Week Three - Classical Approaches

Throughout history, the way we work to create products has changed from small groups (or individually) working from start to finish, to large groups working together and sharing roles.  From the introduction of factories and assembly lines, organizations were related to machines.

This change led to three important theories which can still be seen today.  These include Henri Fayol’s theory of classical management, Max Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, and Frederick Taylor’s theory of scientific management.  Each of these theorists used machines as a metaphor for organizations.  As Miller (2009) points out, this can be shown through three aspects:

v  Specialization – each section of a machine (or organization) has its specific functions which, together, make the machine/organization work;

v  Standardization – like a machine with a faulty part, people can be easily replaced in an organization to keep things running smoothly; and

v  Predictability – like machines, organizations have specific rules/instructions which are to be followed.  Therefore, any mishap can be easily traced and the solution can be easily found.

Pryor and Taneja (2010) argue that some of these machine/hierarchical theories (specifically Fayol’s principles of management) are still very valuable today because they have created a foundation on which we’ve built today’s theories.

However, these theories dehumanized people, and have a strict, top-to-bottom chain of command (Cheney 2007).  This differs greatly from many (but not all) organizations today.

The case study ‘The Creamy Creations Takeover’ (discussed in the tutorial) shows how these machine metaphor theories can be positive and negative to organizations.  Although organizations following these theories find high levels of efficiency, they lack a human aspect that therefore causes customer/employee dissatisfaction.  This is why, with today’s understanding of the complexity of organizations and communication, these theories have been further developed or eliminated completely.

References

Cheney, G 2007, ‘Organizational communication comes out’, Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 80-91.

Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: approaches and processes, 6th ed, Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, Boston, MA.

Pryor, MG & Taneja, S 2010, ‘Henri Fayol, practitioner and theoretician – revered and reviled’, Journal of Management History, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 489-503.