wk 1 550

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

"What a "kick" I get out of teaching from Images of Organizations. What a head-snapping view of organizations it offers to my MBA students, as well as to the odd client/executive who is disposed to creep out of the practicality of business-as-usual and take in a vibrant thrilling view of organizations." — Ariane David, Ph.D., Senior Advisor/President, The Veritas Group Since its first publication over twenty years ago, Images of Organization has become a classic in the canon of management literature. The book is based on a very simple premise—that all theories of organization and management...

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Sold By:

SAGE Publications, Inc

Chapter 2

Mechanization Takes Command

Organizations as Machines

The Chinese sage Chuang-tzu, who lived in

the fourth century B.C., relates the following story:

As Tzu-gung was traveling through the regions north of river Han, he saw

an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch.

The man would descend into the well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms,

and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous, the results

appeared to be very meager.

Tzu-gung said, “There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches

in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like

to hear of it?” Then the gardener stood up, looked at him, and said, “And what

would that be?”

Tzu-gung replied, “You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light

in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out.

This is called a draw-well.”

Then anger rose up in the old man’s face, and he said, “I have heard my

teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He

who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who

carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost

his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul.

“Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree

with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to

use them.”

If the old man were to visit the modern world he would no doubt be

very dismayed. Machines now influence virtually every aspect of our

existence. They have increased our productive abilities a thousandfold,

but they have also done much more, shaping almost every aspect

of our lives. The debate initiated by Tzu-gung and the old man continues.

In the view of many, mechanization has brought mainly gain, raising

mankind from competitors with nature to virtual masters of nature. For

others, the old man’s vision of human alienation recurs in various forms,

as they contemplate the high price of mechanical progress in terms of the

transition from craft to factory production, the exchange of rural community for urban sprawl, the general degradation of the environment, and

the assault of rationalism upon the human spirit.

Regardless of the stand one takes, the wisdom of the old man’s vision

regarding the pervasive influence of machines remains beyond dispute.

The use of machines has radically transformed the nature of productive

activity and has left its mark on the imagination, thoughts, and feelings

of humans throughout the ages. Scientists have produced mechanistic

interpretations of the natural world, and philosophers and psychologists

have articulated mechanistic theories of human mind and behavior.

Increasingly, we have learned to use the machines as a metaphor for ourselves and our society and to mold our world in accordance with mechanical principles.

This is nowhere more evident than in the modern organization.

Consider, for example, the mechanical precision with which many of our

institutions are expected to operate. Organizational life is often routinized

with the precision demanded of clockwork. People are frequently

expected to arrive at work at a given time, perform a predetermined set

of activities, rest at appointed hours, and then resume their tasks until

work is over. In many organizations, one shift of workers replaces another

in methodical fashion so that work can continue uninterrupted twentyfour hours a day every day of the year. Often, the work is very mechanical

and repetitive. Anyone who has observed work in the mass-production

factory or in any of the large “office factories” processing paper forms

such as insurance claims, tax returns, or bank checks will have noticed the

machinelike way in which such organizations operate. They are designed

like machines, and their employees are in essence expected to behave as

if they were parts of machines.

Fast-food restaurants and service organizations of many kinds operate

in accordance with similar principles, with every action preplanned in a

minute way, even in areas where personal interactions with others are

concerned. Employees are frequently trained to interact with customers

according to a detailed code of instructions and are monitored in their

performance. Even the most casual smile, greeting, comment, or suggestion by a sales assistant is often programmed by company policy and

rehearsed to produce authentic results. The management observation

checklist used by a famous fast-food restaurant to monitor employee

performance (Exhibit 2.1) indicates the degree to which a simple task

like serving a customer can be mechanized, observed, and evaluated in a

mechanical way.

Machines, Mechanical Thinking, and the Rise of Bureaucratic Organization

Organizations that are designed and operated

as if they were machines are now usually called bureaucracies. But most

organizations are bureaucratized in some degree, for the mechanistic

mode of thought has shaped our most basic conceptions of what organization is all about. For example, when we talk about organization we

usually have in mind a state of orderly relations between clearly defined

parts that have some determinate order. Although the image may not be

explicit, we are talking about a set of mechanical relations. We talk about

organizations as if they were machines, and as a consequence we tend to

expect them to operate as machines: in a routinized, efficient, reliable, and

predictable way.

In certain circumstances, which are discussed in the concluding section

of this chapter, a mechanical mode of organization can provide the basis

for effective operation. But in others it can have many unfortunate consequences. It is thus important to understand how and when we are

engaging in mechanistic thinking and how so many popular theories and

taken-for-granted ideas about organization support this thinking. One of

the major challenges facing many modern organizations is to replace

this kind of thinking with fresh ideas and approaches, such as those discussed in subsequent chapters. Let us turn, therefore, to the story behind

the development of our mechanistic concepts of organization.

Exhibit 2.1  A Management Observation Checklist Used to Evaluate the Performance of Counter Staff in a Fast-Food Restaurant

THE ORIGINS OF MECHANISTIC ORGANIZATION

Organizations are rarely established as ends

in themselves. They are instruments created to achieve other ends. This is

reflected in the origins of the word organization, which derives from the

Greek organon, meaning a tool or instrument. No wonder, therefore, that

ideas about tasks, goals, aims, and objectives have become such fundamental organizational concepts, for tools and instruments are mechanical

devices invented and developed to aid in performing some kind of goaloriented activity.

This instrumentality is evident in the practices of the earliest formal

organizations of which we know, such as those that built the great pyramids, empires, churches, and armies. However, it is with the invention

and proliferation of machines, particularly along with the industrial

revolution in Europe and North America, that those concepts of organization really became mechanized. The use of machines, especially in

industry, required that organizations be adapted to the needs of machines.

If we examine the changes in organization accompanying the industrial revolution, we find an increasing trend toward the bureaucratization

and routinization of life generally. Many self-employed family groups

and skilled artisans gave up the autonomy of working in their homes and

workshops to work on relatively unskilled jobs in factory settings. At the

same time, factory owners and their engineers realized that the efficient

operation of their new machines ultimately required major changes in the

design and control of work. Division of labor at work, which was praised

by the Scottish economist Adam Smith in his book The Wealth of Nations

(1776), became intensified and increasingly specialized as manufacturers

sought to increase efficiency by reducing the discretion of workers in

favor of control by their machines and their supervisors. New procedures

and techniques were also introduced to discipline workers to accept the

new and rigorous routine of factory production.

Much was learned from the military, which since at least the time of

Frederick the Great of Prussia has emerged as a prototype of mechanistic

organization. Frederick, who ruled from 1740 to 1786, inherited an army

composed for the most part of criminals, paupers, foreign mercenaries,

and unwilling conscripts—an unruly mob. He was determined to change

this and quickly set about making reforms. He borrowed much from the

practice of Roman legions and the reformed European armies of the sixteenth century but also introduced numerous innovations of his own.

Many of these were inspired by the mechanical inventions of his day.

In particular, Frederick was fascinated by the workings of automated

toys such as mechanical men, and in his quest to shape the army into a

reliable and efficient instrument he introduced many reforms that actually served to reduce his soldiers to automatons. Among these reforms

were the introduction of ranks and uniforms, the extension and standardization of regulations, increased specialization of tasks, the use of standardized equipment, the creation of a command language, and systematic

training that involved army drills. Frederick’s aim was to shape the army

into an efficient mechanism operating through means of standardized

parts. Training procedures allowed these parts to be forged from almost

any raw material, thus allowing the parts to be easily replaced when necessary, an essential characteristic for wartime operation. To ensure that his

military machine operated on command, Frederick fostered the principle

that the men must be taught to fear their officers more than the enemy.

And to ensure that the military machine was used as wisely as possible,

he developed the distinction between advisory and command functions,

freeing specialist advisers (staff) from the line of command to plan activities. In time, further refinements were introduced, including the idea of

decentralizing controls to create greater autonomy of parts in different

combat situations.

Many of these ideas and practices had great relevance for solving

problems created by the development of factory systems of production

and were adopted in a piecemeal fashion throughout the nineteenth

century as entrepreneurs struggled to find organizational forms suited to

machine technology. The new technology was thus accompanied and

reinforced by mechanization of human thought and action. Organizations

that used machines became more and more like machines. Frederick the

Great’s vision of a “mechanized” army gradually became a reality in

factory and office settings as well.

During the nineteenth century, a number of attempts were made to

codify and promote the ideas that could lead to the efficient organization

and management of work. Thus, Adam Smith’s praise of the division of

labor was followed in 1801 by Eli Whitney’s public demonstration of mass

production, showing how guns could be assembled from piles of interchangeable parts. In 1832, Charles Babbage, inventor of one of the earliest

forms of the mathematical computer, published a treatise advocating

a scientific approach to organization and management and emphasizing the importance of planning and an appropriate division of labor.

However, it was not until the early twentieth century that these ideas and

developments were synthesized in a comprehensive theory of organization and management.

One major contribution to this theory was made by the German sociologist Max Weber, who observed the parallels between the mechanization of industry and the proliferation of bureaucratic forms of

organization. He noted that the bureaucratic form routinizes the process

of administration exactly as the machine routinizes production. In his

work we find the first comprehensive definition of bureaucracy as a form

of organization that emphasizes precision, speed, clarity, regularity, reliability, and efficiency achieved through the creation of a fixed division of

tasks, hierarchical supervision, and detailed rules and regulations.

As a sociologist Weber was interested in the social consequences of the

proliferation of bureaucracy and, rather like the old man in Chuang-tzu’s

story, was concerned about the effect it would have on the human side

of society. He saw that the bureaucratic approach had the potential to

routinize and mechanize almost every aspect of human life, eroding the

human spirit and capacity for spontaneous action. He also recognized

that it could have grave political consequences in undermining the potential

for more democratic forms of organization. His writings on bureaucracy

are thus pervaded by a great skepticism, of which we will have more to

say in Chapter 9.

The other major contribution was made by a group of management theorists and practitioners in North America and Europe who set the basis for

what is now known as “classical management theory” and “scientific management.” In contrast with Weber, they were firm advocates of bureaucratization and devoted their energies to identifying detailed principles

and methods through which this kind of organization could be achieved.

Whereas the classical management theorists focused on the design of the

total organization, the scientific managers focused on the design and

management of individual jobs. It is through the ideas of these theorists

that so many mechanistic principles of organization have become

entrenched in our everyday thinking. It is thus worth examining their

work in some detail.

CLASSICAL MANAGEMENT THEORY: DESIGNING BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS

Typical of the classical theorists were the

Frenchman Henri Fayol, the American F. W. Mooney, and the Englishman

Col. Lyndall Urwick. They were all interested in problems of practical

management and sought to codify their experience of successful organization for others to follow. The basic thrust of their thinking is captured

in the idea that management is a process of planning, organization,

command, coordination, and control. Collectively, they set the basis for

many modern management techniques, such as management by objectives (MBO); planning, programming, budgeting systems (PPBS); and

other methods stressing rational planning and control. Each theorist codified his insights, drawing on a combination of military and engineering

principles. Exhibit 2.2 summarizes some of the general principles of classical management theory.

If we implement these principles, we arrive at the kind of organization

represented in the familiar organization chart (Exhibit 2.3): a pattern of

precisely defined jobs organized in a hierarchical manner through precisely defined lines of command or communication. If we examine these

principles closely, we find that the classical theorists were in effect designing the organization exactly as if they were designing a machine.

When an engineer designs a machine the task is to define a network of

interdependent parts arranged in a specific sequence and anchored by

precisely defined points of resistance or rigidity. The classical theorists

were attempting to achieve a similar design in their approach to organization. We see this in the way the organization is conceived as a network

of parts: functional departments such as production, marketing, finance,

personnel, and research and development, which are further specified

as networks of precisely defined jobs. Job responsibilities interlock so

that they complement each other as perfectly as possible and are linked

together through the scalar chain of command expressed in the classical

dictum “one man, one boss.”

Unity of command: an employee should receive orders from only one

superior.

Scalar chain:

the line of authority from superior to subordinate, which runs

from top to bottom of the organization; this chain, which results from the

unity-of-command principle, should be used as a channel for communication and decision making.

Span of control: the number of people reporting to one superior must not

be so large that it creates problems of communication and coordination.

Staff and line: staff personnel can provide valuable advisory services, but

must be careful not to violate line authority.

Initiative: to be encouraged at all levels of the organization.

Division of work:

management should aim to achieve a degree of

specialization designed to achieve the goal of the organization in an

efficient manner.

Authority and responsibility:

attention should be paid to the right to give

orders and to exact obedience; and appropriate balance between authority

and responsibility should be achieved. It is meaningless to make someone

responsible for work if they are not given appropriate authority to execute

that responsibility.

Centralization (of authority): always present in some degree, this must

vary to optimize the use of faculties of personnel.

Discipline: obedience, application, energy, behavior, and outward marks of

respect in accordance with agreed rules and customs.

Subordination of individual interest to general interest: through firmness,

example, fair agreements, and constant supervision.

Equity:

based on kindness and justice, to encourage personnel in their

duties; and fair remuneration, which encourages morale yet does not lead

to overpayment.

Stability of tenure of personnel: to facilitate the development of abilities.

Esprit de corps: to facilitate harmony as a basis of strength.

These principles, many of which were first used by Frederick the Great

and other military experts to develop armies into “military machines,”

provided the foundation of management theory in the first half of the

twentieth century. Their use is very widespread today.

Exhibit 2.2  

Principles of Classical Management Theory

Chart A ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF A MANUFACTURING FIRM

Chart B DETAILED STRUCTURE OF THE PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT

Chart A illustrates an organization divided on the principle of functional specialization. Each functional department has its own hierarchical mode of organization. Chart B illustrates details relating to the production department. Note the

chain of command that runs from top to bottom of the organization. From any

place at the bottom of the hierarchy there is only one route to the top, a reflection

of the principle that each subordinate should have no more than one superior. An

example is indicated by the highlighted line. Note the different “spans of control.”

The chief executive in Chart A has a span of control equal to seven. The foreman

of the forging section in the production department (Charts A and B) has a span

of control of twelve. The production manager has a span of three. Note how the

advisory or “staff” departments (e.g., finance, personnel, legal, R&D) have no

direct authority over “line” departments such as the production department.

Exhibit 2.3  Organization Chart Illustrating the Principles of Classical Management Theory and Bureaucratic Organization

The motions of the organizational structure thus produced are made

to operate as precisely as possible through patterns of authority—for

example, in terms of job responsibilities and the right to give orders

and to exact obedience. Patterns of authority serve as points of resistance

and coordinate activities by restricting activity in certain directions

while encouraging it in others. By giving detailed attention to patterns of

authority and to the general process of direction, discipline, and subordination of individual to general interest, the classical theorists sought to

ensure that when commands were issued from the top of the organization

they would travel throughout the organization in a precisely determined

way to create a precisely determined effect.

These principles are basic to both centralized bureaucracy (illustrated

in Exhibit 2.3) and the modified form found in the divisionalized organization, where various units are allowed to operate in a semiautonomous

manner under general rather than detailed supervision and the control of

those with ultimate authority. Just as the military introduced decentralization to cope with difficult combat situations, the classical management

theorists recognized the necessity of reconciling the contrary requirements of centralization and decentralization to preserve an appropriate

flexibility in different parts of large organizations.

The ability to achieve this kind of decentralization has been greatly

advanced during the course of the twentieth century through the development of management techniques like MBO and PPBS and the design of

sophisticated management information systems (MIS), which are often

used to establish the kinds of “top-down” control advocated by the

classical theorists. For example, forms of MBO are often used to impose a

mechanistic system of goals and objectives on an organization. These are

then used to control the direction in which managers and employees can

take the organization—for example, through the development of performance targets consistent with these goals and various budgetary systems.

Computerized information systems now allow performance to be subjected to almost complete surveillance and control.

In this way, the ideas of the classical management theorists are reinforced under the guise of modern management. This often occurs because

the people designing these management systems have come to think

about organization mechanistically and are unaware of other ways in

which these techniques could be used—for example, to promote the kind

of organizational learning and inquiry discussed in Chapter 4, or the

participative corporate cultures or systems of organizational democracy

discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.

The whole thrust of classical management theory and its modern application is to suggest that organizations can or should be rational systems

that operate in as efficient a manner as possible. While many will endorse

this as an ideal, it is easier said than done, because we are dealing with

people, not inanimate cogs and wheels.

In this regard it is significant that the classical theorists gave relatively

little attention to the human aspects of organization. Although they frequently recognized the need for leadership, initiative, benevolence, equity,

esprit de corps, and other factors that might influence human motivation,

organization as such was mainly understood as a technical problem. The

classical theorists recognized that it was important to achieve a balance or

harmony between the human and technical aspects, especially through

appropriate selection and training procedures, but their main orientation

was to make humans fit the requirements of mechanical organization.

For this they have been much criticized. Yet modern managers and

management consultants often continue to introduce the same bias into

their way of thinking. The most recent example is found in the “reengineering movement” that swept across North America and much of

Europe in the 1990s. Recognizing that the bureaucratic form of organization with its emphasis on rigid departmentalization had outlived its usefulness, the reengineering movement urged a new mechanistic design,

building around key business processes instead of bureaucratic functions.

As in the old classical theory, the basic assumption is that if you get the

engineering right the human factor will fall into place. Needless to say,

this is not always the case. As a result, the reengineering movement has

encountered exactly the same problems and failures experienced by

older-style classical management principles. The human factor often subverts the reengineering process, leading to massive failure rates.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

In Frederick the Great’s approach to military

organization we thus find many of the basic principles later elaborated by

the classical management theorists. We also find many of the principles

elaborated by the other great Frederick of organization theory, Frederick

Taylor, who pioneered what is now known as scientific management.

Taylor was an American engineer and a flamboyant if somewhat

disturbed personality. By his death in 1915 he had gained a reputation as

a major “enemy of the working man,” having been summoned in 1911 to

defend his system of management before a committee of the U.S. House

of Representatives. Although one of the most maligned and criticized of

all organization theorists, he has also proved to be one of the most influential. His principles of scientific management provided the cornerstone

for work design throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and in

many situations prevail right up to the present day.

Taylor advocated five simple principles, which can be summarized as

follows:

Shift all responsibility for the organization of work from the worker to

the manager. Managers should do all the thinking relating to the

planning and design of work, leaving the workers with the task of

implementation.

Use scientific methods to determine the most efficient way of doing

work. Design the worker’s task accordingly, specifying the precise

way in which the work is to be done.

Select the best person to perform the job thus designed.

Train the worker to do the work efficiently.

Monitor worker performance to ensure that appropriate work procedures are followed and that appropriate results are achieved.

In applying these principles Taylor advocated the use of time-andmotion study as a means of analyzing and standardizing work activities.

His scientific approach called for detailed observation and measurement

of even the most routine work to find the optimum mode of performance.

Under Taylor’s system, menial tasks such as pig-iron handling and earth

shoveling became the subjects of science. He fused the perspective of an

engineer with an obsession for control.

Prominent models of his approach to scientific management are found

in numerous manufacturing firms, retail organizations, and offices. Consider, for example, the fast-food chains serving hamburgers, pizzas, and

other highly standardized products. Here work is often organized in the

minutest detail on the basis of designs that analyze the total process of

production, find the most efficient procedures, and then allocate these as

specialized duties to people trained to perform them in a very precise

way. All the “thinking” is done by the managers and designers, leaving all

the “doing” to the employees. The management observation checklist

presented in Exhibit 2.1 provides the perfect illustration of Taylor’s

approach to management, showing how a simple job such as taking

and serving a customer’s order can be split into many separate elements

that can each be observed and evaluated. Taylor would have been well

pleased with such a system of work evaluation.

The same approach to work design is also found in traditional forms of

assembly-line manufacturing and in production processes that are tightly

controlled and monitored by computer technology. Here Taylor’s ideas

are built into the technology itself, making the workers servants or

adjuncts to machines that are in complete control of the organization and

pace of work.

Taylor’s principles also had a major influence on the organization of

office work through “organization and methods” and “work study” projects that broke integrated tasks into specialized components that could

then be allocated to different employees. For example, in mechanized systems for processing insurance claim forms, one employee would often be

responsible for checking a claim against a policy, another would initiate an

evaluation process, another would conduct the evaluation, yet another

would evaluate the evaluation, and so on. Systematically applied, Taylor’s

five principles led to the development of “office factories” where people

performed fragmented and highly specialized duties in accordance with

an elaborate system of work design and performance evaluation.

The effect of Taylor’s scientific management on the workplace has

been enormous, increasing productivity manyfold while accelerating the

replacement of skilled craftspeople by unskilled workers. It is for these

reasons that it has been so influential yet so maligned, for the increases in

productivity have often been achieved at great human cost, reducing

many workers to automatons, just as the army reforms of Frederick the

Great did to his soldiers over 150 years earlier. The trend is so pervasive

that it is now often described as one of “McDonaldization”: to capture

how the organizational principles underlying the design of the

McDonald’s chain of fast-food restaurants, with its emphasis on ruthless

efficiency, quantification, predictability, control, and deskilled jobs (often

described as “McJobs”), is providing an icon for organization throughout

society. The principles advocated by Taylor and perfected by McDonald’s

and other fast-food restaurants have found their way into the organization of hospitals, factories, retail outlets, schools, universities, and other

institutions seeking to rationalize their operations.

The human problems resulting from such methods of organization

have been glaringly obvious ever since they were first introduced. For

example, when Henry Ford established his first assembly line to produce

the Model T, employee turnover rose to approximately 380 percent per

annum. Only by doubling wages to his famous “$5 a day” was he able to

stabilize the work situation and persuade workers to accept the new technology. For most people, assembly-line work is simply boring or alienating. Job cycles are often very short, with workers sometimes being asked

to complete work involving seven or eight separate operations every forty

or fifty seconds, seven or eight hours a day, fifty weeks a year. When

General Motors decided to tighten up on efficiency in its Lordstown plant

in the late 1960s, at the height of its commitment to this technology, the

speed of the assembly line was raised to increase output from 60 to 100

cars per hour. At this new pace some workers had only thirty-six seconds

to perform at least eight different operations, such as walking, lifting, handling, raising a carpet, bending to fasten bolts, fastening them by air gun,

replacing the carpet, and putting a sticker on the hood.

The principle of separating the planning and design of work from

its execution is often seen as the most pernicious and far-reaching element

of Taylor’s approach to management, for it effectively “splits” the worker,

advocating the separation of hand and brain. As Taylor was fond of

telling his workers, “You are not supposed to think. There are other

people paid for thinking around here.” Men and women were no more

than “hands” or “manpower”: the energy or force required to propel

the organizational machine. The jobs they were required to perform were

simplified to the ultimate degree so that workers would be cheap, easy

to train, easy to supervise, and easy to replace. Just as the system of mass

production required that products be assembled from interchangeable

parts, Taylor’s system rationalized the workplace so that it could be

“manned” by interchangeable workers.

Over the years, Taylor’s approach to management has been extended

and refined in many ways, most notably through the development of franchising systems that are faced with the challenge of offering consistent

products and services through decentralized operations and through the

science of ergonomics, which studies the use of energy in the workplace.

Interestingly, Taylor’s principles have crossed many ideological barriers,

being extensively used in the former USSR and Eastern Europe as well as

in capitalist countries. This fact signifies that Taylorism is as much a tool

for securing general control over the workplace as it is a means of generating profit. Although noncapitalist countries and institutions are rarely

averse to profitable use of productive resources, one of the great attractions of Taylorism rests in the power it confers to those in control.

Although Taylor is often seen as the villain who created scientific

management, it is important to realize that he was really part of a much

broader social trend involving the mechanization of life generally. For

example, the principles underlying Taylorism are now found on the

football field and athletics track, in the gymnasium, and in the way we

rationalize and routinize our personal lives. Taylor gave voice to a particular aspect of the trend toward mechanization, specialization, and

bureaucratization that Max Weber saw as such a powerful social force.

Taylorism was typically imposed on the workforce. But many of us

impose forms of Taylorism on ourselves as we train and develop specialized capacities for thought and action and shape our bodies to conform

with preconceived ideals. Under the influence of the same kind of mechanism that has helped make Taylorism so powerful, we often think about

and treat ourselves as if we were machines.

The really distinctive feature of Taylorism thus is not the fact that

Taylor tried to mechanize the organization of people and work, but the

degree to which he was able to do this. Taylor’s workers were expected to

be as reliable, predictable, and efficient as the robots that are now replacing them. History may well judge that Taylor came before his time. His

principles of scientific management make superb sense for organizing

production when robots rather than human beings are the main productive force, and organizations can truly become machines.

Strengths and Limitations of the Machine Metaphor

“Set goals and objectives and go for them.”

“Organize rationally, efficiently, and clearly.”

“Specify every detail so that everyone will be sure of the jobs that they have to perform.”

“Plan, organize, and control, control, control.”

These and other similar ideas are often ingrained in our way of thinking about organization and in the way we evaluate organization practice.

For many people, it is almost second nature to organize by setting up a

structure of clearly defined activities linked by clear lines of communication, coordination, and control. Thus, when a manager designs an organization he or she frequently designs a formal structure of jobs into which

people can then be fitted. When a vacancy arises in an organization, managers frequently talk about having “a slot” to fill. Much of our training

and education is often geared to making us “fit in” and feel comfortable

in our appointed place, so that the organization can proceed in a rational

and efficient way.

Classical management theory and scientific management were each

pioneered and sold to managers as the “one best way to organize.” The

early theorists believed that they had discovered the principles of organization, which, if followed, would more or less solve managerial problems

forever. Now, we only have to look at the contemporary organizational

scene to find that they were completely wrong on this score. Indeed, if we

look closely, we find that their management principles often lie at the

basis of many modern organizational problems.

Images or metaphors only create partial ways of seeing, for in encouraging us to see and understand the world from one perspective they discourage us from seeing it from others. This is exactly what has happened

in the course of developing mechanistic approaches to organization. In

understanding organization as a rational, technical process, mechanical

imagery tends to underplay the human aspects of organization and to

overlook the fact that the tasks facing organizations are often much more

complex, uncertain, and difficult than those that can be performed by

most machines.

The strengths and limitations of the machine as a metaphor for organization are reflected in the strengths and limitations of mechanistic organization in practice.

The strengths can be stated very simply. Mechanistic approaches

to organization work well only under conditions where machines work

well: (a) when there is a straightforward task to perform; (b) when the

environment is stable enough to ensure that the products produced will

be appropriate ones; (c) when one wishes to produce exactly the same

product time and again; (d) when precision is at a premium; and (e) when

the human “machine” parts are compliant and behave as they have been

designed to do.

Some organizations have had spectacular success using the mechanistic model because these conditions are all fulfilled. As noted earlier,

McDonald’s and many firms in the fast-food industry provide the best

examples. Look closely, and we find that the McDonald’s situation meets

all the conditions described above. The firm has built a solid reputation

for excellent performance in the fast-food industry by mechanizing the

organization of all its franchise outlets all over the world so that each can

produce a uniform product. It serves a carefully targeted mass market in

a perfectly regular and consistent way, with all the precision that “hamburger science” can provide. (The firm actually has its own “Hamburger

U” for teaching this science to its managers, and has a detailed operating

manual to guide franchisees in the daily operations of the McDonald’s

system.) The firm is exemplary in its adoption of Tayloristic principles

and recruits a nonunionized labor force, often made up of high school and

college students and part-time workers, that will be happy to fit the

organization as designed. And the “machine” works perfectly most of the

time. Of course, the company also has a dynamic and innovative character, but this is for the most part confined to its central staff who do the

thinking (i.e., the policy development and design work) for the corporation as a whole.

Many franchising systems have used the same Tayloristic approach

with great effect, centralizing the design and development of products or

services and decentralizing implementation in a highly controlled way.

The use of scientific methods to determine the work to be performed,

manuals that set standards and codify performance in minute detail, welldeveloped recruitment and training plans, and comprehensive systems of

job evaluation often provide the recipe for success, provided that the

service or product is amenable to definition and control in this way.

Surgical wards, aircraft maintenance departments, finance offices,

courier firms, and other organizations where precision, safety, and clear

accountability are at a premium are also often able to implement mechanistic approaches successfully, at least in certain aspects of their operations.

However, despite these successes, mechanistic approaches to organization often have severe limitations. In particular they (a) can create organizational forms that have great difficulty in adapting to changing

circumstances; (b) can result in mindless and unquestioning bureaucracy;

(c) can have unanticipated and undesirable consequences as the interests

of those working in the organization take precedence over the goals the

organization was designed to achieve; and (d) can have dehumanizing

effects upon employees, especially those at the lower levels of the organizational hierarchy.

Mechanistically structured organizations have great difficulty adapting to changing circumstances because they are designed to achieve

predetermined goals; they are not designed for innovation. This should

come as no surprise, for machines are usually single-purpose mechanisms

designed to transform specific inputs into specific outputs and can engage

in different activities only if they are explicitly modified or redesigned to

do so.

Changing circumstances call for different kinds of action and response.

Flexibility and capacities for creative action become more important than

narrow efficiency. It becomes more important to do the right thing in a

way that is timely and “good enough” than to do the wrong thing well

or the right thing too late. In these respects, mechanistic organization

falls victim to the kind of “segmentalism” that Rosabeth Moss Kanter

and others have shown plagues so many modern corporations. The compartmentalization created by mechanistic divisions between different

hierarchical levels, functions, roles, and people tends to create barriers

and stumbling blocks.

For example, when new problems arise they are often ignored because

there are no ready-made responses. Or they are approached in a fragmented rather than a holistic way so that they can be tackled through

existing organizational policies, procedures, and patterns of expertise. But

standardized procedures and channels of communication are often

unable to deal effectively with new circumstances, necessitating numerous ad hoc meetings and committees, which, because they have to be

planned to fit rather than disrupt the normal mode of operation, are often

too slow or too late for dealing with issues. Problems of inaction and lack

of coordination thus become rife. In such circumstances the organization

frequently becomes clogged with backlogs of work because normal routine has been disrupted, and complex issues float up the organizational

hierarchy as members at each level find in turn that they are unable to

solve them. On the way, information often gets distorted, as people hide

errors and the true nature and magnitude of problems for fear of being

held responsible for them. Those in command of the organization thus

frequently find themselves facing issues that are inappropriately defined,

and which they have no real idea of how to approach. They are often

forced to delegate them to special task forces or teams of staff experts or

consultants—who, since they are often remote from the concrete problems

being experienced, further increase the delay and inadequacy of response.

The difficulty of achieving effective responses to changing circumstances is often further aggravated by the high degree of specialization in

different functional areas within the organization (e.g., production, marketing, finance, product engineering). Interdepartmental communications

and coordination are often poor, and people often have a myopic view of

what is occurring, there being no overall grasp of the situation facing the

enterprise as a whole. As a result the actions encouraged by one element

of the organization often entail negative consequences for others, so that

one element ends up working against the interests of another.

These problems are often compounded by the fact that mechanistic

definitions of job responsibilities encourage many organizational

members to adopt mindless, unquestioning attitudes such as “it’s not my

job to worry about that,” “that’s his responsibility, not mine,” or “I’m here

to do what I’m told.” Although often seen as attitudes that employees

“bring to work,” they are actually inherent in the mechanistic approach to

organization. Defining work responsibilities in a clear-cut manner has the

advantage of letting everyone know what is expected of them. But it

also lets them know what is not expected of them. Detailed job descriptions have this two-edged character, creating many problems when the

organization faces changing circumstances that call for initiative and

flexibility in response.

This institutionalized passivity and dependency can even lead people

to make and justify deliberate mistakes on the premise that they’re obeying orders. The hierarchical organization of jobs builds on the idea that

control must be exercised over the different parts of the organization (to

ensure that they are doing what they are designed to do), rather than

being built into the parts themselves. Supervisors and other hierarchical

forms of control do not just monitor the performance of workers—they

also remove responsibility from workers, because their function really

becomes operational only when problems arise. In a similar way, a system

of quality control on a production line often institutionalizes the production of defective goods. People realize that they are allowed a quota of

errors.

Much of the apathy, carelessness, and lack of pride so often encountered in the modern workplace is thus not coincidental: it is fostered by

the mechanistic approach. Mechanistic organization discourages initiative, encouraging people to obey orders and keep their place rather than

to take an interest in, and question, what they are doing. People in a

bureaucracy who question the wisdom of conventional practice are

viewed more often than not as troublemakers. Therefore, apathy often

reigns as people learn to feel powerless about problems that collectively

they understand and ultimately have the power to solve.

These difficulties are often linked to another set of problems: the development of subgoals and sets of interests that undermine the organization’s ability to meet its primary objectives. Functional specialization is

supposed to create a system of cooperation. Yet it often ends up creating

a system of competition as individuals and departments compete for

scarce resources or job positions higher up the hierarchy. Empire building,

careerism, the defense of departmental interests, pet projects, and the

padding of budgets to create slack resources may subvert the working of

the whole. If the organization is staffed by rational men and women

who behave in accordance with the formal interests and aims of the total

organization, “fitting in” rather than using the organization for other purposes, then this may not occur. But humans are human, and the best-laid

plans have a habit of turning in ways never intended by their creators.

Formal organizations thus often become guided toward the achievement

of informal ends, some of which may be quite contrary to the aims underlying the original design.

A final set of problems relate to human consequences. The mechanistic

approach to organization tends to limit rather than mobilize the development of human capacities, molding human beings to fit the requirements

of mechanical organization rather than building the organization around

their strengths and potentials. Both employees and organizations lose

from this arrangement. Employees lose opportunities for personal

growth, often spending many hours a day on work they neither value nor

enjoy, and organizations lose the creative and intelligent contributions

that most employees are capable of making, given the right opportunities.

Mechanistic approaches to organization have proved incredibly popular, partly because of their efficiency in the performance of tasks that can

be successfully routinized and partly because they offer managers the

promise of tight control over people and their activities. In stable times,

the approach worked from a managerial point of view. But with the

increasing pace of social and economic change, the limitations have

become more and more obvious.

As we enter the twenty-first century we find bureaucracies and other

modes of mechanistic organization coming under increasing attack

because of their rigidities and other dysfunctional consequences. The total

quality movement (TQM) and emphasis on flexible, team-based organization that came into prominence in the 1980s and 1990s signaled an

early response to these problems and the need to find other nonmechanical ways of organizing. From a historical perspective, the mechanistic

approach to organization belongs to the mechanical age. Now that we

are entering an age with a completely new technological base drawing on

microelectronics, new organizational principles are likely to become

increasingly important. Some of the images of organization considered in

the following chapters give a glimpse of what may be both possible and

appropriate for managing in these new times.