Classical And Contingency Theory In Organizational Design

Frederick Taylor (1917) developed scientific management theory (often called "Taylorism") at the beginning of this century. His theory had four basic principles: 1) find the one "best way" to perform each task, 2) carefully match each worker to each task, 3) closely supervise workers, and use reward and punishment as motivators, and 4) the task of management is planning and control.

Scientific management or "Taylorism" is an approach to job design, developed by Frederick Taylor (1856-1915) during the Second World War. With the industrial revolution came a fast growing pool of people, seeking jobs, that required a new approach of management. Scientific management was the first management theory, applied internationally. It believes in the rational use of resources for utmost output, hence motivating workers to earn more money. Taylor believed that the incompetence of managers was the major obstacle on the way of productivity increase of human labour. Consequently, this idea led to the need of change of management principles. On the base of research, involving analysing controlled experiments under various working

The bureaucratic model of leadership is based on the concept of fixed duties that are maintained through a hierarchy of authority. Max Weber (1800) believed that organizations had one critical weakness and that was closely interacting with employees and simulating a family or community like environment. He believed that the only way that and organisation could be run was by separating work and pleasure and ensuring that employees followed a stick code of conduct which would be enforced and managed by more trustworthy and higher ranking employees. However while prominent for over a century the bureaucratic management model has become scarcely used in the last few decades as more and more organisations seem to be gradually reverting to pre bureaucratic values. Organisations like Valve and Google have cause the diminishment of the

Philosophers have identified three key perspectives to organization: rational, natural, and open systems. Each of these perspectives include key development for organizational design. They each also exemplify developments of the science of organization. Modern organizational theory can be described as a combination of these three main perspectives (Scott, 2003). This presentation will compare the rational and natural approach with suggestions of restricting to the natural perspective for our current organization.

Weber's bureaucratic theory strongly emphasized the need for a hierarchical structure of power. It recognized the importance of division of labor and specialization. A formal set of rules was bound into the hierarchy structure to insure stability and uniformity. Weber also put forth the notion that organizational behavior is a network of human interactions, where all behavior could be understood by looking at cause and effect. This is generally analyzed by administrative theory. Administrative theory was formalized in the 1930s. The emphasis was on establishing a universal set of management principles that could be applied to all organizations for effectivity.

If we go back to the first half of the twenty first century, organization theory was dominated by classicists who viewed organizations as rational systems and valued efficient operations above all. They promoted the idea that management is a process of planning, organization, command, coordination n, and control and that design of an organization should be like that of a machine. This concept spawned the modern bureaucracy. (Morgan, 1997a)

Kirst-Ashman emphasizes “that specifically designed, formal structure and a consistent, rigid organizational network employees are most important in having an organization run well and achieve its goal” (as cited in Griffin & Moorhead,2012). Based on a rigid structure which, focuses on the productivity and sufficiency of completing tasks, the classical organization theory

The bureaucratic model of leadership is based on the concept of fixed duties that are maintained through a hierarchy of authority. Max Weber (1800) believed that organizations had one critical weakness and that was closely interacting with employees and simulating a family or community like environment. He believed that the only way that and organisation could be run was by separating work and pleasure and ensuring that employees followed a stick code of conduct which would be enforced and managed by more trustworthy and higher ranking employees. However while prominent for over a century the bureaucratic management model has become scarcely used in the last few decades as more and more organisations seem to be gradually reverting to pre bureaucratic values. Organisations like Valve and Google have cause the diminishment of the

* Frederick Taylor's theory of scientific management developed techniques for improving the efficiency of the work process.

Scientific management or Taylorism advocated by Fred W. Taylor, states that the Production efficiency can be maximised by working closely with the workers. It involves fragmenting each task into individual motions, analyse each motion and eliminate the unnecessary motions. With this best possible way to do the task created the workers with proper tool, training and incentives can follow a closely supervised routine, translating into being extremely productive.

Organizational theory deals with the study of the interaction of an organization with its environment. Emphasis on organizational theories has over time changed from the stiff and hierarchical structures, widespread during the industrial era to more broader and flexible structures prevalent in the modern, technological era. In this regard, organizational theories have attracted serious attention. This post focuses on three organizational theories of the 20th century and if or not they are applicable in the 21st century integrating organizational culture, structures, leadership and enabling technologies. These are classical organizational theory, human relation theory, and contingency theory.

Scientific management (also called Taylorism, the Taylor system, or the Classical Perspective) is a theory of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflow processes, improving labor productivity. The core ideas of the theory were developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s, and were first published in his monographs, Shop Management (1905) and The Principles of Scientific Management (1911).[1] Taylor believed that decisions based upon tradition and rules of thumb should be replaced by precise procedures developed after careful study of an individual at work.

Knowing design of organization makes the company managers find the problems of the company, and create effective strategies to deal with the problems. It is important to make sure that the organization design is fit for organization 's purpose and for the people within the company. Daft (2015) explained that

Organizational design can provide quicker decision-making as some models help accelerate information flow and streamline decision-making. It can also provide personal growth by creating opportunities for people to take on different and challenging roles within the same organization. Any work process in the organization can be in scope for organizational design.

According to traditional theorists such as Fayol, Weber, and Taylor, a school of thought identifies a level of agreement in their view of organizational system implementation. These classical theorists indicate in their readings that there is