Organizational diseases

Dr Raza Ullah

Bureanpathology

There are certain practices which do not contribute to organizational objectives which occur slowly and silently.

The basic cause of wasteful practices is that individuals tend to pursue their own personal objectives without contributing to organizational goals. This tendency known as ‘Bureanpathology’.

Causes of wasteful practices

Personal limitations: In large and complex organization an individual cannot know every detail about every activity. Therefore one has to make decisions without complete knowledge and under uncertainty.

1. Personal limitations

According to Simon individuals adopt satisficing (fine enough) rather maximizing (perfect) behaviors. As a result resources are not put to highest efficiency.

2. Lumpiness of Resources Resources are not infinitely divisible and

cannot, therefore be obtained in exactly the required quantity.

For example, an expensive machine cannot be fully utilized because the organization cannot sell all the output which the machine can produce.

Such idleness witness of resources is likely to be more common in rigid organization.

3. Uneven Demand

The demand for products and services of an organization may fluctuate widely from one time period to another. It is not possible to predict exactly the level of future demand.

Therefore, the resources of the organization are either overworked (during peak demand) or may remain underutilized (during off season).

4. Empire-Building

Managers of large organizations tend to receive higher pay, power and status. Therefore, managers often try to build ‘empire building’. Unless the large organization provides additional desired products or services., empire building becomes a serious wasteful practice.

5. Insurance In order to protect against arbitrary cuts in

the budget of the organization, managers build some insurance into their organization.

For example, they may add extra personnel during good times so that when the cut comes only the unnecessary personnel are retrenched. In this way they can maintain the original resources. Such behavior remains hidden in large and complex organizations.

6. Time Lag

There is often a time lag between making and implementation of a decision. Some of the necessary resources are likely to be ready before others. Therefore, the resources which are ready earlier will have to wait. Such idle resources represent another wasteful organizational practice.

7. Communication

Communication is rarely hundred per cent effective. As a result inefficiency and waste arise due to lack of perfect communication.

8. Nationalism Like nations, organizations like to be independent

or autonomous. Such tendency called ‘nationalism’ requires that the organization has a relatively large number of specialized staff and service activities.

For example, many organizations have purchased expensive electronic data processing equipment even though the same could better be taken on lease. It has been a prestige factor for the organization to have its own high tech equipments. Such nationalism may result in ineffective use of resources.

9. Habit

Many things are done in organizations as a matter of habit or traditions. Rigid politics, procedures and rules obviously aggravate this problem.

There is a tendency to believe that ‘what ever is, is right’. Such views lead to waste in organizational resources.

10. Conflicts in Objective

Residual conflict in organizations lead to much waste in organizations. Individuals rarely have exactly the same objectives as the organization. Such conflict in objectives often leads to inefficiency.

Wasteful Organizational Practices Wasteful organizational practices can to

some extent be reduced and controlled by internalization of organizational objectives by its members.

It implies that members understand and accept organizational objectives. They work hard towards the realization of organizational objectives when they perceive such work as means by which they can accomplish their own personal objectives.

Wasteful Organizational Practices Therefore, if individual and

organizational objectives were perfectly compatible and internalized, wasteful practices could be controlled. However, such perfection is difficult in practice.

Parkinson’s Law C. Northcote Parkinson has satirically dealt

with problem of wasteful organizational practices in his book.

He wrote ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion’.

For example, a student works rights up to the minute it is due on his tutorial assignment.

Similarly, an elderly lady may spend the whole day in writing a letter which a busy man may complete within five minutes .

Parkinson’s Law Parkinson suggested that this wasteful

organizational practice occur due to two factors. - First, an official tends to increase the number of

subordinate rather them rivals in the organization. This is known as the ‘Law of Multiplication of Subordinates’.

- Secondly, members of an organization make work for each other. This is called the ‘Law of Multiplication of Work’.

Parkinson called his law as the law of ‘The Rising Pyramid’.

The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates A manager wants to increase the number of

his subordinates because such increase gives him power and prestige.

For example, a civil servant A feels he is overworked and may adopt any of the three possible remedies.

- He may resign - He may share his work with a colleague

named B - He may appoint two subordinates called C

and D.

The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates By resigning A will lose his pensioner benefits. By

having a colleague he would bring a rival. Therefore he would appoint two junior (C and D) below him. This will add to his prestige and power.

When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will), A will, with the concurrence of C appoint two assistants. But he will appoint two assistants under D also in order to avert internal friction.

With this appointment of E, C, G and H, the promotion of A is assured.

The Law of Multiplication of Work Seven officials are now doing what

one did before. This is where Factor II comes into operation. For these seven make so much work for each other that all are fully occupied and A is actually working harder than ever.

An incoming document may well come before each of them in turn.

The Law of Multiplication of Work No one has been idle. All have done their

best. And it is late in the evening before A finally

quits his office and begin the return journey to ealing.

The last of the office lights are being turned off in the gathering dusk which marks the end of another day’s administrative toil. Among the last to leave. A reflects, with bowed shoulders and a wry smile, that late hours.

The Law of Comitology A committee is an organic rather than

mechanical in its nature. It is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and

grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.

The ideal size of a committee is generally five persons including the chairman. But the number soon rises to seven or nine.

During the third stage the members are included to silence the nuisance makers. This makes the committee inefficient.

The Law of Comitology

It is difficult to assemble all the members at a time and place that is convenient for all. Secrecy is lost as members report back to the group they represent. Other outside groups clamor for representation and in the fourth and last stage committee membership rises to 25 to 30 as the committee becomes ineffective.

The Law of Comitology Parkinson has given the following formula as the coefficient of inefficiency:

x = m (a-d) y+ p b where ‘m’ is the average numbers actually present, ‘o‘ is the number of

members influenced by outside pressure group; ‘a’ is the average age of the members; ‘d’ is the distance centimeters between the two members who are seated farthest from each other; ‘y’ is the number of years since the committee was first formed, ‘p’ is the patience of the chairman as measured on the Peabody scale; ‘b’ is the blood pressure of the three oldest members, taken shortly before the time of the meeting. Then ‘x’ is the number of members effectively present at the moment when the efficient working of the committee has become manifestly impossible. This coefficient of inefficiency will between 19.09 and 22.4, the decimal representing partial attendance i.e. Those absent for a part of the meeting.

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The Law of Triviality

According to this law the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Generally it is assumed that the time spent on different items of agenda depends on their listing i.e. item number one getting maximum time and last item getting minimum time.

But this is not necessarily true. The reason is that most of the committee members are ignorant with trivial items. Therefore, a longer debate takes place on minor items and few people speak on major items of the agenda.

The Law of Organizational Paralysis In every fiend (administrative,

commercial or academic) a type of organization exists in which the higher officials are prodding and dull, those at the middle are intriguing against each other and the junior men are frustrated or frivolous. The organization is moribund afflicted with a self induced disease called ‘Injellititis’.

The Law of Organizational Paralysis The first stage of this disease is the appearance of

an individual who is incompetent and jealous. Having failed to make anything of his own department. He tries to interfere with other departments and gain control of the central administration.

The next or secondary stage in the progress of the disease is reached when the infected individual gains complete or partial control of the central organization. If the head of the organization is second rate he will see to it that his immediate staff are all third rate, and they will, in turn see to it that their subordinates are fourth rate.

The Law of Organizational Paralysis The next or tertiary stage in the

onset of this disease is reached when there is no spark of intelligence left in the whole organization from top to bottom. This is the stage of ‘coma’ in which the organization is practically dead.

It may be quietly disintegrate and may in rare cases recover.

The Law of Organizational Paralysis The disease can be detected from various symptoms

e.g. complacency, low standard of achievement, smugness, apathy etc.

In designing solution to the disease certain principles must be laid down.

First, a diseased institution cannot reform itself. The cure must come from outside and the services of a specialist are required.

Secondly, the primary stage can be cured by surgery alone. Intolerance, ridicule and castigation are the types of injection that can be used. Complete reconstruction or surgery is necessary in the tertiary stage when the organization is for all practical purposes dead.

Summary of Parkinson’s Laws1. Administration create work for each other by

artificial means and swell their rank by more than five per cent every year irrespective of the volume of work to be done known as ‘empire-building’.

2. Executives increase the number of subordinates to move one step forward in the organization heierarchy. They refrain from increasing their rivals who may bar their further promotion.

3. Executive select subordinates who are less competent so as to prevent their potential rivals. As a result organization grows more stupid as it grows older.

Parkinson’s Laws

4. Committee tend to grow in size until they lose their effectiveness. At this stages the inbreeding of small committees takes place and they in turn grow and the process is repeated.

5. As members comprehend small things more easily the petty matters are discussed at length in committee meetings. The time spend on topics varies inverse proportion to the sum involved.

Parkinson’s Laws

6. Expenditures in an organization increase to cut up the available money particularly in budget based institutions.

7. When an organization start decaying the grandeur of its buildings and physical facilities reaches to its climax. A perfect building is choked by its own perfection and cannot take roots for lack of soil.

Peter Principle

Peter and Hall have developed a principle that involves cynical motion of errors in selecting managerial candidates.

According to this principle, managers tend to be promoted untill they reach the level of their incompetence.

Once a manager is promoted to a position this very success may lead him to earn pormotion ot a higher position irrepsective of his perosnal skills and capacity.

Peter Principle

This principle was discovered with a public school system. Why do educational programs fail to achieve stated objectives?

This question triggered off a study of incompetence at every level of the principals, supervisors, and superintendents.

Peter Principle A teacher named Dorothera D. Ditt was found

to be a good teacher. She followed exactly the text book, the curriculum guide and the bell schedule. She never broke a rule but could not handle a problem situation. When a water-pipe burst and flooded the classroom, she kept on teaching until the school principal entered and rescued the class. She had reached her ‘level of incompetence’ as a classroom teacher, and will therefore remain in that position throughout her career.

Peter Principle Peter principle operates in at all levels of a hierarchy.

In a hierarchy e ach employee tends to use to rise to his level of incompetence. Every post tends to be occupied by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.

Competent teachers become incompetent principals; competent principals become incompetent schools’ superintendents. Frequently the very features that were responsible of the promotion were the source of incompetence at the new level. This phenomenon occurs in all trades and professions because the same basic rule governs the climb through every hierarchy.

Peter Principle Occasionally, one may find a competent person

at the very top of a hierarchy. This is because there are not enough ranks for him to have reached his level.

As a rule of a such prodigy of competence eventually side steps into another hierarchy, say from armed forces into industry, from business to government and there he finds his level of incompetence.

Peter has suggested ‘creative incompetence’ to avoid the ultimate promotion and they remain at a level of competence.