Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems

The subject is organizations

The importance of organizations
Ubiquity
Our modern industrialized society has as its dominant characteristic that it is an
organizational society, which fulfills different tasks and fulfills several functions. Some are as old
as the public administration; others have been added as the production and distribution of goods and
services. With these, we make things done and achieve the goals.
There is a difference (according to Standard Statistical Establishment List) between
establishment and company. The first one is an economic unit at a single location and the second
one is a business organization consisting of one or more establishments under common ownership.
Organizations developed gradually, uncontroversial, almost ignored by society, despite the
shift from bureaucratic family businesses to large companies that led to a social revolution. They
began in the nineteenth century in Europe and America during the economic expansion by the
industrial revolution, reaching the point of being contract-based associative forms.
Source of social ills?
Organizations created an emergence of a power elite, made up of the state bureaucracy, the
military and the big corporations, changing the class structure, moving from giving importance to
the means of production and now considering it necessary to occupy positions that allow for
organizational authority. These bureaucrats have great influence on political leaders around the
world.
Another problem it brings is the rationalization of modern life in every area.
Feminism criticizes that feeds the dualism of the private-expressive and public-
instrumental, as well as the recreation of the patterns of oppression and the priority to male virtues,
with a gender bias.
It is also said that they damage the personality of their members and that they are
complicated and inefficient, in addition to taking advantage of their size and power to exploit
others, absorbing functions of society.
As media
Organizations have an important effect on our collective lives, but attention must be paid to
the organization as such and not to the message it conveys. Being an extension of ourselves and
achieving goals beyond the individual, they are themselves the mechanism by which that goal is
pursued. Some examples are President Kennedy and the military options of the Pentagon, the
relationship we make between health and hospital but not medical care, schools and education even
when they are a means of turning people into employees.
As collective actors
Organizations are collective actors that make decisions, use resources, enter into contracts,
and own property, i.e., they are considered legal persons and have relationships with natural persons
or other legal persons.
Theoretical significance
 Organizations have a sociological meaning that allows us to understand the social world,
since they represent trends that are noticed in all human groups, carrying out different social
processes such as communications, power exercises or goal setting. However, there is something
that differentiates them, but makes it easier to study the processes in organizations due to their more
developed form. Thus, it allows us to understand how social processes operate in different social
structures.
Organizations as an area of study
Emergence of the Area
The study of organizations is both a specialized field of sociology and a focus of
multidisciplinary research. The forerunners focused on prisons, party structures, but they did not
seek to generalize beyond the area, they did not focus on organizations. Industrial psychologists
pursued problems such as low morale, fatigue, but did not attempt to determine how the
characteristics of different organizations influenced workers' reactions. Other theorists approached
issues concerning management albeit in a prescriptive approach.
Weber and Michels' translation of bureaucracy analyses was the basis in sociology.
Columbia University became interested in this field, compiling empirical and theoretical materials
on various aspects of organizations. The generalization in the structure and functioning was being
developed and tested.
In the interdisciplinary field, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in its Industrial
Management department created a group of political scientists, economists, engineers and
psychologists to build a behavior-oriented management science focused on decision making. A new
area of study was identified at a theoretical abstraction and a subject matter that encouraged and
rewarded empirical investigation.
Common and Divergent Interest
Common Features
All organizations are social structures created by individuals to support the collective
pursuit of specific goals, all must define their objectives, must induce participants to contribute
services, must control and coordinate those contributions, participants go through the selection-
formation-replacement process. In addition, not all resources can go in pursuit of the goal, some
must be earmarked to maintain the organization.
Diverse organizations
Organizations come in a variety of sizes and shapes, the largest being military services,
Walmart and GM.
Most U.S. employees are employees of someone else (95%), being hired by companies.
The most productive and innovative businesses are small and medium sized businesses,
which increasingly reduce their number of workers. At the same time, small organizations are the
largest (90% of companies employed 12 people), and ownership is usually sole proprietorship.
Many people are employed in the public sector, with one sixth employed in federal, state,
and local governments.
Changes in job percentages are obvious. In the 60s, manufacturing and services were half;
in the 90s, it was one of five in favor of services. In terms of gender also changed, in the 40s women
were 20% and in the 90s 46%.
 The organizations with spirit of profit predominate, however they are also without spirit of
profit, of charity, which are an alternative, offering 7% of the jobs.
Employees no longer feel tied to specific employers. Employees for more than ten years in
the same place were reduced and now there are more employees in non-standard agreements, e.g.
part-time or independent contractors.
There are non-employer organizations, such as the Church, voluntary associations, labor
unions, political parties, professional societies, fraternities, activist groups, neighborhoods.
All have structural differences, such as the way authority is presented, how capital is
allocated, preference for machinery or human resources, the contexts in which they are presented,
and so on.
Organizations with specialized goals began in the nineteenth century with the railroad.
Now, with the East Asian Tigers, interest has been generated in their organizations because
of their context, such as their belief system, the connection between family and firm, and other
temporal, regional, cultural factors.
Diverse research interest and settings
There are differences in the interests, training and employment settings of those who study
the organizations. Disciplines also affect, even when a single type of organization is chosen to
study, as differences are sought between organizations and between different aspects of an
organization.
There is basic research, which is mainly devoted to describing the existing characteristics
and relationships of an organization to understand its nature and operation, throwing practical
applications and driven above all by theory and concepts. Similarly, there are applied studies, which
seek to solve specific problems or bring changes in the system, generating general knowledge and
interested in incorporating any variable that can help, being then interdisciplinary. Applied research
is more likely to be conduced by researchers located in nonacademic settings and the results are less
likely to be published; basic research is conducted by academic departments of colleges. Basic:
mode 1, discipline based, university centered and dominated by highly trained individual scientist;
Mode 2, transdisciplinary, less hierarchical, group based, consulting companies.
There is an intermediate, composed of members of faculties in professional schools, writing
cases that illustrate problems and with tendency to applied studies, being pressured by the students,
consulting work or the university.
Diverse levels of analysis
Determined by the nature of the dependent variable, which means, the behavior of
individuals, organizations, systems.
Social psychological level: behavior of individuals or interpersonal relation within
organizations. Organizational characteristics as contexts or environment, trying to explain impact
on the behavior or attitudes.
Organizational structure level: structural features or processes that characterize
organizations, explain them and their subdivisions. Focus on subunits like work groups,
departments, authority ranks; analytical components like communication networks or hierarchy.
 Ecological level: characteristics or actions of the organization viewed as a collective entity
operating in a larger system of relations; examine specific organization or class and the environment
or the relations that develop among an interdependent system
Early research was conducted at the social psychological level in the early 60s and the last
one was the ecological, in the late 60s.
Another base of divergence: theoretical perspective. Rational, natural or open system is
viewed as central to interpreting the work.
The elements of organization
Social Structure
Patterned or regularized aspects of the relationship among participants in an organization. It
has three components:
First, normative structure, including values or the criteria employed in selecting the goal of
behavior, norms or the generalized rules governing behavior that specify appropriate means for
pursuing goals, and role or expectations for or evaluate standards employed in assessing the
behavior of occupants of specific social positions. These are organized to constitute a coherent and
consistent set of beliefs and prescriptions governing the behavior of participants.
Second, the cultural-cognitive structure, the beliefs and understandings that participants
share about the nature of their situation and interest.
Third, behavioral structure, focusing on an actual behavior rather that on normative
prescriptions or cognitive patterns guiding behavior. Activities, interactions and sentiments that
exhibit some consistency among group members to describe the sociometric structure, also with the
power structure.
These are not independent but also not identical. Groups vary in the extent to which these
structures are aligned, it can be possible to correspond closely to practice or to exist a large gap
between what the rules specify and the behavior. But, all three are always in a state of dynamic
tension, existing and changing somewhat independently of the other while influencing the others.
These three interrelated structures constitute the social structure of a collectivity. It can include
sometimes conflict, and it has helped to shape social structure. It can be structure or structuration,
because of its dynamic connotation.
There are formal and informal structures. The first one is in which the social positions and
relationships among them have been explicitly specified and defined independently of the personal
characteristics and relations of the participants. The second one is in which it is impossible to
distinguish between the characteristics of the positions and the prescribed relations and the
characteristics of the participants, changing as a function of their personal characteristics and the
interpersonal relations they develop.
Participants – Social Actors
Individuals who make contributions to the organizations. All participate in more than one
organization and the extent and intensiveness of their involvement may vary. There are many types
of participants, with different interest in and make different demands on and contributions.
Stakeholders: are affected by and have legitimate claims on an organization.
Differences at: grade of incorporation of facets of participants, personality and private life
information important to the functioning of the organization.
 Demographic characteristics have important consequences for many aspects of structure.
Social actors, constitutes and shapes the structure of the organization and carries on its
functions. Social structure only exists if the social actors carry out the requisite activities.
Instruments of continuity and change of the structure. Agency: ability of an actor to have some
effect on the world, alter the rules or the distribution of resources
Duality of social structure: both medium and outcome, influences ongoing actions and is
constituted by such actions.
Goals
Important but controversial. Some say that are indispensable to the understanding of
organizations, others question if perform any function other than to justify past actions. Central
point of reference, tentative defined as conceptions of desired ends that participants attempt to
achieve through their performance of task activities, involving cultural-cognitive and normative
elements.
Technology
All work and possesses technology for doing that work. Is often partially embedded in
machines and mechanical equipment but also knowledge and skills of participants.
Environment
Specific physical, technological, cultural, social environment to which it must adapt. Great
emphasis on these connections, pervasive influence, affecting every organizational actor and
structural feature.
Relation with participants: heavy cultural and social baggage obtained from social contexts,
involved in more than one organization at any given time.
With technologies: imported from the environment in the form of mechanical equipment,
packaged programs and sets of instructions, and trained workers. Adaptation to the larger
occupational structure in the selection and deployment of workers within the organization, source of
the inputs to be processed by the organization.
With goals: what is called goals by a specific organization is, from the point of view of the
larger society, its specialized function. An organization may thus expect societal support for its
specialized function.
Social structure: reflect important features borrowed from the environment.
Organizations are systems of elements, each of which affects and is affected by the others.
The capacities of organizations
Much in demand because of:
1- Durable, persist over time, routinely and continuously supporting efforts to carry on a
set of specified activities. It does not imply effectiveness or rigidity.
2- Reliability, good at doing the same things in the same way
3- Accountable, framework of rules that provides both guidelines and justifications for
decisions and activities, past behaviors, legal codes that define the powers and limits of
organizations. Have records. Hierarchy of authority.
Defining the concept of organization
 1- Rational system perspective
2- Natural system perspective
3- Open system perspective
A Rational System Definition
1- Barnard: formal organization is that kind of cooperation among men that is conscious
deliberate, purposeful
2- March and Simon: assemblage of interacting human beings and are the largest
assemblages in our society that have anything resembling a central coordinate system,
comparable in significance to the individual organism in biology
3- Blau and Scott: formally established for the explicit purpose of achieving certain goals,
formal organizations
4- Etzioni: social units deliberately constructed and reconstructed to seek specific goals
Two structural features: are collectivities-oriented to the pursuit of goals, purposeful
because activities and interactions of participants are coordinate to achieve specified goals, explicit,
defined; collectivities that exhibit a high degree of formalization, cooperation conscious and
deliberate. Both seen as variables.
Collectivities oriented to the pursuit of relatively specific goals and exhibiting relatively
highly formalized social structures.
A Natural System Definition
Focusing attention on the behavioral structure.
Collectivities whose participants are pursuing multiple interests, both disparate and
common, but who recognize the value of perpetuating the organization as an important resource.
The informal structure of relations that develops among participants is more influential in guiding
the behavior of participants than is the formal structure.
Social consensus: as comprised of individuals sharing primarily common objectives. Social
order is the reflection of underlying consensus among participants, cooperative behavior and shared
norms and values.
Social conflict: resulting from the suppression of some interest by others, coercion not
consensus, dominance of the weaker by more powerful groups. Instability and change.
Open System Definition
Dependent on flows of personnel, resources and information from outside. Environments
shape, support and infiltrate organizations. External can be more critical than internal elements.
Individuals have multiple loyalties and identities, depending on the bargains they can strike.
Cannot be assumed to hold common goals or even to seek the survival of the organization.
Less interested in distinguishing formal and informal structures. Systems of interdependent
activities, some tightly connected and some loosely coupled, all must be continuously motivated if
the organization is to persist.
Congeries of interdependent flows and activities linking shifting coalitions of participants
embedded in wider material-resource and institutional environments.