informal organizations are interrelated social structures that govern the way people work together in practice. These are aggregates, norms, personal and professional connections in which work is done and relationships are built up between people who share an affiliate organization or a group of affiliates. It consists of a series of dynamic personal relationships, social networks, communities of equal interest, and a source of emotional motivation. The informal organization develops, and the complex social dynamics of its members as well.
Effectively, informal organizations complement the more explicit structure, plans, and formal organizational processes: it can accelerate and increase responses to unexpected events, encourage innovation, enable people to solve problems that require cross-border collaboration, and make paths show where formal organizations may someday need to pave the way.
Video Informal organization
Informal organizations and formal organizations
The nature of informal organization becomes clearer when its main characteristics are juxtaposed with formal organizations.
The main characteristics of an informal organization:
- continues to evolve
- grassroots
- dynamic and responsive
- good in motivation
- requires insider knowledge to be visible
- treats people as individuals like
- flat and liquid
- guided by trust and reciprocity
- hard to pin down
- collective decision making
- important for fast-changing situations or not fully understood
The main characteristics of formal organization:
- lasting, unless intentionally changed
- from top to bottom
- missionaries
- static
- nice in position
- plain to see
- likens "people" to "role"
- hierarchical
- is bound together with codified rules and sequences
- easily understood and explained
- important to deal with known and consistent situations
Historically, some people regard the informal organization as a by-product of inadequate formal organization - for example, that "it can not be questioned that the ideal situation in a business organization is where there is no informal organization." However, the contemporary approach - suggested since 1925 by Mary Parker Follett, a community center pioneer and author of influential work on the management philosophy - is to integrate informal organizations and formal organizations, recognizing the strengths and limitations of each. Integration, as defined by Follett, means breaking up real sources of conflict into their basic elements and then building new solutions that do not allow for dominance nor compromise. In other words, integrating informal organizations with formal organizations replaces competition with coherence.
At the community level, the importance of the relationship between formal and informal structures can be seen in the relationship between civil society and state authorities. The strengths of integrating formal organizations and informal organizations can also be seen in many successful businesses.
Maps Informal organization
Function
Keith Davis points out that informal groups serve at least four major functions in formal organizational structures.
They perpetuate socially-supported cultural and social values. Certain values ​​are commonly shared among informal group members. Day-to-day interactions strengthen these values ​​that perpetuate a particular lifestyle and maintain group unity and integrity. For example, a college management class of 50 students may contain several informal groups that are informal organizations in the classroom formal structure. These groups can develop from fraternal or dormitory relations, boarding dorms, project work teams, or seating arrangements. Rules of dress, hairstyle, and political party involvement are strengthened among group members.
They provide social status and satisfaction that may not be obtained from formal organizations. In a large organization (or classroom), a worker (or student) may feel like an anonymous number and not a unique individual. However, informal group members share jokes and complaints, eat together, play and work together, and make friends - which contribute to self-esteem, satisfaction, and a sense of worth.
Promote communication among members
Informal groups develop channels or communication systems (ie, grapevines) to keep members aware of what management actions will affect them in various ways. Many clever managers use wines to "informally" convey certain information about corporate actions and rumors.
They provide social control by influencing and managing behavior inside and outside the group. Internal controls persuade group members to adjust their lifestyles. For example, if a student starts wearing a suit and binds to a class, informal group members can persuade and convince students that such clothing is unacceptable and therefore to return to sandals, jeans, and T-shirts. External control is directed at groups such as management, union leadership, and other informal groups.
Disadvantages
Informal organizations also have the following potential losses and problems that require careful and cautious management attention.
Resilience to change
The degradation of values ​​and lifestyle causes informal groups to be overly protective of their "culture" and thereby resist change. For example, if output restrictions are the norm in the autocratic management group, it should continue to be that way, even though management changes have led to more participatory governance. This culture makes employees become more rigid.
Role conflict
Searching for informal group satisfaction can lead members away from formal organizational goals. What is good for and desired by informal group members is not always good for the organization. Doubling the number of coffee breaks and length of lunch may be desirable for group members but expensive and unprofitable for the company. Employee desire to meet the requirements and services of informal groups and management outcomes in role conflict. Role conflict can be reduced carefully by trying to integrate the interests, objectives, methods, and evaluation systems of both formal and informal organizations, resulting in greater productivity and satisfaction on behalf of everyone.
Rumor
Grapevine handing out truths and rumors with the same vengeance. Uninformed employees communicate unverified and incorrect information that can create very bad effects for employees. It can damage morals, form bad attitudes, and often lead to deviant or even abusive behavior. For example, a student who fails the exam can start a rumor that a professor is sexually abusing one of the students in the class. It can create all sorts of feelings of pain towards the professor and even result in vengeful acts such as "incite" the dwelling or drop the mailbox.
Conformity
Social control encourages and promotes conformity among informal group members, thus making them reluctant to act too aggressively or work at too high a level. This can jeopardize formal organizations by inhibiting initiative, creativity, and performance diversity. In some UK factories, if group members get "out of the line", tools may be hidden, air may be removed from the tire, and other group members may refuse to speak with deviant for days or weeks. Of course, this type of action can force good workers to leave the organization.
Benefits
Although informal organizations create unique challenges and potential problems for management, they also provide a number of benefits to formal organizations.
Blend with formal system
Formal plan. policies, procedures, and standards can not solve every problem in a dynamic organization; therefore, the informal system must mingle with the formal to complete the work. In early 1951, Robert Dubin acknowledged that "informal relationships within an organization serve to preserve the organization from self-destruction that will result from literal adherence to formal policies, rules, rules, and procedures". No college or university may function only by all persons who follow "legal letters" in respect of written policies and procedures. Faculty, staff, and informal groups of learners must work together in fulfilling the legal spirit "to run a well-organized and managed enterprise wisely.
Streamlining the management workload
Managers are less likely to check workers when they know informal organizations work with them. This encourages greater delegation, decentralization, and employee support from managers, which indicates possible improvements in overall performance and productivity. When a professor feels that students are consciously working on their group papers and projects, there will likely be fewer "pop tests" or important progress reports. This facilitates the burdens of professors and students and encourages better relationships between the two parties.
Fill in the gap in management capabilities
For example, if a manager is weak in financial planning and analysis, subordinates can informally help prepare reports through direct advice or engagement.
Act as a safety valve
Employees experience frustration, tension, and emotional issues with management and other employees. The informal group provides a means to relieve these emotional and psychological pressures by allowing one to discuss them openly and frankly. In conversations in the faculty lounge, frustration with deans, department heads, or students "fascinated" among empathetic colleagues.
Encourage better management practices
Perhaps the subtle benefits of informal groups are that they encourage managers to prepare, plan, organize, and control in a more professional way. Managers who understand the power of informal organizations recognize that it is a "check and balance" on the use of their authority. Changes and projects are introduced with more careful thought and consideration, knowing that informal organizations can easily kill unplanned projects well.
Understand and handle environmental crises
IRG solutions: hierarchical incompetence and how to overcome them (1984) argue that central media and hierarchical government type organizations can not understand the environmental crisis we are manufacturing, or how to begin an adequate solution. It argues that what is required, is the widespread introduction of informal networks or the Information Group Routing which is essentially a description of social networking services before the internet.
Business approach
- Rapid growth. Starbucks, which grew from 100 employees to more than 100,000 in over a decade, provides a structure to support improvisation. In Fast Company's July 1998 article on rapid growth, Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz said, "You can not grow if you are driven only by the process, or just by the creative spirit, you must achieve a delicate balance between two sides of the corporate brain." >
- Organizational learning. After a four-year study of Toyota Production Systems, Steven J. Spear and H. Kent Bowen concluded in Harvard Business Review that the legendary versatility of Toyota's operations is due to the way scientific methods are embedded in its workers - not through formal or manual training (system production is never written) but through unwritten principles that govern how workers work, interact, build, and learn.
- Idea generation. Texas Instruments states "Lunatic Fringe" - "an informal and unformed IT engineer group (and colleagues and contacts outside the company)," according to Fortune Magazine - for its recent success. "There is this continuum between total chaos and total order," Gene Frantz, the center of this informal network, explained to Fortune. "About 95% of people in IT are total orders, and I thank God for them every day, because they create products that allow me to spend money.I am here in total turmoil, total chaos of innovation.Our company recognizes the difference between both and encourage both to happen.
Related concepts
- Organizational behavior; organizational structure; organizational communication
- Communities; Community practice; knowledge management
social networks; value network; Social Web
- social network analysis; social network
References
Further reading
- Reingold, Jennifer and Yang, Jia Lynn. "Hidden Workplace" Fortune, July 23, 2007
- Creating Informal Learning Organizations. "Harvard Management Update, (July 1, 2000).
- Myth About Informal Networks - and How to Solve them. "SMR (MIT Sloan Management Review), April 1, 2002
- Cross, Rob and Laurence Prusak, "The People Who Make the Organization Go - or Stop." Harvard Business Review, June 1, 2002.
- Goldsmith, Marshall, and Jon Katzenbach, "Exploring the 'Informal' Organization." BusinessWeek, February 14, 2007
- Krackhardt, David and Jeffry R. Hanson, "Informal Networks: Companies Behind Charts." Harvard Business Review, July 1, 1993.
- Follett, Mary Parker, "Foundation for Business Administration Psychology." Paper presented before the conference group of the Personnel Administration Bureau, January 1925. Reprinted in Dynamic Administration: Paper Collected from Mary Parker Follet, edited by Henry C. Metcalf and Lyndall Urwick, in The Early Sociology of Management and Organizations, Volume III. Kenneth Thompson, series editor. Routledge, 2003.
- "The Office Chart Is Really Meaning." BusinessWeek, February 27, 2006
- Murray, Sarah, "Putting House in Order." The Financial Times, 8 November 2006]
- Shaw, Helen, "Not So Small, Still Beautiful." CFO.com, March 3, 2006
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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