“Beach Games”
This episode of the office deals with several different story lines that we can relate to class. Michael is asked to offer recommendations for his replacement, because he has been asked to go to the corporate office to interview for a job there. The manner in which he decides to find his replacement is to have a beach day, an informal way to get the office members to relax and see who has the characteristics that he likes. Toby stays behind because Michael sees him as not very fun, and he gets sad because he has a small crush on her.
Michael asks Pam to take notes on who seems to be showing leadership qualities. Michael makes reference to the Starfish and the Spider model, by saying, “What happens when you cut off a chickens head? It dies until you find a new head,” By saying this he is referring to a centralized organization that will essentially die if he doesn’t replace himself. He is looking for the office workers indefinable qualities. Pam is sad because she says that she has, “the most boring job in the office, why shouldn’t she have the most boring job on beach day.” Michael seems to put Pam in the position to continually not be controlled by any Hawthorne effect (beach day is allowing the workers time to relax), but because she has to do things so often and through her own personal time she is making reference to the “White Collar Sweatshop.”
While en route to the beach, Michael lets everyone in the office know that he will be monitoring them throughout the day and someone will get a special prize at the end of the day, the prize being his job. This sparks a Tayloristic mindset in all of the workers. If they perform better, the better chance that they have not only to keep their jobs, but also to advance in the company.
Michael is having a hard time keeping his employees motivated for two reasons. The first is that a few of the people that he is considering have also been offered a job at corporate, and the second reason is that he is not keeping enough motivation for his specific job. Michael is also oppressing Pam by making her take notes and not participate in anything. Pam, the secretary in normal circumstances, breaks out of the grip of Michael. She has her own resistance narrative by walking over the hot coals that Michael wanted everyone else to walk over. She walks over them, and then makes a speech about her life to the entire office.
There are also many roles that the people of the office fulfill in this episode. The character named Andy tried to “reconstruct the person according to the needs of the organization” through his member role. He tried to be everything that Michael would want in a person as a leader. Dwight fell under this as well because he tried to compete to the best of his ability making him what Michael would want. The office may have formal roles, but the way in which the office is run there are many informal roles, and overstepping of people, including Michael. Friendships seem to take over some of the formal roles, creating cliques and a sort of human relations approach.
Pam and Michael have a reciprocal/complimentary role because they engage in an interlocking relationship. Michael needs her in the office, as well as on Beach day to take notes and to do the work for him that he cant complete at the time. Stanley has only partial inclusion in this episode as well as the show. Stanley only put part of his identity into his job, and most of the time seems depressed or sad to even be at work. Stanley also takes a role distancing approach because he doesn’t want to do work so often.
Dwight loves Michael as well as the office so much that he has full role embracement. He takes a stand in this episode where he is on the coals and cries out that the will not leave the hot coals until he is given the job of regional manager. He loves his job but would love to move up because he is so in love with the company.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Starfish and the Spider
Because it is based on a clear hierarchy, division of labor among troops, and a centralized command source, the U.S. military is a clear example of the classical model of organization that we discussed earlier in the semester. By contrast, contemporary terrorist organizations are often said to exemplify the decentralized types of organization that we have been discussing in relation to system theory.
Use your readings from system theory to speculate on what may happen as there two types of organization engage in conflict.
The most effective example that I got from the reading to describe my thought is the reference made to the record companies fighting off the P2P drives. The record companies are very structured organizations with one area in which they gather and meet. There is one person in charge of each record label or company, and without the direction of this head person, the lower levels do not know what to do exactly. Essentially they will die until they find a new head. The main point here, is that. a head is essential. The people to people (P2P) networks in which people share their music file with other people around the world, have no leader. No one knows who has created these new drives. There is no president of these file sharing companies, therefore there is no one who can be taken down. If one drive gets shut down, other people will find ways to share their files.
The record companies are centralized systems, much like the spider, and much like our military. Everyone has a position, everyone is accounted for and if for some reason the head were to be taken down, the system would die for a little bit because it would need to wait until a new head rose. The P2P systems are decentralized, in that they have no real head, no positions, no hierarchy. The P2P systems are like terrorist organizations. If you cut the “head” off of a starfish what will it do? It will regenerate, and two starfish will come from the one. If one is stopped, it will only fuel the creation of two.
I do not wan to say that we cannot succeed, because I would like to think that terrorist organizations will someday cease to exist, however I do not see how this can be so. If one “bad guy” is stopped, another takes over. I do not forsee how we can ever, as a world community, can ever fully stop these organizations.
Use your readings from system theory to speculate on what may happen as there two types of organization engage in conflict.
The most effective example that I got from the reading to describe my thought is the reference made to the record companies fighting off the P2P drives. The record companies are very structured organizations with one area in which they gather and meet. There is one person in charge of each record label or company, and without the direction of this head person, the lower levels do not know what to do exactly. Essentially they will die until they find a new head. The main point here, is that. a head is essential. The people to people (P2P) networks in which people share their music file with other people around the world, have no leader. No one knows who has created these new drives. There is no president of these file sharing companies, therefore there is no one who can be taken down. If one drive gets shut down, other people will find ways to share their files.
The record companies are centralized systems, much like the spider, and much like our military. Everyone has a position, everyone is accounted for and if for some reason the head were to be taken down, the system would die for a little bit because it would need to wait until a new head rose. The P2P systems are decentralized, in that they have no real head, no positions, no hierarchy. The P2P systems are like terrorist organizations. If you cut the “head” off of a starfish what will it do? It will regenerate, and two starfish will come from the one. If one is stopped, it will only fuel the creation of two.
I do not wan to say that we cannot succeed, because I would like to think that terrorist organizations will someday cease to exist, however I do not see how this can be so. If one “bad guy” is stopped, another takes over. I do not forsee how we can ever, as a world community, can ever fully stop these organizations.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Human Relations v Human Resources
For your fourth post, discuss the differences between the human relations and human resource approaches to management. Pay particular attention to how they approach the issue of worker participation.
With productivity as the key concern, there are two approaches that have stemmed from the classical model of organizations.: Human resources and human relations.
“The human resources approach is concerned with the total organizational climate as well as with how an organization can encourage employee participation and dialogue” (87). In the human resources approach participation is the focal point, it is where the question “what does an organization look like” is asked. The workers participate in the way that they themselves are rearranging the workplace through a workplace democracy. The teams that they work in (marketing team, news team, sales team etc.) are so needed that the structure changes in such a way to facilitate their needs without jeopardizing the company as a whole.
“ The human relations approach starts with the assumption that all people ‘want to feel united, tied, bound to something, some cause, bigger than they, commanding them yet worthy of them, summoning them to significance in living’” (82). This approach focuses more on psychological factors that can increase or decrease worker productivity, such as the physical environment, or the “feeling” they get from listening to music at work. There is also a subculture of informal organization, in which workers are networked within the company as well as out of the company. These little networks or cliques, are part of what “ties” the worker to the organization because they have something that cannot be gotten at by management. It is a culture unto itself where the workers bind together through the experiences they have shared and the non-formal information that they can acquire. Worker participation in human relations deals more with these informal networks, because the workers are drawn in not only because of interest in their career but because they are personally drawn into the system.
With productivity as the key concern, there are two approaches that have stemmed from the classical model of organizations.: Human resources and human relations.
“The human resources approach is concerned with the total organizational climate as well as with how an organization can encourage employee participation and dialogue” (87). In the human resources approach participation is the focal point, it is where the question “what does an organization look like” is asked. The workers participate in the way that they themselves are rearranging the workplace through a workplace democracy. The teams that they work in (marketing team, news team, sales team etc.) are so needed that the structure changes in such a way to facilitate their needs without jeopardizing the company as a whole.
“ The human relations approach starts with the assumption that all people ‘want to feel united, tied, bound to something, some cause, bigger than they, commanding them yet worthy of them, summoning them to significance in living’” (82). This approach focuses more on psychological factors that can increase or decrease worker productivity, such as the physical environment, or the “feeling” they get from listening to music at work. There is also a subculture of informal organization, in which workers are networked within the company as well as out of the company. These little networks or cliques, are part of what “ties” the worker to the organization because they have something that cannot be gotten at by management. It is a culture unto itself where the workers bind together through the experiences they have shared and the non-formal information that they can acquire. Worker participation in human relations deals more with these informal networks, because the workers are drawn in not only because of interest in their career but because they are personally drawn into the system.
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