## Digital organising: principles and methods // 02. Organisational theories and the digital
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Pablo Velasco // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me)
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## TOPICS FOR THE DAY
* Scientific management and classic organisational theory
* Weick's organisational approach
* Morgan's Metaphors (according to you)
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# Scientific management and classic organisational theory
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### Taylor's principles of scientific management
| | |
| -------- | -------- |
| * Scientific (technical science)<br>* Goal: enhance **productivity and efficiency** in manufacturing<br><br>* Research focused on **'Time-motion'**-> exact movements for a task and time spent on the sequence<br>* Reaching for **standarisation**<br>* Data is systematized, correlated, and reduced to determine optimum combination of choices (for task) |  |
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ciVHghh.png" width="100%">
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### Outcomes of taylorism
* 📈 Boost in productivity
* 📈 More work accomplished by fewer people (more profit for companies)
* 📈 Higher quality product (arguably)
<br><br>
* 📉 Companies didn't pay more
* 📉 "Managers think, employees do"
* 📉 Deskilled employees (also expendable)
* 📉 Employee burnout
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Scientific management has been criticized for dehumanizing laborers, as they no longer control their labor processes
<span class="refs">Kjær, P. (2014). Scientific Management. Klassisk og moderne organisationsteori, 47–66.</span>
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### Max Weber (1922)
| | |
| -------- | -------- |
| * **Rational** and ethical<br>* Power and authority:<br> a. charismatic<br> b. hereditary<br> c. **bureacratic**: "rational-legal" with organisational features <br><br> * Efficiency/systematic<br>* Aimed at the **"reduction of uncertainty**"<br>* Interested in understanding rules (also the "intangible ones") |  |
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### Hawthorne studies
* Originally a research on the relation betweeen productivity <-> quality of physical environment
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/4AApuWf.png" width="40%">
* Productivity caused by the amount of attention paid to workers (by researchers, in this case)
* Informal relationships and unwritten rules within work groups had greater effects on workers' productivity and motivation
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# Weick's organisational approach
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## "Why do we find it so congenial to speak of organizations as structures but not as clouds, systems but not as songs, weak or strong [ties] but not tender or passionate"
<span class="refs">Gergen, K. J., Reed, M., & Hughes, M. (1992). Organization theory in the postmodern era.</span>
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### Karl Weick
| | |
| -------- | -------- |
| * "**Symbolic-interpretive**" school<br><br>* Organisations are not discrete entities with some sort of static structure, but sense-making machines (social structures enacted through social interaction)<br><br>* **sense-making as a diagnosis process**: from ambiguous cues to sustained action<br><br>* **microactions** diagnostics to understand maximum complexity<br><br><span class="censor">“sensemaking is a diagnostic process directed at constructing plausible interpretations of ambiguous cues that are sufficient to sustain action.”</span><span class="refs">Weick, K. E. (1979). The Social Psychology of Organizing (2nd edition). Adison-Wesley.</span> | 
|
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### equivocality
* ***Uncertainty*** ☛ (lack of information: inability to decide)
* ***Equivocality*** ☛ (too many possibilities: inability to choose)
* things (and technologies) don't have essential characterstics (they are open to interpretation)
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### double interact
* smallest unit of analysis
<span class="refs">Klabbers, J. H. G. (2009). The Magic Circle: Principles of Gaming & Simulation: Brill.
</span>
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### collective structure
<span class="refs">Allport, F. H. (1962). A structuronomic conception of behavior: Individual and collective: I. Structural theory and the master problem of social psychology. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 64(1), 3–30.</span>
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### mutual equivalence structures
<span class="refs">Wallace, A. F. C., & Fogelson, R. D. (1961). Culture and Personality. Biennial Review of Anthropology, 2, 42–78.</span>
* consummatory actions (rewards)
* instrumental actions (means to rewards)
* no shared goals or motives needed
* but some degree of prediction
<span class="censor">"By repeated activation of instrumental acts, the mutual equivalence structure is continually activated and the ties among the contingencies are made stronger"</span>
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### minimal social situation
<span class="refs">Kelley, H. H. (1968). Interpersonal accommodation. American Psychologist, 23(6), 399–410.</span>
| Fate control | Fate behaviour |
| :--------: | :--------: |
|  |  |
|  |  |
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### empty world hypothesis
<span class="censor">"Most things are weakly connected with most other things"</span>
<span class="refs">Simon, H. A. (1991). The Architecture of Complexity. In G. J. Klir (Ed.), Facets of Systems Science (pp. 457–476). Springer US.</span>
### timing/synchronicity
<span class="censor">"When people go home at night and the organisation is interrupted, what does it fall back to?"</span>
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