What are the various parts of system theory?
Openness and complexity of vocal organizations while knowing the importance of communication between individuals.
Does systems theory study parts or wholes?
Wholes. A systems is greater than its parts.
What is dynamism?
The quality of being characterized by vigorous activity and progress.
What is parsimony?
Extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources
What is equifinality?
The same goal may be reached in multiple ways.
What is contingency?
There is no best way to organize. All ways of organizing are not equally effective.
Does systems theory predict social systems well?
No, it over looks individuals and dehumanizes them.
Systems are, by definition, complex - what does this mean?
Many different departments apart of one whole.
What does general systems theory say about existence and order?
Language makes interdependence between members of social systems looser than those found in biology.
What is a learning organization?
Brings back systems under those who manage corporations by system thinking, personal mastery, flexible mental models, a shared vision, and team learning.
How does a learning organization relate to systems theory and human resources?
Group members are more willing to distance themselves from their opinion and take on a whole opinion.
How flexible or adaptive are learning organizations?
They have a "we thinking" instead of "me thinking
What are the parts that help make a learning organization?
Systems thinking, personal mastery, flexible mental model, a shared vision, team learning.
What is systems thinking?
For any one member to succeed, all members must succeed.
-part of a learning org.
What is personal mastery?
All members share a personal commitment to learning and self reflection.
-part of a learning org.
What is a shared vision?
Share a common organization vision and understand how their own work helps build on that shared vision.
-part of a learning org.
What are flexible mental models?
Members engage themselves to first understand self reflection and then mental models change to guide their thinking.
-part of a learning org.
What is team learning?
Communicate in ways that lead the team toward intelligent decisions with an emphasis on dialogue to keep the team learning.
-part of a learning org.
What is a servant leader?
Enriches the lives of individuals that builds better organizations,and creates a more caring world.
What is organizational culture?
The action, ways of thinking, practices, stories and artifacts that characterize a particular organization.
What does the theory use to examine organization's cultures?
Environment, symbols, metaphors, rituals, storytelling, artifacts, heroes, performances, values.
What are artifacts?
Tangible and physical features of an organization, contributed to its culture. "office decor
What is Anticipatory socialization?
Learning about work through communication. Vocational (learning about jobs as a child) and organizational (learning about a job right before it starts, like through pamphlets)
What is anticipatory assimilation?
Involves both surprise and sense making. (door is always open example)
What are practical views?
Manages desire for practical advice and speech communication strategies for enhancing competitiveness and increasing employee satisfaction
What are interpretive views?
Treats culture as a process that is socially constructed in everyday communicative behavior among all members of the organizations.
What are critical and postmodern views?
Challenges to power relationships and the status quo.
What is differentiation?
Highlights differences across organization units and subculture
What is integration?
Portray culture in terms of consistency and clarity. no room for ambiguity.
What is fragmentation?
Ambiguity is inevitable and pervasive aspect of contemporary life.
How do socialization and technology relate?
The process by which people learn the rules, norms, and expectations of a culture over time and thereby become members of that culture.
What is a "high reliability" organization?
Members continually operate in dangerous conditions where even a small mishap can lead to disaster.
What is Theory Z?
Survival and prosperity of organization depend heavily on their ability to adapt to surrounding culture.
What is the basic premise of critical organizational theory?
The hidden but pervasive POWER that organization have over individuals and all of society.
What is the role of profit? How does this relate to capitalism?
Growth and success
-it related by putting profit at the top of the hierarchy other social priorities are discounted.
What is the highest organizational priority for capitalism (generally)?
profit
What is progressive capitalism?
A connection between the wages paid to employees and the employees ability to be actively consuming.
What is ideology?
System of ideas that serves as the back of a political or economic theory.
What is hegemony?
Theory of how ideology works
What is reification?
The process whereby socially constructed meanings come to be perceived and experienced as real, objective, and fixed, which that members "forget" their participation in the construction of those meanings. "the way things are
How do myths, stories, and metaphors characterize organizations and reinforce hierarchies?
Form of communication that contain implicit, hidden and taken for grated ideology assumptions that reside at a deep structure level of power.
What is manufactured consent?
Employees at all levels willingly adopt and enforce the legitimate power of the organization society or system of capitalism.
What is the panopticon?
A circular prison with cells arranged around a central wall, from which prisoners are able to be seen at every point of the day.
What is surveillance?
Constant supervision.
How does technology aid to panopticon?
It keeps employees more tethered together.
How can we resist organizational colonization?
Businesses need to attend to relevant stakeholders rather than just stakeholders. (boycotts, strikes, individual tactics).
What would make an organization healthier? At least according to critical theory?
Doctor patient relationships, employees unconsent to unhealthy work practices, the social construction of risk at work.
How can theorists and practitioners create organizational change?
By embracing care, thoughtful and good humor in sense of organization empowerment and justice.