Organizational Behavior and Public Management, Revised and Expanded

Michael L. Vasu, Debra W. Stewart, G. David Garson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351555579
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Organizational Behavior and Public Management reveals how organizational behavior enables managers to direct resources that advance the programs and policies of public and government. This edition offers a public sector perspective of core topics, such as communication, decision-making, leadership, management ethics, motivation, organizational change, participation and performance appraisal. Contemporary Psychology called this book "skillful and comprehensive…There is a need for a text like this…the device of juxtaposing theory and application is a sound one." The authors discuss such topics as communication, decision making, worker participation and total quality management, organizational change, management systems, information, computers and organization theory in public management.

1
Introduction to Organizational Behavior in the Public Sector

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to provide you with an introduction to advanced study in organizational behavior. Our assumption is that you, like millions of individuals throughout the world, will spend your professional work life acting and reacting to the forces and individuals that comprise the social networks we call organizations. Consequently, the topics we shall discuss in this book (communication, motivation, decision-making, etc.) will form the basis for recurring themes in your own professional life. In other words, as either manager or subordinate, you will encounter people with whom you will need to communicate effectively. As a manager you will be expected to motivate subordinates, engage in decision making, employ information technology, act ethically, evaluate the performance of others and demonstrate that elusive quality known as leadership. In any organization that you find yourself, you will have to participate with others in order to achieve organizational objectives. Many of the people with whom you must participate will react to you on the basis of their perception of your organizational role. You will need to understand what quality is and how to achieve it. Moreover, as you move between and among organizations, you will sense that organizations have different climates and that they possess both formal and informal structures. If you have the opportunity to move between public and private organizations you may observe different goals, performance measures, and personnel practices. You may also observe that different organizations have different cultures which are reflected in different rituals and norms. Finally, if you remain in an organization long enough, you will observe that organizations can and do “learn” over time.

Choosing a Unit of Analysis

The previous discussion about the kinds of activities you will engage in or are likely to encounter in your personal organizational Odyssey are the chapter titles of this book. The purpose of our book is to expose you as a potential public manager to the research in leadership, motivation, ethics, etc. We do so to provide you with a “map” that you can use to find your way in your own organizational Odyssey. The focus of the book, the unit of analysis in formal terms, is on the individual manager and the activities in which he or she must engage in order to function in public organizations. For our purposes, the unit of analysis can be understood as the perspective from which we will view the organization. The two most common perspectives in the literature are the fields of organizational behavior and organizational theory. The intellectual roots of organizational theory are in sociology. The study of organizational behavior has its roots in the fields of industrial and social psychology. While we will focus on the former approach, we do provide perspectives drawn from the latter. Moreover, our ultimate objective is to discuss the implications of both traditions for the practice of public management. Consequently, a brief description of these two approaches and our frame of reference is important.

In any discussion of perspective or unit of analysis, one must be cognizant of the lessons to be learned from the parable of the six blind wise men of India. It seems that the blind wise men were trying to “describe” an elephant. The first blind wise man felt the elephant’s tusk and said that it appeared to be a spear. The second felt its side, flat and tall, and rendered the judgment that it must be a wall. The third touched the elephant’s leg and said it must be a tree. The fourth felt its trunk and declared it a snake. The fifth blind wise man was exploring the elephant’s ear and pronounced it a fan. The last wise man felt the elephant’s tail and said it must be a rope. Clearly, all the wise men were partly right in their descriptions. They were also partly wrong. They were victims of their limited perspective! How we view organizations is also affected by the perspective we assume.

Organizational Behavior

While we recognize the inherent dilemma posed for organizational analysis by the foregoing parable, we nonetheless agree with one of the eminent scholars of modern organizations, Herbert Simon, who said, “In the study of organization, the operative employee must be at the focus of attention, for the success of the structure will be judged by his place in it” (Simon, 1957, p. 3). In this sense, our primary focus in this book is on the social-psychological aspects of management. Therefore, we will seek to understand organizations using a model that focuses on the social and psychological forces and factors that impact upon the individual employee.

The notion of “models,” a useful epistemological devise in the social sciences, has considerable utility in discussing what an organization is. A model is a tentative definition that fits the data available about a particular object. Unlike a definition, a model does not represent an attempt to express the basic, irreducible nature of the object, and is a freer approach that can be adapted to situations as needed. Thus, physicists treat electrons in one theoretical situation as infinitesimal particles and in another as invisible waves. The theoretical model of electrons permits both treatments, chiefly because no one knows exactly what an electron is; that is, no one knows its definition (Henry, 1995, p. 52).

Organizational behavior is a field of study which focuses on the behaviors, attitudes, and performances of people within an organization. It is sometimes referred to as the micro level of analysis. Organizational behavior is especially concerned with the influence of both the formal organization and the informal organization on employees, the effect of employees on the organization, and the work environment’s effect on both (Hellnegal et al., 1986). Students of organizational behavior study the individual and group dynamics within the organization analyzing such topics as work motivation, job satisfaction, leadership, and decision making. They do so to help the manager in the real world carry out his essential analytical task which is to identify the important variables in any management situation, to estimate probable outcomes related to changes in those variables, and, to select the ones he or she can and should influence (Handy, 1993).

However, the organizational elephant is an elusive beast! If you think about the term “organization” you will realize that it is a construct, a linguistic abstraction like intelligence. Constructs are convenient words that represent generalizations based on observations about specific behaviors in real life. In this sense, constructs are not “real” in the sense that a computer is! Constructs are measured by indicators of their dimensions and operational definitions. For example, the ability to do calculus is one indicator of one dimension of intelligence and one operational definition of intelligence is scoring in the 90th percentile or above on the Graduate Records Examination. Similarly, organization is a term we employ to describe a phenomenon that occurs when individuals come together as a group to achieve a common objective. While there may be no universally accepted definition of the construct organization, scholars have attempted to operationally define organization by focusing on its various dimensions. Chester Barnard advised “A formal organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons” (Barnard, 1938, p. 73). This definition focuses on the very central fact that organizations involve human activity systems that have at least two and usually many more people. Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn define organizations as consisting of “… patterned activities of a number of individuals. Moreover, these patterned activities are complementary or interdependent with respect to some common output or outcome; they are repeated, relatively enduring, and bounded by space and time” (Katz and Kahn, 1978, p. 20). This definition underscores that the activities within organizations are interdependent, that the organization has boundaries, and that the activities are usually directed at a common objective. Dwight Waldo sees the organization as “… the structure of authoritative and habitual personal interactions in an administrative system” (Waldo, 1955, p. 6). This definition underscores the formal structure implied in an administrative system. In our view, an organization is a group of individuals working in a coordinated effort toward a common goal. The essential elements of an organization in our model are coordination and motivation. Coordination is necessary to unite the specialized work of individuals.

Adam Smith’s example of the pin factory vividly shows the benefits of cooperation and specialization and the corresponding need for coordination. Smith described how in his time (the late eighteenth century) the various stages of pin manufacturing were carried out by different people, each of whom specialized in a single task, pulling wire, strengthening it, cutting it to appropriate length, sharpening the point, attaching the head, and packaging the finished product-and how the resulting volume of output was many times greater than it would have been if each person involved had done all the stages alone. The crucial point, however, is that such specialization requires coordination. A single person producing pins alone turns out something useful. The time and efforts of the specialists are wasted unless they can be sure that both the people at each of the preceding stages are doing their parts in generating semifinished materials in the appropriate amounts and in a timely way, and that those at the latter stages of manufacturing are prepared to take what the people before have produced and turn it into a finished product (Milgrom and Roberts, 1992, p. 25).

The motivation dimension of organizations represents a necessary function that all organizations must perform. The need to motivate employees is central to the concept organization. It requires that the organization develop means to direct the activities of disparate individuals toward a common goal or output. Organizations must establish goals and measures of employee movement toward those goals, and, in so doing, to provide structures that facilitate both intrinsic motivation (the work itself) and extrinsic motivation (compensation).

Organizational Theory

By all the foregoing definitions of the term, the U.S. Department of Defense and the City of Cary, North Carolina are both organizations. Specifically, they are both public organizations. However, we are sure that you also recognize that while each organization is in some ways similar, in other ways, they are quite different. Both the Department of Defense and the City of Cary, N.C. are created by law and supported by taxes. They are both directed by public managers who approach work through a strict hierarchy of accountability, exemplified by written rules and procedures that govern budget and personnel decision making. They are both accountable to the public. They are divided into functional departments that facilitate a given division of labor. They both respond to some form of legislative and executive oversight. At the same time, these organizations are obviously dissimilar. They are of vastly different scale or size, they use different technologies to achieve their goals and function at different levels of government. Each has access to very different tax bases. Furthermore, their ultimate organizational missions (goals) are different.

Organizational theory is the formal name for the approach that seeks to describe, compare, and evaluate organizations at this macro level of analysis. Theory, itself, can be defined as a coherent set of interrelated definitions or propositions, presenting a systematic view of an event or phenomenon with the objective of explaining and predicting that event or phenomenon. Organizational theory, then, is a field of study that seeks to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the impact such systematic factors as size, task, technology, and culture have on predicting organizational outcomes (Senge, 1990).

The organizational theory perspective gives us very important insights into organizations. And, while it is not the primary focus we will pursue in this book, it is a focus we will not completely ignore. Organization theory tells us that organizations must do two things that are seemingly contradictory. On the one hand, every organization must differentiate its work into separate tasks or parts. As we said previously, a division of labor is required to achieve efficiency; that is, the most economical conversion of inputs into outputs. On the other hand, in order for an organization to be effective, that is to achieve goals that may go beyond simple economic efficiency, organizations must integrate. In order to integrate, organizations must coordinate, they must seek to bring the work of the specialized parts back together into a coherent whole. This tension between the natural tendency to differentiate work and at the same time the need to integrate that same specialized work, is inherent in all organizations. In other words, organizations are best conceptualized as systems that have inputs, a conversion process, outputs, and a feedback loop. The purpose of the organization is to minimize what are called transaction costs, which are the costs of running the system; that is, the costs of coordinating and motivating (Milgrom and Roberts, 1992, p. 29).

Administration or management, in this context, is the process of coordinating the individual acts of various specialized subgroups of people toward a unified organizational objective in order “to get things done” (Simon, 1957, p. 1). In this sense, organizations can and do exhibit a “culture,” a set of assumptions, values, and perceptions about how “to get things done,” that renders IBM and the American Red Cross very different organizational climates in which to work. In short, we recognize that the organization is the sum of its parts and, at times, greater than the sum of its parts.

Public Versus Private Organizations

This book is written for students and managers of public sector organizations. Public organizations are those created by law whose budget support comes from the public in the form of taxes. Public organizations are frequently referred to as nonmarket organizations in the literature to distinguish them from those whose survival depends upon the laws of supply and demand. The fact that we have decided to write a book about organizational behavior and public management suggests that we, like other researchers in the field, believe public organizations to be different from private organizations (Martin, 1989, p. 54). However, discussing the similarities and differences between public and private organizations brings us back to the question of perspective. Earlier we noted that organizations need to achieve, at one and the same time, the ostensibly contradictory goals of both differentiating and integrating work in order to function. In a similar vein, the case can be made for both the inherent similarities and inherent differences between public and private organizations and, by implication, between public and private management. To paraphrase Wallace Sayer, public and private organizations are very much alike in a variety of unimportant ways. Current debate, however, argues that all formal organizations share similar characteristics. And, in some sense, they do. Some argue that the essential elements of management in the public and private sector are generic, and in some sense they are. Other theorists argue that any organization, government, the firm, the not-for profit sector, have a degree of “publicness” in that they are affected by public authority (Boseman, 1987). Again, this is true. It all depends upon your perspective and your definition of terms (Golembiewski, 1984; Perry and Kramer, 1983; Martin, 1989; Milgrom and Roberts, 1992).

Perhaps the best way to commence a discussion of public and private organizations is to speak in ideal types and to talk in terms of degree of “publicness.” In our perspective, public and private organizations are different because their primary goals are different, and they are different ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface to the Third Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction to Organizational Behavior in the Public Sector
• 2 Approaches to Organization Theory
• 3 Motivation in Organizations
• 4 Leadership
• 5 Role Behavior: Individuals and Groups
• 6 Communication
• 7 Decision-Making
• 8 Worker Participation and Total Quality Management
• 9 Organizational Change
• 10 Management Systems
• 11 Information, Computers, and Organization Theory in Public Management
• 12 Performance Appraisal
• 13 Management Ethics
• Index