First podcast

Modernism

Modernism rooted in the early 18th century in the age of Enlightenment. It can be seen as a cultural and philosophical movement that emphasises rationality,rigour and elegance. Modernism encourages re-examination of and deviance from norms, celebrating innovation and progress. It seeks to advance and relies upon scientific knowledge and practical experimentation.


A modernist ontology sees the world as ordered, with underlying systems to be discovered. In this way it is quite similar to Ancient Greeks's point of view of the world as highly mathematical. Humans are said to be rational economic,i.e. free of emotions. The second fundamental issue in the modernist ontology is that we can under- stand the natural and social worlds as systems.  The organization theorist Mary-Jo Hatch (1997) suggests that this idea of organizations as systems inspired much of the modern approach to organization theory and helps maintain continued support for modernism because it enables theorists and managers to understand organizations in all their complexity in a holistic, interconnected manner.

Modernism represents the triumph of intellect over opinion and superstition, but even though modernists express confidence in technologies that will enable progress, they might become over-concerned with building perfect systems, which will be unable to cope with rapidly changing world. This could result in "paralysis through analysis" I also think it's important to note about chaos theory: even in physics it is impossible to make 100% accurate predictions as even small changes, that are mathematically insignificant, might have tremendous consequences over a period of time(the butterfly effect). Michael Reed(1993) suggested that this ontology can no longer fit into todays world of exponential growth. 

Modernists are optimistic in their search for knowledge and have the assumption that rational principles will lead to social progress and personal growth. However many writers suggest that this ideas might be applied to top managers/professionals but not to a middle/lower class since for the latter work is essentially boring way to earn economic reward.

Modernist technologies:

Bureaucracy: the key idea behind this term is that organisations can operate efficiently and effectively if they possess clear hierarchy and authority. People are aware of their status – from the most junior through to the chief executive – so that they are aware of their responsibilities and their place in the structure of authority in the organization.
Modernist processes of management: organisations can be managed in efficient and effective way by people who possess knowledge and skills, who have clear sense of purpose of the organisation.

(But does it mean that modernist organisation, which was made by people to create order ends up by controlling us?)

Core characteristics

• That the design of organizations needs to accord with the principles of system and rational order.

• That modernist organization theory sees change as inevitable but it can be undertaken in ways that are rational and essentially ordered. This is in the context that modernism is not just about order and rationality; it is also about change and indeed excitement.

• That individuals and groups in their relationship to the organization can be conceived as components of the machine.

• That although many of the critics of modernism believe that it has passed its sell-by date, many of the technologies of management and processes of organizational development continue to be underpinned by modernism.

Talkot Parson's(1951) human systems:

What organisation needs to survive:

A set of goals.
Integration (means of communication between different groups/subsystems)
Latency(established patterns of organisation,culture)
Adaptation

Also represent the first level of Boulding's system

Boulding (1956): ‘physical and chemical and most social systems do in fact exhibit a tendency to equilibrium – otherwise the world would have exploded or imploded long ago’.  

Second level: Machine-like dynamic - smooth running organisation where everything is in its own place and external environment does not change significantly. 

Third level: System itself defines the equilibrium - members begin to communicate about the nature of their work 

Fourth level: Environment changes a lot and the organisation starts to interact both with environment and itself.

Why modernists love systems theory.

From a modernist perspective, interest in systems theory is understandable. It displays a fascination with the key concerns of modernism.

These concerns include:

• the search for order and rationality
• the establishment of control over knowledge through control of flows of information and the abil- ity to assemble data in ways that are rational and ordered
• the desire for the whole picture
• the modernist love of hierarchy
• a passion to understand what is happening in the organization
• the search for cooperation and collaboration within organizations and the avoidance of conflict.

The systems approach to organizations provides theorists and managers with an opportunity to align organization theory with the natural sciences. This means that they can legitimate the use of scientific and engineering principles as a means of establishing order and control in organizations.

Systems theory provides a rich opportunity to develop an understanding of core operating princi- ples that apply to all organizations.

It provides an intellectually rigorous structure for the exploration of organizations.

When we reach open systems theory, we can explore the relationship between the organization and its external environment. This provides a rational framework for dealing with the uncertainties that a fickle fate throws at organizations.

And why contemporary writers are sceptical of systems theory

Critics suggest that an excessive faith in the theory can lead people in organizations down some wrong paths. The organization theorists Michael Harrison and Arie Shirom (1999) suggest:

• The search for rules and regulations that would ‘cure’ situations where there are problems between subsystems can lead to major problems. Instead of searching for new rules, it is better for managers to take a pragmatic approach.
• If an organization were in perfect fit between the subsystems for more than a moment, then it would be stagnant because there is no dynamic for change.
• Even if the fit between different subsystems is not as good as it might be, limited fit may be no bad thing because a lack of fit can lead to some useful conflicts.
• Organizations are dynamic, and the shapes of the subsystems and their relationships with each other are constantly on the move.
• A well-aligned organization can become unresponsive. This issue can be significant particularly for larger, more mature organizations that become satisfied with their elegant organizational design. 

Max Weber : 

bureaucracy was revolutionary in the sense that it was responsible for the destruction of ways of organizing that were irrational such as the rule of the monarch, the feudal rights of the lord of the manor, the rule of the dictator and tyrant or the rule of the mob. The growth of bureaucracy leads, he suggests, to ‘a “rationalist” way of life’ that ‘furthers the domination of “rational matter of factness” and “the personality type of the professional expert”’ (Weber, 1922, p. 240). On the negative side, Weber was fatalistic about the development of economic materialism – the search for economic and financial reward – of which bureaucracy is a key component. He referred to the life of machine production and materialism as an imprisoning ‘iron cage’ (Weber, 1904, p. 1264). He suggests that the ‘objective indispensability’ of bureaucracy ‘means that the mechanism . . . is easily made to work for everybody who knows how to gain control over it’ (Weber, 1922, p. 229).

It is also important to note that the first argument can also be used against bureaucracy, since the means of communication have advanced a lot since 1922, making it almost impossible for the "feedback loops" to reach management. One reasonably decent solution for that, might be flatter hierarchies, but there's also a limit to the extent of how it can solve the problem, since there will still be some time between a change in the environment and the respond to it.  

There are also some moral issues about bureaucracy: since it dehumanizes workers and management, moral responsibilities are put under an anesthetic. David Cesarani argues that it is important to understand Eichmann (one of the key architects of the Holocaust) not as an evil person but as a bureaucratically ‘normal’ person who used bureaucratic means to undertake purposes that others see as evil but were not seen as such by the perpetrators - "he managed genocide in the way that any Chief Executive of any corporation would run a multinational company’.

 Of course, there are some sociologists and historians that do not agree with this view, for example Paul du Gay(2000) writes that 'objectivity’ required of the bureaucrat is not an impersonal dehumanized matter, but rather, it is the ‘trained capacity to treat people as individual cases . . . so that the partialities of patronage and the dangers of corruption might be avoided’