Chester Barnard (1886-1961)

Executive at the Bell Telephone Company, then president of the New Jersey Bell Telephone, Chester BARNARD was interested in the decision-making process and the role of the manager. He took up Emile Durkheim's idea of informal organisation and suggested that a manager's success depended on how well he managed this aspect of the organisation: development of a cooperative system, integration via communication of objectives and focus on motivating the members of the organisation. He considered that an organisation was made up of individuals and groups whose specific objectives must serve the entire company. Management must therefore convince each individual that there is a common goal, which must be accepted by all those involved in accomplishing it. As for authority, this depends on whether the person wieiding it is accepted by the organisation's members. Communication also plays an important role: the formal communication circuits must be known, accessible and as short as possible. BARNARD thus exposed a theory of participative behaviour in formal organisations. He saw companies as an instrument of social progress, which was more efficient than that of the Church or the State. His work echoed themes which were to be taken up again later and which centred on issues relating to organisational values, motivation, meaning and culture.

Barnard influenced his own epoch, towards the end of the 1930's, but was then apparently forgotten until the emergence of theories about organisational culture (notably Peters and Waterman, In Search of Excellence). Furthermore, he is also accused of having neglected the issue of conflict within organisations.

Further reading on Barnard:

Barnard, C. (1938). The functions of the executive, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Barnard, C. (1948). Organisation and Management. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Peters, T. F. and R. H. Waterman (1982). In search of Excellence, Harper & Row, 1982)

Sociological approach to organise a producing unit

Max Weber (1864-1920)

Max Weber was a German sociologist who was concerned about understanding the transformations of industrial society taking place before him. In particular, he analysed the relationship between the moral obligations of Calvinistic Protestantism and'the birth of capitalism (the seeking of profit and its re-investment) as the driving force behind any company. He anticipated the growth of bureaucracy[29] and the disappearance of traditional organisational forms, notably feudal. He emphasised the rational virtues of bureaucracy: formal authority based on precise and impersonal rules; control procedures defined in detailed rules; legitimate hierarchy; mobilisation of experts. He saw in bureaucracy an organisational form marked by the precision, clarity, rapidity, regularity, reliability and efficiency of work.

He analysed the forms of authority in an organisation. He opposed the rational-legal authority model (the dominating form in modern institutions) with the old forms of authority based either on individual radiation (charismatic model), or on compliance with tradition and its associated rights (traditional model). These older forms have not disappeared however; modern management still comprises forms of charismatic leadership or forms based on tradition (company culture or patronage as the modern version of heritage). When a charismatic boss leaves a company (Ford or Thomas Watson, the founder of IBM) the organisation may switch from a charismatic model to a bureaucratic model.

An organisation's set of rules, which apply to all including those individuals occupying executive positions, ensures continuity of action. Bureaucratic administration depends on the application of a set of principles, notably that:

- Individuals are free and are only subject to an organisation's authority within the framework of their official impersonal obligations.

- The job hierarchy is clearly defined.

Each job has a clearly defined sphere of competency.

A job is occupied on the basis of a free contractual relationship. It involves free mutual selection on behalf of the employer and employee.

Applicants are selected on the basis of their qualifications, assessed through an examination or certified by a diploma. They are appointed, not elected.

They are paid with a fixed salary. The employer may not arbitrarily end this contract. The salary scale depends on the employee's position in the hierarchy, the responsibility attached to this position and the requirements of social status.

The job held is considered to be the main professional occupation of the person holding it.

A job constitutes a career; there are therefore promotions according to seniority or work performed.

The employee (even an executive) is not the owner of the production resources and cannot appropriate this position.

The employee (even an executive) is subject to disciplinary rules and strict and systematic monitoring of the work he or she performs.

Organisation = bureaucratic administration system + abstract, rational and impersonal rules + definition of tasks and skills + definition of relationships of authority + formalisation of procedures + ownership * management

Bureaucracy therefore constitutes a form of secular administration of the organisation (whether public or private), which is assumed to bring together individual effort. It is the most rational means of controlling the organisation of labour ever described: it is known to be efficient and predictable (both for those who manage it and those who work in its midst). It can also be applied to a wide range of situations: industrial production, private and public service activities, etc. It is a way of rationalising the social environment; the equivalent of what technology does with respect to the physical environment. Because of the link he sets

up between bureaucracy and technology, organisational theoreticians in the 50's and 60's recognise in Weber one of their founding peers.

WEBER also distinguishes two forms of rationality: with respect to a goal (instrumenta! rationality), and with respect to values (value rationality). Bureaucracy is a form of instrumental rationality that seeks out new, more efficient means in order to reach an organisation's goals. With new means, an organisation should be able to develop new goals. Also, in view of this form of rationality, man finds himself imprisoned in an iron cage, in a mechanism without end. However, to understand action within an organisation, value rationality must also be taken into account; in other words the meaning and value that an organisation gives to what it does and the way in which it does it, the "right reasons" for acting the way it does. Thinking about forms of rationality led to comprehending analyses of action within an organisation. This thinking was to be taken up again by the post-modernists.