Critical thinking
Gareth Morgan “is a British/Canadian organizational theorist, management consultant and Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto” (Witzel ,2003). In 1986 he wrote a tremendous work on management “Images of organization”. This book was translated into many languages and is still republishing. While writing this book, Morgan had the idea to unite all existing theories and bring the most complete and easy understanding of the structure of any organization. He succeeded in completing this ask, that is why his book is still valuable and widely used.
After reading this book I have got a lot of new information about an organization and its structure. The most important idea that Morgan described is the idea that any organization can be described using eight “organizational metaphors”. “Organizational metaphor a primal force through which humans create meaning by using one element of experience to understand another” (Morgan, 2006). In other words, an organizational metaphor is a combination of features revealing the structure of the organization and describing in detail its characteristic features. The main purpose of that metaphors is to understand and help to deal with different problems within an organization. According to his words, every organization has its own peculiarities and special features. Nevertheless, all of them correspond to one of the eight “metaphors”. These eight metaphors are:
“Organization as a machine,
Organization as an organism,
Organization as a brain,
Organization as a culture,
Organization as a political systems
Organization as a psychic prison,
Organization as a flux and transformation,
Organization as an instrument of domination” (Morgan, 2006).
For me, the most significantly to my learning were readings, presentations and class discussion learning experiences. Of course, without reading the book “Images of Organization” it is impossible to get deep into the topic. To my mind, reading is the first step on the way to successful learning. The second step is class discussion. Each student has its own understanding of the reading material and it is important to share these opinions. Moreover, during class discussions it is possible to clarify points that remain unclear after reading. Furthermore, I find it quite useful to discuss contentious issues and come to a common understanding of the problem or, at least, adjust your viewpoint. Presentations are also very important part of learning process because of the visual interpretation of information. Illustrative charts and tables simplify the perception of information and make learning process more interesting.
Many people perceive an organization on the basis of one or two Morgan’s metaphors. What is even worse, “most people are permanently stuck in their favorite metaphor and simply cannot understand things said within other metaphors” (Rao, 2010). Only few of us can fully understand all the possible organizational structures. In this case, Morgan’s book pays a very important role in reader’s consciousness expansion and deepening of knowledge. Fully understanding of the fact that each organization has its own peculiarities and that it is impossible to row all organizations with the same brush will help to solve problems within organization more successfully. Moreover, deep knowledge of organizational structure will help to improve activity of an organization and make it beneficial both for employees and shareholders to take part in it.
What concerns preparation to an educational administrator, it is obvious that this work is very useful. Morgan underlines, that in order to “achieve greater effectiveness, managers must become skilled at reading organizations from different perspectives, and developing action strategies that are consistent with the insights they glean” (Morgan, 2006). It means, that successful managers are those who have flexible thinking and sensitive to changes that take place around him and his organization. This book gives managers an additional tool for problem solving and even these problems prevention. It is a well-known fact that people who abandon the one-sided perception of the problem and are looking at the situation from different angles are more likely to succeed. This book aims to develop the skill of a multilateral approach to the problem.
One approach that attracts may attention most of all is the population ecology view of organizations. According to this approach, “organizations, like organisms in nature, depend for survival on their ability to acquire an adequate supply of resources necessary to sustain existence” (Morgan, 2006). To my mind, this approach is very relevant nowadays in a citations of scare resources. Many huge world corporations that deal with production face the problem of shortage of resources and the need to save them. In this case, they are to invest a lot of money in developing new technologies that will help to solve scare resources problems. In its turn, the need of new technologies and large investments will bring many companies to bankruptcy due to inability to meet the new requirements. People all over the world are very interested in ecological issues. They create many organizations to control the activity of large corporations and prevent them from environmental pollution and other ecological problems. This fact creates additional difficulties and limitations for large corporations. As a results, barriers to entry in the industry as well as the level of competition became very high.
References
Witzel, M. (2003). Fifty key figures in management. Routledge.
Morgan, G. (2006). Imagines of Organization. Sage Publication, Inc.
Rao, V. (2010). The Eight Metaphors of Organization. Retrieved from http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/13/the-eight-metaphors-of-organization/
