Organizations. Organizational Climate.

If you define man as a social creature, you won’t be mistaken. The most vivid distin­guishing feature we possess is the ability to interact and to cooperate. Our ancestors, as well as our contemporaries, had no sharp teeth, strong paws or night-vision. They had to put up with the idea that they were unable to accomplish many tasks that required more than in­dividual effort, e.g. hunting predators or making a fire. Still cave people managed to struggle with the hostile environment using intellingence and group work. The result was that many impressive goals could be attained. The necessity for group activity, discovered at dawn of our history, evolved together with the humanity, and nowadays we may claim that the en­tire social structure is based on numerous organizations.

So, people cooperate and create compound unions, which give an increase in both quantity and quality aspects. Such a system of group relationships built upon and fostering coopera­tion, then, is basically the meaning of an organization. We may also define the sys­tem through its parts: the human element, the physical element, the work ele­ment, and the coordination element. The most general description sounds like this: “Organization is an open, dynamic, purposeful so­cial system of cooperation designed to enhance individual effort aimed at goal accomplishment, which transforms resources into out­puts for users.

Good understanding implies meticulous research. To penetrate into the whole configura­tion we should pay attention to its separate parts. The most typical list of components in modern conceptions is as follows: goals, work, power and authority, delegation, structure.

Sometimes we come across wrong opinions that organization is any accidental gathering of interacting people. Chaotic crowds or packs unite people, who undoubtedly interact, but they are subordinate to blind will or fear and on no account should we call them organizations. Organizations are intermediaries for pooling talent and ability into an effective whole that can accomplish some desired objective, or a goal. The goal or purpose is an imaginary state or condition that the members of some unit do not possess but which they find desirable. It is imperative that goals be clearly defined to all members who are to be affected by them; otherwise we may observe the lack of motivation or interpersonal conflicts within a company. Goals are the starting point for the development and further functioning of the organization itself. At the same time, supply is affected by demand, and any goals must meet a need that society has defined as important. Commercial and “not-for-profit” organizations have to comply with basic social values, political and cultural traditions; otherwise their existence will be useless and won’t last long.

Once the goal of an organization is established, it is time for its participants to develop an optimal algorithm of operations, maximizing its efficiency. Basi­cally, any organization must perform two fundamental types of work: primary and secondary. The division is not very strict and, to some extent, subjective as modern organizations may focus on a great number of interdependent problems and the only criterion enabling to succeed is equal attention paid to all the elements involved. However, the primary, or line work includes pro­duction and distribution of goods and services that directly satisfy consumer needs. The secondary work (it is often termed staff work) consists of all those activities that maintain and extend the operations of primary work. For ex­ample, in a manufacturing firm, the secondary work would include accounting, personnel and quality control, asset management and security. The complexity of this structure is not so rigid and may vary for different entities.

Technology itself is nothing without a proper set of controlling actions. No theoretical model of organizations would be complete without a treatment of the roles that power and authority play in or­ganizational activity, and practice tells this idea is correct. Even communists, who are great admirers of equality, accept the idea that different functions within a company must be shared in accordance with personal abilities. These two notions help to explain the network of relationships that tie the other components of an organization together into some logical pattern.

Power is the ability to influence others successfully. It descends from any single or combination of possible sources. For example, one can have power over others because of one's intelligence, education, social status, physical strength, skill or money. Regardless of its source, power enables its holder to exercise one's will over others. In fact, everyone who is influenced by an outer factor like power becomes an object of manipulation. In some cases (I mean absolute power) people may be viewed as “talking tools”, and the analysis of such groups ends in the leader’s tactical and strategic preferences, without taking the others’ opinions into consideration.

Authority can be defined as power that has been given formal support by the organization. Once an organiza­tion legally authorizes an individual to act on its behalf, that person is said to possess authority. Every member of the organization has, or at least should have some amount of authority to perform necessary actions to carry out his responsibility. Surely, many organizations insist on centralizing authority in order to stick to the chosen course and to act decisively in critical situations, but the others provide their members with a broad range of rights, which is essential for development and creativity. Both ways have pros, contras and side effects, and the final decision strongly depends on a vast number of factors.

An effective system of power may lead to economic success and consequential rise in level of production. The processes of growth and expansion do result in the ne­cessity to divide the work of the organization into sub-units or groups. Each of these groups will be under the guidance of a manager or managers. Each manager is granted appropriate responsibility and authority to put the company’s strategy into practice. This policy is usually termed delega­tion. In general, delegation may be defined as the process of transferring an obligation (responsibility) and an accom­panying right (authority) from a superior to a subordinate position within the organization. It is this basic process that enables an organization to grow and not to bury itself in bureaucratic affairs. Delegation allows people to reveal their managerial abilities; it is the way to transfer specialized duties to hardcore professionals and to boost the firm’s performance. Without delegation, an organization transforms into a lying log: it can exist, but cannot move, and the example of the USSR, where delegation was not spread, has proved it.

The last, but not the least important issue is structure. Structure is the hierarchical pattern of authority responsibility, and accountability relationships designed to provide coordination of the work of the organization. It can be compared with the skeleton of the organizational body. The ideas of hierarchy of authority and the differentiation of responsibility of the line (doers) and the staff (the advisors) are fairly ancient and origin from the clergymen and military leaders, who were faced with the need to manage large aggregations of human and material capital. Organizations create an officially sanctioned structure known as the formal organization or de jure organization, specified in the official documents.

A formal organization doesn’t provide us with all the interactions in a company. There is a series of informal or de facto relationships, which are not imposed by the management. These include informal work groupings of employees, informal leaders, informal channels of com­munication and informal power and status differentials. The meaning of such formations sometimes overcomes the official structure, as people always tend to break artificial restrictions. As I view it, companies may use these informal relations, as violence never ends in success, and cooperation may greatly improve the psychological atmosphere in the company. Of course, I don’t mean that managers should encourage collective sabotage or absenteeism initiated by informal chiefs…

The structure I described above is rather stable, but in some cases a temporary, ad hoc, or­ganization may be created. The organization exists to reach a certain goal or set of goals and disbands once the goal is achieved. The scale of such groups differs from international financial consortiums to student clubs, designed for mutual copying at the exam…

All these elements are interconnected and create specific long-term patterns of organizational behavior - organizational climate. It is the overall favorability of member attitudes and percep­tions with reference to specific activities and features of an organization.

Organizations tend to have a kind of internal culture: a mix of values, attitudes, norms, habits, traditions, behaviors and rituals. In Belarus, due to the soviet past, such traditions are nearly neglected, but many foreign companies view their culture as a powerful strategic tool, used to direct all units and individuals toward common goals, motivate employees to create, ensure loyalty, and fa­cilitate communication. They aim at creating a culture of their own and making sure that all employees understand it and adhere to it. This culture may involve many elements, the most important of which are:

the organization's mission (high technolo­gies and innovations, superior quality, ecological and ethical policy);

the treatment of people (concern for people and their needs, equitable treatment, re­spect for individual rights, training and promotion oppor­tunities, the means of motivating people);

the importance of different management positions, style of management (importance of different vice-presidents' positions; the role of middle and line management; respective role and authority of research and development);

decision making process (who decides; who has to be consulted; individual or collective decision making; need to reach consensus);

circulation and sharing of information (employees amply or poorly informed; information readily shared or not);

communication pattern (preference for oral or written communication; rigidity or flexibility in using established channels, use of meetings);

socialization patterns (who socializes with whom during and after work; facilities such as separate dining rooms or reserved clubs);