Business Systems - Mechanistic vs Organismic, Bureaucratic vs Team Cultures

T. Burns and G M Stalker in their 1961 book, "The Management of Innovation" reported on difficulties facing organisations in adjusting to new environmental conditions. Their focus was on Scottish electronics companies operating in increasingly competitive and innovative technological markets. A new edition has been recently published.

They described two organisational types representing a continuum along which most organisations can be placed.

At one end is the mechanistic organisation - similar to Weber's bureaucracy (adapted to relatively stable conditions). At the other end - the organismic type (adapted to more dynamic, fast-moving conditions in which new and unfamiliar problems continually arise which cannot be broken down and distributed among the existing specialist roles).

Problems of bringing about change are shown strikingly in the mechanistic (bureaucratic) model. They point to problems of short-circuiting in communication, role conflicts occuring with committees, "super-ordinate" officials reporting directly to the boss and inter-departmental conflicts. They saw the "mechanistic form" as being:

• appropriate to conditions of relative stability.
• highly structured, members have well-defined, formal job descriptions/roles, and precise positions vis a vis others.
• direction is from the top - down through the hierarchy. Communication is similarly vertical.
• The organisation insists on loyalty and conformity from members to each other, to managers and to the organisation itself in relation to policies and methods.
• members need sufficient functionary ability to operate within organisational constraints

Problems of Mechanics?

• organisational creativity and effort can focus on internal problems only - systems and procedures.
• heavy administrative overhead - internal procedures consume more resources than external customer-focused operations.
• slow in responding to external change - lose touch with customers and external stakeholders.
• Parochialism, defend-my-patch behaviours occur. Organisational members can develop unhelpful, bounded mind-sets - perceptions of external and internal. Job and departmental boundaries can lead to the rational-legal organisation becoming bogged down in a spaghetti of tortuous processes and "need-to-consult" everyone and anyone.
• the status quo is defended rather than changed to meet new circumstances.

The organic/organismic form

Burns and Stalker saw organismic forms as being:

• suitable for unstable, turbulent and changing conditions.
• The organismic firm tries to re-shape itself to address new problems and tackle unforeseen contingencies
• rather than a rigid, highly specialised structure - a fluid organisational design is adopted which facilitates flexibility, adaptation, job redefinition
• departments, sections and teams are formed and reformed. Communication is lateral as well as vertical - with emphasis on a network rather than a hierarchy.
• organisational members are personally and actively commitment to it beyond what is basically operationally or functionally necessary.

Criticism of mechanistic cultures, their endemic problems and behaviours is an easy thesis as many organisations today are pushed for change and seek greater operating and coordinative flexibilities. Modern approaches to management are cogniscent of this and invest great effort to secure project-based forms of (temporary) organisation grouping such as matrix structures and team cultures (participative management style) within the basic bureaucratic framework.

A similar appraisal of organisation cultures offering a expanded classification is that of Harrison whose work on roles and cultures is summarised in Handy - Understanding Organisations. Harrison paints a picture of four types of organisation. he suggests that each type represents a "culture". The types are

• Power culture
• Role culture - corresponding roughly with bureaucracy - with varying degrees of centralisation and decentralisation. This remains, from a control point of view, the essential architecture of the large scale modern organisation.
• Task culture - corresponding with small-team culture or the project teams in a project -based organisation or matrix structure. The integration of "small-team" culture can be achieved within a bureaucratic system but it requires considerable investment in a human-relations approach by management who must guard against incongruent behaviour on their own part - upsetting the trust relationships that are essential for the team to flourish. They need to be aware and skilled in creating the support environment needed to realise the potential for human achievement possible.
• Personal culture

Overall - notwithstanding the dysfunctional aspects of implementation, the Weberian model of bureaucracy, and for big business, still supplies the main 'structuring' apparatus that puts the economic rationality of modern capitalism into practice.

Moving from mechanistic to organismic

• Burns T and Stalker G, The Management of Innovation, Tavistock, 1961
• Burns T, The Management of Innovation, OUP, 1994