Understanding Organisations

EDUC8884: ORGANISATION THEORY IN EDUCATION
Assignment 1- UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONS (LITERATURE REVIEW)

INTRODUCTION
Organisations, which have been developed over decades, embrace dynamic and complex elements and structures. Working in organisations requires leaders, managers and staff members to pay attention to these features in order to understand the organizational life and the way it works.
In this paper, a review of the literature related to understanding organisations will be presented while the concepts of, and interrelationships between, organizational culture and change are going to be explored and examined. Then two common themes growing from the literature will be critiqued, and finally I will draw on my insights from the literature to critique a current change initiative in my organization and reflect on the implication for future practice.

UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONS
Organisations are entities involving a diversity of workforce, cultures, roles, structures with dynamics and complexities within themselves and can be influenced by different factors. Hence, to have some insights into understanding organisations requires a critical scrutiny of that diversity. Bolman and Deal (2008) recommend four frames for making sense of organisations, namely a structural frame, a human resource frame, a political frame, and a symbolic frame. A frame is deciphered as a mental model, which engages a group of assumptions and ideas (Bolman & Deal, 2008). The structural frame covers rules, roles, goals, policies, technology and environment while the human resource frame centers on needs, skills and relationships between the organisation and its workforce. The political frame is concerned with power, coalitions of individuals and interest groups embraced by micro-politics in organisation, and the symbolic frame is known as a cultural element of the organisation (Bolman & Deal, 2008). The researchers further point out that thinking about these frames

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