TECHNICAL-NATIONAL APPROACHES

Technical-National Approaches to Organisation

Technical-National Approaches to Organisation

Introduction

Technical-rational approach hypothesizes the presence of two subsystems in every organization or corporate; they are the technical sub-system and the social sub-system. Many researchers, notably at the Tavistock Institute in London, while studying the resistance of the work force to innovation and especially to the introduction of technological systems for work automation, suggested that a fit between the two sub-systems was needed for the overcoming of the workers' difficulties and for the achievement of the expected benefits from management (Trist, 1963, 62). The cornerstone of the technical-rational approach is that the fit is achieved by a design process aiming at the joint optimization of the subsystems; any organizational system maximizes performance only if the interdependency of the subsystems is explicitly recognized. Hence, any design or redesign must seek out the impact each subsystem has on the other, and planning must aim at the achievement of superior results by ensuring that all the subsystems are working in harmony.

A Technical-Rational Systems Primer

The endurance of technical-rational design to this day is largely attributable to its focus on the human element and the fact that many have undertaken leadership roles in keeping it current and relevant through conferences, roundtables, and public workshops. This is one of the interesting and delightful enigmas of technical-rational— namely, that it has endured so well and been adopted so widely despite the fact that, unlike other similar managerial innovations such as TQM and Business Process Reengineering (BPR), technical-rational was not adopted and advocated by major professional consulting groups. International consulting groups were largely responsible for the worldwide diffusion of TQM and BPR and, in turn, both TQM and BPR were critically important underpinnings of the growth and development of these groups (Trist, 1977, 201).

Technical-rational never acquired that international consulting support, possibly because it preceded TQM by a generation, and at that time these groups were early in their formation. A more likely reason is that the human element that informed technical-rational was not a part of the values of the many consultants who composed these international consulting groups. It may also be that industry leaders were more inclined to pay for the quick-fix productivity efficiencies that TQM and BPR espoused, but less inclined to pay for the social and human benefits that technical-rational espoused, even though the technical side of technical-rational offered most of the same process improvements as did BPR.

Technical-rational endured at a lower level of adoption probably because so many of its adherents were so strongly committed to the socio-psychological side of the activities of the workplace, that is, the human element. In each other, they found common beliefs and values that were not widely accepted in the workplace. Technical-rational provided them with one of the few forums where they could find others who were interested in innovating the design of the social systems of the workplace as well as the technical systems. However, technical-rational never caught the imagination of industry leaders in the ...