2. Mary Parker Follett
How to resolve conflicts in organizations
Mary Parker Follett (3 September 1868 – 18 December 1933) was an American social
worker, management consultant and pioneer in the fields of organizational
theory and organizational behavior. She also authored a number of books and numerous
essays, articles and speeches on democracy,human relations, political
philosophy, psychology, organizational behavior and conflict resolution. In her capacity as a
management theorist, Mary Parker Follett pioneered the understanding of lateral processes
within hierarchical organizations, the importance of informal processes within organizations,
and the idea of the "authority of expertise", that really served to modify the typology of
authority developed by her german contemporary, Max Weber, who broke authority down
into three separate categories: rational-legal, traditional and charismatic.
Modern management theory owes a lot to a nearly-forgotten woman writer, Mary Parker
Follett who advocated for a human relations emphasis equal to a mechanical or operational
emphasis in management. Her work contrasted with the "scientific management" of Frederick
W. Taylor and evolved by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, which stressed time and motion studies.
Follett suggested that organizations function on the principle of power "with" and not power
"over."
Studying organizations is not suffiecient to obtain maximum efficiency. That is way, in every
organization is required to study the expectations of the working people. Groups, where
people are seeking for identity, should be seen as an entity that could solve problems, make
changes. In this way, society and the individual are not independent: society shapes the
individual and the individual shapes the society.
Follet recognized the holistic nature of community and advanced the idea of "reciprocal
relationships" in understanding the dynamic aspects of the individual in relationship to others.
She identifies a leader as "someone who sees the whole rather than the particular." Follett was
one of the first (and for a long time, one of the few) to integrate the idea of organizational
conflict into management theory, and is sometimes considered the "mother of conflict
resolution" . The three types of conflict, recognized in organizations: domination,
commitment, integration. Mary Parker Follett advocated the principle of integration, "power
sharing." Her ideas on negotiation, power, and employee participation were influential in the
development of organizational studies.
Follett is increasingly recognized today as the originator, at least in the 20th century, of ideas
that are today commonly accepted as "cutting edge" in organizational theory and public
administration. These includes the idea of seeking "win-win" solutions, community-based
solutions, strength in human diversity, situational leadership, and a focus on process.
However, just as her ideas were advanced for her own time, and advanced when people wrote
about them decades after her death, they remain too often unrealized. We recognize them as
an inspirational and guiding ideal for us today, at the beginning of the 21st century.
3. Chester Irving Barnard
Understanding the extension of the informal organization
Chester Irving Barnard (November 7, 1886 – June 7, 1961) was an American business
executive, public administrator and the author of pioneering work in management theory
and organizational studies. His landmark 1938 book, ’The Functions of the Executive’, sets
out a theory of organizationand of the functions of executives in organizations. Chester
Barnard looked at organizations as systems of cooperation of human activity and was worried
about the fact that they are typically rather short-lived. Firms that last more than a century are
rather few and the only organization that can claim a substantial age is the Catholic Church.
According to Chester Barnard, this happens because organizations do not meet the two
criteria necessary for survival: effectiveness and efficiency.
Efficiency and effectiveness were originally industrial engineering concepts that came of age
in the early twentieth century. Management theorists like Frederick Taylor and Frank and
Lillian Gilbreth designed time and motion studies primarily to improve efficiency. Work
simplification efforts again focused primarily on questions like "How fast can we do this
task?"
The words efficiency and effectiveness are often considered synonyms, along with terms like
competency, productivity and proficiency. However, in more formal management discussions,
the words efficiency and effectiveness take on very different meanings.
Efficiency is doing things right, while effectiveness is doing the right things. A third related
concept is adaptability, which is flexibility or the capability to respond fast.
Barnard defines efficiency of an organization as the degree to which that organization is able
to satisfy the motives of the individuals. If an organization satisfies the motives of its
participants and attains its explicit goals, cooperation among them will last.
He takes a perspective that was very unusual at that time, close to that of Mary Parker Follett,
and is not that usual even today. One might say that managers should treat workers
respectfully and competently to obtain authority, but the authority lies not in the position but
in the relationship between the subordinate and his superior. Authority comes from the lower
levels and means... acceptance.
In the theory of incentives, he sees two ways of convincing subordinates to cooperate:
tangible incentives and persuasion. He gives great importance to persuasion, much more than
to economic incentives. He described four specific incentive.
The specific inducements were:
Material inducements such as money
Personal non-material opportunities for distinction
Desirable physical conditions of work
Ideal Benefactions: such as pride of workmanship.
But cooperation in this manner means a limitation of freedom: when cooperating we lose the
opportunity to do what we want and we are also forced to strictly depend on the leader.
That is why managers key tasks are to set up systems to motivate employees towards the
organisation's goals - individuals working to a common purpose rather than by authority.
Viewing the communication system in an organisation as the key to organisational
achievement, Barnard set out three principles for effective communication: Ș
Everyone in the organisation must know what the channels of communication are
4. Everyone must have access to a formal communication channel
Lines of communication should be kept short and direct.
As part of his communications theory, Barnard's acceptance theory of authority proposes that
a manager exerts authority from above, and success depends on its acceptance by the
employees managed. In this way, employees determine how authoritative their manager is
and, for this reason, the main focus of an executive needs to be on creating the right
conditions to increase acceptance levels. Barnard suggested that this could be done if:
Managers are clear in what they ask employees to do,
Employees understand what their manager wants them to do
Employees are capable of complying.
Employees must also understand how their work helps to achieve organisational objectives.
To understand an organization is necessary to understand the informal organizing
(friendships, charisma, conflicts, etc..).
The role of informal organizations is to communicate and maintain a cohesive social bound,
provide the opportunity to strengthen personal attitudes and actions and avoid disintegration.
The consequences of informal organizations: establish certain attitudes, habits, customs,
norms to create conditions for the formal organizations to appear.
Formal organizations are undefined and unstructured, but informal organizations can’t survive
and flourish in their absence.
- Formal and informal organizations are interdependent.
Barnard's ideas on values and the way that executives must manage them to ensure
organisational success, did not find popularity at the time. But in the 1970s the ideas
resurfaced and have now become an important part of management theory in the form of
topics such as corporate social responsibility, business ethics, and organisational culture.
5. George Elton Mayo
A quick way to understand the value of creation
Professor George Elton Mayo (1880-1949), has secured fame as the leader in a series of
experiments which became one of the great turning-points in management thinking. At the
Hawthorne plant of Western Electric, he discovered that job satisfaction increased through
employee participation in decisions rather than through short-term incentives.
Mayo's importance to management lies in the fact that he established evidence on the value of
a management approach and style which, although not necessarily an alternative to FW
Taylor's scientific management, presented facts which Taylorites could not ignore.
The study began in 1924 by isolating two groups of workers in order to experiment with the
impact of various incentives on their productivity. Improvements to levels of lighting
produced increases in productivity, but so too did reversion to standard lighting and even
below-standard lighting in both groups. The initial assumption therefore was that increased
output stemmed from variation alone.
Other incentives - including payment incentives and rest pauses - were manipulated at regular
intervals, and although output levels varied, the trend was inexorably upwards. Whatever
experimentation was applied, output went up. Although it had been fairly conclusively
determined that lighting had little or nothing to do with output levels, the Assistant work
Manager agreed that something peculiar was going on and that experimentation should
continue.
In order to understand this further Mayo instituted a series of interviews. These provided the
workers with an opportunity to express their views and let off steam. It emerged that they
would feel better for discussing a situation even if it did not change. Further exploration into
worker complaints revealed that some had little or no basis in fact but were actually
symptoms or indicators of personal situations causing distress.
By focusing on a more open, conversational, listening and caring interview approach, Mayo
had struck a key which linked the style of supervision and the level of morale to levels of
productivity.
A third stage in the Research programme took place in the Bank Wiring Room with a similar
application of incentives to productivity. Here it emerged that: output was restricted - the
group had a standard for output which was respected by individuals in the group; the group
was indifferent to the employer's financial incentive scheme; the group developed a code of
behaviour of its own based on solidarity in opposition to the management, and output was
determined by informal social groups rather than by management.
For industry to benefit from the experiments at Hawthorne, Mayo first concluded that
supervisors needed training in understanding the personal problems of workers, and also in
listening and interviewing techniques. He held that the new supervisor should be less aloof,
more people-oriented, more concerned, and skilled in handling personal and social situations.
It was only later, after a period of reflection, that Mayo was able to conclude that:
- job satisfaction increased as workers were given more freedom to determine the
conditions of their working environment and to set their own standards of output;
- intensified interaction and cooperation created a high level of group cohesion;
6. - job satisfaction and output depended more on cooperation and a feeling of worth than
on physical working conditions.
In Mayo's view, workers had been unable to find satisfactory outlets for expressing personal
problems and dissatisfactions in their work life. The problem, as Mayo perceived it, was that
managers thought the answers to industrial problems resided in technical efficiency, when
actually the answer was a human and social one.
Mayo's contribution lies in recognising from the Hawthorne experiments that the formality of
strict rules and procedures spawns informal approaches and groups with their base in human
emotions, sentiments, problems and interactions. The manager, therefore, should strive for an
equilibrium between the technical organisation and the human one and hence should develop
skills in handling human relations and situations. These include diagnostic skills in
understanding human behaviour and interpersonal skills in counselling, motivating, leading
and communicating.
Bibliography:
Mary Parker Follett
www.vectorstudy.com
Chester Barnard
www.mbsportal.bl.uk
George Elton Mayo
The Human Relations Movement
http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/hawthorne/
