Chapter 3 Classical Theories of Organizational Communication

Specialization & Division of Labor

Specific set tasks allow employees to achieve its own objective. Thus, every worker did not have to do many jobs, but an exclusive task that was assigned to that worker. This helped to alleviate multiple trainings and increase production.

Rules & Procedures

Written policies help manage and direct the organization. Managers spend a majority of their time on how these policies help to guide and function in the organization. These procedures would serve as a guide and resource for the organization.

Hierarchy of Authority

Organizations need to have a chain of command that is shaped like a pyramid. There are levels of supervisors and subordinates. Each worker will answer to their corresponding superior. This would assist in having a direct line of communication and better efficiency in the organization.

Formal Communication

All decisions, rules, regulations, and behaviors are recorded. This information and communication will be shared in terms of the chain of command. Hence, everything is documented and accounted. There is no question in what needs to be done, because it is written down.

Detailed Job Descriptions

The organization has clear and concise definitions, directions, and responsibilities of each position. Each worker is aware of their task and how to employ.

Employment Based on Expertise

The organization will assign workers in positions that would fit their competencies. Hence, workers will be placed in the organization were they can maximize production.

Impersonal Environment

Relationships need to be impersonal and separate so that workers’ personal thoughts or feelings would not affect bias or decisions. Workers just need to work and they do not need to interact with others. Interpersonal relationships may jeopardize the organization’s outcomes.

Weber (1947)Weber, M. (1947). Essays on Sociology. New York: Oxford Press, pp. 196–198. categorized three types of authority: traditional, bureaucratic, and charismatic. Traditional authority is related to the backgrounds and traditions of an environment. This leadership is usually passed down from one family member to another without little regard to who is more apt or capable. Thus, authority is given to another based on custom or tradition. Think of family owned businesses and how those businesses usually do not let outsiders infer with it unless they are related to the family.

Charismatic authority is founded on the idea that the best candidate for this position will be the one who can exert authority. This person is usually charismatic, hence the name. If this person ever leaves the position, then their authority does as well. According to Weber, charismatic leaders are ones that lead to insecure and unpredictable organization because there is a vague idea of who will replace their position.

Another type of authority is bureaucratic. Weber felt that bureaucratic was the best way to delegate authority in an organization. Bureaucratic authority is founded on set objectives and criterion. Hence, the best leaders were bureaucratic leaders because they were picked in terms of the guidelines set out for that organization’s mission. Weber believed that bureaucratic authority was the ideal way to select authority because it neutralize thwarted ideas of nepotism, preferential treatment, prejudice, and discrimination. Hence, a candidate would be selected in terms of their job competency and not their linage or personality.

Unity of Direction

The organization should have the same objectives, one plan/goal, and one person of leadership/authority.

Unity of Command

Employees should get orders from only one person. Therefore, there would not be a chain in command. One person would be the person in charge and be responsible.

Authority

Managers have the entitlement to provide orders and obtain compliance. No other individuals in the organization have the privilege of power.

Order

The organization must have set places for workers and resources. These should be in the right place at the correct time.

Subordination of Individual Interest to the General Interests

The interest of the organization is most significant and not those of the group or individuals working for the organization.

Scalar Chain

There is a hierarchical order of authority. There is a sequence and succession to how communication is transferred from one person to the other. This is similar to horizontal communication where workers of the same level communicate with each other.

Even though Fayol’s principles may appear to be strict, he was one of the first theorists to grasp the idea that having unconditional compliance with an organization may lead to problems. Hence, he also noted that each organization must determine the most favorable levels of authority.

All in all, communication in the classical perspective has two functions: control and commandOrganizations must limit their communication to precise and explicit words for task design and implementation. At the same time, communication is not spontaneous and is more centralized in a classical organization.. Fayol believes that organizations must limit their communication to precise and explicit words for task design and implementation. Thus, communication is not spontaneous and is more centralized in a classical organization.

Fayol also believed there were certain management activities. He felt there were five activities that are applied to the administration unit of an organization. These activities included: planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling and controlling. As explained by Fayol, planning is where managers create plans for the organization and predict future organizational needs. Next, organizing occurs when organizations employ people and materials to complete their plans. Commanding is what managers do to get the optimal output in production and efficiency. Coordinating is where managers bring together the labors of all of its employees. Last, controlling is to determine the accuracy of the organization’s efforts and its plan. Fayol’s impact still has a big influence on many of today’s organizations’ climate, structure, and leadership.

Illumination Study

The first study at Hawthorne Works was designed to explicitly test various lighting levels and how the lighting levels affected worker productivity. The original hypothesis of the illumination study was the as lighting increased worker productivity would increase. The opposite was also predicted, as lighting decreased, worker productivity would decrease. The original push behind the study was the electric power industry who believed that if they could demonstrate the importance of artificial lighting, organizations around the country would adopt artificial lighting in place of natural lighting to ensure worker productivity.

The research began in the fall of 1924 and continued through the spring of 1927 as three different groups of workers were put through the experiment: relay assembly workers, coil winding workers, and inspectors.Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. After three different testing conditions were concluded, the researchers were perplexed by their findings. It did not matter if the researchers increased or decreased light in the company; the workers’ productivity increased. This finding was even true when the researchers turned down the lights to wear the workers could barely see. The researchers later realized that lighting did not affect worker productivity, rather the researchers’ presence had an impact. That's why, production outcomes were similar to the lighting study because workers were influenced by the attention they got by the researchers.Roethlisberger, F. J., & Dickson, W. J. (1939). Management and the worker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. This incident was labeled the Hawthorne EffectWorkers behaviors were affected by the attention they receive rather than by other variables like lighting or temperature. Once workers felt like they were being noticed or recognized, it influenced their productivity. Group norms were also affected..

Relay Assembly Study

In order to further clarify the impact of a variety of factors on productivity, a second set of tests were designed to evaluate rest periods and work hours on productivity. The goal of this study was really to determine how fatigue impacted worker productivity. Six women operators volunteered to participate in the relay assembly study. The women were given physical examinations at the beginning of the study and then every six weeks in order to ensure that the experiment was not adversely affecting their health.

The six women were isolated in a separate room away from other Hawthorne workers where it was easier to measure experimental conditions like output and quality of work, temperature, humidity, etc… The specific task in the relay assembly test was an electromagnetic switch that consisted of 35 parts that had to be put together by hand.

The experimenters introduced a variety of changes to the workers’ environment: pay rates, bonuses, lighting, shortened workdays/weeks, rest periods, etc… Surprisingly, as the test period quickly spanned from an original testing period of a couple of months to more than two years, no matter what the experimenters did, productivity increased. In fact, productivity increased over 30 percent during the first two and a half years of the study and then plateaued during the duration of the tests. The physicals the workers received every six weeks also showed that the women had improved physical health and their absenteeism decreased during the study period. Even more important, the women regularly expressed increased job satisfaction.

Once again the researchers were stumped. The researchers quickly tried to determine what was causing the increased productivity. The researchers quickly ruled out all of the manipulated conditions and settled on something considerably more intangible, employee attitudes.

Employee Interview Study

During the middle of the relay assembly studies, a group of Harvard researchers led by Elton Mayo and F. J. Roethlisberger joined the team of engineers at Hawthorne Works to add further expertise and explanation to the studies underhand. One of the most important contributions Mayo makes is during the follow-up to the illumination and relay studies when they interviewed workers at Hawthorne Works.

From 1928 to 1931 the Harvard researchers interviewed over 21,000 workers in attempt to gage worker morale and determine what job factors impacted both morale and job satisfaction. The researchers predicted, based on the illumination and relay studies, that if they could increase worker morale and satisfaction then the workers would be more efficient and productive as well. The interview study definitely posed some new challenges for the researchers. Mayo not that the “experience itself was unusual; there are few people in this world who have had the experience of finding someone intelligent, attentive, and eager to listen without interruption to all that he or she has to say.”Mayo, E. (1945). The social problems of an industrial civilization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, pg. 163. To this end, Mayo trained a series of interviewers to listen and not give advice as they took descriptive notes of what was being told to them by the workers.

After the interviewing study was completed, the researchers attempted to make sense of the mounds of data they had accumulated. One interesting side effect was noted. After being interviewed by a researcher about the employee’s working conditions, the employee reported increased satisfaction. Ultimately, the vary act of being asked about their working conditions made the employees more satisfied workers and more ultimately more productive. One of the interesting outcomes of this study is the practice of employee reaction surveys, which are still widely used in organizations today.

Bank Wiring Observation Study

One of the findings of the interview study was that workers had a tendency of creating an informal standard for output that was predetermined by the group but never clearly stated. These productivity standards were never really in-line with the ones communicated by either efficiency engineers or managers. To examine the influence that informal group rules had on worker productivity, Mayo and his team created the bank wiring observation study.

Fourteen bank wiremen (nine wirers, three solderers, and two inspectors) were placed in a separate room and told to complete their individual tasks. The men in the room were putting together automatic telephone exchange components that consisted of 3,000 to 6,000 individuals terminals that had to be wired. The workers spent a lot of time on their feet. To ensure that the men were not affected by the Hawthorne effect, the researchers never let the men know they were being studied. However, a researcher named W. Lloyd Warner, a trained anthropologist with an interest in group behavior, was present in the room, but he acted like a disinterested spectator and had little direct interaction with the wiremen. In the experimental condition, pay incentives and productivity measures were removed to see how the workers would react. Over time, the workers started to artificially restrict their output and an average output level was established for the group that was below company targets. Interestingly enough, the man who was considered the most admired of the group also demonstrated the most resentment towards management and slowed his productivity the most, which led to the cascading productivity of all of the other men in the group.

The researchers ultimately concluded that the wiremen created their own productivity norms without ever verbally communicating them to each other. For the first time, the researchers clearly had evidence that within any organization there exists an informal organization that often constrains individual employee behavior. The bank wiring observation study was stopped in spring of 1932 as layoffs occurred at Hawthorne Works because of the worsening Great Depression.

Conclusion

The Hawthorne Studies and the research of Mayo and Roethlisberger reinvented how organizations think about and manager workers. Unlike Taylor’s perspective, Mayo and Roethlisberger felt that interpersonal relationships were important. Moreover, they felt that society was composed on groups and not just individuals, individuals do not act independently with their own interests but are influenced by others, and most workers decisions are more emotional than rational. One cannot overstress the importance that Mayo and Roethlisberger have had on management theory and organizational academics. Overall, these studies demonstrated the importance that communication is in subordinate-supervisor interactions, the importance of peer-relationships, and the importance of informal organizations.

While the Hawthorne Studies revolutionized management theory, they were also quite problematic. For example, most of the major studies in this series consisted of very small samples of workers (6 in the relay study; 13 in the bank wiring study), so these results are definitely suspect from a scientific vantage point. Furthermore, some people would argue that Hawthorn effects were really the result of workers who were more afraid of unemployment rather than communication relationships.Rice, B. (1982). The Hawthorne Defect: Persistence of a flawed theory. Psychology Today, 16(2), 70–74. Regardless of potential errors of the studies, the conclusion that Mayo, Roethlisberger, and Dickson found was quite extraordinary. Relationships have a significant impact on the quality of organizational performance.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Many other theorists tried to explain the importance of the human resources approach. One of these individuals was Abraham Maslow.Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96. He is widely known for his creation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of NeedsModel that suggests there are certain levels of human motivation and each level must be met before moving to the next level. Shaped like a pyramid, the model shows that human’s most basic need from lowest to highest is physical, then safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.. In order to get employees to work, he tried to understand what motivates people. He came up with five needs that need to be satisfied at one stage before moving on to another stage. Malsow felt that needs vary from person and person and that individuals want their need fulfilled. One must determine what is the motivational factor (Figure 3.1 "Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs").

Physiological Needs. The first level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is psychological, which means that physical needs such as food and water need to be met before moving to the next level. If workers do not make enough money to buy food and water, then it will be hard for them to continue working.

Safety Needs. The second level is called safety. Workers need to be in a safe environment and know that their bodies and belongings will be protected. If workers don’t feel secure, then they will find it hard to work efficiently. Think of the many occupations that are highly unsafe. According to an article on the CNN Money websiteChristie, L. (2011, August 26). America’s most dangerous jobs: The 10 most dangerous jobs in America. In CNNMoney [website]. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/pf/jobs/1108/gallery.dangerous_jobs/index.html, the top ten most dangerous jobs in the United States are as follows:

1. Fisherman
2. Logger
3. Airplane Pilot
4. Farmer and Rancher
5. Mining Machine Operator
6. Roofer
7. Sanitation Worker
8. Truck Driver/Deliveryman
9. Industrial Machine Repair
10. Police Officer

According to Maslow’s basic theoretical premise, these individuals will have a harder time worrying about needs at the higher levels unless they can overcome the inherent lack of safety within these jobs.

Love, Affection, and Belongingness Needs. The third layer is called love, affection, and belongingness needs. Maslow believed that if an individual met the basic physiological and safety needs, then that individual would start attempting to achieve love, affection, and belongingness needs next, “He [or she] will hunger for affectionate relations with people in general, namely, for a place in his [or her] group, and he [or she] will strive with great intensity to achieve this goal.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381. Maslow believed that organizations would have better worker retention and satisfaction if they kept their employees in a cohesive environment. Furthermore, if a worker feels isolated or ostracized from their environment, then he or she would feel less motivated to work, which will lead to a decrease in overall productivity.

Esteem Needs. The fourth layer is called esteem, and is represented by two different sets of needs according to Maslow. First, individuals are motivated by the “desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381. Maslow goes on to discuss a second subset of esteem needs, “we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people), recognition, attention, importance or appreciation.”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 381–382. While Maslow originally separated these two lists from each other, they clearly have more in common than not. If employees do not feel that their input is valued at the organization, they will seek out other places of employment that will value their input, because humans have an intrinsic need to be appreciated for their efforts.

Self-Actualization Needs. The fifth layer is called self-actualization, and it is the hardest to attain. Self-actualization “refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for [a person] to become actualized in what he [or she] is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” Maslow goes on to explain, “A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he [or she] is to be ultimately happy. What a man [or woman] can be, he [or she] must be. This need we may call self-actualization [emphasis in original].”Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–96, pg. 382. Maslow felt that if individuals can have their needs met in order of the layers, then they would be both motivated and seek opportunities to excel.

All in all, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs helps us understand how to motivate workers to strive for more in the organization. Hence, communication is very important, because we need to understand what our employees need in order to motivate them to work more proficiently and productively.

Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory

Another researcher to enter into the fray of human motivation was Frederick Herzberg. Originally trained as a clinical psychologist, over the course of Herzberg’s career he switched focused and became one of the first researchers in the growing field of industrial psychology. The original notion of Frederick Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene TheorySimilar to Maslow’s Heirarachy of Needs, but focues on what motivated humans to work. He also focus on what demotivated workers to have a positve or negative job attitues. was that traditional perspectives on motivation, like Maslow’s, only looked at one side of the coin—how to motivate people. Herzberg and his original colleaguesHerzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. S. (1959). The motivation to work. New York, NY: Wiley. theorized that what ultimately motivated individuals to work were not necessarily the same factors that led to demotivation at work. In Herzberg’s worldview, motivation on the job should lead to satisfied workers, but he theorized that satisfaction and dissatisfaction were not opposite ends of one continuum. Instead, he predicted that the factors that lead to positive job attitudes (and thus motivation) were different from the factors that lead to negative job attitudes (and thus demotivation). For the purposes of his theory, he called the factors that led to positive job attitudes motivatorsThe list of factors that lead to positive job attitudes according to motivation theorist Frederick Herzberg. and those factors that led to negative job attitudes hygiene factorsThe list of factors that led to negative job attitudes according to motivation theorist Frederick Herzberg.. In Table 3.3 "Motivators and Hygiene Factors" the basic motivators and hygiene factors are listed. Notice that the motivators are all centered around ideas that are somewhat similar to the esteem needs and self-actualization needs of Abraham Maslow. On the other hand, the hygiene factors all examine the context of work.

Upon looking at Table 3.3 "Motivators and Hygiene Factors", you may notice that Salary is centered between both motivators and hygiene factors. In The Managerial Choice Herzberg reversed his previous thinking that salary was purely a hygiene factor, “Although primarily a hygiene factor, it [salary] it also often takes on some of the properties of a motivator, with dynamics similar to those of recognition for achievement.” Herzberg, F. (1976). The managerial choice: To be efficient and to be human. Homewood, IL: Dow-Jones-Irwin, pg. 71.

Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

As we discussed earlier, the classical perspective felt that leadership should control and order subordinates. Then, in the human relations approach, we learned that superiors need to cultivate and support their employees. Douglas McGregorMcGregor, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill., a management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s and 1960s, felt that there are two different perspectives, which he termed as Theory XThis approach is similar to the scientific management approach, where workers are expected to only work. In this perspective, managers believe that workers are apathetic towards work and people need direction. In addition, managers believe that workers are not smart, do not seek advancement, and avoid responsibility. and Theory YThis approach is similar to the human relations approach. In this perspective, managers believe that people want to succeed and they can excel if you give them the right to be creative. In addition, people want to work, seek direction, and are ambitious.. These theories were based on assumptions that managers have about their workers.

McGregor defined a Theory X manager who believes that most people do not like work. Workers are not smart or creative. People do not care about the organization, and will adequately work when there are promises for rewards and potential punishments. Moreover, Theory X manager believes that people want to have direction in order to evade responsibility.

On the other hand, Theory Y managers feel that people want to do what is best for the organization and can direct themselves under the right conditions. Table 3.4 "Differences between Theory X & Theory Y" illustrates the differences between Theory X and Theory Y.

Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making Theory

The last major theorist we are going to explore related to the human resources side of management theory is Rensis Likert’s Participative Decision Making (PDM) TheoryThis model has four systems that are based on effectively functioning groups that are related throughout the organization. Hence, Likert felt that with accurate understanding of human performance in variability and contrasts, then organizations could be more productive.. Likert originally explored the idea of how organizational leaders make decisions in his book The Human Organization.Likert, R. (1967). The human organization: Its management and value. New York: McGraw-Hill. Likert’s ideas were based in the notion that supervisors with strong worker productivity tended to focus on the human aspects of subordinate problems while creating teams that emphasized high achievement. In other words, these supervisors were employee centered and believed that effective management required treating employees as humans and not just worker bees. Likert further noted that these highly productive leaders also tended to involve subordinates in the decision making process. Out of this basic understanding of productive versus unproductive management, Likert created a series of four distinct management styles.

System 1: Exploitive Authoritative. System 1, exploitative authoritative management, starts with the basic issue of trust. Under this system of management, the manager simply does not trust subordinates and has no confidence in subordinate decision making capabilities. Because of this lack of trust, all decisions are simply decided upon by people at the upper echelons of the hierarchy and then imposed on the workers. Communication under these leaders is typically unidirectional (from management to workers), and employees are motivated to comply with management dictates out of fear.

System 2: Benevolent Authoritative. System 2, benevolent authoritative management, starts with the basic notion that decision making should be situated with those in managerial positions. Because managers believe that decision making should be theirs and theirs alone, managers believe that workers will simply comply with managerial dictates because of the manager’s legitimate right to make decisions. This type of management almost takes on a master-servant style relationship. As for communication, subordinates are not free to discuss decisions or any job-related matters with their superiors. Ultimately, employ motivation to comply with managerial dictates is done through a system of rewards.

System 3: Consultative. System 3, consultative management, starts with a lot more trust in employee decision making capabilities. However, the manager may either not have complete confidence in employee decision making or may have the ultimate responsibility for decisions made, so he or she does not allow workers to just make and implement decisions autonomously. Typically, the manager seeks input from workers and then uses this input to make the ultimate decision. Under consultative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is fair, and employees tend to be more motivated and satisfied than the previous two styles of management. However, consultative management can be very effective if, and only if, the input process is conducted legitimately. One of the biggest mistakes some managers make is to use pseudo-consultative practices where they pretend to seek out input from subordinates even though the actual decision has already been made. Pseudo-consultative decision making is just a different flavor of benevolent authoritative management.

System 4: Participative. System 4, participative management, is built on the goal of ensuring that decision making and organizational goal attainment is widespread throughout the organizational hierarchy. In these organizations, organizational leaders have complete confidence in worker ability to make and implement decisions, so workers are constantly encouraged to be very active in the decision making process. Under participative management, communication, decision making participation, and teamwork is good, and employees tend to be motivated and satisfied.

These four different systems characterize many of the classical theories discussed in this chapter. For instance, System 1 is similar to the scientific management approach t and System 4 has characteristics from the human relations approach. Likert believed that an organization’s performance is based on the systems or structures in place for the workers. Thus, Likert believed that organizations could incorporate some aspects from the scientific management approach, human relations, and human resource approach in order to maximize organizational outcomes.