The Organization as an Open System
The Organization as an Open System
The system is in constant interaction with their environment and achieves a stable state. The survival of the system would not be possible without a continuous inflow, processing and output stream.
The system should receive a sufficient input of resources to maintain its operations and also to export the processed resources environment in sufficient quantities to continue the cycle.
The Organization as a Complex System
A number of authors and researchers have observed that see an organization as decision-making body composed of hierarchies and relations as those illustrated in an organization, not for how the organization actually works. In other words, the organization represents only one of many channels of communication between people within an organization. If we see the organization as a complex system we see more real elements.
Models of overlapping clusters
Organizations can be conceived as systems where groups dovetail with each other and these groups are connected through people who serve as "liaison" between groups.
Theory of the Firm
In studies to determine how to make the organization to set goals and make decisions, concluded that an organization is actually a complex coalition of individuals and groups. The coalition members use various forms of "reclaiming" others to join with them in the task of achieving certain goals.
Sources of Complexity
One of the biggest challenges is to properly define the scope of any organization. How far does the company?, Its departments, suppliers, etc.. and determine their environment more relevant (society in general, the economic system and political competition, the union).
The organizations pursue multiple goals and perform many functions. Some of these functions are primary and secondary schools.
The primary function: It's make your product, provide a service with a profit.
The secondary function: It is offering security and rationale for community members.
The organization has representatives de0l surroundings. Employees are not only members of the organization that employs them but are also part of society, other organizations, unions, consumer groups and others.
The Nature of the environment is changing very quickly. This can be easily seen in the tremendous growth that has been technology. The demands of turbulent half require that the organization has a different capacity to respond to them
The organization as a dynamic model in developing countries
Dynamic models of organizations
Effects of differentiation and integration: Lawrence and Lorsch.
Lawrence and Lorsch in 1967 developed a way to see the organization that made it possible to explain why different types of organization are more or less effective in different media types and with different technologies. The basic premise is that each functional part of an organization, whether manufacturing, research or sales, you have to understand a particular part of the environment and people working in that area develops a cognitive point of view that reflects their particular adaptation to that particular part of the medium. This process is known as differentiation.
The other key process that every organization has to understand is integration, which is to bring together various cognitive styles and problem-solving strategies into a coherent set of activities directed towards achieving goals
3. The design theory of Galbraith.
The model of Galbraith (1973, 1977) begins with the assumption that the organization is a complex system whose main problem in their relationship with the environment, is the collection and use of information.
The design of the structure of the organization is a process that occurs over time. It is the one who decides how to maintain consistency between strategies, possibilities of division of labor (differentiation), processes of coordination of various units (integration), ways to integrate the staff of the organization, and finally how to change the elements earlier in order to facilitate adaptation of the organization to environmental changes.
Nine ways to compare different levels of uncertainty
These alternatives can be viewed as mechanisms to develop and evolve as the organization goes from being a small and lean organization to a large and complex.
1. Hierarchy of authority: If you need to coordinate the efforts of two or more people, the simplest and most efficient information processing that occurs between them is direct communication. However, if two people are geographically dispersed, many people if there is no consensus among them in goals (the essence of the organizing activity), the simplest mechanism of processing is to create a hierarchy and make the entire information to flow vertically from a single superior.
2. Rules, programs and procedures: The basic purpose of the program rules and procedures to maintain information channels free of irrelevant information and thus facilitate the upward flow of information relating to special circumstances. Galbraith makes the observation that each mechanism identified another does not replace but adds to others, so rules, programs and features do not replace the hierarchy.
3. Planning and goal setting: As information processing requirements increase, an answer is to devolve more autonomy to lower levels where the information, but this response only works if the organization has some form to ensure that the employee who has more autonomy can give the correct answer from the standpoint of the goals of the organization. Two mechanisms to ensure this happens, is to:
· Increase the technical and professional training of employees so that those goals can be appropriated.
· Increase planning actions to ensure that the employee understands, in advance, what the organization is trying to do.
4. How to change the hierarchy by reducing the level of control: If the organization is still loaded, another alternative is to reduce the scope of control, putting fewer people under the responsibility of each supervisor. However, this action increases the total number of supervisors. This mechanism is therefore expensive and not very efficient because the total number of organizational links where the information circular must also be increased.
5. Environmental Management: Organizations can accommodate your basic strategy for controlling information overload, trying to control parts of the medium
6. Creation of additional resources: One way to reduce pressure that causes the mark in the reporting process is to reduce the production standards, not complying with the programming or hiring (buying) additional resources to meet these peak periods.
7. Creation of autonomous tasks: As organizations grow, they gain more commitments in terms of tasks and products, manage more complex technologies and therefore must process more data, at some point in its evolution suffer a significant design change to switch from a "functional" organization to a targeted "product" (or the market). This problem can be solved if you create small autonomous units that perform tasks according to a given product or geographic region. This organizational action is also known as "decentralization" or "divisionalization.
8. Investment in better vertical information systems: As the hierarchical form of organization can, if used properly, disseminate information quickly and reliably, one solution is to reevaluate the information systems to ensure the ability to transmit information more quickly and reliability. To achieve this, the organization should add people, computers, information systems and procedures.
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