THE ORGANIZATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL - OB

The purpose of this chapter has been to provide a transition between group behavior and the influences of organizational design. In addition, some rather specific goals have been established for the analysis. The attempt has been to not overestimate or underestimate the importance of structure on organizatioanal behavior.

The objectives having been defined, the authors surveyed various views of the individual’s interaction with the organisation. Both the Weber’s theory of bureaucracy and the new developing contemporary structural view advocated by Charles Perrow have been elucidated. The point of agreement in both formulations is the importance attached to positions and roles rather than to personality factors.

Then the non structural arguments by Chris Argyris and Warren Bennis were dealt with. The former propounded that there is incongrruency between the needs of the mature adult personality and the demands of the formal organization. This incongruency is capable of producing many things, including frustration and apathy on the part of organizational members. Warren Bennis’ idea was regarding the inability of bureaucracy to adequately respond to change. These ideas are relevant to the issue of organizational behavior because they propose a drastic shift from the traditional bereaucratic views regarding human nature, power and democratic processes in oranisations.

The chapter concludes with a look at two different views of the organization, developing a relation between the two relating to the ease with which organizations interact with environmental forces. The first view which is regarded as the machine model of organization tends to minimize the importance of environmental factors in influencing organizational behaviors. The second is the open systems model which recognizes the necessity of organizational – environmental interaction. A view of the holistic character of organizational behavior shows that environmental forces are explicitly acknowledged as determinants of structure. The structure consequently influences behavior which in turn has reciprocal impact on design.