Modern Organizational Theory vs. Improvisation

A detailed Summary of Modern Organizational Theory vs. Improvisation

Modern Organizational Theory vs. Improvisation

"Organization theory deals with the formal structure, internal working, and external environment of complex human behavior within organizations. As a field spanning several disciplines, it prescribes how work and workers out to be organized and attempts to explain the actual consequences of organizational behavior (including individual behavior) on work done and on the organization itself."(Gordon and Milkavoich, 147) It has been evolving for centuries on how should work be done in the public administration and how the organization should be. "Research findings have emerged about what motivates workers and how different incentives affect various tasks, employees, and situations; and the environments in which they operate." (Gordon and Milakovich, 147) Even with all those research statistics and different modes of thought toward organization there are still situations in which the rational approach to public decisions does not help. For instance, what if the environment is !

instable and has no guidelines or precedents to follow? In the case of Israel, improvisation has changed the organization of public administrations, uprooted the conventional models for policymaking, and stra

Improvisation began in Israel since 1967, the day the city was united under total Israeli control. It involved deviating Israel's formal policy to keep the peace. With the Arabs fighting for their land back and Israel's strong willed notion to maintain all of the land under Israeli rule, it proved to be quite a task. Not only did the government had to improvise to ease the tension between the Arabs and the Israelis, they also had to settle the demands of the Religious and the Secular people. To maintain a harmonious environment the public decision makers had to improvise a way to keep the religious and secular Jews on the same level, whereby initiating one approach to appease on group and lowering the standard to appease the other. This could only be done with an open system in which the organization constantly interacts with their environment to give grounds to their decisions. This systems theory- "which holds that organizations are like biological organisms in which !

construction, and produced an adequate supply of housing for immigrants." This is yet another success story by using improvisation as the method of organization and decision-making process.

they behave according to the inputs from their environment is the modern organization theory. The modern organization theory imbibes the notion of improvisation since it is open to feedback and is not closed to the public and is vulnerable to the forces in the external environment." (Class notes)

The use of improvisation is dependent on the culture and the environment in which policy decisions are made. For example, the use of improvisation is found more so in Spanish managers. Why? "Spanish mangers express an explicit preference for spontaneous, improvised managerial style over the methodical and formal planning favored by their American, English, and Dutch counterparts." (Sharkansky and Zalmanovitch, 2) Another proponent of improvisational technique

Some common words found in the essay are:
Religious Secular, Russian Jews, Survival Diaspora, Gordon Milakovich, Sharkansky Zalmanovitch, Improvisation Organization, Improvisation Israel, Herbert Simon, Max Weber, Union Israel, public administrative, organization theory, organizational theory, sharkansky zalmanovitch, modern organization theory, arabs israelis, russian jews, religious secular, rational planning, israelis improvisation, decision makers, modern organizational theory,

Approximate Word count = 1308
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Politics