management principles focus on the best way of doing things and are prescriptive
Answers
discussing ways that organisational theorists have characterised organisational structures and cultures, and the impact of different national cultures on organisational practice and ways in which managers might make sense of these
a short pre-reading activity asking you to think about a problem/opportunity situation in your own context, to see how these theories and models are both relevant and irrelevant to your own management practice.
Creative problem solving
developing your skills in creative problem solving by learning some techniques based on systems theory
learning how to use case studies and their analysis to better understand and apply the ideas you are studying.
Making connections
thinking more closely about your organisation’s culture and how you can use metaphors to better understand the way organisations work.
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This course is an adapted extract of the course B716 Management: perspective and practice (MBA Stage 1).
Learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
appreciate how organisational structure and culture contribute to management control in organisations
think about how to analyse an organisation in this respect
understand an organisation’s characteristics and how they might impact on management practices.
1 Exploring ideas
Sections 2 and 3 will help you to make sense of the effects of organisational structure and culture and of the impact of national culture on the way people manage and are managed. They are prefaced by sets of questions that pull together some of the major themes from the readings and points to consider. These questions may be helpful in developing your critical and analytical skills regarding the use of theory in relation to your practice.
If you think for a moment about your experiences of management, you could find instances where your organisation’s size, structure, culture, sector, environment or national/international context was very much a factor in how you responded to management issues.
In this section, you will learn some additional ways that theorists have approached the study of organisations, using metaphors that seem to get to the heart of the problem. In fact, later in this course, we’ll ask you to think about a metaphor for your own organisation.
To reflect on how potential organisational/people issues affect organisations, click on the outer edges of the onion diagram displayed below in order to learn more about context, culture and environment.
Figure 1 Onion diagram
Long description
1.1 Your organisational problem or opportunity
Consider an issue related to how people work or are managed in your organisation. This problem/opportunity need not be related to one you are facing currently.
The following task should be done briefly. However, it will give you a chance to do some more thinking about some of the organisational and people-related issues.
Activity 1 Brief thoughts about your problem or opportunity in relation to organisational and management issues
Write a brief description of a problem/opportunity situation outlining the following:
what the problem/opportunity situation is and its main characteristics
the main causes and how people are involved
the effects of the situation on the work of your organisation and how you do your work
the effects of the organisation on the issue.
There is no feedback for this activity.
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1.2 The organisational context
Managers employ staff to achieve a set of objectives, but how do we ensure these objectives are pursued? It is the role of managers to establish the conditions, structures and processes required to ensure their employees’ efforts are directed towards the achievement of objectives, at all levels and in all departments.
There is a wide range of options available that managers might choose from in seeking to ensure that work is coordinated and directed towards the appropriate aims. These range from the policy of selecting and employing the most appropriate kinds of individuals and then giving them autonomy and trusting them to deliver, through to command and control systems that remove all worker autonomy and specify all tasks and actions, continuously monitoring compliance and performance. Most of us work in organisations that lie somewhere between these extreme