MANAGING CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS

Managing Change in Organisations

Managing Change in Organisations

There are eight foremost characteristics of what is called the "bureaucratic form." Your association expected values most of these. Virtually all associations that use the bureaucratic pattern appear to bear the identical suffocating and immobilizing symptoms that persons call "bureaucracy." The characteristics of the bureaucratic association are: (Tsoukas, H., Chia, R. 2000, 45-78)

Fayol's list of basic management principlesBureaucratic Approach of ManagementOne of the contributors in bureaucratic approach to organization is Max Weber. Weber's ideas of bureaucracy were a reaction to managerial abuses of power. The basic principles of bureaucratic organization are:

• Principle 1: In a bureaucracy, a manager's formal authority derives from the position heor she holds in the organization. (Winston, B.B. 2004, 74)

• Principle 2: In a bureaucracy, people should occupy positions because of their performance, not because of their social standing or personal contacts.

• Principle 3: The extent of each position's formal authority and task responsibilities, andits relationship to other positions in an organization, should be clearly specified.

• Principle 4: So that authority can be exercised effectively in an organization, positions should be arranged hierarchically, so employees know whom to report to and who reports to them• Principle 5: Managers must create a well-defined system of rules, standard operating procedures, and norms so that they can effectively control behavior within an organization.

Rules are formal written instructions that specify actions to be taken under different circumstances to achieve specific goals (for example, if A happens, do B). Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are specific sets of written instructions about how to perform a certain aspect of a task.

Weber looked for methods to eliminate managerial inconsistencies that contributed to ineffectiveness, and his solution was a set of principles for organizing' group effort through a bureaucratic organization. Although the term bureaucracy, has been popularized as a means of referring to organizations that “rule too rigidly by the book,” these principles are found in virtually every formal organization, today. (Winston, B.B. 2004, 74)

Example:One of the more dramatic examples of the strengths and weaknesses of bureaucratic organization is the U.S. Postal Service. A fact that sometimes escapes the demanding public is that usually a letter can be delivered quickly and cheaply across the country. Coordinating the efforts of a number of employees equivalent to a major metropolitan city is possible only because the postal system has a workable set of rules and policies and a hierarchy of authority. These obvious strengths of bureaucracies can be seen in many organizations.

(Winston, B.B. 2004, 74)

Weaknesses

Most workers accuse their organization's "bureaucracy" on older management. They suppose that administration should desire it, or it wouldn't be tolerated. Senior managers don't desire or like "bureaucracy" any more than remainder of the employees. The detestable consequences of bureaucracy victimize every individual, despite of level. Senior managers haven't renowned what to do to eliminate it. Executives have endeavoured numerous things to eradicate "bureaucracy," but the "program-of-the-year" approach usually hasn't worked, because they have been battling symptoms, not the origin ...