Theories of Organizational Behavior
Revisiting the Classical theories
Introduction
Organization indexes considerably more than the structures that lifts us out of ‘bare life’. Organization is also intimately, and utterly, connected to thought. While many, and by no means just those in the West, think of themselves as ‘free’ from enslavement by others, and even free from the organization of the state, who can argue that they are also free from the pervasive effects of language, culture and science? These are matters into which we find ourselves ‘thrown’, long before we wake up to their organizing effects. If, indeed, we ever do wake up. For if the intricate relations between language and thought came to be examined late in the 19th century, questions about the intercession between science and culture began to be asked only with the rise of the sociology of knowledge in the 20th century.
Questions also arise over what all this organization is for. Who benefits when community is eschewed for markets, when institutions are rendered into bureaucracies, and when sociability is altered in favour of friendship? Are we still to enjoy moments of intimacy, occasions in which compassion comes to fruition? Or are our ideas of organization incapable of being emancipated from the impetuous calls of efficiency and subordination? What place is there today for ‘ultimate values’ like dignity or happiness? Have these all-too-human dreams been made impossible in the disorganization of global capital? When organizations get busy organizing each other, how then are we to think of ‘belonging’? And how can we stop tradition from being the Other of modernization? Are there forms of affiliation and belonging that are not based on exclusion, exploitation, precedent and privilege?
Organization Theory
These are the issues that Organization theory answers. As we all know, Organizational theory, encompasses the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people act within organizations. It
Introduction
Organization indexes considerably more than the structures that lifts us out of ‘bare life’. Organization is also intimately, and utterly, connected to thought. While many, and by no means just those in the West, think of themselves as ‘free’ from enslavement by others, and even free from the organization of the state, who can argue that they are also free from the pervasive effects of language, culture and science? These are matters into which we find ourselves ‘thrown’, long before we wake up to their organizing effects. If, indeed, we ever do wake up. For if the intricate relations between language and thought came to be examined late in the 19th century, questions about the intercession between science and culture began to be asked only with the rise of the sociology of knowledge in the 20th century.
Questions also arise over what all this organization is for. Who benefits when community is eschewed for markets, when institutions are rendered into bureaucracies, and when sociability is altered in favour of friendship? Are we still to enjoy moments of intimacy, occasions in which compassion comes to fruition? Or are our ideas of organization incapable of being emancipated from the impetuous calls of efficiency and subordination? What place is there today for ‘ultimate values’ like dignity or happiness? Have these all-too-human dreams been made impossible in the disorganization of global capital? When organizations get busy organizing each other, how then are we to think of ‘belonging’? And how can we stop tradition from being the Other of modernization? Are there forms of affiliation and belonging that are not based on exclusion, exploitation, precedent and privilege?
Organization Theory
These are the issues that Organization theory answers. As we all know, Organizational theory, encompasses the systematic study and careful application of knowledge about how people act within organizations. It
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