Management and Organizational Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Management and Organizational Theory - Essay Example The paper tells that current critical management studies have criticized traditional management with creating scientific or objective knowledge which is nothing more than elitist thinking institutionalized as wisdom The result of this is the elitist groups have managed to maintain a status quo that deprives and exploits members lower down an organization due to their class, gender and ethnicity. Many of the simplistic views on management needs revision and rather than applied mechanically, critical management needs to take a broader 360 view encompassing politics and ethical perspectives. Today's organizations and workplaces are a melting pot of ethnic and multi-culturally diverse set of individuals. More foreigners are employed in western businesses than ever before; young and old work together. People form a diverse backgrounds and skill sets now coordinate their work in order to arrive at the best solution for complicated problems. The merger of companies, threat of downsizing, an d rapidly changing work environments have tended to create a sense of unease about job security. Even then, employees demand more from the organization they're employed in, high expectations in terms of workplace treatment, greater respect for their individuality irrespective of their ethnic, gender, racial or family background or sexual orientation. The challenge then for companies is to develop more inclusive policies and procedures to embrace a wide variety of people while respecting their individuality. This model has largely been ignored by organizations which use their employees mechanically, expecting them to only produce. Up until the mid 20th Century, the organization was seen as a machine with characteristics such as a central authority, a hierarchy of power, divisions of expertise and specialisations, categories of labour and distinct sections between staff, management from lower paid workers. With the economic boom and moves towards globalisation, the internal culture of organizations changed with greater emphasis placed on the people instead of on the inner machinery of the organization. There was more focus on delegation of authority, employee self-rule, open dialogue where concerns of workers were shared with the authority. Much of this resulted from the development of new technologies. At the workplace, this meant requirement of new skill sets and specializations utilized in order to achieve organizational goals. People with expertise in various disciplines were sought and recruitment became selective. With more power to the labour force, the hierarchy of authority was forced to develop a more cooperative model of management. This in addition to the changing markets and branch diversification required management to be more adaptive. The existing scientific management model had inadequate concepts to cope with the rapidly changing work environment and there was a move towards changing the industry and discarding forms of scientific management. A s society grew modern, people started to develop social etiquette and became more morally conscious. Things that were considered normal a century ago began to be questioned. Child labour for example was outlawed. Customers demanded better quality products and attitudes in society changed. This spilled over into the workplace. Dictatorial methods of authority were no longer tolerated and generally people expected proper treatment.

The Theory of Gestalt Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Theory of Gestalt - Term Paper Example This attitude, for a time, forced Gestalt into the background of scientific study. Today the therapy is striving and gaining professional ground in not only a myriad of areas of endeavor, but also in combination with other therapies which once discounted it. The Basis of Gestalt As a psychology term created in the early 20th century by German psychologists, gestalt essentially means a unified whole. It referred to theories of visual perception which attempt to describe how people tend to organize visual elements into groups, using certain elements to perceived, in the end, the whole. The term and concept was later applied by the Perls and Goodman in their Gestalt Therapy studies. There are many critiques and analysis of gestalt, so it is important from the outset that we explain the concept in layman’s terms that inform the remainder of the paper. Gestalt as applied to Gestalt Therapy is a method of awareness practice akin to "mindfulness" in eastern philosophical thought â₠¬Å"by which perceiving, feeling, and acting are understood to be conducive to interpreting, explaining, and conceptualizing [the hermeneutics of experience]† (Brownell, 2010: p. 128). ... The concept as applied in Gestalt Therapy according to Brownell (2008) relies upon several aspects, including the phenomenological method but also dialogical relationships, practical theoretical strategies and the perceived freedom to use these strategies and insights as experimental tools to help clients reach personal goals. The goals for success include a suspension of past expectations; understanding and empathy between client and therapist; a thorough understanding and confrontation of the client’s environmental field of experience; and the singularly specific approach of moving the client from analysis to positive, concrete actions. Evolution and Application of Theory Gestalt psychology and therapy fell out of favor with the emergence of cognitive psychology and methods in the mid-1900s. As recently as 1995, however, professionals cognizant of its benefits have emphasized the value of the insights Gestalt Therapy brings to understanding and insights brought about by the behavioral and cognitive methods. While behavioral therapy assumes that mental disturbances are learned but aimless behaviors, and cognitive therapy studies how people think and how they interpret their experiences, Gestalt Therapy helps patients become more aware of themselves and what is going on in the private inner world in which they actually live; that includes the therapists themselves. In terms of gender therapy, Gestalt has been used for therapist training by the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Philadelphia Women’s Therapy Center to help them better approach gender identity issues with patients from a â€Å"nonpathological, non-shaming perspective†