Social organizations are also characterized by a number of objective and subjective processes in place. The first ones are cyclic processes of rise and fall, synergy etc., the second ones are those related to making various managerial decisions.
Management as a process can be executed only in the organization because any organization - from industrial enterprises, small businesses and supermarkets to coffee shops, schools and hospitals - are in need of being managed. Management focuses on the entire organization from both short - and long-term perspectives, so it is a process of forming a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy and then implementing and executing the strategy. If management goes beyond the organization's internal operations to include the branch and general environment, this is management of the organization.
The sociological approach focuses on management in the organization which it is identified as comprising three components. The first one is purpose-driven managing impact, the second one is self-organization. They both make up the third component - organizational regulation. When coordinated, the given components suggest integration based on making use of possibilities and limits of each and taking away potential contradictions. For instance, any official would like to transform a greater volume of decisions (orders, tasks) from impacts for one occasion to those of long-term perspective.
Any impact is impossible without applying methods of social governance that fall into those applied to a separate individual, group and social organization.
An individual's behaviour can be regulated by direct order, stimulation (through needs and stimuli), system of values (bringing up, education) and social milieu (changing work conditions, a status etc).
A group as part of an enterprise can be governed by such methods as a purposeful formation of its structure (in number, location of jobs, qualifications, demographic qualities etc) and formation of unity (perfecting the leadership styles, arranging competition, applying psychological factors etc).
The level of social organization, for instance of an enterprise, requires such methods as coordination of formal and informal structures (taking away contradictions between planned and existing relations and norms), democratization of management (through increasing the role of public organizations, employees' wide involvement in decision making, election of some middle and top managers etc) and social planning (qualification upgrading, perfection of the entity's social structure, bettering of the social security system etc).
The uppermost product of management is managerial decisions. A managerial decision is a formally registered project of some change in the organization. Managerial decisions fall into:
strictly fixed ones when the authorities do not influence on the process of their making because their content is predetermined by the organizational terms such as law, instructions, directions of a higher establishment etc. Strictly fixed decisions are subdivided into:
· standardized, routine ones such as paying regular wages or allowances, sacking an employee after his taking a notice in etc.;
· derived, secondary ones such as those to implement decisions made before;
· “initiative” decisions are not strictly fixed, they suggest individual contribution of the decision-maker. They are subdivided into:
a) situational ones which mainly have episodic or local character (rewards, sanctions, irregular appointments etc);
b) reorganizing ones aimed at changing some element of the organization (redistribution of resources, developing new assignments, etc).
The second component is self-organization as a process of evolution where the effect of the environment is minimal, i. e. where the development of new, complex structures takes place primarily in and through the system itself. Self-organization is normally triggered by internal variation processes. It is part of self-governance which is typical for any organization and which has two meanings - wide and narrow. Its wide meaning suggests autonomous functioning of any organizational system and the organization's right to make decisions on its internal problems. The narrow meaning suggests collective governance, or all members' participation in the activities of the governing body through involvement of executors into the processes of making common decisions.
The third component is social regulation that consists of rules identifying permissible and impermissible activity on the part of individuals, firms, or governing agencies along with accompanying sanctions and/or rewards. Social regulation is aimed at restricting behaviours that directly threaten public health, safety, welfare, or well-being. As a tool of governance, it is used to accomplish a number of public purposes such as preventing harms or providing public benefits. Regulatory programs vary considerably in what they require and/or prohibit, timing of their intervention etc. They entail:
· rules that govern expected behaviours or outcomes;
· standards that serve as benchmarks for compliance;
· sanctions for non-compliance with the rules (or rewards for compliance);
· an administrative apparatus enforcing rules and administering sanctions.
Social regulations are typically developed to prevent harm to a society. While there is much conceivable harm that could be addressed, it is up to governmental officials to determine the particular harms that deserve attention.
Development of management on the post-Soviet area
Development of modern societies on the post-Soviet area is characterized by deep dynamic changes of systemic nature. State, political and economic forms have changed; new social and production technologies have been introduced. All these processes considerably increased the significance of governance in orderly organized social systems.
All over the world the quality of labour force and the structure of aggregated labour have undergone changes. Now managers encounter not with non-qualified obedient executors but mainly with specialists who are able to assess and creatively affect the implementation of managerial decisions. The structure of employees has also changed: if earlier peasants, blue-collars and service workers dominated in number, in modern economy managers and specialists are now becoming the main professional groups, the contradictions between which determine the dynamics of practically any organization.
It means that radical changes in the social object of governance suggested a necessity of changing the character of modern industrial management which gained a particular significance in a transitional period when market reforms were carried out. The changes undertaken in the production structure and character of economic relations, as well as the macro-economic dysfunctions, the total financial imbalance, a revolution in property and the system of consumption produced a great deal of uncertainty and disorganization in the development of modern enterprises. In turn, radical transformation of the social-economic system required special scientific and managerial maintenance of the reforms, deep theoretical working out of the problems of maneuverability of the reformation process, formation of quality of management itself etc.
Considerable peculiarities of the development of modern production entailed changing the whole philosophy of management and its practical re-orientation. In the organization of production the utmost importance is now paid to introducing the results of information science, socializing the system of industrial management on the basis of the principles of corporatism, ecologization of managing the production etc.
In other words, the processes of modern management development are of a special interest not only for sociologists: administration and governance transforming into a genuine process of managing people as human capital, not as human recourses, must be comprehended from the viewpoints of compliance with group values, needs and possibility to realize cooperation. In this connection quality of social governance of human capital as the main national resource may become the most significant factor so that on the post-Soviet area successful market changes and guarantee of effectiveness (compatibility) of the present-day production can be achieved.
In recent years various innovations of crisis management in the national production have been applied to settle stagnation and degradation processes: the statuses of regular professional groups within the labour collective and the share of qualified labour started increasing, the labour force redistribution from the main production to a non-productive sphere was ceased, hidden unemployment stopped from developing, etc. The given problems may have the possibility to be solved as non-standard social and governmental strategies were applied in the area.
BASIC CONCEPTS
Authority - people's voluntary abeyance to one of them due to his peculiar individual qualities; in politics, it generally refers to the ability to make laws, independent of the power to enforce them, or the ability to permit something.
Bureaucracy - the way that the administrative execution and enforcement of legal rules is socially organized; the formation of bureaucracy, or the management, is the major aspect of rationalization (by M. Weber).
Flat (single-level) hierarchy - the opposite extreme to the pyramid hierarchy which is most common in smaller organizations which lack standardization of tasks.
Formal organizations - large secondary groups that are legally registered and rationally designed to achieve specific objectives.
Hierarchy - any system of relations among entities wherein the direction of activity issues from the first party to the second party, but not the other way around; it is based on the principle of collateral subordination when the upper levels are “superior” to the lower ones and control them.
Informal organizations - secondary groups which for their minority or any other reason are not legally registered, their members are cohered by personal interests in culture, sports, recreation etc., headed by a leader and not involved in activities designed to get material profits.
Managerial decision - a formally registered project of some change in the organization.
Organization - a formal group of people with one or more shared goals.
Organizational area - element of the organizational structure that includes definite physical, functional, status and hierarchical areas of the organization.
Organizational culture - a less tangible element of the organizational structure which comprises attitudes, values, beliefs, norms and customs of an organization that affects its members' behaviour.
Organizational structure - the way in which the interrelated groups of the organization are constructed.
Power - the ability to impose one's will on others, even if those others resist in some way.
Pyramid hierarchy - the configuration of the hierarchy if the number of those who are superior is smaller than the number of those who are supervised.
Self-organization - a process of evolution where the effect of the environment is minimal, i. e. where the development of new, complex structures takes place primarily in and through the system itself.
Social regulation - third component of management that consists of rules identifying permissible and impermissible activity on the part of individuals, firms, or governing agencies along with accompanying sanctions and/or rewards, it is aimed at restricting behaviours that directly threaten public health, safety, welfare, or well-being.
Additional literature
Blau P. Exchange and Power in Social Life. (3rd edition). - New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1992. - 354 p.
Bourdeiu P. Logic of Practice. - Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. - 382 p.
Coser L. The Functions of Social Conflict. - Glencoe, Ill: Free Press, 1956. - 188 p.
Durkheim E. The Division of Labour in Society. - New York, NY: Free Press; 1997. - 272 p.
Durkheim E. Suicide. - New York, NY: Free Press; 1951. - 345 p.
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