Gareth Morgan

 What was discovered in the Hawthorne Studies of the 1920s and 1930s? ◦ A new theory of organization built on the idea that individuals and groups, like biological organisms, operate most effectively only when their needs are satisfied.

1. Physiological ◦ Salaries and wages 2. Safety ◦ Pension and health care plans; job tenure 3. Love/Belonging ◦ Office and factory parties; a work environment that promotes interaction with colleagues 4. Esteem ◦ Creating jobs with scope for achievement, autonomy, responsibility; feedback on a job well done. 5. Self-Actualization ◦ Encouragement for employee commitment; job a major expressive dimension of employee’s life.

 What is the concept of the “open system”? ◦ Continuous cycle of input, internal transformation, output, and feedback. ◦ Emphasizes importance of relationships between the environment and the internal functioning of the system.

Can you explain each of the following? ◦ Homeostasis ◦ Entropy/negative entropy ◦ Structure, function, differentiation, and integration ◦ Requisite variety ◦ Equifinality ◦ System Evolution

 Organizations are open systems that need careful management to satisfy and balance internal needs and adapt to environmental circumstances.  There is no “best way” of organizing.  Different approaches to management may be necessary to perform different tasks within the same

 Sometimes described as “project organizations,” adapt the functional-bureaucratic form to meet the demands of special situations through the establishment of subunits or teams with membership drawn from different functional areas or departments.  See diagram in text.

 How does this view relate to Darwin’s theory of evolution? ◦ “Organizations, like organisms in nature, depend for survival on their ability to acquire an adequate supply of the resources necessary to sustain existence...The environment is thus a critical factor in determining which organizations succeed and which fail, ‘selecting’ the most robust competitors through elimination of the weaker ones.”

 What does Kenneth Boulding mean when he states that evolution involves “survival of the fitting” and not just “survival of the fittest?  How can this be seen in organizations today?

 What are the strengths and weaknesses of the organismic metaphor?