ORCOM

Herzberg spoofed the entire human relations movement in his classic article in the Harvard Business Review :
Over thirty years of teaching and in many instances, of practicing psychological approaches to handling people have resulted in costly human relations programs and in the end the same question : How do you motivate workers? Here, too escalations have taken place. Thirty years ago it was necessary to request, “please don’t spit on the floor.” Todat the same admonition requires three “please’s” before the employee feels that his supervisor has demonstrated the psychologically proper attitudes toward him.

The example of strict human relaions approach to management is offered by the managerin a small organization who practiced the following behaviours. He frequently joked and laughed with his employees: he often patted them on the back. He scheduled and hosted frequent and expensive parties. He supplemented the incomes of certain favored employees with paid for trips and vacations. He resolved conflict bay avoiding issues, attempting to “laugh it off”. He rewarded even the incompetent employees with token and merit salary increases. The net result of his behaviour was a relatively happy bat stagnant organization.

Before condemn the entire human relations movement as a disastrous, insincere and manipulative approach to management, remember that the approach became the foundation for successful present-day management theories.

Davis described an informal organization as based on people and their relationships rather than on positionsand their functions. He distinguished informal poweras personal and formal power institutional:
Power in informal organization is earned or given permissively by group members, rather than delegated; therefore, it does not follow 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 formal 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 a responsive personality. An example of an informal organization concerns an assistant professor in a university department of fifteen members. This faculty member achieved prominence within his department as a competent researcher, an excellent teacher, and an active member in his professional organizations: As a result, he was highly respected by his collegues and gain much influence and prominence in the university and the community.

The Social System School

A faculty member may publish an article that establishes her as a national expert in her field which influences positively her application for a large grant, which provides overhead funds to the university, a percentage of which ultimately reaches her department, which uses some of the funds to send another faculty member to a meeting in another city. In that case, 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 a social system,questions of structuraland human variables assume new importance. No longer can the job function of a machine be divorced from successful functioning of the entire organization; nor can the morale of ane employee be a minor point of concern. The organization must be considered from a large point of view that acknowledges that both functional and human issues influence an organization.

Longennecker has supported this point of view:
The system 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 pitfalls of a components mentality which department work out their own relationships in a haphazard manner.

Because of the importance of interrelationships, some organizations employ the fast track system for determining immediately the likely success of new executives. New employees are asked to produce within one month a list of major job objectives they consider to be included in their responsibilities. Next, they must identify whi in the organization both influence are influenced by these objective. Finally, they must list the resources and information they will need for these other people.

Scott likened organization theory to general system theory because both study the following factors:
1. Parts(individuals) in aggregates and movement of individuals into and out of the system
2. Interaction of individuals with the environment oh the system interaction among individuals in the system
3. general growth and stability problems of system

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

Some of key concept necessary to the understanding of an organization as an open social system are feedback, balance, input, transformation, output, and interdependence.