Organizational communication

THE THEORY OF ORGANIZATION









ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION
MARKETING 11-1C
MAYA LISA
POPY BONANZA
SHINTA
SHERLY FEN
WINCENT OCTAVIANUS



23 MARET 2009
STIKOM LONDON SCHOOL OF PUBLIC RELATIONS JAKARTA

THE CLASSICAL THEORY
An example of scientific management in practice concern the manager of an agency who requires all employees to time their interview with clients, record the number of minutes involved in clerical work, and calculate the average length of an interview and the average time involved in written work. Norms are calculated for all employees and regularly reported at weekly meetings. Employees deviating downward form the norms are constantly reminded of the relationship between time and money. Continued deviation downward is rewarded by eventual termination.
What is important to consider ? That the classical theory of organizing worker developed to meet the needs of scientific manager. Two foremost scholars of the classical school were Henry fayol and Max Weber other were James Mooney and Alan Reiley, Luther Gulik and Lyndall Urwiek, and Chester Barnard.
Among the recommended principles of management. Fayol include the following :
 Division of work
 Authority and responsibility
 Discipline
 Unity of command
 Unity of direction
 Subordination of individual interest to general interest
 Remuneration of personnel
 Centralization
 Scalar chain
 Order
 Equity
 Stability
 Initiative
 Esprit de corps

According to Max Weber, bureaucracy is an organization having the following characteristics:
 Continuity dependent upon adherence to rules
 Areas of bcompetence in which worker share the work and work toward specific goals under predetermined leaders
 Scalar principals
 Schalar (hierarchical) principals
 Rules that are either norms or technical principles
 Separation of administrative staff and ownership of production devices
 Separation of private belongings and the organization’s equipment
 Resources free from outside control
 Structure in which no administrator can monopolize personnel positions
 All administrative acts, rules, policies, etc stated in writing
Keith Davis has advised that members of a bureaucracy will probably maintain job security as long as they follow rule and do not rock the boat. Davis summarized the four key ingredients in a bureaucracy as high specialization, rigid hierarchy of authority, elaborate rules and control, and impersonality. One of the best examples of bureaucracy is the federal government. Some of the problems associated with the federal bureaucracy were published recently by presidential commotions that investigate paperwork in government. Proliferation of committees and subcommittee insure that people share both the burden of decision making and the blame for bad decision. The best bureaucrats are those who can move problems through channels without making decision of their own. The standard of competence of private business is furnished inexorably by profit factor. There is no sure way to determine either excessive cost or concrete achievement in the federal bureaucracy.
Scott identifies 4 key components of classical organization theory :
Division of labor refer to how a given amount of work is divided among the available human resources. The division can be according to the nature of the various job or according to the amount of responsibility and authority each person assumes.
Scalar and functional processes express, respectively, the vertical and the horizontal growth and structure of the organization.
Structure refers to the network of relationships and roles throughout the organization.
Span of control

Jablin in his review on 1987 describes four key structural dimensions that predominate in most theoretical analysis.
1. Configuration (span of control and organizational for example)
2. Complexity (vertical and horizontal)
3. Formalization
4. Centralization

Span of control refers to the number of employees a manager can effectively supervise. According to Graicunas’s formula, a manager with four subordinates had forty-four possible interrelationships. The interrelationships increase to a hundred with the addition of just one employee. The greater the number of possible interrelationships, the greater is possibility for human conflict. The typical span of control is between five and fifteen subordinates. Span of control influences the shape of an organization. If the organization has a small span, the overall shape of an organization will then be tall. If the typical span is great, then the overall shape of the organization will be flat. It is easy to see that the multiple levels of a tall organization increase the number of channels of communication and the possibility for distortion. Flat organizations have fewer levels through which messages travel, but the number of face to face contacts is reduced and a communication overload may be created at the manager’s office.
The growth of the span of the control sometimes is hardly to control though. Parkoinson’s law predicts that the number of people in an organization will increase at an annual rate regardless of the work to be done.
Another implication of span of control relates to how centralized or decentralized an organization is. Centralization is more likely in a tall structure and decentralization in a flat structure. Centralization of authority can usually expedite decision making since fewer people are involved. Decentralization involves more people and takes more time but may improve organizational morale by giving more employees opportunity to be involved in decision making.
A combination of centralized and decentralized authority may be required. The actual amounts of both should vary according to the specific goals, directions, personnel, and environment of the organization. For example : a dean who assumed final decision making authority and based decisions upon recommendations from the general faculty and the committees might have satisfied both factions.
THE HUMAN RELATIONS SCHOOL
Ten years after the scientific managers began to publish their recommendations for organizing workers, a group of researchers from the National academy of sciences began to study the relationship between production and lighting intensity at Western Electric Company. They did not find a relationship. Group from Harvard Business School with the leader Elton Mayo began their research that tested relationship between worker output and working conditions. They also found no relationship. During their study of lighting intensity they noticed that when the lights were practically turned off, worker production increased.
These studies marked the beginning of human relations movement in industry. First time, evidence on such variables as workers attitude, morale, informal work group, and social relations was collected.
Fleishman, Harris, and Burtt study about representative that people oriented management is more effective than production oriented management. The basic logic of the human relations approach was to increase concern for workers by allowing them to participate in decision making, by being friendlier, and by calling them by their first names, which improved worker satisfaction and morale. The net outcome would be lower resistance and improved compliance with management’s authority. A contemporary example of the human relations approach to organizing people is the management of a major league baseball team. The owner of this team paid his player higher salaries than any other team in baseball. Star players were practically their own boss, and if a conflict between a star and an average player arose, the latter was usually traded quickly, with no attempt made to resolve the conflict. As a result of this human relations approach, the members of the team reported to the press that they were extremely satisfied with the management.
One very important outgrowth of the human relations movement was the identification of the informal organization not shown on management charts. Hawthorne studies first demonstrated, certain relationships arise that are not linked to informal authority and job functions, study of personal and informal relationships has continued. He described an informal organization as based on people and their relationships rather those positions
Power in formal organization is earned or given permissively by group members. rather than delegated, it does not follow the official chain of command. it is more likely to come from peers than from superiors in the formal hierarchy; and it may cut across organization lines into other departments .it is usually more unstable than formal authority, since it is subject to the sentiments of people. Because of its subjective nature, informal organization is not subject to management control in the way that informal organization is.
For Davis, the main criteria of an informal leader are age, seniority, technical competence, work location, freedom to move around the work area, and responsive personality. An example of an informal organization concerns an assistant professor in university department of fifteen members. Despite his lack of tenure and relatively low seniority in the department and at the university, this faculty member achieved prominence within his department as a competent researcher, an excellent teacher, and an active members in his professional organization: As a result, he was highly respected by his colleagues and gained much influence and prominence in the university and the community. One communication related phenomenon that arises from the informal organization is the grapevine and the spread of rumors. As we conclude this section on the human relations school, it should be apparent that just as the classical is narroe and rigid in its emphasis on structure and function. As the next section on the social systems school will show, there is no one best way to organize and manage people. It all depends.
THE SOCIAL SYSTEMS SCHOOL
I was one scheduled to depart on a plane to the West Coast at 09.30 a.m. When the plane was thirty minutes late arriving (and still not sight), I asked the airline supervisor about the delay and was informed that the plane “was late getting into St Louis and would arrive in fifteen minutes. ”I asked why it was late getting St.Louis and he replied, ‘Because it was late getting into Chicago.” Finally, in anger I asked, “Why was it late getting into Chicago.” And he answered, “Because of a snowstorm in Boston.”
The example illustrates the underlying logic inherent in the social systems school of organization: all parts affect the whole: every action has repercussions throughout the organization. In this case, a snowstorm in the one city affected airplane timetables, airport operations and passenger nerves in three other cities thousands of miles apart.
In all these cases, what affected one part of the organization affected all parts of the organization. Nothing exists without eventual impact on something else. When the organization is viewed as social system, questions of structural and human variables assume new importance. No longer can job function of machine riveter be divorced from successful functioning of the entire organization: or can the morale of one employee be a minor point of concern. No longer can a single message sent via the grapevine be ignored: or can the others of one supervisor to her staff be minimized. The organization must be considered from a large point of view that acknowledges that both functional and human issues influence an organization the systems concept is useful because of its strong emphasis upon these interrelationships. These interrelationships are stressed as being of primary importance. The role of management is seen as the management of interrelationships. This emphasis avoids some of the pitfalls of a components mentality in which departments work out their own relationships in haphazard manner.
Among researchers who have made the major contributions to the development of both general systems theory and the use of systems theory in organizations are Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, James March and Herbert Simon, Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn, and Paul Lawrence and Jay W. Lorsch
Scott likened organization theory to general systems theory because both study the following factors:
1. Individuals in aggregates and movement of individuals into and out of the system
2. Interaction of individuals with the environment of the system
3. General growth and stability problems of systems

Huse and Bowditch summarized main characteristics define an organization as a system:
1. Composed of a number of subsystems, all of which are interdependent and interrelated.
2. Open and dynamic, having inputs, outputs, operations, feedback, and boundaries.
3. Striving for balance through both positive and negative feedback
4. With a multiplicity of purposes, functions, and objectives, some of which are in conflict, which the administrator strives to balance

Some of key concepts necessary to the understanding of an organization as an open social system are feedback, balance, input, transformation, output and interdependence. We agree with Katz and Kahn (1966) theoretical model for the understanding of an organization: . . . (it is) an energic input-output system in which the energic return from the output relatives the system. Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energic input consist of transactions between the organization and its environment.
THE ORGANIZATION AS AN OPEN SYSTEM
A system may be labeled either open or closed, depending upon the nature of its boundaries. Fisher and hawse distinguished the two as follows: A closed system has fixed boundaries which permit no interaction with the environment. The result is that the structure, function, and behavior of the system are relatively stable and predictable if the initial arrangement of components is known. An open system, on the other hand, has permeable boundaries which allow for environment-system interaction. The result is that the structure, function, and behavior of the open system is changing perpetually.