Write an individual short essay on the contribution that critical analysis of leadership theories makes to your understanding of organizational leadership, and how this knowledge will make a difference to your development as a future leader.

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Home >Human Resource Management homework help >Write an individual short essay on the contribution that critical analysis of leadership theories makes to your understanding of organizational leadership, and how this knowledge will make a difference to your development as a future leader.

The Organisation Society

Organisational Behaviour

Developed by Professor Martin Wood

Last Week: Recap and Glossary

• Modern industrial capitalism arose from the inherent

inefficiencies in traditional and customary models;

• The emerging rationality of the labour process of capitalist

production that combines new technical knowledge with

increased scale of efficiency and exploitation

• Growth of industrial capitalist production built around the notion of

bureaucracy

Today

• Overview and analysis of attempts to theorise the ongoing

managerial problem of the structure of enterprise

The Appliance of Science

• Decline in Protestant Ethic

• Rise in interest in reform of society through discoverable scientific methods

• „More than ever, the world‟s greatest need is a science of human relationships and an art of human engineering based upon the laws of … science‟ (Whyte, 1956: 24, added emphasis).

Scientific Management

„the American system of “scientific management” enjoys the

greatest triumphs in the rational conditioning and training of work

performances. The final consequences are drawn from the

mechanization and discipline of the plant, and the psycho-

physical apparatus of man is completely adjusted to the

demands of the outer world, the tools, the machines, in short to

an individual “function”. The individual is shorn of his natural

rhythm as determined by the structure of his organism: his

psycho-physical apparatus is attuned to a new rhythm through a

methodical specialisation of separately functioning muscles,

and an optimal economy of forces is established corresponding

to the conditions of work‟

(Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980: 82, added emphasis)

Frederick Winslow Taylor

• aka Freddy „Speedy‟ Taylor

• How do you control and coordinate work in large scale

(industrial) bureaucracies?

• Produced accurate and scientific study of unit

production times The Principles of Scientific

Management (1911)

• Led to division of labour

Principle Aims

Aims:

1. To point out the loss through inefficiency

2. Scientific management

3. Emphasis on measurement, control and

predictability

Among Taylor‟s Recommendations

1.Division of labour

2.Work measurement

3.Individual task prescriptions Motivation through incentive schemes

4.Role of management

5.Development of management thinking

Scientific Management Associates

Henri Fayol

• First comprehensive application of rationalisation principles at the

level of management

Gulick and Urwick

• Early U.S. based (Urwick was English) management consultants

who adapted Fayol‟s principles to rationalise work processes in

large conglomerates;

• More sophisticated approaches to enhancing worker performance

Henry Ford

• All encompassing Fordism widened the scope of Taylorism

Some Notable Dissociates

• Antonio Gramsci – Italian formal theorist of (and for)

labour and resolutely against Taylorism:

• Braverman – another Marxist who argues scientific

management deskills though separation of mental and

physical.

• Durkheimian – further erodes social solidarity at the level

of the firm

• Weberian – Iron cage

• Rarely implemented fully

• Develops to serve and benefit bureaucrats

• Privileges past decisions and status quo

• Unimaginative and non-entrepreneurial

• Wasted talent / knowledge of workers

• No promotion (if good at role)

• Intrinsic value? More than just economic animals?

• Turnover, absenteeism

• Quantity not quality

Final Analysis: Efficiency and

Effectiveness?

New VISA Paywave

• Aimed at mass adoption by consumers

• Transaction times are crucial to the consumer experience and the retailer business

• Marketed as a new and exciting consumer experience

• Continuing emphasis on measurement, control and predictability

McDonaldization Rationalization

and Mass Production • McDonaldization is “The process by which the principles of the fast-

food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the World.” (George Ritzer The McDonaldization of Society p1)

• The processes are those of Rationality

– Bureaucracy – of organization

– Taylorism – of work design

– Fordism – of mass production

• The principles are

– Efficiency – the shortest distance

– Calculability – measure everything

– Predictability – time-space compression

– Control – non-human for human substitution

Elton Mayo and the Human

Relations Movement

• Human Relations School = a form of neo-Durkheimian

intervention to repair social solidarity at the level of the

firm

• Aimed at reducing likelihood of workplace unrest

through the study of the informal social relationships

• Contrasted the doctrine of possessive individualism

with that of the function of groups

• The famous „Hawthorne Studies‟ (1924-32)

Development of Human

Relations Theories

• Distinction between formal/informal organisation

• Formal and informal prescriptions need not (and often do not) cohere: consensus as a myth?

• The worker does not always behave as the formal organisational logic would prescribe Management training in human relations techniques to address the question of the control and coordination of work

• Psychological bias

Human Relations as Crusade?

„[The Human Relations School] may neglect the fact that many problems of organization are in fact only problems of and for management, and that these problems cannot be spirited away through a change of supervisory style or the learning of social skills. They are in fact structural contradictions inherent in the hierarchical organization of work in terms of distinct levels of mental and manual labour, for the private appropriation of the fruits of the collective product, and the inegalitarian treatment and reward of organization members in the process‟

(Clegg and Dunkerley, 1980: 134, added emphasis)

References

Whyte, W. (1956) The Organization Man. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

Wright Mills, C. (1951) White Collar. London: Oxford University

Press.