Tom Burns Tom Burn spent more than 30 years at the university of Edinburgh, retiring in 1981 as Professor of Sociology. His early interests were in urban sociology and he worked with the West Midlad Group on Postwar Reconstruction and Planning . While he was at Edinburg his particular concern was with studies of different types of organization. He has also explored the relevance of different forms of organization to changing conditions. In collaboration with a psychologist (G.M Stalker), Burns has studied the attempt to introduce electronics development work into traditional Scottish firms. The difficulties which these firms faced in adjusting to the new situation of continuously changing technology. The mechanistic type of organization is adapted to relatively stable condition. In it the problems and tasks of management are broken down into specialisms within which each individual carries out. There is a clear hierarchy of control and responsibility for all knowledge. Vertical communication and interaction is emphasized. This system corresponds quite closely to Weber”s rational-legal bureaucracy. The organismic type of organization is adapted to unstable conditions when new and unfamiliar problems arise. And it cann”t be broken down and distributed among the existing specialist roles. There is therefore a continual adjustment and redefinition of individual tasks. Interactions and communication may occur at any level as required by the process and a much higher degree of commitment to the aims of the organization as a whole is generated. In this system organization charts laying down the exact functions and responsibilities of each. The traditional Scottish firm almost complete failure to absorb electronics research and development engineers into their organizations leads Burns to doubt whether a mechanistic firm can consciously change to an organismic one. This is because individuals in a mechanistic organization are not only committed to the organization as whole. Thus their develop power struggles between established sections to obtain control of the new function. These divert the organization from purposive adaptation. Pathological system are attempts by mechanistic organizations to cope with new problems of change. Burns describes three of these typical reactions. In a mechanistic organization the normal procedure for dealing with a matter outside an individual’s sphere of responsibility is to the appropriate specialist or failing that to a superior. In a rapidly changing situation the need for such consultations occurs frequently and in many instances the superior has to put up the matter higher still. A heavy load of such decisions finds its way to the chief executive. Thus there develops the ambiguous figure system of an official hierarchy and non officially. The head of the concern is overloaded with work and many senior managers whose status depends on the functioning of the formal system feel frustrated at being by passed. Some firms attempted to cope with the problems of communication by creating more branches. This leads to a system described as the mechanistic jungle , in which a new job or even a whole new department may be created. The third types of pathological response is the super personal or committee system. The committee is the traditional way of deahng with temporary problems which cannot be solved with a single role. But as a permanent device it is inefficient. This system was tried only sporadically by the firms, since it was disliked as being typical of inefficient government administration, attempts to develop the committee as a super person to fulfil a continuing function. Burns maintains for a proper understanding of organization functioning, it is therefore always necessary to conceive of organization. It is naive to consider the organization as a unitary system equated with the formal system, and any successfully changed must be acceptable. This is particularly so with modern technologically based organizations which contain qualified expert. Thus the attempt to change from a mechanistic to an organismic management. Concern with the interaction of these three social system within the organization continuous in Burn’s study of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC is a very segmented organization both horizontally. A sense of the past and the very recent past is essential to anyone who is trying to perceive the here and now of industrial organization. If the organizational structure is viewed as a result of a process of continuous development of three social system. Adaptation to new and changing situations is not automatic. Indeed many factors militate against it. An important one is one existence of an organization structure appropriate to an earlier phase of development. Another is the multifaceted nature of the commitment of organization members to their various event. These are often stronger than their commitment to the organization as a whole event.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 16:36:45 +0000