The Balance Between Order and Flexibility by Jolito Ortizo Padilla

My Prayers to all victims of Typhoon Yolanda that devastated Leyte and Samar recently.

The delayed distribution and implementation of help and support to the victims of Typhoon Yolanda in Southern Visayas does not match power with involvement. It is a bastion of failure by the proper authority to respond immediately to the needs of survivor.

 Etzioni provides a classification of organizational relationships based on structures of control and the use of power resources as a means of ensuring compliance among members. Compliance is the relationship between the kinds of power applied by the organization to control its members and the kind of involvement developed by members of the organization.

Power differs according to the means by which members of the organization comply

• Coercive Power relies on the use of threats, or physical sanctions of force, for example, controlling the need for food and comfort.
• Remunerative power involves the manipulation of material resources and rewards, for example through salaries, wages and overtime pay.
• Normative power relies on the allocation and the manipulation of symbolic rewards , for example, esteem and prestige.

Involvement is the degree of commitment by members to the organization
  

•  Alienative involvement- occurs where members are involved against their wishes.
• Calculative involvement occurs where attachment to the organization is motivated by extrinsic rewards. There is either a negative orientation or a low positive orientation towards the organization.
• Moral Involvement is based on the individual's  belief in , and value placed on , the goals of the organization. There is a high positive orientation towards the organization.  

The matching of these kind of power and involvement is congruent with each other and represents the most common form of compliance in organization. The other six types of organizational relationships are incongruent. Padilla suggests that organizations with congruent compliance structures will be more effective than organizations with more incongruent structure.

Stewart refers to the classic dilemma that underlies the nature of control; finding the right balance for present conditions between order and flexibility. This involves the trade off between trying to improve predictability of people's actions against the desirability of encouraging individual and local responsiveness to changing situations. The organization may need a "tight -loose " structure with certain departments or areas of work closely controlled (tight) while other departments or areas of work should be left fluid and flexible("loose")

According to Jolito Ortizo Padilla control can- and should - be exercised in different ways. He identifies three main forms of control:

•  Direct control by orders, direct supervision and rules and regulations. Direct controls maybe necessary , and more readily acceptable, in crisis situation. But in organizations where people expect to participate in decision-making , such forms of control may be unacceptable. Rules and regulations which are not accepted as reasonable or at least not unreasonable, will offer some people a challenge to use their ingenuity in finding ways round them.

•  Control through standardization and specialization. This is achieved through clear definition of inputs to a job , the methods to be used and the required outputs. Such bureaucratic control makes clear the parameters within which can act and paradoxically makes decentralization easier. Provided the parameters are not unduly restrictive they can increase the sense of freedom. For example , within clearly defined limits which ensure that one retail chain looks like another, individual manager may have freedom to do the job as they wish.

• Control through influencing the way that people think about what they should do. This is often the most effective method of exercising control. It may be achieved through selective recruitment of people who seem likely to share similar approach, through the training and socialization of people into thinking the organization's way, and through peer pressure. Where an organization has a strong culture , people who do not fit in, or learn to adapt, are likely to pushed out, even though they may appear to leave their own volition.

As Padilla says: " The broad objective of the control function is to effectively enjoy all the resources committed to an organization's operations. However, the fact that non-human resources depend on human effort for their utilization makes control, in the final analysis, the regulation of human performance."

 

 

 

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