WAKING UP WITH ORGANIZATIONS

1) Find a partner and make one list together

2) Think about everything you did this morning from the time you woke up until arriving in class

3) Together with your partner make the longest list you can of every organization or company whose service or product you used in that short period of time (formal names not required)

WE LIVE IN AN

ORGANIZATIONAL WORLD

· We are born, live and die in organizations

(hospitals, birth certificates, social security numbers, death certificates, funeral homes)

· We work in organizations for most of our lives

(90% of U.S. individuals will earn their living working for an organization)

· We are educated in organizations

(Preschool, elementary, secondary, university, on the job training)

ORGANIZATIONS ARE INFLUENTIAL

· Organizations control and manage our assets

(mutual funds, banks, pension funds)

· Organizations decide what will be developed and ignored (urban growth, suburban sprawl, parkland)

· Organizations decide where we will live

(zoning, regulation of living space)

· Religion is organized (organized religion growing rapidly)

· Self-help for personal problems is organized

(neighborhoods and families are being replaced by self-help groups)

· Organizations define what is a social problem & what isn’t (legislature decides about drug laws, who can marry)

· Organizations decide how we will deal with social problems (Ideologies of punishment and rehabilitation are kept alive in organizations)

ORGANIZATION DEFINED

· "Social structures created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of specified goals" (Scott, 1992)

· "Collections of individual efforts that are coordinated to achieve things that could not be achieved through individual action." (Pfeffer & Salanick, 1980)

· Examples:

- Mastodon hunt (the first organization?)

- pin factory (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations)

IS GOAL PURSUIT A DEFINING

ATTRIBUTE OF ORGANIZATION?

· People often don’t know the goal of their organization

· People often disagree about the goal

· Goals shift over time

· Manifest goals vs. latent goals

· Is organizational survival the fundamental goal?

MEMBERSHIP AND BOUNDARIES

· Rewards of membership

(being a member often provides access to social and material resources)

· Balance must be positive

(people leave when demands exceed rewards.....usually)

· Individual well being and status related to membership

(stigma and pride can be results of membership)

· Membership is a source of identity

(people readily identify themselves as members or followers)

· Organizational boundaries are established and maintained to regulate allocation of resources and rewards of membership

(admission to university; club; employee status.... "I still have my job, I just don’t have any work right now")

WHY MODELS OF ORGANIZATIONAL

BEHAVIOR ARE IMPORTANT

· Our assumptions and models have consequences - they are often self-fulfilling prophesies and dictate corporate strategies

e.g. "Workers are lazy and are only driven by punishment and financial reward."

VS.

"Workers will expend great effort for social rewards and to maintain their organizational identity."

· Models guide research and shape the direction of knowledge development

-Should we study zero-sum games or the sources of social support in work groups?

ECONOMIC MODEL

OF ORGANIZATION

· Behavior is "rational" i.e. intentionally chosen to maximize individual utility or preference

· Organizations are social arrangements designed to achieve efficiency - the inefficient will disappear

· Organizations are just aggregations of individual preferences or a nexus of contracts

· People are opportunists - self interest pursued with guile and deceit

· Workers must be pushed and pulled with incentives

SOCIAL MODEL

OF ORGANIZATION

· Humans don’t live in isolation, they associate with others, and need relationships

· Social cues drive behavior and thought, task preferences are socially determined, turnover is socially mediated

· Social capital "It’s not what you know, but who you know" - who you know confers influence and access to resources

· Social contagion, social modeling, imitation are prime forces - poison pilk are adapted because of who knows whom. Decision to enter the market are driven by imitation

· Network position; i.e., location in the social structure is a critical source of power

influence

THE BIG GRAB

· 2 players

· Jar of "dollars"

· Each player has a bank

· Object of game: Each player should try to get as many dollars as possible

· Referee can stop withdrawals at any time

· Referee will replenish supply if it stays above a certain point

THE "TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS"

· Organizational life embodies an inherent tension between individual gain and the collective good

· Examples:

- free riding in work groups vs. group incentives

- environmental depletion vs. lobstermans association

- tax cheating vs. enforcement by the state

- littering vs. norms of individual clean up

- predatory behavior in corporations vs. anti trust action

· Manage your "commons" wisely