Evolution_of_Formal_Organizations

Evolution of Formal Organizations Debra Mallery SOC/120 - Sociology May 27, 2012 Kimberley Stephens Evolution of Formal Organizations The first thing is to understand how a formal organization works in our society. A formal organization starts with a social group where at least two people are interacting with one another. A formal organization also has a primary group this is considered as a small group and gently is like a family working together. In this type of a group most of the people have some type of respect for each other. There is also a secondary group and this is the opposite than the primary group. In that a secondary they meet and have specific goals and usually do not share personal information about their sleeves. Formal organizations have changed over time in such a way that in the past these groups were in a primary group but as time has progressed they are thought of as a secondary group. In some ways they are able to reach their goals more effetely than in the past. One of the reasons is that they have more technology to do this and more access to more funding than they had in the past centuries. In most formal organizations their actions are relatively logical (Barnard C.I. 1962). A formal organization is thought of in some ways as a rooted tree metaphorically thinking. The nodes and the edges of the roots are thought as the members the organization. The path between the roots is thought to be the communication between the members in the organization, and adding edges to the rooted tree is the equivalent to adding new members that may be helpful down the line in certain programs that the organization may have or want to accomplish in the community (Sawada, 2009). Formal organizations have increased gradually in their involvement in society in the past centuries. One of the main reasons for this transformation is due to technology, and its increasingly changing and growing in more modern ways than in the past such as the Internet with its ability to communicate with more people in other places than just the area of the organization. These new abilities of communication and organization can help others more than in the past when it was just face-to-face. Most organizations can achieve specific goals with higher efficiency than organizations could in the past. Organizations will be expanding even more as time goes on as technology evolves even more so they can help more and achieve more of their goals in a shorter amount of time. In some ways bureaucracy has changed to make it a more diverse environment than most organizations were in the past. A flexible organization allows the people more freedom to be their selves, creative with an open mind, and more competitive to achieving their goals within the organization due to the new technologies of the world. Some of the changes in the newer organizations may not be as good for some as they were in the past. They are more commercialized in some ways than they need to be when dealing with people one-on-one. Some organizations have gotten away from the true meaning they had from when they started the organization. In a flexible organization the employees are allowed to do more on their own rather than having someone tell them what needs to be done like in a bureaucracy organizational structure. In a bureaucracy organizational structure some people may not be happy because things are not done their way, and having to do them the way they are told even if it is not as cost efficient as another way would be in the end. A flexible organization can be a good thing if the employees are allowed to do, and create new ways to accomplish the goal. This should be done in a manner that can encourage others to work together to solve the problems than doing things on their own to get noticed. This will promote more working together. For some this is hard to do because as an individual people want to be noticed for what they do on their own rather than in a group. In larger and formal organizations they have become less flexible in dealing with people because technology has hurt our society in the way we communicate. Communication should be a big part of the organization, but most do not see it that way they try to do more to reach their specific goals and sometimes it hurts organizations. People have gotten away from face-to-face communications and not able to see the people they are helping they may be thousands of miles away or even in another country. Yes, this is good, but some things have changed too fast, and too much in the way organizations help people. Yes, technology has made things easier than it was in the past to do things faster to accomplish more in a shorter amount of time, but what is it taken away in the process such as seeing the person’s face when you've done something to help them. Some say it is payment enough to see a smile on a person's face. One of the main differences between the organizations we have now and in the future is human values. In the past a person's values were what made the people so different from others. Technology has taken the human values of the way things should be out of the picture. This resource has been taken over by the technology and machines. They can predict what a person should do rather than trial and error of a person’s own decision. The technology in some ways has taken a person's identity away from them in the way people look at things in most formal organizations. A flexible organization may not be the way of the future because of technology which deals with more set ways of doing things than in a flexible manner. For example this can be shown in the way an organization is willing to go out of its way to help others in the aftermath of such natural disasters as a tornado or flood. Many people sit and do nothing where others see it as if it were their family and try to help more (Flamholtz 1972). As for formal organizations it will be up to technology to see the way for them to go in centuries to come. Yes, technology to some is a good thing, but to others it has taken away a person's ability to do for themselves. For an organization to become more flexible it needs to get away from some of the technology and allow the employees to think and do more on their own than letting technology dictate how things are done or will be done. Yes, in some ways technology has enable organizations to run better, but in some organizations it came on too fast, and many people are falling through the cracks, and do not receive the help that they need to before it's too late. Yes, there are still some organizations that help people one-on-one, but they are few and far between due to the technology. Most organizations believe the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. That is not the way it should be it should be the other way around one should out weight the needs of many to make it be a helping world. Reference A Model of Adding Relations in Multi-levels to a Formal Organization Structure with Two Subordinates by: Sawada, Kiyoshi; Amano, Kazuyuki. AIP Conference Proceedings, 10/10/2009, Vol. 1177 Issue 1, p109-116, 8p; DOI: 10.1063/1.3256239 https://ehis.ebscohost.com Chapter IX: Organizations and their relation to formal organizations by Barnard, Chester I. Functions of the executive; 1962, p114-123,10p. https://ehis.ebscohost.com Toward a Theory of Human Resource Value in Formal Organizations By: Flamholtz, Eric; Accounting Review; Oct72, Vol. 47 Issue 4, p666-678, 13p, 10 Diagrams https://ehis.ebscohost.com Formal Organization, Ideological Structure, and Patterns of Communication among a Hospital Service Staff * Veterans Administration Hospital, Sepulveda, California F. Harold Giedt and Mary Joan Thomsen https://ehis.ebscohost.com -------------------------------------------------