Concepts: Chapter 2

Rational-Legal Authority and Formal Rationality

The Clash of Organizations: From the CIA to the Taleban

Introduction: The organization structure of an intelligence agency is perhaps one of the most interesting structures that come to mind when studying organizational theory. My curiosity, and the plentiful room for speculation that is available when trying to study the workings of an intelligence agency make this subject as interesting as it is. To demonstrate [...]

PLEASE READ!

This is your captain speaking. A few reminders as you post. Make sure you use the right category.  These are on the left of the dashbaord screen.  There are just a few choices to keep it simple. Blog= Your minimum long blog post or any other “normal” posts. Fun= Anything else you want to add.  [...]

Leadership in Organizations

I have been spending the past few days in a completely different word than Bucknell. The United States Naval Academy is hosting their annual leadership conference. I feel somewhat out of place here amoungst the students in their uniforms. This organization operates on a much different set of standards and traditions than the Bucknell organization. [...]

Can Soccer be formalized?

In this blog post, I will attempt to highlight formalization ideas proposed by Simon, 1997  and Stinchcombe, 2001 (both pg. 38 O&O)  , and connect them with how a soccer team is organized and run. Formalization is often viewed as an attempt to render behavior more predictable by standardizing and regulating it. According to Simon, [...]

When Governments Fail…

This past Monday, Iceland’s coalition government collapsed amid public outcry of the government’s failure to effectively bail out their broken financial system.  Simply put, Iceland did not have deep enough pockets like the US did to provide some sort of recovery program for its banks and other financial institutions.  Although those are some of the [...]

Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club? or Costco?

I wonder how it would be to work at both and then be able to compare their organizations. We read a excerpt from a book where a journalist tried to work at Wal-Mart but could not make it not only because of the wages but because of the mindless job she was asked to perform [...]

Taylor-Mart

Maybe Frederick Taylor’s real last name was Walton. Or perhaps he had a distance cousin names Sam Walton. Either way, Taylor’s ideas on scientific management have truly become part of the American culture: “(Taylor) helped instill in us the fierce, unholy obsession with time, order, productivity, and efficiency that marks our age.” As Barbara Ehrenreich [...]

Formalized Structures are Eventually Ineffecient

Organizations and Organizing mentions the development of a type of rational system known as a formalized structure. Organizations design formalized structures by making the rules and roles of its members clear and explicit. This makes the social structure and flow of information obvious so that the organization’s performance is easily predictable and there is an [...]

Efficiently Inefficient

Frederick Taylor, the father of scientific management, would be perplexed to look at Wal-Mart as an organization. Taylor believed an organization could scientifically analyze the tasks of its workers to streamline processes to maximize output and minimize input. Wal-Mart strategy of low-cost goods using new technology to minimize costs, including its economies of scale and [...]

Explaing Our Economy in “-isms” and “-izations”

Thanks to Henry Ford and his meticulous methods to increase the productivity of workers on his assembly line, the economy transformed from one of craft production to one of mass production. In addition to “Fordism,” the past 100 years in the US economy can be explained by using “Levittownization,” “McDonaldization,” and “WalMartization.” Ford perfectly implemented [...]

Commercialization of Human Feeling

Drawing on concepts from Chapter 1 in our text, Organizations and Organizing, I would like to draw attention to a specific topic Scott and Davis address.  The two authors cite information on the “commercialization of human feeling” (found on page 4-5 of the text).  This idea has had an increasing importance with the dominance of [...]

WalMart – Industrial Peace?

In true Borat fasion – WalMart employees are clearly the happiness employees on the planet……NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is more than clear through the picture painted by Barbara Ehrenreich that WalMart employees probably don’t top the charts in employee satisfaction.  They seemed miserable with their wages, mindless tasks, and especially their incompetent managers, like our friend Howard.  [...]

Psychological Theories Tied to Attitudes Within Organizations

The selection we read from Nickel and Dimed sparked an interesting idea in reference to one of my annotated bibliography concepts we received back in class. One of my concepts related to a point that Scott and Davis made in chapter 2 about the influence an organization can have over an individual. They discuss how [...]

Traditional Authority in a changing world

In the selection for Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich it talks about working in a bureaucracy, for the most part living in a bureaucracy is a good thing however, we all know what to much of a good thing leads to. Ehrenreich talks of her experience in trying to get ahead in the minimum [...]

Weber’s Bureaucratic Authority and Our New President

The Gist In Weber’s theory of Bureaucracy, he contends that authority gains its legitimacy by one of three techniques. Traditional and rational-legal authorities are argued to be more formalized, structured, forms of authority usually existing with stable external environments. Leaders in these structures gain their allotted power through traditional hierarchies, or pre-established laws and regulations. [...]

Two interesting Living Wage resources

Ehrenreich’s book is about exploring low wage work in AMerica. Here are tow additonal resources. Living Wage Calculator Living Wage Research.

Is it almost Friday?

This is a quote.

Teaching people how to post

I am teaching these intrepid blog-o-nauts how to write a post. blog-a-nuat is defined by the New hacker’s dictionary of geeky terms as….

Bloggable ideas from Ch 2 of O&O

As an example of how to draw inspiration for blogging from the Scott and Davis book, Organizations and Organizing, I offer the following list of prompts from my notes. Can it really be rational to purseu goals with maximum efficiency without caring about the selection of goals? Have you ever seen a group or organization [...]

The importance of threads

Great saying for ideas and how they link: Do you think me a learned, well-read man?” “Certainly,” replied Zi-gong, “Aren’t you?” “Not at all,” said Confucius, “I have simply grasped one thread which links up the rest. “ Recounted in Sima Qian (145-ca. 89BC)

Post-it Notes

[Note: this is a sample post from an older class] If you have seen Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion (I don’t particularly recommend it) than you might recall their claim of becoming successful business women by inventing post-it notes. I cannot say I remember whether or not any of their classmates believed them, but [...]

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