Management and Organizational Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Management and Organizational Theory - Essay Example The paper tells that current critical management studies have criticized traditional management with creating scientific or objective knowledge which is nothing more than elitist thinking institutionalized as wisdom The result of this is the elitist groups have managed to maintain a status quo that deprives and exploits members lower down an organization due to their class, gender and ethnicity. Many of the simplistic views on management needs revision and rather than applied mechanically, critical management needs to take a broader 360 view encompassing politics and ethical perspectives. Today's organizations and workplaces are a melting pot of ethnic and multi-culturally diverse set of individuals. More foreigners are employed in western businesses than ever before; young and old work together. People form a diverse backgrounds and skill sets now coordinate their work in order to arrive at the best solution for complicated problems. The merger of companies, threat of downsizing, an d rapidly changing work environments have tended to create a sense of unease about job security. Even then, employees demand more from the organization they're employed in, high expectations in terms of workplace treatment, greater respect for their individuality irrespective of their ethnic, gender, racial or family background or sexual orientation. The challenge then for companies is to develop more inclusive policies and procedures to embrace a wide variety of people while respecting their individuality. This model has largely been ignored by organizations which use their employees mechanically, expecting them to only produce. Up until the mid 20th Century, the organization was seen as a machine with characteristics such as a central authority, a hierarchy of power, divisions of expertise and specialisations, categories of labour and distinct sections between staff, management from lower paid workers. With the economic boom and moves towards globalisation, the internal culture of organizations changed with greater emphasis placed on the people instead of on the inner machinery of the organization. There was more focus on delegation of authority, employee self-rule, open dialogue where concerns of workers were shared with the authority. Much of this resulted from the development of new technologies. At the workplace, this meant requirement of new skill sets and specializations utilized in order to achieve organizational goals. People with expertise in various disciplines were sought and recruitment became selective. With more power to the labour force, the hierarchy of authority was forced to develop a more cooperative model of management. This in addition to the changing markets and branch diversification required management to be more adaptive. The existing scientific management model had inadequate concepts to cope with the rapidly changing work environment and there was a move towards changing the industry and discarding forms of scientific management. A s society grew modern, people started to develop social etiquette and became more morally conscious. Things that were considered normal a century ago began to be questioned. Child labour for example was outlawed. Customers demanded better quality products and attitudes in society changed. This spilled over into the workplace. Dictatorial methods of authority were no longer tolerated and generally people expected proper treatment.