Global ETD Search

281	The "Equalizer" Administration: Managerial Strategies in the Public Sector Cavalcanti, Bianor Scelza 08 April 2005 (has links) The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the managerial "action" of public administrators in the management of their organizations within the Brazilian context. The research seeks to understand the relationships between managers and formal management mechanisms by exploring the complementary nature of the effective managerial action in the face of structural deficiencies and flaws, considering the possibility of overcoming the structuralism-subjectivism dichotomy present in the construction of the Theory of Organizations. Initially, the study provides a review of the literature on organizational design. It highlights the "goodness of fit" proposition on strategic choice issues concerning the main organizational variables design and organizational goal attainment. It also calls special attention to the emerging interest of designing theorists on interpretivist approaches to the matter, such that of Karl Weick. A review of the the administrative reforms in Brazil is made from the perspective of the main stream organizational design conceptual framework. It highlights the complex dynamics of a constant search for differentiation and flexibilization subject to patterns of advances and reversals, due to the centrality, strength and pervasiveness of the bureaucratic model. It is concluded that in no single given moment, a public manager and his team, may count on a formal organizational design which attends the"congruency" criteria, devised by organizational design conceptual frameworks, to explain organizational results in different environmental sets. Although this conclusion may explain failure at the public sector, it can not provide understanding on the many instances of significative success attained by government operations in spite of inadequate formal administrative structures. This point calls for a better understanding from the interpretivist approach, on how public administrators, strongly associated with good organizational results, engage into transformative action, in order to superate administrative structures flaws and dysfunctional cultural patterns of conduct, structurally present and constantly reproduced, in vigorous developing countries, such as Brazil. The dissertation transcribes the testimony of four outstanding public administrators, doing a deep incursion in the managerial real world of public administration, as subjectively defined by them and transformed by their engagement into action.Through the thematic version of the Oral History methodology, full segments of the complete interviews are categorized into the thirty two managerial strategies captured which are presented on a recategorized manner under eight main strategies: (1) Interchanging Frames of Reference; (2) Exploring the Formal Limits; (3) Playing the Bureaucracy Game; (4) Inducing the Inclusion of Others (5)Promoting Internal Cohesion; (6) Creating Shields against Transgressions; (7) Overcoming Internal Restrictions; (8) Letting the Structures Blossom. Each one of these eight blocks of strategies presented, deserves further reflexive interpretation by the author, on the light of the interpretivist approach to organizational design. A final effort is made, now on theory building, for improving understanding on the matter. In order to find a significant meaning underlining all the strategies extracted from the "practical consciousness" of the interviewers as revealed in their report, the author resort to a metaphor. This metaphor helps to: (1) better describe and understand a not adequately treated phenomenon, namely, good results under inadequate structural social and organizational conditions; (2) reveal the logic and the meaning underlining all the strategies adopted to generate results under these unfaithful conditions; (3) name, accordingly to the nature of the managerial transformative social action involved, an open ended class of managerial interventions of a pragmatic sort driven by an ethics of results much common to good managers, that is, the concept of "managerial equalization"; and (4) give back to public administrators, represented by the interviewees, to be incorporated in their "discursive consciousness", something the most effective and experienced public managers already have as tacit knowledge built in their "practical consciousness", and so, help the education and development of new talents. / Ph. D. equalizer manager equalizing management unfaithfull structural conditions metaphor discursive cousciousness discourse practical cosciousness tacit knowledge agency intentionality ethics empirical bases improvising equalizing theory building meaning agent desining patrimonialism reflexive interpretation organizing inclusion cohesion transgression corruption clientelism nepotism cognitive maps deponents frames of reference transformative action explanation understanding oral history flexbilization decentralization uniformity conceptual frameworks organizational change goodness of fit organizational results organizational performance differentiation uncertainty Brazil develloping countries administrative reform bureaucratic model centralization organizational design organizational theory interpretivist approach subjectivism funcionalism paradigms cultural patterns reproduction structural flaws public manager public administrator formal management mechanisms Action managerial action public administration and management public sector public policy public programs
282	La structure de la réalité sociale abstraite inhérente aux sociétés prescrites : La quiddité des liens et des structures de coopérations intra-organisationnels issus de l’activité réelle, dans le cas du processus de co-construction de sens découlant des décisions stratégiques / The structure of abstract social reality inherent to prescribed societies : the quiddity of intraorganizational cooperation links and structures resulting from the actual activity, in the case of the sensemaking process deriving from strategic decisions Dandelot, Damien 15 May 2012 (has links) Partant de l’idée que des filiales d’une entreprise sont en mesure de remettre en cause les décisions de la direction générale (maison-mère), l’approche holistique développée dans ce travail part du principe qu’une organisation peut être un « être », laissant entendre ainsi que les informations dont elle dispose seraient extérieures aux individus qui la composent. Ce qui conduit à s'interroger s’il est concevable d’ignorer l’individu dans une telle relation de domination. Cette thèse propose justement un modèle autour de résultats qui montrent la difficile exclusion de l’individu dans un contexte méta-organisationnel (dans lequel les membres seraient des organisations et non des individus). Dans cette veine, ce sont les dynamiques humaines de l’organisation qui sont au cœur de ce travail : il existe par et au travers de l’individu une dynamique issue de l’activité réelle qui permet de faire vivre l’organisation par elle-même, mais également qui permet au prescrit de cette dernière d’évoluer. Bien que les résultats obtenus montrent que l’organisation n’est pas un objet mort et sans force et qu’elle a bien la possibilité de vivre par elle-même, ce sont les individus qui — par leurs engagements conditionnels — permettent cette existence propre de l’organisation comme structure intra-consciente qui impose des droits et des obligations. Dans cette perspective, le modèle proposé vise à dessiner les structures de la réalité sociale abstraite (dénommé dans la recherche menée, l’Entité X) en montrant les forces et les contraintes organisationnelles qui pèsent sur les individus-membres, tout en relevant les capacités humaines à sortir des structures prescrites par la co-construction de liens et de structures transversales de coopérations issus de l’activité réelle. / Based on the idea that the subsidiaries of a company are able to call into question the decisions of senior management (the parent company), the holistic approach developed in this study assumes that an organization can be a “being”, implying thereby that the information in its possession is external to the individuals who compose it. This raises the question of whether it is conceivable to ignore the individual in such a relationship of domination. This thesis proposes a model based on the results which show the difficult exclusion of the individual in a meta-organizational context (in which members would be organizations and not individuals). Along these same lines, the organization’s human dynamics are at the heart of this research: there exists by and through the individual a dynamic resulting from actual activity that allows the organization to live by itself, while also allowing prescribe to evolve. Although the results show that the organization is not a dead and strengthless object, and it has the opportunity to live by itself, it is the individuals who —through their conditional commitments— allow the separate existence of an organizational structure’s intra-consciousness, which imposes rights and obligations. In this perspective, the proposed model aims to draw the structures of abstract social reality (referred as Entity X in this study) by showing the strengths and organizational constraints that weigh on individual members, while raising the human capacity to emerge from the structures prescribed by the sensemaking of links and transversal structures for cooperation that originate from the actual activity. Co-construction de sens Décision stratégique Échanges transversaux méta Enaction « Entité X » Formes de régulation méta Gouvernance Holisme Individualbased organizations Intentionnalisme Intentionnalité collective Intra-conscience Inter-subjectif Individu vs organisation Individualisme L’invariance et le système Jeux de pouvoir / Stucture de jeux Légitimation inter-groupe / entité Management International Méta-organisation Ordre global Ordre social Organizing / Changing Plus structurel qu’organisationnel Phénomènes sociaux / Faits sociaux Réalité sociale humaine Résistance / Révolte Socio-pouvoir Sujet pluriel Violence symbolique Sensemaking Strategic decision Transversal Meta exchanges Enaction “Entity X” Forms of Meta regulations Governance Holism Individualbased organizations Individualism Collective intentionality Intra- conscience Inter-subjective Individual vs organization Individualism The invariance and the system Power games/Game structures Inter-group/entity legitimation International Management Meta-organization Global order Social order Organizing/Changing More structural than organizational More structural than organizational Human social reality Resistance/Revolt Social power Plural subject Symbolic violence 650

Search results

The "Equalizer" Administration: Managerial Strategies in the Public Sector