MPA 8002
Organization Theory

PowerPoint Presentation:

The trap of seeking to develop expertise......

Students oftentimes enroll in graduate management or leadership programs believing that their course of study will provide them every solution to the problems that confront them in the workplace. Scanning their workplace, students see a myriad of problems they would like to solve and believe their programs will provide the tools that will enable them to improve how their organizations function. And sadly, many programs provide just that, namely, the tools, skills, and techniques purported to solve the myriad of problems typically arising in the workplace.

Many organizational problems stem from poor management. Hence, students study how to plan, organize, staff, direct, coordinate, report, and budget, all with the ostensible goal of improving the work process in terms of its efficiency and effectiveness. However, most organizational problems stem from poor human relations with the consequence that organizational efficiency and effectiveness is compromised. Consequently, students learn about an array of tools social scientists have developed that promise to improve interpersonal relations among people in the workplace. Another source of frequently recurring problems is poor technology. That is, while the work process and the people in the workplace might be well integrated, the technology being utilized might be deficient or, at least, inefficient or unresponsive to the demands of the organization’s environment and perhaps the workplace as well. To deal with these and a host of other problems, most graduate programs in management and leadership expose students to new technologies that offer the promise of improving the organization’s responsiveness to the demands of its environment and workplace.

The word "sadly" was used deliberately in the first paragraph to indicate that this approach to educating graduate students in management and leadership is, at least, insufficient or deficient, or, at worst, misleading, inappropriate, and perhaps unethical. While graduate students undoubtedly need to become conversant with and experienced in using the tools associated with good organizational management and leadership practice, the student’s decision-making process—wherein they make judgments about the applicability of various theories and skills in specific workplace contexts—should be accorded primary importance in graduate in management and leadership programs. Invoking Killion and Todnem's terminology (1991), graduates should be capable of engaging in "personal theory building."

Consider the training of cardiologists. They receive early training during their undergraduate years by studying biology and chemistry. Following this initial training, aspiring cardiologists receive more exacting training in a medical school. Lastly, they complete their residency training at a cardiology center. These years of rigorous training are intended to prepare cardiologists for clinical practice, insuring that they possess the requisite professional knowledge, skills, and experience they will need to assist patients afflicted with coronary disease. Note that cardiological training prior to actual clinical practice includes the acquisition of the body of theoretical knowledge as well as the technical skills cardiologists need to deal with coronary disease. In addition, the residency program provides a forum wherein neophyte cardiologists hone their ability to judge what theory and skill mandate in individual cases, each possessing its own idiosyncratic and confounding factors. This experience helps aspiring cardiologists to learn how to make good judgments about what they must do, that is, to make accurate diagnoses and practical decisions having life and death consequences.

No cardiologist’s patient would want things otherwise. That is, coronary disease patients realize something Aristotle (1958) asserted more than two millennia ago, namely, that theoretical knowledge uninformed by technical skills (e.g., untested theoretical knowledge) as well as technical skills uninformed by theory (e.g., practicing a skill without consulting theory) are equally insufficient for good practice. After all, who would want to undergo arterial bypass surgery at the hands of a cardiologist who earned straight A’s throughout medical school but had never performed the operation? Likewise, who would want to undergo an angioplasty procedure at the hands of a cardiologist who has experimented with the procedure but has never studied the human heart? What good practice requires, then, is a cardiologist who possesses not only the requisite theoretical knowledge about what needs to be done but who also possesses the requisite expertise in the skills needed to bring about healing of coronary disease. Even more importantly, a cardiologist must possess the refined intellectual capability to discern how theory and skill will be brought to bear in each patient's case, given the peculiarities presenting themselves in what Sergiovanni (1986) calls a "practice episode."

For Aristotle, it is in actual practice that human beings make decisions concerning what ought to be done and they do so by evaluating the worth of various theories and skills given the particular context in which these people find themselves. Thus, a program of graduate study that stresses theory but never allows students to hone their skills or, contrariwise, a program that stresses the honing of skills but avoids dealing with the intricacies of theory will not produce graduates who possess the refined capability to make judicious and wise decisions about what ought to be done in actual practice. It would be, for example, as if a cardiologist had studied everything there was to know about coronary disease but had never honed the surgical skills needed to ameliorate coronary disease. Or, perhaps even more chilling, if a cardiologist had never read a professional journal or attended professional development seminars since completing the residency requirement 10 years previous.

In light of Aristotle’s insight into nature of professional practice, graduate students should think about training in organizational management and leadership to consist of two conjoined elements, as if they formed two sides of one coin, the "coin of ethical decision making" (Jacobs, 2002). On one side of this coin, students learn the fundamental theories and conceptual frames (Bolman & Deal, 1997) and images (Morgan, 1997) associated with good management and leadership practice. Although theory is abstract by its very nature, researchers have validated the import and applicability of these theories and concepts for professional practice. Theory, then, provides instructive guidance about what ought to be done, what works well, and why this is the case. On the other side of this coin, graduate students must also hone the skills and techniques that have proven useful in resolving fundamental organizational problems. Managers and leaders in the workplace have demonstrated and attested to the usefulness of these skills and techniques in actual practice episodes.

At the same time, however, graduate students must learn that professional practice is not a "zero sum" game where either theory or skill reigns supreme. No, the metaphor of the "coin" is intended to remind graduate students that good professional practice is a matter of making wise decisions about what ought to be done only after giving serious consideration to what both theory and practice suggest managers and leaders ought to do. It is in the practice of making decisions, then, that managers and leaders take responsibility for what transpires in organizations (Jacobs, 2002). For Aristotle, this is what ethical decision making is all about. And, for graduate students, this is how managers and leaders develop professional knowledge and expertise.

The preponderance of organizations in contemporary society, from the simple organization of the family to the complex organization of the multi-national corporation, makes it difficult for many people—including graduate students—to think critically about the nature and function of organizations. It is almost as if the notions of society and organization are so inextricably linked in contemporary consciousness that it is impossible to conceive of one without thinking immediately of the other.

Take a wedding, for example. In the movie, Father of the Bride, viewers see that it is virtually impossible for a bride and her mother to conceive of a wedding without immediately beginning to organize for it. There’s the guest list, the bridal party, the reception and hall, the church and, of course, Franz the wedding coordinator and his entourage as well. All of these matters need to be organized. And, as the father of the bride, Steve Martin comes to learn—and much to his dismay—it is not unusual that problems crop up like weeds in a flower bed as the organizational plan develops, unfolds, and needs to be adjusted.

Likewise for a complex organization. While there may be an organizational mission, strategic plan, and process for evaluating organizational performance against its goals, oftentimes the types of managerial, human relations, and technological problems enumerated earlier predictably emerge. And, as a consequence of these problems as well as a host of other problems, it is difficult for managers and leaders to disentangle all of the problems in order to understand more precisely what an organization is and what is really transpiring in it.

Traditional definitions of organization do not provide an easy way out of this conceptual entanglement. For example, organizations have been defined for the most part as a unified, consolidated group of elements established to achieve a specified purpose in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Simply put: organizations conjoin people and technology in a process of transforming input into output. But, when managers and leaders think about and examine their organizations, they quickly discover that many of the goals implied by traditional definitions (e.g., a neat, orderly interaction of people, technology, and process) are not evident in most organizations...especially the one for which they bear responsibility.

Bolman and Deal (1997) believe that organizations are better understood by recognizing their four characteristics which, it should be recognized, are not at all as rational as traditional definitions would have it. First, organizations are complex, involving people who interact—perhaps "collide" would be a better word—with one another. Because human interactions are fluid, changing, and in constant state of flux depending on personalities and circumstances, one can never be quite sure exactly how another person is going to respond in a human interaction. From families to complex multi-national organizations, individuals and groups have a great impact upon organizations and their functioning, making organization much more complex than many people would prefer to believe. Learning about organizations and managing and leading them, then, is a much more complex endeavor, requiring greater cognitive complexity on the part of managers and leaders than most graduate students would hope. Thus, the ancient aphorism should ring true at the completion of a graduate training program: "the more I know the less I am sure I understand."

Organizations are also surprising, Bolman and Deal assert, in the sense that what one might predict will be a logical outcome frequently is not the case. Somewhere between the promulgation of a plan and its implementation many confounding factors can intervene, making it virtually impossible for the plan to work, on the one hand, or to fail miserably, on the other. External conditions influencing the organization—what is called the "organizational environment" (Emery & Trist, 1973, Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967, Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978)—might change as, for example, happened to the American automobile industry in the late-1970s. Internal conditions, like changes in employee sentiments, the introduction of new technologies, or a new management team—the consequence of a hostile takeover or carefully-planned organizational re-engineering—can exert a profound influence upon organizational functioning. What should not be surprising is that organizations are surprising! What is surprising, however, is that many people assume that organizations should not be surprising but predictable. Think about it: how much does a small change in routine, for whatever reason, cause trauma in a family or in the workplace?

Further, those who populate organizations will sometimes (if not oftentimes!) engage in less-than-forthright behaviors, perhaps even engaging in unethical or immoral conduct. Thus, people learn the hard way that one can never be absolutely sure that what family members or co-workers report is indeed the whole truth. In this sense, Bolman and Deal discuss organizations as "deceptive." This being the case, it is difficult for managers and leaders to know that they are acting on the best information available. Once again, what is interesting about the notion that organizations are deceptive is that what people expect—namely, that honesty and forthrightness will characterize interactions in human organizations—is not always the case. Does this reflect a cynical attitude? Not necessarily. If people are primarily engaged in organizations in order to fulfill self-interest (Barnard, 1968), the fact that organizations are deceptive presents a management and leadership challenge. That is, how will managers and leaders create conditions fostering the climate of trust that is absolutely necessary for the common good to thrive (Maclagan, 1998)? Challenging people to accountability for their words and actions as members of a community is what authority in a democracy is all about (Jacobs, 2002).

Lastly, organizations are ambiguous, not at all subject to easy classification as many assume. The reason that ambiguity characterizes organizations is simple: what happens within them (that is, in the dynamic interaction of people, technology, and process) is not all that clear and able to be identified, that is, if what happens is to be classified and dealt with appropriately. Organization charts and job descriptions may provide the patina of rationality, but a sociogram depicting the relationships formed by the people who populate organizations provides an indication of a much different organizational chart and a set of very different job descriptions than official documents convey.

To cope with these four organizational characteristics, people construct social realities (Weick, 1995). These cognitive constructions, what people generally call "organizations" and Weick calls "enactments," make responding to the question "What is truly going on in this organization?" a very difficult question to answer.

To understand organizations in contemporary society, theorists are now suggesting that managers and leaders need to develop skills in the art of "reading" the multiple and varied situations that exist in organizations. Bolman and Deal (1997), for example, suggest that managers and leaders need to develop cognitive skills, arguing that they must be capable of using multiple perspectives ("frames") to organize and accurately interpret their organizational reality. From a perspective steeped in linguistics, Morgan (1997) presents eight predominant metaphors humans use to talk about organizations. He demonstrates how each metaphor actually provides a unique way of thinking and seeing that exerts a formative influence upon human understanding. In addition, because metaphors imply modes of thinking and acting, Morgan argues that the metaphors managers and leaders use must be examined for what they illuminate as much as for what they hide. Then, there are the social scientists who—for the greater part of the 20th century—have worked to develop theoretical concepts and constructs to explain and predict behavior in organizations. Social psychologists, political scientists, and organizational theorists have advocated a myriad of perspectives to enhance how people might conceive of and understand organizations.

At issue in this discussion is not which body of theory or methodology best helps people to understand organizations. Rather, what is at issue for graduate programs in management and leadership is that they enable students to complicate their understanding of organization by challenging students to experiment with multiple frames, metaphors, and social science theories. To do so, these programs must aim at developing and refining their students’ cognitive complexity, that is, to seek out alternative conceptions about the array of options available for them to deal with the problems they see arising in their organizations.

The goal of encouraging the development of conceptual pluralism in graduate programs in management and leadership is to liberate future managers and leaders from "psychic prisons" (Morgan, 1997), those narrow, frustrating, self-made intellectual jail cells where individuals cling to a unitary vantage point to understand organizational reality by simplifying it. Freed from the psychic prisons of diagnoses based upon unitary perspectives, managers and leaders can then be more imaginative and creative in their understanding and, ultimately, they can lead their organizations to achieve its goals by uniting people, technology, and process in a pathway (McWhinney, 1992), that makes their organization not only more efficient and effective but also more humane.

All too often, managers and leaders come to their jobs with experiences and knowledge, what Avolio (1999) calls a "stream of life events" and Sergiovanni (1986) calls "antecedents," that act as perceptual lenses through which these individuals look at and assess organizational reality. And, when problems arise in the workplace, as inevitably will be the case because organizations are complex, surprising, deceptive, and ambiguous (Bolman & Deal, 1997), most managers and leaders impose their prior experiences and knowledge upon the organizational reality in order to make sense of what is transpiring within the organization. Implicitly, these individuals believe that management and leadership follows a script and is a matter of style and grace, sort of dancing like Fred Astaire. But, as a recalcitrant workplace confronts organizational managers and leaders, they oftentimes will deny this reality saying, "it could be worse," because to admit the reality would require self-change (Weick, 1995). However, management and leadership is about confronting the substantive issues causing organizational dysfunction not simply ameliorating the symptoms associated with it (McWhinney, 1992).

The cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) managers and leaders experience when confronted by organizational problems can, however, be a fruitful resource to the kind of self-change that can be translated into greater management and leadership expertise. Inquiring into what appears to contradict one's "stream of life events" (Avolio, 1999) and "antecedents" (Sergiovanni, 1986) can assist managers and leaders to journey along a pathway that will enable them to disentangle the complex web of problems which these individuals confront and to deal more forthrightly with the substantive issues underlying the problems and their symptoms (Dewey, 1933; McWhinney, 1992; Sergiovanni, 1986, 1995).

Reflective practice is a tool specially suited to stimulate the development of cognitive complexity in managers and leaders so that they might better deal with the organizational reality (Dewey, 1933; Sergiovanni, 1986; Seifert, 1999). Reflective practice is not prescriptive, that is, it does not provide a unitary method by which managers and leaders solve organizational problems. Instead, reflective practice is a rigorous intellectual discipline by which managers and leaders:

• soberly examine the events transpiring in the workplace (what are called "practice episodes" where one's intentions, actions, and outcomes are placed into question);
• critically evaluate one’s intentions as well as the theories embedded in one’s intentions (what are called "theories of practice"); and,
• honestly examine how one’s human experience (what are called "streams of life events" [Avolio, 1999] and "antecedents" [Sergiovanni, 1986]) impacts one’s decision-making process.

The tool of reflective practice, then, enables leaders and managers to effect positive organizational functioning by engaging in the more threatening process of self-change which is the heart of any attempt at organizational change (Schön, 1983, 1987).

Reflective practice, it has been said, enables managers and leaders to "swim in a swamp" like Tarzan, to "ride a rip-tide surf," or to "white water raft."