The purpose of this chapter hasbeen to provide a transition between group behavior and the influences oforganizational design. In addition, some rather specific goals have beenestablished for the analysis. The attempt has been to not overestimate orunderestimate the importance of structure on organizatioanal behavior.
The objectives having beendefined, the authors surveyed various views of the individual’s interactionwith the organisation. Both the Weber’s theory of bureaucracy and the newdeveloping contemporary structural view advocated by Charles Perrow have beenelucidated. The point of agreement in both formulations is the importanceattached to positions and roles rather than to personality factors.
Then the non structural argumentsby Chris Argyris and Warren Bennis were dealt with. The former propounded thatthere is incongrruency between the needs of the mature adult personality andthe demands of the formal organization. This incongruency is capable ofproducing many things, including frustration and apathy on the part oforganizational members. Warren Bennis’ idea was regarding the inability ofbureaucracy to adequately respond to change. These ideas are relevant to theissue of organizational behavior because they propose a drastic shift from thetraditional bereaucratic views regarding human nature, power and democraticprocesses in oranisations.
The chapter concludes with a lookat two different views of the organization, developing a relation between thetwo relating to the ease with which organizations interact with environmentalforces. The first view which is regarded as the machine model of organizationtends to minimize the importance of environmental factors in influencingorganizational behaviors. The second is the open systems model which recognizesthe necessity of organizational – environmental interaction. A view of theholistic character of organizational behavior shows that environmental forcesare explicitly acknowledged as determinants of structure. The structureconsequently influences behavior which in turn has reciprocal impact on design.
