Views Of Performance

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Views of Performance

By

James F. Pestaner, Jr.

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Overview

Organizations are a unique social form due to its foundation in intent, "they

get things done" (Scott, 2003). Customers are the focus of planning, production,

and placement of goods and services. Owners provide the catalytic energy

behind the focus attempting to operate within and if possible control the

environment that berthed the organization. The Western design of organizations

is dominated by the objectives of owners that struggle to align with the objectives

of a chosen management and staff labor system through the control of

resources, law, and a division of labor. The characteristics of these three

components may be blurred at times as workers place claim of ownership of

processes, autonomous groups self-manage, and public bureaucrats shun the

title or claim of ownership. Yet these roles remain present and distinguishable.

Emerging issues in other domains attempt to shape structures and processes

related to this design, which is not surprising, as social and organizational praxis

have historically been related. But recently, the concerns of social order have

superseded the place of organizational and business thinking. And yet it is clear,

organizations are all about performance.

There appears to be general consensus about the nature of performance

and related improvement. There is an economic relationship between inputs and

outputs and improvements of production. Topical studies have evolved from the

sole artisan to the factory and transitioned from time and motion within classical

organizational theory to motivation and the application of social sciences

(Greenberg & Baron, 2003; Anonymous, 2006). Competitive strategies have

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moved from environmental alignment to managerial consistency to best practices

(Voss, 1995). And time focus has categorized periods of time in American

History as pre-industrial, the Industrial Era or the Information Age (Holtzman,

2005). The academic understanding of management, as it applies to

organizational behavior, has transitioned from a command-and-control

orientation to a perspective that embraces diversity and cooperative

relationships. The conceptual transitions from Foyol's functions to Mintzberg's

roles to Katz's competencies to Luthan's activities of management also illustrate,

though in a limited fashion, transition in perspective (Robbins, 2003). More

importantly, these concepts are evolved in the related mental models adopted

within organizational thinking (Hubiak and O'Donnell, 1996).

While there is general agreement concerning the characteristics of

performance, there is also disagreement over the responsibility of organizational

behavior that has led to confusion and inconsistent dealings within and external

to the formal structure concerning decision-making (Beauchamp & Bowie, 2004).

There are supporters of integrated decision-making, which would ultimately rule

against accountability of the organization collective. And there are those who

contend that organizations engage in an aggregated decision-making process;

individuals are accountable for reward or punishment. Problems with production,

error, cost, and profit are mentally modeled and thus employ a standard set of

conceptual devices to repair what is perceived to require fixing.

Observing the context of organizational language exhumes linguistic

artifacts providing insights (Brown, 1987) and focusing discussion. A not so

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obvious problem may occur as the analyst may unintentionally alter meaning by

changing the context of origination. This effect occurs with such words as "gay",

"dial", and "ice box".