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Organizational Analysis (Week-3)

Caution:

These lecture notes are only guidelines in brief, the students are expected to
go through the entire range of references given at the end of each weeks
academic activities. Without that you shall not be able to take examinations for
good grades.
Any logical addition to the existing knowledge, made by the students, shall be
discussed in the class and appreciated.

Schemas (conception of what is common to all) and Personal Schemas

Each individual has his own perspective of an organizations success or

failure, good performance or bad performance.
Schemas gives us an approach to repeated situations and free up our minds
for other complex and highly varying activities.
Schemas get outdated. People who do not update their schemas may
themselves be falling in embarrassing situations.
Schemas are resistant to change. Like they are insistent saying but we have
always done it that way.
Schemas are incomplete. We develop schemas in line with our ongoing
experiences but we may miss some important features.

Three Lenses on Organizational Analysis

The strategic design lens.

The political lens.
The cultural lens.

The Strategic Design Lens: From Max Webers discussion on machine

bureaucracy at the turn of last century to the customer centred designs of the
early 21st century, the dominant view on organizations has viewed them as strategic
design; that is as systems deliberately constructed to achieve certain strategic
goals. It has been built that organisations has strategy for creating values that
provides the test for generating and assessing organisations design. Key elements
of the organisations design are:

Task; the smallest unit of activity that needed to be performed. It also includes
task interdependence and sequential interdependence in the light of Frederick
Taylors Scientific Management.
Strategic Grouping; it dictates the basic framework like tasks, functions,
disciplines, coordination and communication etcetera. Under the Strategic

Grouping, it has Basic Structures (which includes grouping by expertise /

function, grouping by output / product, grouping by market i.e. geography /
customer), Hybrid Structures (Matrix Organizations, Front / Back Structures
etcetera) and Strategic Linking (formal reporting structures, permanent crossunit groups, temporary cross-unit groups, information technology systems and
planning processes).
Alignment; which means ensuring that the units and individuals assigned
certain tasks and activities by the grouping and linking patterns have resources
and motivation to carry them out effectively. It includes organizational
performance management systems, individual rewards and incentives,
resource allocations and informal system and processes.

The Political Lens: political lens sees it as an arena for competition and conflict
among individuals, groups and other organizations whose interest and goals differ
and even clash dramatically. The organization as a political system includes:

Interest: position in the division of labour, location with national and

international dimensions, and professional / occupational category.
Power: the potential ability to influence behaviour, to change the course of
actions / activities, to overcome resistance and to get people to do something
that they would not otherwise do. It includes personal characteristics, scarce
and valued expertise, past performance / track record, formal position as a
source of power and informal network position as source of power.

The Cultural Lens: it refers to a way of life shared by the members of a given
society. It includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and other abilities
acquired. Organizational culture includes aspect like:

Culture and Control: coercive theories and exchange theories. From a cultural
perspective it is to create highly specific work norms and practices, altering
organizational structures, creating preferred kind of organizational culture a
promoting conceptual models of thought.
Sub-cultures and Segmentation: sub-cultures are groups of people who share
common identities based on characteristics that often override their
organizationally prescribed roles and relationships. It occurs between
management and labour, may also be because of occupational interests and
education background.
Organizations and Cultural Contexts: cross cultural context, applicability of
certain organizational forms and cross societal aspects.
Cultural Diagnoses of Organizations: symbols and meanings, identity, social
control, subculture, cultural relativity, habits and history.

Key Questions: As manager of the firm, be ready to answer the following

questions:

What challenges can I expect in my first job?

What do I want / expect from my work / career? How is this similar or different
from what my parents and grandparents wanted and expected?

How can I make my team work well?

How did the modern organization evolve and where is it going?

How do I analyze and make sense of the organizational structure in which I am

working?

Who will share my interests and who won't? Who has power, and how will it
affect what I do?

How do I sell my great idea to higher authorities?

What traditions matter in organizations, and how do they affect what goes on?

How do I negotiate when it looks like I have no power?

What should I ask for? What should I offer?

What structural, political, and cultural challenges have to be addressed to

integrate multiple agencies into a single efficient transportation organization
and system?

How do ideas move from the laboratory through the organization to the
marketplace?

Discussion on the Given Assignment

Framework for taking Actions in New Organizations

Framework for taking actions in New Organizations; it included requisites for

taking effective actions discussed under organizational characteristics.
For effective actions, it is for individual skills, organizational features and
managing the environments.
For organizational characteristic, it was for networked, flat, flexible, diverse and
global attributes of modern organizations.

Mapping Your Organization

In included introduction of the organization, stating old or new organization,

after due analysis of structure and functioning.
The second part was filling it up against attributes of new organizations like
networked, flat, flexible, diverse and global.

The Search for the Organization of Tomorrow

Three streams: high involvement workplace meaning operation with selfmanaging teams for empowering employees, managing processes to include
material handling, purchasing and manufacturing and thirdly evolution and
effects of information technology on organizational functioning.
The people who do the work should have in their hands the means to change
to suit the customer. That means workers should have the incentives and
power to respond the market.
Organizational transformation, which is required if one wants his organization
to function on the concept of New Organizations.

Layout of the Case Study / Article Review: given at page 4 of the course outline
already provided to the students through course representative, shall be discussed
in the class for elaboration / clearing doubt if any.
Layout of the Project Research Study: given at page 4 of the course outline
already provided to the students through course representative, shall be discussed
in the class for elaboration / clearing doubt if any.
Note: the students shall also be provided a specimen of paper review which stands
good for both i.e. project research paper and article / case review.
New Assignment

Selection of Topic for Project Research Paper: Each Group shall select 5
topics for project research paper for presentation / discussion in the class in 4 th
week session. After discussion with the instructor, each group shall have one
organization as topic for research study.
Case Study as Assignment: One case study / article review shall be given to
the students in next week as assignment. That would require to be handed
over to the instructor in the first period of 5th weeks session. Students are
requested to avoid embarrassing the instructor for late submissions.

Reference for Studies

Ancona, Kochan, Scully, Van Maanen and Westney, Managing for the Future:
Organizational Behaviour and Processes, as referred and explained to the
students in first week. (Module-2, Pages M2-8 to M2 89)
Graeme Martin, Managing People and Organizations in the Changing Context,
Butterworth-Heinemann, Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford, UK, 2006.
(Chapters as relevant to the topic of this week, optional studies)

Sheila K. McGinnis, Organizational Behaviour and Management Thinking,

Jones and Bartlett Publishers, available on internet. (Chapter 3).