Week 2: Classical Approaches

This chapter tells us about the principals of organizational power. In Henri’s Fayol Theory of Classical Management, it suggested the ‘highly structure and hierarchical’ management in organizations, which top-level occupations have the control of lower level of employees within an organization. 

For instance, Directors have control over President and Executive Staffs, whereas Executive staffs have the sovereignty to control Vice-Presidents of marketing, and Vice-Presidents control Managers. This schema can be seen as an illustration for classical organization.

Therefore, the communication flows are downward in classical management, throughout the organization, the principles of classical management all deal with power relationship. For example, the 2000 jobs cut in of HSBC Bank in United Kingdom (itv.com) is a result of classical management. 

HSBC bank reduced the number of bureaucracy positions in the company in United Kingdom, which related to the theory of classical management and principles of organizational power, where managers has control over decision-making on employees’ positions. HSBC announced senior and middle management position would be affected in the job cuts.

Clearly, the principles of organizational power such as Centralization and Authority (Miller, 2012) in HSBC such as the Directors and Chief executives are the person who makes decision on senior and middle management job positions.

Reference:

Itv.com 2012, ‘HSBC eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy with job cuts,’ 26 April, p. 1.

Miller, K 2012, Organization Communication, 6^th edn, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston.