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Comparing the Modern Organizational Theory and Improvisation Essay

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"Organization theory deals with the formal structure, internal working, and external environment of complex human behavior within organizations. As a field spanning several disciplines, it prescribes how work and workers out to be organized and attempts to explain the actual consequences of organizational behavior (including individual behavior) on work done and on the organization itself."(Gordon and Milkavoich, 147) It has been evolving for centuries on how should work be done in the public administration and how the organization should be. "Research findings have emerged about what motivates workers and how different incentives affect various tasks, employees, and situations; and the environments in which they operate." (Gordon and …show more content…

Improvisation is made inevitable in a situation where problems must be dealt with expediently and on the spur of the moment. Taking into consideration the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, improvisation is essential to running administrations. The formal theory such of Max Weber cannot apply since its framework of rules and procedures are to ensure stability, predictability, and reliability of performance; yet, with no stability or predictability in the environment these theories only fall short of their expectations. Rational panning has already been pointed out a century ago by Herbert Simon (1976) to be "bounded" by many factors such as: "skills, habits, and reflexes, values, etc, which makes it impossible to achieve rational planning that is suited for the situation…Moreover, rational planning does not have primary value in Israel's cultural heritage. Survival in the Diaspora often depended on an ability to act quickly, with limited resources, under harsh, changing, and uncertain conditions."(Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 2) With endless terrorism, continuous war, and a population growth that shifts from month to month there is the perpetual challenge to respond to each situation expediently and ingeniously. Even with the scientific management organizational theory, the formal structure and rules, the highly centralized top management levels, and especially the standardizing procedures would make policy-making

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