Organizational Behavior 2

Essential Theories of Process and Structure

John B. Miner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317463542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

This comprehensive text provides a detailed review and analysis of the building-block theories in the macro-organizational behavior field.

John Miner has identified the key theories that any student or scholar needs to understand to be considered literate in the discipline. Each chapter includes the background of the theorist represented, the context in which the theory arose, the initial and subsequent theoretical statements, research on the theory by the theory's author and others (including meta-analysis and reviews), and practical applications.

Special features, including boxed summaries of each theory at the beginning of each chapter; two introductory chapters on the scientific method and the development of knowledge; and detailed, comprehensive references, help make this text especially useful for every student and scholar in the field.

PART I
Scientific Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Science and Its Theory

Theory and Practice

Science Defined

The Role of Theory in Science

Theory Defined

How Theory Works

Assumptions of Science

Rules of Scientific Inquiry

Theory Building

Defining a Good or Strong Theory

Kinds of Theories

Micro, Macro, and Meso

Typologies as Theory

Grounded Theory

Conclusions

What is organizational behavior? It is a social science discipline—much like cultural anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. That means that it utilizes the scientific method to establish truth and to validate its theories. It is a discipline that historically has had its intellectual home in business schools. It is a new discipline relative to the other social sciences, having its origins in the middle twentieth century. The key points are that it is a science and that it has a history that, though short, has been quite turbulent.

Although the exact boundaries of the discipline are somewhat fuzzy (see Blood 1994), organizational behavior’s focus is clearly on the world of organizations. The concern is first with the behavior and nature of people within organizations, and second with the behavior and nature of organizations within their environments. The term organizational behavior initially had reference only to the behavior and nature of people in organizations. Given the fuzziness of its boundaries, the discipline always had a tendency to stretch beyond that domain, however. By the time it was approaching twenty-five years of age, it clearly had staked a claim to incorporating the behavior and nature of organizations as well. This is historically consistent in that both the study of the behavior and nature of people and the study of the behavior and nature of organizations emerged in business schools in the same places at the same times. The focus of this volume, however, is on the latter, with the usual caveat regarding fuzzy boundaries.

In line with its professional school origins, organizational behavior is an applied discipline, concerned with matters of practice and application. Despite this orientation, it has relatively few members who actually devote their primary professional efforts to the practice of organizational behavior in business and other organizational settings; rather, most are concentrated in academia—teaching, writing, and conducting research. In my opinion this is unfortunate; the field would be better off, not by reducing its academic efforts, but by expanding its practitioner efforts. We will return to this theme in various ways throughout this book.

Several other terms have become intertwined with organizational behavior over the years, although none has achieved quite the same level of acceptance. One is organization theory, which has come to refer almost exclusively to the study of the behavior and nature of organizations in their environments. A second is organization(al) science, which appears to cover essentially the same ground as organizational behavior, and which in many respects I prefer as a designation for our field (see Miner 1984). However, right now organizational behavior has won the day. Finally, there is the term organization studies, which also has a broad connotation, extending, at least in the recent period, beyond the science of organizations to incorporate several different philosophic positions (see Clegg, Hardy, and Nord 1996).

Having explained what organizational behavior is, I need to say something about what it is not. It is not strategic management, a field that has emerged and achieved stature more recently than organizational behavior (see Schendel and Hofer 1979) and that has differentiated itself at the border that previously existed between organizational behavior and economics, borrowing from and overlapping with each. Also organizational behavior is not economics, although in recent years there has been some confounding of the two fields and some even foresee a possible future takeover of organizational behavior by economics (see, for example, Pfeffer 1995). However, economics was well established in business schools long before organizational behavior arrived, and organizational behavior was spawned, in large part at the behest of economists, as a separate and distinct discipline. Historically the two are clearly different entities with very different origins.

Finally, organizational behavior is not philosophy. That, however, is a rather complex story. As a science, our field is closely tied to, though separate from, the philosophy of science. In this respect it is like all other sciences, and the relationship can be expected to continue as long as organizational behavior defines itself as a social science. But philosophy has been threaded into organizational behavior in other respects from the very beginning, not always to the benefit of either field. Sometimes, in the hands of certain individuals, organizational behavior and philosophy have become almost indistinguishable from one another. Understanding what is involved here requires a background in the nature of science, scientific theory, scientific research, and in the history of science—in short in the scientific foundations of the field. It also requires a background in the ways in which philosophy has become threaded into organizational behavior at various points in time. These matters are considered in these introductory chapters of Part I.

The primary focus of this book, however, is on the major theories that have evolved within the broad field of organizational behavior that deal with the processes of organizational functioning and the structures of organizational forms. The goal is to provide an understanding of these theories and thus to determine what they can tell us that might prove useful to people who participate in organizations.

In point of fact we all participate in various organizations, such as schools, companies, and hospitals throughout our lives, and we devote a large percentage of our time to such participation. Most people would like to function more effectively in organizations and to contribute to more effective functioning of the organizations themselves. It seems logical that the more we know about organizations and the way they operate, the better our chances of coping with them adequately and of achieving our own goals within them and for them. Giving us this knowledge is what theories of organizational behavior attempt to do.

As a foundation for understanding these theories it is important to know what scientific theory is and what it is not, as well as how theory relates to research and how research either supports or fails to support theory. These are the concerns of this scientific introduction. The intent is to provide a basic understanding that can be drawn on as specific theories are discussed in the remainder of the book.

Theory and Practice

Theory is the cornerstone of any science. It provides the ideas that fuel research and practice. Theories of organizational behavior are as potentially useful when applied to organizations as theories of physics and chemistry are when used in developing new manufacturing technologies and consumer products, or theories of biology are in advancing medical practice. However, the relationship between theory and practice (or application, or usefulness) in organizational behavior is often misunderstood. For many people the term theory evokes images of a speculative, ivory-towered world, far removed from reality. Theories do not sound helpful in understanding the practical facts of organizational life. Yet one hears such statements as that of the eminent psychologist Kurt Lewin (1945), who said that “nothing is so practical as a good theory.” And this dictum continues to receive widespread acceptance today (see, for example, Van de Ven 1989).

Confusion on this score is in fact widespread; the subject requires consideration here at the outset because a particular reader’s preconceptions regarding the theory—practice relationship (or the lack thereof) can color that person’s thinking about the entire field. The idea that theory is somehow “ivory tower” while practice is “real world”—and that the two are distinct and separate—permeates much current discussion of business school education and of the role of the organizational behavior discipline (Das 2003, Donaldson 2002).

What then is the state of the situation at the interface between academic theory and research, and the world of application? What do studies tell us? One of the most comprehensive such studies deals with the research knowledge, much of it theory-based, of human resource managers (Rynes, Brown, and Colbert 2002; Rynes, Colbert, and Brown 2002). This investigation indicated that these managers were not very knowledgeable regarding the research evidence; they were only neutral on the value of research findings for practice, and most read very little in the research literature. Yet those few who were more conversant with the research worked for more financially successful companies. A difficulty appears to be that many HR managers rely almost entirely on the popular press for knowledge input (Mazza and Alvarez 2000), and often get wrong information from such sources. Not surprisingly, the popular press tends to pick up on temporary fads and fashions that are “hot” at the time, many of which are simply recycled versions of old ideas that had been discarded (Spell 2001).

Another study, focused on a specific theory, failed to find evidence of an understanding of this theory among managers, although M.B.A. students were better informed (Priem and Rosenstein 2000). Thus, practicing managers could not go in the directions prescribed because they lacked the knowledge to do so. Although value and motivational differences are involved here (Brooks, Grauer, Thornbury, and Highhouse 2003; Miner 2004), this in itself would not logically account for the academic-managerial gap found; the problem appears to be in not going to appropriate sources of information (Roehling, Cavanaugh, Moynihan, and Boswell 2000).

The data thus seem to indicate a substantial gap between theory and perceived usefulness in practice. Yet there are reasons to believe that this gap can be reduced under appropriate circumstances (Rynes, Bartunek, and Daft 2001). One objective of this volume is to facilitate this process and accordingly to narrow the gap so that practitioners will come away with a greater appreciation of the value that organizational behavior theory can bring to practice. Examples of recent academic—practitioner collaborations on research studies (Ford, Duncan, Bedeian, Ginter, Rousculp, and Adams 2003; Rynes and McNatt 2001) and of increasing concern about linking theory to practice (Cooper and Locke 2000) give reason for optimism in this regard.

In this context, let me return to Lewin’s (1945) dictum. What Lewin meant by a good theory is one that is validated by adequate research. To be truly useful, a theory must be intimately intertwined with research, and to the extent that it is, it has the potential for moving beyond philosophic speculation to become a sound basis for action. Good theory is thus practical because it advances knowledge in a field, guides research to important questions, and enlightens practice in some manner (Van de Ven 1989).

Some theories are obviously more concerned with application than others. Some, at the time of inception, may fail to meet the test of usefulness, only to find their way to a juncture with practice later on. Some theories are never tested, or fail the test of research, and they are not very good theories, at least as far as anyone can tell. In any event a good theory has the potential for valid applications and thus can prove useful if correctly applied. A theory in an applied field, such as organizational behavior, that is so divorced from application (so ivory tower?) that it has no potential for speaking to practice is very unlikely to be a good theory. This is the viewpoint that guides the analyses and interpretations presented throughout this book.

Science Defined

Science is an enterprise by which a particular kind of ordered knowledge is obtained about natural phenomena by means of controlled observations and theoretical interpretations. Ideally, this science, of which organizational behavior is a part, lives up to the following:

1. The definitions are precise
2. The data-collecting is objective
3. The findings are replicable
4. The approach is systematic and cumulative
5. The purposes are understanding and prediction, plus, in the applied arena, control (Berelson and Steiner 1964).

The usually accepted goals of scientific effort are to increase understanding and to facilitate prediction (Dubin 1978). At its best, science will achieve both of these goals. However, there are many instances in which prediction has been accomplished with considerable precision, even though true understanding of the underlying phenomena is minimal; this is characteristic of much of the forecasting that companies do as a basis for planning, for example. Similarly, understanding can be far advanced, even though prediction lags behind. For instance, we know a great deal about the various factors that influence the level of people’s work performance, but we do not know enough about the interaction of these factors in specific instances to predict with high accuracy exactly how well a certain individual will do in a particular position.

In an applied field, such as organizational behavior, the objectives of understanding and prediction are joined by a third objective—influencing or managing the future, and thus achieving control. An economic science that explained business cycles fully and predicted fluctuations precisely would represent a long step toward holding unemployment at a desired lev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I. SCIENTIFIC INTRODUCTION
• PART II. ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION MAKING
• PART III. SYSTEMS CONCEPTS OF ORGANIZATIONS
• PART IV. BUREAUCRACY-RELATED CONCEPTS
• PART V. SOCIOLOGICAL CONCEPTS OF ORGANIZATION
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• About the Author