Max Weber Bureaucracy, Subsystems in the Organisation and Relationship between contingency or situational approach

Max Weber Bureaucracy

1. A formal hierarchical structure

Formal hierarchy as the basis of central planning and centralized decision making.

2. Management by rules

 Ensuring decisions made at high levels are executed consistently at lower levels.

3. Organization by functional specialty

Differentiation of work

4. An "up-focused" or "in-focused" mission

Up-focused mission serves stockholders, the board, or empowering agency. In-focused mission set to meet organizational goals

5. Purposely impersonal

Equal treatment of employees and clients

6. Employment based on technical qualifications

Work done by suitably competent personnel Protection from arbitrary dismissal

Meaning of System perspective:

§  Considering all the behaviours of a system in the context of its environment is the systems perspective.

§  While the concept of system itself is a more general notion that indicates separation of part of the universe from the rest, the idea of a systems perspective is to use a non-reductionist approach to the task of describing the properties of the system itself.

§  In the systems perspective, once one has identified the system as a separate part of the universe, one is not allowed to progressively decompose the system into isolated parts. Instead, one is obligated to describe the system.

§  If one uses separation into parts, as part of the description of the system properties, this is only part of a complete description of the behaviour of the whole, which must include a description of the relationships between these parts and any additional information needed to describe the behaviour of the entire system.

§  Further, in a systems perspective one should be careful about considering the system in the context of the environment and not as an isolated entity. Thus, one should include the interactions and relationships between the system and the environment.

Subsystems in the organisation

§  There are various subsystems in the organisation and have been classified in different ways.

§  Kast and Rosenzweig have identified five subsystems. These are: - Goals and value subsystem, psychological subsystems, technical subsystem, Structural subsystem, Managerial subsystem

§  A more comprehensive view has been adopted by Carzo and Yanouzas who identify: -

Ø Technical subsystem

Ø Social subsystem

Ø Power subsystem

These subsystems are interconnected and interrelated

Technical subsystem

§  The basic component of the technical subsystem is a group of tasks or activities that can be performed by an individual.

§  Behaviour in the technical subsystem is governed by rules, procedures, policies, and other prescriptions.

§  The basic purpose of the behaviour so that the organisation members may develop reasonable expectations of others’ work behaviour in the organisation.

Social subsystem

§  When people are set to perform their tasks, they develop some sort of informal relationships.

§  The informal organisation expects certain norms of behaviour from its members and individuals have expectancies of psychological satisfaction they hope to derive from association with others on the job.

§  Both these expectancies interact resulting into individuals modifying their behaviour according to group norms and the group modifying what it expects from individuals because of the impact of their personally factors on group norms.

Power system

§  Every organisation has a power subsystem and people in the organisation elaborate their behaviour through the power relationship.

§  Power subsystem is important to transform a decision into action in the organisation.

§  There is hierarchy of power centres in the organisation because people aspiring for power have varying degrees of success as they have varying degrees of control on how the power can be acquired such as formal position, job importance, expertise, personal characteristics, and coalition of individuals in the organisation.

Contingency Approach

§  The contingency approach is a management theory that suggests the most appropriate style of management is dependent on the context of the situation and that adopting a single, rigid style is inefficient in the long term. Contingency managers typically pay attention to both the situation and their own styles and make efforts to ensure both interact efficiently.

§  The contingency approach contrasts with other forms of leadership, such as trait-based management, whereby personality and individual make-up predict patterns of management and responses to given situations over time. Another management approach is style-based app.

§  Contingency theory is beneficial to organisations because of the potential for learning from specific situations and using these lessons to influence future management of the same or similar situations. The ability to adapt to external pressures and changes is also an advantage. Contingency theory may also produce more well-rounded leaders who are able to develop their skills in multiple areas.

Relationship between contingency or situational approach

§  The basic idea of the contingency approach is that there cannot be a particular management action or design which will be appropriate for all situations.

§  Contingency theorists find that systems approach does not adequately spell out the precise relationship between organisation and its environmental components.

§  When a subsystem in an organisation behaves in response to another system or subsystem, we say that the response was contingent on environment.

§  Hence, a contingency approach is an approach where the behaviour of one subunit is dependent on its environmental relationship to other unit or subunit that has some control over the consequences desired by the subunit.

Relationship between contingency and system approaches

§  The relationship of the contingency approach to systems theory is parallel to the relationship of the neo-classical approach to the classical model of organisation theory.

§  They have tried to modify the basic premises of classical theory by adding insights from the behavioural science to account for the realities of human behaviour in organisation.

Comparison between system and contingency approaches

        i.     Model of Human Being: - The former considers the full range of human needs and motivation, while contingency approach, is more interested in structural adaption of organisations to their task environment. such, a difference may be accounted by the fact that social psychologists have been the principal contributors to contingency approach.

      ii.       Organisational variables: - System approach is all encompassing and takes much broader view of organisational variables. Contingency approach on the other hand, concentrates on structural adaptations of organisations.

   iii. Evolution: - This has been recognised by the equifinality characteristic of open system which suggests that different adaptation strategies are available to an organisation facing a particular problem.

Implications of contingency approach

The real implications of contingency approach can be analysed in the following manner: -

        i.       An action may be suitable for one organisation at a particular time but may not be suitable for other organisations at the same time or for the same organisation at different times. The basic reason behind this is that situational variables on which action dependent may not be similar in various organisation or in the same organisation over the period.

      ii.  It suggests that no organisational design can be suitable for all situations, the suitable design is one determined keeping in view the requirements of environment, technology, size, and people. It is not enough to suggest the need for integrating organisation with environment, the approach must also suggest and explicitly define certain pattern of organisational variables.

   iii.  Kast and Rosenzweig feel that this approach can be useful in strategy formulation, organisational design, information, decision systems, influence systems and leadership and organisational improvements.