Morgan’s overall analysis of industrial organizations looks at the more external and structural development of them. Organization behaviour looks at the internal make-up of this organization and how they contribute to a sustainable and stable organizational development. Lets look at how Morgan’s organizational view of theories and models specifically machines and organisms relates with personality, values, and perception theory and models and how those individual’s perceptions, values and attitudes relate to how we experience organizations.
Morgan uses eight (8) metaphors to describe the different ways of how an organization can either be thought of, seen and how it functions or supposedly functions. The identified metaphors are: machines, organisms, brains, culture, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation, instruments of documentation. However, for purposes of this blog I will just focus on machines and organisms. Organizational behaviour focuses on the human element of the organizational structure. It is the people who are the biological organisms who make-up and drive organizational development. According to several studies conducted after 1980 an individual’s performance in a work place can affect how well they performance, and in turn translates to the organization’s overall performance non-financially and financially. As a result, since then, organizations have come up with personality pre-testing which predicts how an individual performs their job. These tests includes, Myer-Briggs Types Indicator (MBTI), Jung’s Personality Types, the Five-Factor model and Cattell’s sixteen (16) personality factor to name a few.
Table 1.1.- Correlation between Organization Developments and Organizational Behaviour below, breaks down Morgan’s metaphors into their appropriate formal functions and how it translates with the organization’s today. In addition, the table also shows how individual(s) personality, values, and perceptions, become/are a thread that runs continuously throughout the entire organizational structure. This is because no single metaphor can exist without the other metaphor in its description of the organization. An indication of this is highlighted by Morgan when he compares an organization to a machine, “…the metaphor is incomplete…it ignores the human aspects,” which is resonated in the other metaphor that describes organizations, “biological organism.” This in essence highlights the fact that there is a relationship between organizational development and organizational behaviour which is intertwined and perhaps detrimental to the existence and sustainability of any organization. However, according to Morgan the “machine” metaphor encourages other ways of looking at the organization at management/bureaucratic system(s). When we look at it at that level we begin to interrogate the roles and functionality of such systems and how an individual placed at the level can meaningfully contribute to the mechanistic nature of the system. It is now at these levels of management that an individual’s personality, values and perceptions plays a catalytic role. It is at these levels that an individual is required to be methodological and almost mechanical. There by shaping and influencing organizational behaviour in a top-down effect.
The “biological organism” metaphor that Morgan mentions implies that an organization is made up of many organ-parts, heterogeneous by sight, but all co-ordinating and working towards a common goal of being a functional whole and in the process , growing, changing and adapting to its environment. This is highlighted when Morgan states “we come to see different types of organizations as belonging to different species.” It is at this level of organizational development that Human Resources Management Systems are put in place to plan, co-ordinate and facilitate the ever-changing and growing organization. It is at this level that again an individual’s perception, values and perceptions plays a catalytic role in identifying and assessing skilful and sometimes highly specialized human resources to meet the organization’s needs for growth and sustainability.
Table 1.1. Correlation between Organization Developments and Organizational Behaviour
| Key words | Formal Functions in Organizations | Personality, Values & Perceptions | |
| Machines | As a goal-seeking machine with interchangeable parts | Bureaucratic Systems/Management Levels | |
| Organisms | As a biological organism that continually adapts to change | Human Resources Management Systems |
Personality
Personality is defined as “The totality of qualities and traits, as of character or behaviour, which are peculiar to a specific person.”[2] It is important for organization’s to measure an individual personality and/or preference profile to ensure that the individual fits within organization and its existing members, and is suited to the role that they have applied for and are now have been recruited for. This level of identification is closely associated with the Morgan’s theory of “goal-seeking machine with interchangeable parts”. People are used as a resource to support the already existing bureaucratic system/management levels in the organization. The process recruiting these “interchangeable parts” is starts at company’s talent management and selection process. They are various interviewing processes in today’s world that enable to assess the person’s personality. According to a study by Barrick & Mount, 1991, “conscientiousness and emotional stability are the best personality predictors of job performance across nearly all jobs.” How you assess conscientiousness and emotional stability is highly dependent on the interviewing process and tests the individual undergo. For example, “Brad Smart, PhD, originated the CIDS Interview and first described it in his book: Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People. As its name states, it’s a chronological in-depth STRUCTURED survey. You're surveying a candidate's background, school and work, in structured, systematic manner to note not only skills and talents, but also patterns of responses he'll bring to your day.”[3] Other organizational testing used are to ascertain personality which in turn affects job performance where identified by Borman & Motowildo in 1993. They states that testing an individual’s incremental validity helps predict that individual future performance as opposed to what they can currently do at the moment. This highlights Morgan’s other metaphorical statement that describes organizations “a biological organism that continually adapts to change.” This is infers that because the organization itself is in a constant state of change and transformation the individual needs to be evaluated on their level of commitment to achieving that organizational need also referred to by Borman & Motowildo 1993 as “Organizational Citizenship Behaviours”. This means that the individual has the ability to do more the required from their job functions that they were required to do. It was further proofed that unlike selection tools, there has been no evidence to proof otherwise of different selection ratios between demographic groups. Other methods of testing that have been used have been competency-based test. This also assesses the individual management and leadership skills/styles, interpersonal and personal skills, technical knowledge, and commercial effectiveness. Commercial Effectiveness in the Topgrading methodology above follows the Honey & Mumford Learning Styles questionnaire (LSQ). The difference is instead of the candidate’s filling a checklist form, interviewers ask a series of work-related questions indirectly asking managers how they learn, how effective how they on learning commercial aspects of the industry related to the job they will be employed.
Based the above-mentioned studies it is evident that personality is an important aspect in identifying the right fit or ‘part’ for the organisation.
Values
Values are defined as individual beliefs in our external environment, for example, work, family, etc. If an individual’s value is systematic and follows their bureaucratic system then that individual will be able to fit with an organization defined as mechanic. In addition, according to research findings cited, values of power, achievement usually lead to imply the individual is not a team player. That individual is perhaps suited in a mechanical environment where human contact is limited. However, values of conformity lead to an individual being more cooperative. This may suggest that the individual is more suited to Morgan’s metaphor as a “biological organism” as they would be part of something bigger. The study further proves that there is a relationship between values, personality and cognitive styles, which we discussed early affects how the individual will be placed or declined on the basis of their ability to fit with the organization’s description.
Perceptions
Perception is how the individual reacts or responds to the organizational environment that they have been placed: “a process of receiving information about and making sense of the
world around us; how we view and interpret what happens around us.”[4] Irrespective of their reaction this influences an individual’s attitude and behaviour in that environment. Studies have shown that regular employee-attitude surveys can be conducted by an organization to assess the importance of information on employers’ ideas and changes. Depending on the what environment the individual is placed in either machine-like or biological-like, aspects such as organisational commitment , job involvement, and job satisfaction that contribute to how that individual perceives that environment. In addition, research finding have indicated that there is a statistical relationship between organizational commitment and job satisfaction that can either positively or negatively correlate with absenteeism and recruitment and retention turnover as well as ethical behaviour. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1994) stated that there are three (3) possibilities for managers who want to build an organization that will last and in which people are motivated to contribute and to stay: "First, make the objective conditions of the workplace as attractive as possible. Second, find ways to imbue the job with meaning and value. Third, select and reward individuals who find satisfaction in their work.”[5]
In summary, Morgan’s view of theories and models specifically “machines” and “organisms” relates with personality, values, and perception theories outlined above. This in turn will affect how the individual perceives that organization in the future.
[1] COMMENTS ON ORGANIZATIONAL METAPHORS - http://www.dooy.salford.ac.uk/ext/org.metaphors.html
[2] http://www.answers.com/topic/personality
[3] Small Business Resource of the Week: CIDS Interview July 10, 2008 Article - http://zanesafrit.typepad.com/zane_safrit/2008/06/small-busines-1.html
[4] Jorgensen, Frances PhD., Presentation 16 September 2010
[5] Jorgensen, Frances PhD., Presentation 16 September 2010
Copyright @ 31 October 2011. BlogSpot by Tambudzai Ndoro, Non-Executive Director of Global Business Assignments Inc.,
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