• Part 1
• Read the Discussion Participation Scoring Guide to learn how the instructor will evaluate your discussion participation throughout this course.
Outline the major aspects of an organizational theory of your choice within the parameters set forth below. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the theory. Use scholarly sources to build argument and to support your statements.
• If your last name begins with T-Z, choose any of the "Relatively Recent Developments" theories listed on page 53 of the Rainey text.
Response Guidelines
Read your peers' posts and respond to at least one. In your response, you might ask a probing question, offer a suggestion, elaborate on a particular point or provide an alternative opinion. Support your discussion where appropriate with references to the professional literature.
• Part 2
• Effective Agency and Supporting Theory
Resources
• Discussion Participation Scoring Guide.
Name one public agency you believe is efficient and effectively managed. Give a brief overview of its mission and purpose. Present your case for why the agency is effective and efficient. Connect the organization back to one organizational theory, providing examples of how the theory relates to specific practices.
US Department of Labor Mission statement:
To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.
Response Guidelines
READING HANDOUT
1. Max Weber is the classic organizational theorist who was influential in providing analysis of bureaucracies and defined characteristics such as hierarchies of authority, career service, selection and promotion on merit and rules and regulations.
2. The theory attributed to Max Weber is the Rational Legal Theory.
3. Specialization and hierarchical control are emphasized in the Administrative Management School model. Work is divided, coordinated, and a supervisor's span of control is limited to no more than ten subordinates.
4. The Hawthorne Studies illustrated that paying attention to workers increases a sense of importance and raises productivity.
5. Maslow's hierarchy of needs postulates that human needs begin with low order needs such as food, clothing and shelter and move upward as a lower need is met. The highest level is self-actualization.
6. The author Victor Thompson coined the term "Bureaupathology", a condition where members of a bureaucracy become overly concerned with protecting the authority of their office.
Read your peers' posts and respond to at least one. Do you agree with your peer's analysis of practice and theory? Why or why not? Are there other theories that might inform the practices as well?