Introduction
What are social organisms? what they are made of, where they come from, what is the object in this society and above all what is its primary function, in this brief essay, we will investigate about social organizations and their function towards society, as well as the main functional areas at present, its origins, its main authors and brief comments on their research in this area.
Likewise, we will also superficially address how social organisms affect or benefit productivity, and we will briefly comment on the Fayolian concept of functional areas, as well as the cycle of a company's operations.
We therefore hope that this work is to your liking and especially useful for future reference.
Social organizations and functional areas
Social organisms are called systems that are constituted by structured processes, in which many people intervene, who elaborate specific and differentiated tasks to achieve a goal, that is, they fight together to achieve a common goal.
Interaction between 2 or more people, the desire to cooperate, and have the purpose of achieving a common goal, are the conditions that must exist for a social organism to exist.
Organizational culture is something that all the members of a social organism share, it deals with the attitudes, motivations, beliefs, values, techniques, etc., that the members of the same have in common.
There are two components of the organizational culture that are formal and informal, the first deals with the behaviors that are established in an organism, for example, this would be its mission and vision; and the second is the behaviors that are carried out in a social organism, but are not actually formally established within the organism.
- Set an organizational objective, that is, what is the reason why the organization was created and what they will have to achieve jointly.Having a division of labor, here the members of the organization must establish the activities in which each will have to develop one of them; This division is made taking into account the capacities, abilities and skills of the members in order to carry out the activities that will lead you to achieve the organizational objective with the greatest efficiency and effectiveness.Establish a hierarchy, this is established so that there is an order in the organization, since an organism must have leaders and subordinates. Not everyone can perform as leaders because it would cause disorder, since everyone would do what they wanted and without a doubt we would not be talking about a social organism.
Taking into account the previous characteristics, we can define the social organism, as a set of people who work together, performing differentiated tasks to achieve a common goal.
Social Organizations are classified by their nature and functions of and for society, among them are the most important which are:
According to Talcott Parsons:
Production: Companies that provide goods or services, such as industries.
Political goals: They are created to form political parties or unions that have a common goal that is politics or that are related to it.
Integrative: They are those destined to form part of society and that provide a service for a common good, such as firefighters or the police.
Maintaining patterns: It focuses more on culture and education.
Open social organizations
Open systems:
Set of dynamically related elements, in interaction that develop an activity to achieve an objective or purpose, operating with data, energy, matter, linked to the environment that surrounds the system and to supply information, energy, matter.
It has numerous entrances and exits. To relate to the external environment, its cause and effect relationships are indeterminate.
A system consists of four main elements:
Inputs: Through them the system obtains the resources and inputs necessary for its food.
Processing: Transform inputs into outputs or results.
Outputs: Result of the system operation. Through it, the system sends the resulting product to the external environment.
Feedback: It constitutes a return action; it is positive when the output, because it is greater, stimulates and widens the inputs to increase the operation of the system; it is negative when the output, because it is smaller, restricts and reduces the input to slow down the system.
Social organizations and productivity
The concept of Social Productivity is based on the search and analysis of business productivity technologies that can also be applied to improve systems in social organizations, increasing their productivity and improving the final impact on the beneficiaries of this type of services.
Social productivity is a set of achievements reflected in measurable products as results of the harmonization of its productive resources, where established objectives, achievements achieved, acceptance and interaction with the community, belonging and importance are combined.
The Fayolian concept and modern concepts of functional areas
The second decade of the 20th century was tumultuous. The First World War (1914-1917) involved Europe and the United States in joint military operations. At this time the rise of the means of transport, as well as the automobile industry and the railways. Civil and military commercial aviation was also born. Radio (medium and short waves) and the press experienced great expansion. In Europe the classical theory of administration emerged.
Work of Fayol.
Henri Fayol (1841-1925, creator of the classical theory, was born in Constantinople and died in Paris. He lived the consequences of the industrial revolution and, later, the First World War. He graduated in mining engineering and entered a metallurgical company and Carboniferous, where he developed his entire career.Fayol presented his Theory of Administration in his famous book Administration Industrielle et Generale, published in 1916. Before being translated into English, his work was widely publicized by Urwick and Gulick, two classical authors.
The six basic functions of the company.
Fayol emphasizes that every company fulfills six functions.
The six basic functions of the company
1. Technical functions, related to the production of goods or services of the company.
Commercial functions, related to the purchase, sale or exchange.
Financial functions, related to the search and management of capital.
Security functions, related to the protection and prevention of goods and people.
Accounting functions, related to inventories, records, balances, costs and statistics.
Administrative functions, related to the integration of the other five functions in the management. The administrative functions coordinate and synchronize the other functions of the company, and are always above it.
Fayol argues that none of the first five functions mentioned have the task of formulating the general action program of the company, establishing its social body, coordinating efforts, or harmonizing its actions. These attributions constitute another function, designated with the name of “administration”.
2. Concept of administration.
Fayol defines the act of managing as planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling. Administrative functions encompass elements of administration, that is, administrator functions:
Planning, foresee the future and draw up the action program.
Organization, build the material and social structures of the company.
Direction, guide orient staff.
Coordination, linking, uniting, and harmonizing all acts and collective efforts.
Control, verify that everything happens in accordance with the established rules and orders given.
These elements of the administration that constitute the so-called “administrative process”, is present in any activity of the administrator and in any level or area of the company. In other words, the director, the manager, the boss, the supervisor, the foreman, the person in charge (each at her level) perform planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling activities, since they are fundamental administrative activities.
3. Proportionality of administrative functions.
According to Fayol, there are proportionalities of the administrative function: they are distributed by all the hierarchical levels of the company and it is not exclusive to senior management. The administrative function is not concentrated only at the top of the company, nor is it the privilege of the directors, but it is distributed proportionally among the hierarchical levels. As you move down the hierarchical ladder, the proportion of the other functions of the company increases, as you move up the extension and volume of other functions of administrative functions increases.
4. Difference between administration and organization.
Although Fayol recognizes the use of the word administration as a synonym for organization, he makes a difference between the two words. According to him the administration constitutes a whole, of the organization it is one of the parts. Its broad and comprehensive concept of administration, as a set of closely related processes, includes aspects that the organization alone would not cover, such as planning, direction and control. The organization refers only to the definition of the structure and the form, consequently it is static and limited.
From this differentiation, the word organization will have two meanings:
Organization as a social entity, in which people interact to achieve specific objectives. In this sense, the word organization indicates any intentional human initiative, undertaken to achieve certain objectives. The company is an example of social organization.
Organization as an administrative function and part of the administrative process (planning, direction, coordination and control). In this sense, organization means the act of organizing, structuring and allocating resources, defining the bodies in charge of administration and setting their attributions and interrelations.
5. General principles of administration, according to Fayol.
Like all science, administration must be based on laws or principles. Fayol defined the general principles of administration, systematizing them without much originality, since he took them from various authors of the time. Fayol adopts the term principles to separate himself from any idea of rigidity, since nothing is rigid or absolute in administrative matters. In administration, everything is a matter of measurement, weighting and common sense. Consequently, the principles are universal, malleable and adapt to any time, place or circumstance.
According to Fayol the 14 general principles of administration are:
- Division of labor: specialization of tasks and people to increase efficiency. Authority and responsibility: authority is the right to give orders and the power to expect obedience; responsibility is a natural consequence of the authorities implies the duty to render as many. Both must be balanced with each other. Discipline: obedience, dedication, energy, behavior and respect for established norms. Unit of command: each employee must receive orders from a single superior. It is the principle of single authority.Unit of management: assigning a boss and a plan to each group of activities that have the same objective.Subordination of individual interests to general ones: general interests must be above particular interests Staff remuneration:there must be (in terms of remuneration) fair and guaranteed satisfaction for employees and for the organization Centralization: concentration of authority at the top of the organization Climbing chain: line of authority from the highest to the lowest echelon. It is the principle of command.Order: there must be a place for everything and everything must be in its place, it is the material and human order.Equity: kindness and justice to achieve the loyalty of the staff.Stability of the staff: the rotation has a negative impact on the efficiency of the organization Initiative: ability to visualize a plan and personally ensure its success Team spirit: harmony and union between people constitutes great strengths for the organization.Centralization: concentration of authority in the hierarchical top of the organization Scalar chain: line of authority that goes from the highest level to the lowest level. It is the principle of command.Order: there must be a place for everything and everything must be in its place, it is the material and human order.Equity: kindness and justice to achieve the loyalty of the staff.Stability of the staff: the rotation has a negative impact on the efficiency of the organization Initiative: ability to visualize a plan and personally ensure its success Team spirit: harmony and union between people constitutes great strengths for the organization.Centralization: concentration of authority in the hierarchical top of the organization Scalar chain: line of authority that goes from the highest level to the lowest level. It is the principle of command.Order: there must be a place for everything and everything must be in its place, it is the material and human order.Equity: kindness and justice to achieve the loyalty of the staff.Stability of the staff: the rotation has a negative impact on the efficiency of the organization Initiative: ability to visualize a plan and personally ensure its success Team spirit: harmony and union between people constitutes great strengths for the organization.It is the principle of command.Order: there must be a place for everything and everything must be in its place, it is the material and human order.Equity: kindness and justice to achieve the loyalty of the staff.Stability of the staff: the rotation has a negative impact on the efficiency of the organization Initiative: the ability to visualize a plan and personally ensure its success Team spirit: harmony and unity between people is great strengths for the organization.It is the principle of command.Order: there must be a place for everything and everything must be in its place, it is the material and human order.Equity: kindness and justice to achieve the loyalty of the staff.Stability of the staff: the rotation has a negative impact on the efficiency of the organization Initiative: the ability to visualize a plan and personally ensure its success Team spirit: harmony and unity between people is great strengths for the organization.Team spirit: harmony and union between people constitute great strengths for the organization.Team spirit: harmony and union between people constitute great strengths for the organization.
Cycle of operation of a company
The first stage of development of an organization is Dating. The organization has not yet been born. It is just an idea. In Dating the organization is in the ideas and in the possibilities that the future offers. The company does not yet physically exist. At this stage there is much talk, but no action; the founder is creating the commitment.
In order for an organization to begin to perform the function for which it was designed, it has to take risks. And it is not possible to take risks without first having a proportionate commitment.
Promises made during the Dating stage are part of the commitment-building process.
In the Corporate Life Cycle the founder has to fall in love with his idea or creature, the company that is being conceived. Later, when the company begins its existence, it will be that love for his baby that will nurture the founder's motivation during difficult times of childhood.
The organization is born when the commitment passes the tests, when risks are assumed, the degree of commitment required in the organization depends on the degree of risk that it will assume after its birth.
The founder's motivation has to be transcendental; it must exceed the paltry limits of immediate gain. Compromise cannot just be rational. First and foremost, it has to be an emotional commitment to the idea and its viability in the market. At this stage of the Life Cycle it is a normal problem, a sensation. It is not a pathological problem. The phenomenon is normal and desirable.
This characteristic of the founder's commitment to customer needs as he imagines them (and not the commitment to the product that the same customer and market want) and his relatively low level of commitment to benefits (essential for healthy growth company), can become a pathological problem for the organization. The founder may be unaware of when to give up his signature dream and become overly product oriented for too long. He does not agree to study the marketing strategies necessary to position the product or service in the market. You act on your perception of what it should be, rather than accepting what it is and offering the market what it wants.
What is normal at one stage of the Life Cycle may become abnormal at another. The fanatical commitment, necessary during the Dating and Childhood stages, can later become pathological.
Childhood
Once the risk is taken, the nature of the organization changes dramatically. You have to cover the risk. You need cash to pay the bills. The center goes from ideas and possibilities to generating results, to satisfying certain needs, which is why the organization was created. In a business organization it is expressed in terms of sales, sales and more sales. Now that the risk exists, we no longer need any more ideas, we need sales.
In Courtship there was time to talk and dream. After taking the risk, there is no time to talk; just to act.
Companies, at this stage of childhood, involve an important paradox. The greater the risks, the greater the commitment necessary to ensure success. This means that, during Dating, the founders have to be dreamers capable of creating Commitment with the dream. However, when the company is born, the risk is substantial, and the organization needs a hard-working, results-oriented founder who is not a dreamer.
At this stage of the Life Cycle, the organization is like a child. You frequently need your "milk" (working capital), and if you don't get it, you are very vulnerable. Generally, it does not have an established management; if the founder dies, no one is qualified to assume leadership. You have no track record or experience, and as a result, any mistake in product design, sales service, or financial planning can have dire repercussions. These errors are highly likely, as the organization typically has only very limited resources and does not have the capital to establish the complementary team necessary to make balanced business decisions.
The problem of decapitalization
The milk that the company needs is working capital to be able to finance inventory increases and accounts receivable. There is a tendency to underestimate the need for cash and working capital. It is born from the typical enthusiasm of the founder during the Courtship stage. Since enthusiasm is functional and essential for creating commitment, a realistic view of treasury needs is incompatible with this accumulation of enthusiasm.
The Founder's Commitment
The founder cannot allow his dream to die, his self-esteem is at stake
By now it should be apparent that what is functional behavior at one stage of the Life Cycle often becomes dysfunctional at another. Normal problems can degenerate into abnormal ones and, later, into pathologies.
Child mortality
Infant mortality occurs when the founder loses control of the organization; gets bored or withdraws from his creation. It also happens when the company irretrievably loses its liquidity.
Go-go
The more successful the organization, the more arrogant the founder becomes. Sometimes he thinks he is invincible. As a result, Go-Go companies often end up in trouble, because they go all out, pursuing almost contradictory goals at the same time.
During childhood, the organization is product-oriented; in the Go-Go stage, it is oriented to the market. However, this return to the market does not imply an assimilation of marketing, it is simply an orientation to sales.
The Founder's Trap means that when the founder dies, the company can also die. Likewise, the Founder's Trap can become The Family Trap. The company lives this experience when a member of the family takes over, because they are the owner and not because of their competence and experience. If this happens, the company has not separated ownership from the address.
Usually the transition to Adolescence is accompanied by a major crisis, caused by the mistakes of the arrogant Go-Go. The causes of the transition have been around for a long time: arrogance, rapid uncontrolled growth, lack of systems, budgets and policies, lack of structure, centralized decision-making.
Second birth and coming of age
Adolescence
At this stage the organization is reborn. The first birth was in childhood. It was her physical birth. In adolescence it is the separate birth of its founder, it is his emotional birth. This stage is characterized by conflict and inconsistency.
The transitional stage between the Go-Go stages and adolescence is difficult for three reasons:
The delegation of authority
Since the growth of the business exceeds the individual skills of the founder, specialization is imperative. The founder cannot do everything himself. It is necessary to delegate, but he must do it without losing control. It is difficult to delegate for the founder as it is difficult to make decisions for his subordinates, the process is slow but it must be carried out.
Sometimes the founder decides to hire a professional manager to carry out the decentralization.
The leadership change
Leadership is about solving today's problems and preparing the company for future problems. The new manager must be a leader and his objective is to assume the command held by the founder.
The company has to professionalize. The new leader must create systems, redefine roles and responsibilities, and institutionalize a set of rules and policies. This step is very difficult to carry out, the employees do not want to lose their privileges and feel threatened by the new manager; furthermore the founder refuses to give up his power so easily. This creates a confrontational situation of "us against them".
Rethinking goals
What further complicates the transition of authority is the need for the company to rethink its goals. You have to go from more is better to better is more, from working hard to working smarter.
To make the transition, everyone has to participate in the restructuring. This transition is exhaustive, and putting it into practice requires respect and trust in the organization.
The end result of these three factors - delegation of authority, change of leadership and rethinking of goals - is the conflict between:
Veterans and newcomers.
The founder and the professional manager.
The founder and the company.
Corporate and individual goals.
Normal versus pathological - divorce
The energy that was previously focused on the market and service, is reverted to the interior. It is spent on infighting and conflict regulation, which are fueled by rumors.
This conflict is normal during adolescence, but it can become pathological when the conflict causes a substantial loss in the level of trust and mutual respect between those who control the company's decision-making processes. Entrepreneurial partners may walk away feeling that their talent is being wasted or being ignored
This exit can cause a pathological phenomenon: premature aging. The organization loses its main entrepreneurial component, which made it flexible, sensitive to its environment, offered vision and the driving force.
We call it premature aging because the organization fails to reach its full potential: fullness.
The fullness
It is the optimal point of the life cycle, where self-control and flexibility come to balance. The characteristics of an organization in its fullness are:
Functional systems and organizational structure.
Institutionalized vision and creativity.
Result oriented.
The organization plans and follows up on the plans.
Its performance is excellent thanks to its ability to predict.
The organization can simultaneously increase sales and profitability.
The organization gives life to new Children's organizations.
In full, a normal problem is the lack of qualified personnel, but they also become complacent, which is an abnormal problem.
The fullness does not mean that it has already arrived, but that it is still growing. It is a process, not a destination.
Description of the life cycles of organizations: organizations that are aging.
Aristocracy
This stage is characterized by the following behavior patterns:
The money is invested in the control systems, benefits and facilities.
The emphasis is on how things are done and not on what is done and why it is done.
There is formality in dress and treatment.
People are interested in the vitality of the company, but as a group.
The level of internal motivation is low.
The corporation can buy other companies to acquire new products and markets or even to acquire entrepreneurial capacity.
The organization is rich in treasury; it is often a potential target for companies that want to absorb it.
The decline in flexibility, initiated in Fullness, has a far-reaching effect: at any given time, the ability to achieve and produce results has to decline as well.
The Aristocratic organization is distinguished from other organizations in the remaining Life Cycles by the way its members dress, where they meet, how they use the space, the way they treat each other, how they communicate with each other and how they manage the conflict.
A fourth distinguishing characteristic of Aristocracies is the way in which people handle conflict, as a group. On an individual level, everyone is concerned about the company and its future, but in formal meetings they do not express any of these doubts.
The Aristocratic company denies the current reality. Although it is losing market share and progressively increasing its inability to compete, in terms of products or marketing skills, its members maintain a business-as-usual attitude.
Aristocracies generally try to increase profits by increasing revenue, not by cutting costs. And they do it, but not by raising sales per unit, but by increasing prices.
The Aristocratic organization has a strong treasury. The organization is conservative and its liquidity is excellent, since there are few investment proposals from its internal sources. The organizational climate, which accepts the present as desirable, dominates and is stronger than the aggressive aspirations of any individual in the organization. With this cash, the Aristocratic organization then looks for new ways of growth. As there are no internal proposals on that cash, it looks abroad for growth opportunities.
Normal Aristocracies buy Go-Go companies. They are attracted to these companies as they want access to new technologies in a growing market. Go-Go companies want to sell because they are tired of their attempts to organize and grow with their own internal resources. They think that the Aristocratic organization can do it more easily because it is bigger, richer and better organized.
When an Aristocratic organization buys a Go-Go, the latter suffocates. What gave the Go-Go company enthusiasm and vigor was its flexibility, its speed in making decisions. Many of them were intuitive and in the organization there was neither respect nor room for the ceremony. In Aristocratic organizations the climate is just the opposite. The ceremony is rigorous: it requires budgets submitted in a certain format, on a fixed date and with specific details, all of which is suffocating for the Go-Go organization.
When a Go-Go company acquires an Aristocratic, the Go-Go organization fails to understand the Aristocratic's problems. Squeezing his treasury will not bring him to the Fullness stage, but will transform him into a ruined Aristocrat.
Doomsday comes when it is impossible to raise prices, and purchases are not so easy. The truth emerges quickly. Then, the niceties are over. They draw the knives and the fight for individual survival (not the corporate one) begins.
Early bureaucracy
In the Early Bureaucracy, these are the typical characteristics of the organization's behavior:
The emphasis is on who caused the problem, not what to do about it (as if solving the who would be the same as solving the what)
Conflict, backstabbing and infighting abound.
Paranoia freezes the organization; nobody wants to stand out.
The center is in the infighting; the external customer is a nuisance.
During the Aristocracy, with neither the desire to change nor a results orientation for a prolonged period, the artificial surgery of the price increase comes to have a negative effect.
In the Aristocratic organization, the calm before the storm reigns. They all smile, are friendly, and treat each other with silk gloves. In the Early Bureaucracy, when the poor results are already evident, instead of fighting the competition, as they should, managers start fighting each other.
Bureaucracy and death
In the Bureaucratic stage, the company does not generate enough own resources. It does not justify its existence with a good functioning, but by the fact of existing. You can only delay death by living connected to artificial support systems. How is the bureaucratic organization?
Abundance of systems, with little functional orientation.
She lives dissociated from her environment, basically focused on herself.
There is no sense of self-control.
Systems with poor functional results
The Bureaucratic organization is disorganized. When clients try to reach a decision on something, they often receive a request for an additional document. The organization does not request, in advance, everything it needs, and thus it is impossible for the inexperienced customer to be prepared.
Bureaucratic organizations can survive a prolonged coma. This happens when they are able to operate in isolation from the external environment. Examples of organizations of this type would be monopolies and official bodies. Political or union pressure can keep them alive, because no one dares to eliminate an entity that offers employment. All this causes a very expensive artificial prolongation of life.
Years may pass before your actual death. Death occurs when no one is committed to the organization anymore. It can occur before bureaucratization arrives, due to the absence of a viable political commitment that supports a sector or company, with its consequent execution.
Cycle of operations
Bibliography
- Ichak Adizes; "Life Cycles of the Organization"; Ed. Díaz Santos; Madrid Spain; 1994, Reprint, Chiavenato Idalberto; "Introduction to the General Theory of Administration", Ed. Mc Graw Hill, Seventh edition. Munch, Galindo Lourdes, "Administration", Mexico 2007, Editorial Pearson.
