Organizational Behavior and Virtual Work

Concepts and Analytical Approaches

Arvind K. Birdie, Madhu Jain

• Editore: Apple Academic Press
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315342337
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Operations

With the globalization of work and technological advancements in recent years, and with emphasis on service quality today, organizations have changed. Virtual work has emerged as the new employment relationship and has been embraced by employees and employers in many industries. This book explores the dynamics of changing organization structures, theories of leadership and trust, and how dimensions of self-efficacy works in this new work relationship. Organizational Behavior and Virtual Work: Concepts andAnalytical Approaches shows the enormous impact of technology and globalization on employment relationships and also predicts how they will contribute to the changing dimensions of organizations in the future. With a unique blend of theory and application in the real world of virtual workers, the book presents the most recent research and developments in the relatively new and still emerging area of virtual work. It takes an in-depth critical look into the key factors affecting the virtual work environment with practical inputs of suggestions and recommendations.

With the objective of presenting information about this new work scenario, this book attempts to unfold important human behavior processes in organizations. The volume presents a rare combination of the necessary concepts of human behavior in organizations along with the results of research in the field and also makes practical recommendations on virtual work programs.

Key features include a unique blend of research with organizational behavior concepts and practical recommendations for workers, managers, and business executives.

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

ORGANIZATIONS

CONTENTS

1.1	The Essence
1.2	Traditional Organizations
1.3	Cultural Perspectives
1.4	Elements of Organizations
1.5	Challenges of Organizational Design
1.6	Dimensions of Structure
1.7	Contemporary Organizational Designs
1.8	Challenges for Today’s Organizational Design
1.9	Organizational Life Cycle
1.10	Organizational Culture
1.11	Is It Possible to Change Corporate Culture?
Keywords

1.1 THE ESSENCE

In order to understand forces around us, we need to see with the nature of “organizations” as social phenomenon. Simply stated, “an Organization is a collection of people working together to achieve a common purpose.” It describes everything from clubs, voluntary organizations, and religious bodies to entities, such as large and small businesses, unions, hospitals, schools, and government agencies.

Organizations have always existed in one form or another. When human beings began to do collective activity as a means of improving their chances of survival and quality of life, the basis of the social organization was formed. This form of activity is still evident today in the many family businesses (Bork, 1986). There is evidence of early forms of organizations not based upon the family unit being used by the Sumerian people who settled around the river Euphrates approximately 3500 years BC (McKelvey, 1982). Of course, many organizations during that period continued to be family run. The leadership of the state was based upon dynastic family groupings.

Organizations can also be categorized into those that operate for profit and not for profit institutions. An organization could be described as a collection of individuals who are organized into groups and subgroups and “interact” with each other in an “interdependent relationship.” The individuals work toward “common goals,” which are not always clear, and the way they relate is determined by the structure of the organization (Duncan, 1981).

Perrow (1970) mentioned five organizational goals:

Societal goals: These goals refer to the production of goods or provision of services, the maintenance of cultural values in the society.

Output goals: These goals are designed to satisfy customer or client needs for goods or services as this could be viewed as the primary task of the organization.

System goals: These goals are used to promote the interests of the organization independent of its output. For example, these goals could be in the form of an intention to augment the organization growth or as a market leader.

Product characteristic goals: These goals could refer to the production of a distinctive product with style and they could be derived from either output or system goals.

Derived goals: These goals apply when top management uses the organization’s power and resources to advance social and cultural causes etc.

March and Simon (1958) drew a distinction between three types of goals:

Official goals: These goals are stated in the charter of the organization or established by the founder of the organization.

Operative goals: These goals reflect the real intentions of the leaders or dominant coalitions within the organizations and are concealed from the public.

Operational goals: These goals could be expressed in quantitative terms. Whereas growth of the organization may be an operative goal, it becomes an operational goal when it is expressed in percentage terms (e.g., 7% growth rate).

1.2 TRADITIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Organizations and their management can be traced from the history itself. A large number of archaeological evidence and big monuments like TajMahal, The Great Pyramids, and cultures and civilizations like Indus valley are few examples of prescientific era organizations. Since ancient times, traditional organizations were more of authoritarian, which stands in silent tribute to the talents of workers who were in miserable conditions and according to historical and archaeological evidences, were even harshly treated after taking work from them. Monument like Taj Mahal is a big example where King Shahjahan had ordered for cutting the hands of numerous workers who made Taj Mahal beautifully by working hard in difficult working conditions. As the pyramid shape suggests, power was concentrated primarily among the handful of individuals at the top.

As time passed, natural resources exploration and advancement in tools led to Industrial Revolution, which bought big change through migration and change in quality of life in people. People started taking education and moved to cities from villages to work in factories. This phase came as the starting of Classical Management era. Now there was a level of workers, economy, tools, techniques, and roles in comparison to earlier period of AD 1000–1880. In the Classical era, two major thrusts emerged as administrative theory approach traced from Henri Fayol who divided managers’ roles into five functions: planning, organizing, command, coordination, and control. His 14 principles of management emphasized division of labor, authority, discipline, and a strictly enforced chain of command. Secondly in 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor in his book, Principles of Scientific Management, introduced the principles for designing and managing mass-production facilities such as Ford’s automobile factory in Michigan and Carnegie’s steel works in Pittsburgh. He saw workers basically as lazy beings, motivated primarily by money. The emergence of a factory system of production during the early stages of industrial capitalist development in Europe and the United States presaged the beginning of organizational conflict. A traditional way of life and labor was disrupted. This provoked intense resistance, opposition, and conflict over the emerging organization of factory production (see Pollard, 1965; Thompson, 1963; Bendix, 1956; Montgomery, 1979; Gutman, 1975). As increasingly larger portions of the population are forced into the labor market, where they must sell their labor power for a wage, the proletariat or working class is created. A large mass of workers are now organizationally constrained within a hierarchical factory system. A large part of the evolution of organization theory and management strategy can be chronicled as a history of trial and error in developing methods and techniques for this control and extraction.

At the time, however, the monumental challenge of coordinating and controlling large numbers of workers within a single factory had never been confronted on such a scale. During this period, one of the most significant sources of conflict, according to Bendix (1956), was “traditionalism”– the ideological way of life among labor prescribing precapitalist customs, norms, routines, and work habits. This stood as the major obstacle to the enforcement of the “new discipline” within the factory. In the United States the heterogeneity of the labor factor, fueled by the constant flow of immigrants, resulted in a variety of cultural habits that did not fit smoothly into the emerging industrial machine (Gutman, 1975; Montgomery, 1979).

Thus, the factory organization was characterized by an array of competing forces–traditional work habits, an emerging production system, managerial strategies to break traditions and impose discipline, and the reaction and resistance of labor (Jeffy, 2008).

During the 1930s, a unique combination of factors developed the emergence of new era called Behavioral era. The legalization of union management collective bargaining in the United States in 1935 forced management to opt for new ways of handling employees and at the same time, behavioral scientists started emphasizing on “human factor.” Western Electric’s Hawthorne plant study was a prime stimulus for this human relations management enforcement. A general perspective of the Behavioral era shows starting of organization’s focus on humane work environment and informal work groups.

1.3 CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES

Culture has been the subject of investigation in social anthropology, where researchers have sought to understand the shared meanings and values held by groups in society that give significance to their actions (McKenna, 2000). Today, many organizations are sensitive to the fact that cultural differences exist and how it plays dynamic role in communication, climate, and behavior in organizations. SouthAsian countries like Japan where people derive great satisfaction and happiness from relationships and working in groups, American culture puts more emphasis on individual goals and independence. The distinction between individualism and collectivism makes sense when we realize that people across all cultures define themselves in terms of both their uniqueness, that is, personal identity and their relationship to others (social identity). Some cultures clearly reflect more than the others, but both have a place in a person’s values and self-concept (Mc Shane, Glinow, & Sharma, 2011).

In Western cultures, predictors of happiness, include elements that support personal independence, a sense of personal agency, and self-expression. In Eastern cultures, predictors of happiness ...