Slide 2.

Chapter 2
Organisations and Organising:
Bureaucracy, Control, Processes
and Negotiated Orders

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.2

Organisations and Management as part of

the modernist search for control
Modernization: more problems/issues occurs,
e.g. accidents, conflicts, mistakes and
failures made by being.
Modernization: the problems of scarcity and
desire remain
Work activities occurs within the context of
market pressures and the dynamic of
competitive corporate activity
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.3

Modernism and management

The key principle of
modernism in work
organisation is to achieve
greater human control
over the world and to
bring about general
progress in the condition
of humankind.

Managers are the

specialised experts within
work organisations who
rationally analyse the tasks
for which the organisation
was set up and the
resources required to
complete them and, in the
light of these analyses,
design work systems which
achieve sufficient control
over work activities to ensure
successful task completion.

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.4

pure or ideal type bureaucracy

every operating rule and procedure would be formally written down;
tasks would be divided up and allocated to people with the formally
certified expertise to carry them out;
activities would be controlled and coordinated by officials organised
in a hierarchy of authority;
all communications and commands would pass up or down this
hierarchy without missing out any steps;
posts would always be filled, and promotions achieved, by the best
qualified people;
office-holders posts would constitute their only employment and the
level of their salary would reflect their level in the hierarchy;
posts could not become the property or private territory of the officeholder; the officers authority deriving from their appointed office
and not from their person;
all decisions and judgements would be made impersonally and
neutrally without emotion, personal preference or prejudice.
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.5

Can bureaucracy be removed from organisations?

TUTORIAL

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.6

Modernism and The Management of Systems

The system idea of modern management
system can be conceive organisational
elements as the body parts or movements of
a big animals.
Organisations like a living creature: they both
take resources into themselves and produce
outputs (these two activities are related to
each other) = open systems.

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.7

Open Systems Thinking

A way of analysing any complex entity in
terms of system inputs, system outputs and
an internal conversion process, with
communication links or control actions
monitoring the outputs to enable any
necessary process adjustments to be made.

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.8

Figure 2.1 A living open system

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.9

Figure 2.2 The organisation as a big open-system machine

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.10

If organisation is perceived as a living open system, identify the

main inputs and outputs and some of the control actions that adjust
inputs as a result of monitoring outputs. You may choose any
organisation or organisational sub-unit in open system terms. See
Case 2.1 in your textbook (Watson 2006, p 44) as a reference for
this question.

TUTORIAL

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.11

1. What value or insight, is there in thinking of a work organisation

as if it were a living creature, like the one in the picture?
(answer p 42)
2. Where does the metaphor break down or become unhelpful
where a living creature coping with its environment and
organisation functioning in the social and economic world fail to
be helpful. (answer p 43)

TUTORIAL

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.12

Organisational goals
lies at the heart of the
system control thinking

Table 2.1 A systems-control framing of organisations

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.13

Organisational goals
lies at the heart of the
system control thinking
Table 2.2 Ten textbook definitions of organisations
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.14

Control is the main

theme in
management
Table 2.3 A dozen management students quick answers to the question, What is
management?
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.15

Organisational Goals seem to precede

managerial action

Managerial
Actions

Goal

Control
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.16

The problem with organisational goals

Attaching purpose or goals to organisations avoids
awkward questions about the human interests and
values, which pervade all organisational activities.
By suggesting that organisations themselves have
goals and that management exists to achieve those
politically-neutral organisational goals, we duck all
questions about whose goals the organisation exists to
fulfil and we avoid any debate about conflicts over
goals and purposes.
Issues of human conflict, argument and debate are
effectively pushed out of the picture.
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.17

Organisation exists to perform tasks e.g. to

make clothes, car or deliver services.
But task is not goals. Goals is much more
complex and much more ambiguous than
tasks.
To accomplish 1 task may involve many
goals.
Goal and task are mutually influence.
Different goals for 1 task (page 50)
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.18

Process-Relational View
In system-control view, we have to realise
that in fact:
1. Organisation cant be perfectly controlled
2. System has no mind to perform task rationally
3. System may not really aware of organisational goals
4. Along the way of system-control, problems like conflict,
arguments, debates and ambiguities may arise.

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.19

Process-Relational View
Process-relational view has more goals (multiplicity)
compare to system-control view.
The reason is the goals of process-relational view
emphasizes not only on the system goals (input and
output only)as in system-control view, but also goals of
human individual and groups
Process-relational view emphasizes on How things
happen in practice, so this make up the overall process
of organising and managing (human process and
relationships that go on in every work organisation)

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.20

Table 2.4 A process-relational view of organisations

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.21

Defining Organisations
Work organisations are work arrangements involving
relationships, understandings and processes where people are
employed, or their services otherwise engaged, to complete tasks
undertaken in the organisations name.
Can organisation be controlled? Can manager exercise power
in organisations?
1. Only partial control because organisation exist through human
relationships, and human relationships never allow the total
control of some people over others.
2. Power is rarely uncontested and attempts to control are typically
resisted.
3. Control is achieve through negotiation, persuasion, and
motivation, some device of system may use e.g. rules and
procedures
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.22

A fundamental organisational
contradiction

Organisations use people but people also use

organisations.
Organisations depend on the passive controllability
of employees as resources but at the same time
(and in a way that is potentially incompatible with
this) they have to allow employees the freedom to
take initiatives and apply discretion to the
performance of organisational tasks.
A tension thus exists between pressures to make
people controllable and pressures to allow them
discretion.
Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.23

The organisational paradox of

consequences

The means chosen in organisations to achieve certain

ends have the tendency to undermine or defeat the very
ends for which they have been adopted.
It arises as part of the tension between two contradictory
principles of modern work organisations and the
associated institution of employment.
This is the tension whereby people accept a degree of
control but always insist, to some extent, on doing things
their own way, a way that will not necessarily fit in with
organisational priorities.

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006

Slide 2.24

List what are the factors contributing to the contradiction of the

human element in the modern work organisation

TUTORIAL

Watson, Organising and Managing Work, 2nd edition Pearson Education Limited 2006