ABSTRACT
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ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE, CULTURE, AND DEVELOPMENT: UNIFYING CONCEPTS IN INDUSTRIAL/ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
In this chapter, we view organizations at their most general level: looking at how the organization, as a whole, can affect the behavior of the typical worker. Take organizational structure, for example. In rigid, rule-driven, traditional organizations, it is likely that employees will be expected to adhere closely to strict company regulations and policies. By contrast, in nontraditional organizations, there is a lack of rigid structure and rules, which means that workers will have quite a bit of freedom and are expected to take on responsibility and to demonstrate initiative. Knowing about the structure and culture of an organization can help us understand and analyze the work behavior that occurs within the organization.
Although this chapter focuses on the organization as a whole, the concepts of organizational structure and culture have been touched on previously. For example, in Chapter 11, we saw that the organizational chart, or organigram, illustrates the lines of formal communication within an organization, or the organization’s communication structure. In this chapter we will focus more on the organization’s authority structure because the organizational chart also represents the formal lines of status and authority. The general concept of authority was also discussed in Chapter 14, when the topic of legitimate power was introduced. There are strong ties between the concept of power and the structure of organizations because organizations can be viewed as power structures. The concept of organizational culture has been hinted at in several previous chapters. Organizational culture is connected to workers’ feelings about their jobs and their organization—recall Chapter 9 and the discussions of job engagement and organizational commitment. In addition, the group processes chapter (Chapter 12) explored the elements that contribute to an organization’s total “culture.”
The field of organizational development (OD), which is introduced in this chapter, emphasizes that organizations must take steps to keep up with the changing world around them. Organizational development is an eclectic area of I/O psychology, for it draws on 451many theories and applications from a variety of topics within the broader field and uses them to help organizations adapt and change. In our discussion of OD, you will see many of the concepts and topics from earlier chapters, but here they will be applied in an effort to help organizations change and innovate.
