Orgnizationl, Theory, Change & Culture

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Business Administration Collage

MBA Program

2009 – 2010

Organizational Theory, Design & Change

Student Name: Hadeel Yaser Agha

ID Number: 554

Presented to: Dr. Kota 

Introduction

This report is focuses on Organizational Ethics, values, structures & Cultures and how they affect the organization environment in both dimensions internal and external.  

 The project covers the following terms:

  • Identifying Organization, organizational Structures, cultures & ethics
  • Overview about Johnson & Johnson and Crown Corning’s and the ethical issues that they faced and how each organization deal with there own problems.
  • The type of organization structures in UAE / Middle East in both Government & Private Sectors

Organization definition:

An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, controls its own performance, and has a boundary separating it from its environment. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon.

In the social sciences, organizations are studied by researchers from several disciplines, the most common of which are , , , , , and . The broad area is commonly referred to as ,  or organization analysis. Therefore, a number of different theories and perspectives exist, some of which are compatible.

Organizational structures

The study of organizations includes a focus on optimizing . According to , most  organizations fall roughly into four types:

  •  or  
  • Committees or juries
  • Matrix organizations
  • Ecologies

 Pyramids or hierarchies

A  exemplifies an arrangement with a  who leads leaders. This arrangement is often associated with . Hierarchies were  in  (1969), a book that introduced hierarchiology and the saying that "in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence".

An extremely rigid, in terms of responsibilities, type of organization is exemplified by .

 Committees or juries

These consist of a group of peers who decide as a group, perhaps by voting. The difference between a  and a  is that the members of the committee are usually assigned to perform or lead further actions after the group comes to a decision, whereas members of a jury come to a decision. In  countries legal juries render decisions of guilt, liability and quantify damages; juries are also used in athletic contests, book awards and similar activities. Sometimes a selection committee functions like a jury. In the Middle Ages juries in continental Europe were used to determine the law according to consensus amongst local notables.

Committees are often the most reliable way to make decisions.  proved that if the average member votes better than a roll of dice, then adding more members increases the number of majorities that can come to a correct vote (however correctness is defined). The problem is that if the average member is worse than a roll of dice, the committee's decisions grow worse, not better: Staffing is crucial.

 procedure, such as , helps prevent committees from engaging in lengthy discussions without reaching decisions.

Staff organization or cross-functional team

A  helps an  get all his work done. To this end, a "chief of staff" decides whether an assignment is routine or not. If it's routine, he assigns it to a staff member, who is a sort of junior expert. The chief of staff schedules the routine problems, and checks that they are completed.

If a problem is not routine, the chief of staff notices. He passes it to the expert, who solves the problem, and educates the staff – converting the problem into a routine problem.

In a "cross functional team", like an executive committee, the boss has to be a non-expert, because so many kinds of expertise are required.

 Organization: Cyclical structure

A theory put forth by renowned scholar  has asserted that throughout the cyclical nature of one’s life organizational patterns are key to success. Through various social and political constraints within society one must realize that organizational skills are paramount to success. Stephen John suggests that emphasis needs to be put on areas such as individual/ group processes, functionality, and overall structures of institutions in order to maintain a proper organization. Furthermore, the individual's overall organizational skills are pre-determined by the processes undertaken.:

 Matrix organization

This organizational type assigns each worker two bosses in two different hierarchies. One hierarchy is "functional" and assures that each type of expert in the organization is well-trained, and measured by a boss who is super-expert in the same field. The other direction is "executive" and tries to get projects completed using the experts. Projects might be organized by regions, customer types, or some other schema. matrix management

Ecologies

This organization has intense . Bad parts of the organization starve. Good ones get more work. Everybody is paid for what they actually do, and runs a tiny business that has to show a , or they are fired.

Companies who utilize this organization type reflect a rather one-sided view of what goes on in . It is also the case that a natural  has a natural border -  do not in general compete with one another in any way, but are very autonomous.

The   talks about functioning as this type of organization in  from .

What is an organization’s Cultures?

Culture is a unique characteristic of any organization. While the phenomenon of organizational

culture is difficult to define succinctly, understanding it can help a manager predict how his or her organization is likely to respond to different situations; to assess the difficulties that the organization might experience as it confronts a changing future; and to identify the priority issues for the leadership to address as they prepare the organization to compete for the future. Organizational culture affects and regulates the way members of the organization think, feel and act within the framework of that organization. Culture is the result of common learning experiences. Because culture forms the basis of group identity and shared thought, belief, and feeling, one of the most decisive and important functions of leaders—particularly the founders of a company—is the creation and management of its culture.

Culture Definition:

Because culture is such an important organizational phenomenon, many scholars have proposed

definitions of what culture is. These include: observed behavioral regularities that occur when people interact, the norms that evolve in close working groups, the dominant values espoused by an organization, the philosophy that guides an organization’s policy toward employees and customers, the rules for getting along with other people in the organization, and the feeling or climate of a particular organization. However, MIT’s Edgar Schein, one of the world’s foremost scholars of organizational culture, argues that while these meanings might reflect an organization’s culture, they fail to capture its essence.

Schein concludes that culture is a property of an independently defined social unit—a unit whose

members share a significant number of common experiences in successfully addressing external and internal problems. Because of these common experiences, over time this group of people will have formed a shared view of the way that the world surrounding them works, and of the methods for problem solving that will be effective in that world. This shared view of the world has led to the formation of basic assumptions and beliefs that have worked well enough and long enough to be taken for granted. These basic assumptions and beliefs are learned responses to the problems that the group has encountered as its members have tried to work together to survive in the face of challenges encountered in the external environment and in response to tasks that recur in the internal environment. Beliefs about how to solve these problems have become taken for granted because they have worked repeatedly and reliably. Because Schein defines culture as a learned result of a group experience, he asserts that culture is only found where there is a definable group with a significant history of togetherness.

Culture is dynamic, in that it can evolve with new experiences. This change can occur in two ways: as the result of a clear and present crisis—the “burning platform” syndrome—or through a managed evolution under a skilled and sophisticated manager. Occasionally, an organization may fail repeatedly in attempting to solve problems in the way that historically had led to success. If the resulting crisis is severe enough, members may be galvanized to understand and question the continued usefulness of what historically had been useful assumptions. However, Schein asserts that managers who want to shape their organization’s culture do not necessarily have to wait for—or precipitate—a crisis deep and powerful enough to generate this forced “unlearning”. Instead they can lead their organizations through a more organized and deliberate cultural change process if they do two things. The first is to direct significant effort toward understanding the present culture’s antecedents—the initial evolution of the organization’s culture that came from successfully solving particular problems. With this understanding as a foundation, the second thing that managers can do is to find or create a set of new problems that the organization must confront repeatedly and successfully. These problems must demand a different pattern of response, which pattern ultimately will constitute the basis of a changed culture.

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Organization's Culture:

The organization initially was confronting fade away as the market changes, the old organization with its culture can also fade away.

When attempting to change an organization’s culture, in other words, the fundamental unit of

analysis, or the starting point, is the task, not the process or culture—because processes, priorities and culture are a response to recurring tasks.

Managing culture is a complex and vital part of the work of general manager. It can be one of the

most powerful tools that a manager can employ in their efforts to get the diverse and dispersed set ...

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