1) Make an outline of the chapter. Write the chapter heading or title of paper first. Next, write each heading and subheading. Refer to these headings as you are reading the text.
When you are reading, the names of the headings/subheadings will help remind you about the subject matter.
2) Fill in one or two sentences beneath each heading/subheadings explaining what the purpose of each section is. Why is the author discussing this section? What point is s/he making?
3) If you are confused about a section, ask yourself these questions
A) What point is the author trying to make?
B) How does the point fit into the section you
are currently reading?
C) How does the section fit into the subject of
the chapter?
Remember: Reading is a skill. You cannot get better unless you practice. So don’t give up!
Questions for the Chapters to ask yourself! See Below:
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 9
Chapter 8
Chapter 2: Mechanization Takes Command: Organizations as Machines
1) What is the mechanistic metaphor?
2) What is a bureaucracy? Why has bureaucracy grown so much in
modern history? How has bureaucracy shaped our images of
organizations?
Of our personal life?
3) What is the history of organizations? When did bureaucracy
overtake organizations? Why does Weber argue bureaucracy
undermines
democracy?
4) What is classical management theory? What is it trying to
explain
and how does it explain it?
5) What is scientific management? Mcdonaldization?
6) A large function of organizations, especially when organized
around
scientific management, is control. Explain how and why.
7) Imagine an organization in which control would not be the
goal.
What could it look like?
8) What are the strengths and limitations of the mechanistic
metaphor?
Chapter 3: Organizations as Organisms
1) Intro: Different species are successful in different kinds of
environments
2) History
Understand the historical evolution of organizations as
organisms.
The Hawthorne experiments, Maslow and Human Resource Management
What is a socio-technical system?
3) Theory
A) What does it means to say that organizations are an “open
system” -- Know the different concepts associated with “open system”
for
example, homeostasis and system evolution. How can we use this
biological
concept to understand organizations?
B) Contingency theory -- in the organizational literature,
open
systems is referred to as “contingency theory.” What is
contingency
theory?
4) Descriptions of Organizations --
A) Variety of Species: machine bureaucracy, divisionalized
form,
professional bureaucracy, simple structure and
adhocracy.
Also, MATRIX organization.
5) How to find the best fit between the environment and the species:
A) What factors help decide which species is most effecient?
6) Critiques of “contingency theory”
A) Population ecology -- What is it?
1) Critiques of population ecology
B) Organizational ecology --- What is it?
7) Strengths and Weaknesses of the metaphor.
Chapter 4: Organizations as Brains
1) How is an organization like a brain? (Ghengis the
cockroach)
2) Three images of the brain help us understand organizations
A) information as processing brains
Critique (which image of organizational structure fits
here)
B) learning organizations
Cybernetics and “double loop” (why is double loop superior to
a single loop)
What are the characteristics of the double loop?
C) 5 Principles of Holographic brain
3) Strengths and weaknesses of the metaphor.
Chapter 5: Organizations as Culture
1) What is culture?
2) Organization as cultural phenomena
a) country culture
b) corporate culture
3) Discuss how each culture has its own history, structure and
powerful
people who try to control culture
4) Creating organizational culture:
shared rules
shared values
Shared meaning
5) Stenghts and weaknesses
Chapter 7: Psychic Prisons --
1) What is Plato’s cave and how is it related to the metaphor of
psychic
prisons?
2) People resist change. How does this relate to
organizations?
Gives examples of auto industry.
3) Unconscious affects organizations in a variety of ways --- understand these and how they relate to organizations.
a) repressed sexuality --
b) patriarchal family --
c) Death and immortality --
d) Organization and Anxiety
e) Organizations, dolls and teddy bears
f) Shadow and Archtype
4) Strenghts and weaknesses
5) I don’t think he does a good job of understanding how society
affects
our unconscious. What do you think? Make a case
either
way.
RSR
67
1) How is groupthink an example of a psychic prison?
68
1) What’s the main function of bureaucracy, according to this article?
2) How can we use psychology to understand organizational life?
69
1) How does the organization foster addiction to work?
Chapter 6: Intersts, Conflict and Power
1) How do capitalism and democracy conflict?
2) Organizations as systems of government
autocracy
bureaucracy
technocracy
direct democracy
A) Organizational choice means political choice. What
does
this mean?
3) Organizations as systems of political activity
define politics
A) Analyzing interests -- tasks, career vs extramural.
What
are coalitions and cliques?
B) Understanding conflict --
C) Exploring power
1) formal authority
2) control of scarce resources
3) use of organizational structure, rules and procedures
4) control of decision processes
5) control of knowledge and information
6) control of boundaries
7) ability to cope with uncertainty
8) control of technology
9) interpersonal alliances, networks and control of informal
organization
10) control of counterorganizations
11) symbolism and the management of meaning
12) gender and management of gender relations
13) structural factors that define stage of action
14) power one already has
15) ambiguity of power
D) Managing pluralist organizations
1) frames of reference
Pluralism
Unitary
Radical
E) Strenghts and limitations of the metaphor
RSR
50
1) Understand the various ways that time, space, friendship, things
and agreements are used differently in the various cultures the author
metions.
51
1) What metaphor would you use to describe your workplace.
52
1) What role do stories play in corporate culture?
2) What roles do stories play in YOUR corporate culture?
53
1) What is a transformational leader?
54
1) Tandem developed a corporate culture that built commitment.
What did it do?
56
1) How did Datsun promote harmony on the outside but not on the inside?
86:
1) What metaphor best explains the culture at Design Inc.
87:
1) The two managers at Petroco had very different styles. What
were they and which was most “effecicent.” Explain
88
1) What type of culture was the training program trying to
establish?
How was it successful? How did it fail?
89:
1) What went wrong at Nomizu? How could the company avoided this
problem?
91:
1) What cultural changes were necessary to move from a mechanistic
to an organismic culture?
Chapter 9:
1) Organizations are responsible for many social ills. Explain
and elaborate
2) Organizations as Domination
A) Weber --
B) Michels --- iron law of oligarchy
3) Organizations exploit workers
A) Organization class and control
B) Work hazards, occupational disease and industria accidents
4) Workaholism and social and mental stress
5) Organizational politics and the radicalized organization
6) Multinationals and the World Economy
A) Multinationals as world powers
B) MNC’s” a record of exploitation
7) Strenghts and limitations of the metaphor
Chapter 8: Flux and Change
1) Organizations are constantly changing
2) Autopoiesis:
Autonomy
Circularity
Self-reference
A) Applying autopoeisis to organizations:
1) Organization interact with projections of themselves
2) Egocentrism Vs systemic wisdom
3) Chaos Theory
Nonlinear ---
A) Rethinking organizations
B) Art of managing and changing context
C) Using small changes to make large effects
D) Living with emergence as natural
4) Loops not lines: the logic of mutual causality:
positive
feedback
5) Dialetics
Unity of opposites
Negation of negation
Transformation of quantity into quality
A) Dialectics of management
6) Strengths and weaknesses
First Test
d
a
a
a
b
b
a
a
b
d
b
c
c
a
c
Second Test
a
a
a
d
c
a
d
a
d
c
a
a
c
c
c