Social Psychology of the Work Organization (RLE: Organizations)

Arnold Tannenbaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781138996250
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135985301
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This book discusses social psychological research in organizations and illustrates the implications of this research for organizational theory and practice. The book focuses on the relationship of man to the organization in which he works; his sense of satisfaction, involvement, feelings of identification or loyalty, conflicts, and tensions – as well as his effort in support of, or opposition to, the formally defined goals of the organization.

	chapter one
	The Work Organization

Industrial and business concerns are complex social organizations designed to produce goods or provide services through the concerted efforts of their members. However, no two organizations are exactly alike. They differ in size, in the goods they produce, and in the technology they employ, and they differ in the social, psychological, and administrative assumptions upon which they are based. These assumptions may be more or less realistic, and the organizations built on them may be more or less successful in achieving the purposes for which they were set up.

Formal and Informal Organization

It is only in relatively recent years that students of organization have analyzed in detail the weaknesses of some of the social and psychological assumptions underlying organizations. A vital distinction has grown out of this analysis, that between formal and informal organization. The formal organization is the organization that is planned and intended by its designers. Prescribed by rules, it is a kind of official blueprint that reflects the social, psychological, and administrative assumptions of the designers. However, it is never fully realized in the behavior of its members.

The term informal organization refers to the unplanned, informal set of groups, friendships, and attachments that inevitably develop when people are placed in regular proximity to one another. These relationships, which grow out of the personal needs of members, are not fully accounted for by the formal organization; in fact, they are sometimes designed to protect the members from the demands of the formal organization. The behaviors and sentiments that constitute this informal aspect of organization have no place in the formal plan. Officially, they do not exist. Yet these relationships have a significant effect on the total organizational effort–sometimes to the great chagrin of administrators.

In the next chapter, we shall discuss the importance of the informal organization. Here, we shall consider a number of characteristics that are helpful in describing what the formal work organization is like. Most of these characteristics are essential to the work organization as we know it. All of them are general, in the sense that they are present in some degree in all work organizations. This is the way work organizations are; you may want to consider, as you read on, whether this is the way they have to he.

Major Characteristics of the Formal Organization

Purpose

The purpose of the work organization is to produce goods or to provide services efficiently. We stress the word efficiently, because efficiency is instrumental in most work organizations if these organizations are to make profit and hence to survive. The organization may have additional purposes imputed to it by members or by the public; and this has been a subject of some controversy (42, 62, 145). But the need for efficient production is a compelling circumstance, within which most work organizations must function. Even organizations that are subsidized or owned by government are expected to perform services or manufacture goods efficiently, and within a budget. The same principle applies widely in communist states, where profit in one form or another, or efficiency, is the measure of organizational success.

Specialization

Organization members necessarily perform different functions; if they all did the same thing, the work of the organization would never get done. In an automobile plant, for example, some members make fenders, others attach these fenders to car bodies, and still others paint the fenders. Hundreds, if not thousands, of workers contribute in their own way to the final product, which may be the Ford or Chrysler or Chevrolet sedan that rolls off the assembly line. This division of labor is not restricted to the production line. There is specialization in the office too; the secretary, the mail boy, the accountant, the engineer, and the lawyer each contributes in special ways to the total work of the organization. At the very pinnacle of the organization, we see specialization reflected in the titles of top executives–for example, vice-presidents in charge of each of several specialties, such as production, sales, industrial relations, planning, research, personnel, and so forth.

Specialization is one of the keys to productive efficiency in modern industrial organization; it is also the source of considerable frustration for many workers. Specialization often requires that jobs be broken into relatively simple components which are performed repetitively. Many industrial jobs are therefore boring; they limit the freedom and initiative of workers and reduce their sense of satisfaction in the work.

Coordination

Specialization creates another problem, one that is its inevitable counterpart in organization: the problem of coordination. The many different functions that members perform must be coordinated or tied together somehow so that they contribute jointly to the end result. In order for this to be achieved, members have to do the right thing at the right place at the right time; they have to perform their specified tasks so that each contribution fits the contributions of others. Essentially, this means teamwork. However, industrial teamwork is a somewhat more complex and subtle kind than that of a basketball team, since many members in a complex organization never see, let alone know, the others with whom they are working.

Order

The ensemble of behaviors in an organization is part of a logical plan to achieve certain formally defined objectives. The success of this plan requires order–first, in what goes on within the organization at a particular moment, and, second, in the regularity of the organization through time. Organizations, unlike crowds or other social groupings, which are spontaneous or ephemeral, have stability and continuity.

An essential feature of this order is that, within limits, behaviors of and the relations between members are predictable. Predictability is the essence of organization, of organized action. The behaviors of members are planned, at least in general ways, and unless members conform predictably to expectations, the organization will lapse into anarchy and chaos–which is another way of saying disorganization. Suppose a worker who is expected to he on his job from seven to five prefers to be there from eight to six. Such variations are intolerable, especially if they become extensive or chronic.

Authority

Organizations guard against chaos and preserve predictability, orderliness, and regularity through several devices. One such device is the system of authority.

Authority is the formal right of a person, by virtue of his position or rank in an organization, to decide, determine, or influence what others in the organization will do. This authority is implemented through a hierarchy, or chain of command, in which persons at succeedingly higher levels have greater responsibility for ensuring that the members below do what they are supposed to do. In the typical industrial organization, rank-and-file workers are at the bottom of the authority pyramid. They are directed by supervisors, sometimes called foremen or first-line supervisors, who report to and take directions from still other superiors and so on up the organizational hierarchy.

Uniformity

An important and general implication of the hierarchical system of control is conformity or uniformity in the behaviors of organizational members.

F. H. Allport provided a graphic illustration, through the hypothetical curves shown in Figure 1-1, of the uniformity of behavior implied by organization. The solid-line curve describes the relatively narrow range of behaviors consistent with the requirements of organization. If we consider, for example, the time at which employees arrive at work, we find that the great majority of employees come almost exactly on time; the distribution of arrival times is therefore quite narrow. This uniformity in the behaviors of members contrasts with what one might expect if members were to follow their own purely individualistic inclinations–without regard for organizational requirements. Individuals in this case would arrive at more widely differing times, and their arrivals would probably be distributed as a bell-shaped curve (dashed line), following the usual distribution of personality traits (3).

The narrow, more uniform distribution demonstrates the effects of social control, adherence or conformity by members to some organizational rule or standard. It also illustrates one aspect of the order and predictability essential to organization: we know, or can predict within a relatively narrow margin of error, where a particular person is likely to fall on the scale if he is a member of a group whose behaviors distribute according to the solid-line curve. Most persons in this group fall within a very narrow range. In the case of the dashed-line curve, however, our prediction would be less certain and less reliable–as would an organization built on distributions of this kind.

FIGURE 1-1. Hypothetical distributions of organized and individualistic behaviors. (Adapted from Allport, 3.)

Replaceability

Formal organization is set up to minimize–if not to eliminate– disruptions caused by personality and individual idiosyncrasy. It does not make a bit of difference from the point of view of formal organization who performs a given role, provided his behaviors are appropriate and conforming. It is often said that people come and go but the organization continues. This saying is true, because organizations are composed of replaceable members. Other, less formal types of social relationships, such as the family, do not have this facility. A mother, father, son, or daughter cannot be replaced readily, if at all.

Compensation

Members of work organizations are paid. They may receive perquisites in addition to pay, but money is usually considered a compensation for work. Generally, those who work harder or longer, or with greater skill, or who assume more responsibility in their work are paid more. The fact of pay is a basic fact of life for organizations, and it enters into some of the most serious problems which organizations face.

Technology

Another characteristic of work organizations is technology. Technology, whether it involves simple tools or massive assembly lines coordinated by complex computers, plays an integral role in shaping the character of the organization. Specialization, which we have already discussed, is one effect of technology. Technology also affects the physical proximity of persons and their opportunities to interact and form social groups (129). The large-scale introduction of automation in the factory and the office carries significant implications for the way in which formal organization must be designed and the way in which informal organization can develop. This is why the work organization is sometimes referred to as a sociotechnical system (45, 164).

Signs and Symbols

All formal organizations have symbols or signs of some kind to help identify the organization as a social entity or to facilitate discriminations within the organization itself. All formal organizations, for example, have names by which they are readily recognized: General Motors, U.S. Army, Acme Rubber Company, University of Michigan. Often associated with these titles are slogans, coats of arms, trade marks, and so forth, which help denote the organization and distinguish it from others. Titles, uniforms, badges, and insignia of various kinds generally appear within organizations. For instance, one man is called a press operator, another a manager; one wears a white shirt and tie, the other a blue shirt and overalls; one may have a stripe on his arm, the other a star on his shoulder; one has a mahogany desk and rug in his office, another (usually his subordinate) has a steel desk and no rug. Symbols also play a role in communications within the organization. In some organizations, the president has special stationery with the letterhead “From the office of the president.” Special attention is given by subordinates to messages written on this stationery.

The signs and symbols that indicate rank or function in the organization, or that denote the organization itself, help to preserve the order and integrity of the total system. In the Army, for example, a private must be able to distinguish the sergeant from the captain at a glance. It is useful for clerks in the supermarket to be dressed in white so that customers can locate them easily and avoid annoying other customers when attempting to locate the beer counter. It also helps the manager to know at a glance where his clerks are in the otherwise confusing mass of persons on the floor.

Bureaucracy as a Model of Formal Organization

You have probably noticed that the role of the individual in the picture of organization that we have drawn is quite incidental–aside from the fact that he does the work. Members are more or less taken for granted. They are expendable, replaceable, interchangeable; they are expected to “fit” and not to get in the way of the grand design of the formal organization. There is little accounting in the picture for personality, for individual differences in value and attitude, for personal initiative, or for expressions of feelings or emotion. The elements of organization that we have described imply a logical or rational social system, and one must assume, if the system is to work according to plan, that the persons who make it up more or less adopt the organization's rationality as their own. These features of organization derive in large measure from attempts to meet the objective of efficiency.

The sociologist Max Weber coined the term bureaucracy as a label for a type of formal organization in which impersonality and rationality are developed to the highest degree. The term bureaucracy has since come to apply derogatorily to any kind of organizational inefficiency or waste, particularly in government. Bureaucracy as Weber conceived it, however, was to be the most efficient form of social organization, precisely because bureaucracy is coldly logical and because personalized relationships and nonrational, emotional considerations do not get in its way (173). The elements of the work organization which we have just described reflect, in a number of respects, the character of the bureaucratic organization.

Bureaucracy is a system of law, more than of man; a system in which rules cover all contingencies and where obedience is assured through the appointment of technically expert supervisors who administer law with precise and cold impartiality. The bureaucratic system is autocratic, since it has a rigid chain of command in which persons at the top give orders and those on the bottom unquestioningly obey. But the orders are always within the framework of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• 1. The Work Organization
• 2. The Human Factor in Organization
• 3. The Individual in the Organization
• 4. Personal Adjustment and Conflict in the Work Organization
• 5. The Group in Organizations
• 6. Supervision
• 7. Participation
• 8. Applications
• References
• Index