Suchergebnisse

The cultural aspects of organizations have been mostly overlooked in the study of management. This is particularly important because the Protestant ethic which organized the sociopsychological matrix for the industrial revolution no longer commands enough authority to continue organizing individual motivation and societal needs. Thus, local solutions have evolved to deal with cultural ambiguity and they have evolved with little thought as to their implications. In this essay, the cultural aspects of interpersonal relations in a telephone company are analyzed. This analysis was carried out during a year long full-time fieldwork period which employed participant observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and document analysis for data collection purposes. Strong demands for conformity were found to dominate interpersonal relations. Three types of response to these demands were discovered: acceptance based on conscious suppression of personal interests, acceptance based on unconscious distortion, and secret rejection. These mechanisms for dealing with strong demands for conformity were found to affect managerial development, interpersonal communications, and organizational adaptability. Given these kinds of superior-subordinate relations, it was anticipated that the Bell System will have great difficulty adapting to a competitive marketplace.

An analysis of the relationship between the Pico-Union Neighborhood Council (PUNC) and the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles reveals the pressure of bureaucratic perspectives and role demands to be a significant factor in the interaction of public agencies and community organizations. In spite of independent funding, this neighborhood council has moved from militant advocacy, with broad community par ticipation. to community development directed largely by professionals, with substan tially reduced involvement from community residents. This transformation is examined through an analysis of the perspectives and roles of these two organizations as well as those of the technical advisers from the University of California at Los Angeles. The pressure of role demands and the dynamics of modernization are presented as explana tions for the changes which took place in PUNC. Three major considerations for puhlic administrators of agencies involved with community organizations are discussed.