SOC227H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Hawthorne Effect, Scientific Management, Organization Studies
Document Summary
The word bureaucracy has negative connotation when used in a conversation. Bureaucracy is associated with inefficiency, lack of caring. Management is the opposite and makes a positive statement. Questions about how best to integrate & coordinate the activities of large numbers of workers within a single enterprise gave rise to organization studies & theories of management. Organization structure adopted by 19th century businesses was the bureaucratic hierarchy. Weber considered bureaucracy to best able to efficiently coordinate & integrate the multitude of specialized tasks conducted in big factory offices. He believed capitalism would not be successful without bureaucracies. Gareth morgan defines bureaucracies as organizations that emphasize precision, speed, clarity, reliability & efficiency achieved thru the creation of a fixed division of tasks, hierarchical supervision, & detailed rules/regulations. It was an improvement over tradition-bound, disorganized methods used to run businesses. Also a system of authority, rules/regulations are designed to elicit cooperation & obedience from employees.
