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The Four Theoretical Contributions Central Today 's Understanding Of Organizations

Satisfactory Essays

Week 1 Written Assignment Nicole Robinson April 12, 2017

The four theoretical contributions central to today’s understanding of organizations can be summarized thusly:

F.W. Taylor’s Theory of Scientific Management: Studied work processes at the individual level to find the most efficient ways of carrying out work tasks with the goal of providing maximum output with the least utilization of time and resources. This theory focuses almost entirely on quantitative metrics. It a sense, it reduces a worker to a machine. Inefficiencies and redundancies are identified and streamlined in an effort to improve output and presumably profitability. I believe that this model has the greatest historical context as roughly a hundred hears …show more content…

It focuses on the “administrative man” who only knows some of the possible options and will choose what satisfies a need rather than looking for the ideal solution. Types of decisions are made by different levels of management within an organization. The top levels make value based or “what” decisions, the bottom makes factual or “how” decisions. This leads to a chain of means-end decisions from the top down. This model stresses unobtrusive controls to behavior such as training, procedures, and calculated dissemination of information. I would argue that this is the model most important in healthcare organizations and long-established businesses today. They focus on rules, procedures, protocols, and standardized training.

Discussion:

With the decline of manufacturing in the United States in the past decades, the theory of scientific management is not as applicable as it once was but as businesses now rely more on ingenuity, innovation, and information management, processes that do not lend themselves as readily to efficiency analysis. However, as there will always be a need for efficiency, its principles still underlie the application of new innovations and producing new products.
In my opinion, administrative theory models many aspects of corporate America and can still be seen widely in business organizations today. It involved climbing a corporate ladder, seeking promotion, being assigned to work with people of a similar skill set in a certain

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