

This is achieved by written rules and the storage of information in files.

Officials (members) of the organization are highly trained.  They are commitment tot eh organization. They separate their official life from their private life.

Five points that, according to the textbook, pinpoint the most essential characteristics of an ideal typical bureaucratic organization:

overhead

Five essential characteristics of an ideal typical bureaucratic organization (textbook pp.208-209):

1. Clear-cut hierarchy of authority.

2. Written rules specify the conduct of officials at all levels of the organization.

3. Officials are full-time and salaried.

4. Separation of official tasks and private life.

5. Separation of organizational property and private property of the official.

Who makes the rules and values that guide organizations?

It was Max Weber who described how values, held by the individual, have become irrelevant in a bureaucratic machinery of modern institutions.

Organizational behavior is not guided by individual ethics, but by written rules of the organization.

Rationalization or bureaucratization destroys individual creativity.

Weber even stated that individuals in the organization act as brainwashed wheels in a bureaucratic system             .

Today, organizations strictly follow rational bureaucratic rules.

Foucault's theory of organizations: The Control of Time and Space

Time: exact scheduling and timetables that efficiently "distribute bodies"

Space: "The architecture of an organization is directly involved with the social makeup and the system of authority" (Giddens 2000, p.210).

• Top people on top floor
• Young faculty member has no windows in her office
• Most important: Surveillance
  
  

Bentham's Panopticum 19^th century

Film: Brazil, constant surveillance by the government. Problems in the bureaucratic machinery when a bug (fly) that came between the typewriter and the paper renders the name of an innocent citizen.

The nightmarish futuristic satire Brazil effectively blurs all lines between illusion and reality. Jonathan Pryce plays a
government statistician who chooses to blind himself to the decaying, drone-like world around him. Whenever real
life becomes too oppressive, Pryce fantasizes (to the tune of the 1940s big-band hit "Brazil") about being an
alternate-world superhero, forever rescuing beautiful Kim Griest. The omnipresent computer that controls
everything in the "real" world malfunctions, causing the mistaken-identity assassination of an innocent citizen. When
Pryce routinely investigates the error, he meets Griest, the girl of his dreams. It turns out that she is an associate of
terrorist Robert DeNiro, whom the computer had originally intended to target for execution. The price Pryce pays
for tumbling to this fact is a close encounter with Michael Palin, the man in charge of lobotomizing troublesome
citizens. Does Pryce escape his fate? Well....he thinks so. Director Terry Gilliam does too much very well in Brazil
(a typically excessive moment is the hilarious plastic-surgery treatment given Pryce's mother, played by Katherine
Helmond).  -- Hal Erickson, All-Movie Guide

Limits of Maximizing Surveillance

Weber and Foucault argued that the most effective way to run an organization is to maximize surveillance

• dependence on the complexity of someone's task
• limits of efficiency
• organizational culture, a self control mechanism
• tradition in Japan, recent focus in the U.S.
  

Formal and Informal Relations within Organizations

Weber was interested in forms of formal organization. Here are two examples of investagations of informal organizations.

1. Hawthorne studies [not in book]:

Roethlisberger, F.J. & W.J.Dickson. 1939. Management and the worker, Havard University Press.

The study of the Bank Wiring Observation Room (1931-32) showed that cohesive groups of equals established norms of performance.   They created their own definition of a "fair day's work".

2. Peter Blau (1963): informal relations  

Studied income-tax investigators. They should discuss problems with their immediate supervisors, not with their rank equal colleagues. Afraid to weaken their chances for promotion agents are hesitant to consult their superiors.

• Agents violated official rules and consulted each other.
• They established informal procedures.
• They established a cohesive set of loyalties.

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