Knowledge about organizational design has evolved over the past century. In this part, I will show you on a brief tour of the historical development of organizational design theory. Keep two things in mind here. Firstly, because both the approaches and environments are changing over time, organizational design is an on-going process. Secondly, changes in the theories usually involve trial and error, which should be understood dialectically.
The classical approach
According to Weber, Taylor and Fayol’s opinions on organizational design, it is believed that the most efficient and effective organizations had a hierarchical structure in which members of the organization were guided in their actions by a sense of duty to the organization and by a set of rational rules and regulations. Classical theory of organization design suffers from superficiality, over simplification and lack of realism.
Generally speaking, the classical approach appeared to fail in providing a direct and simple basis for relating organisational structure and business success. Mullins (2007) One of the fundamental problems with the classical theory is that the scholars only emphasized the high efficiency of the activity and mechanism of authority instead of the importance of people’s action and human behaviour. Fred Luthans (2006) pointed out that, the classicists disregarded factors of human nature and individuality and they let it play only a minor role in comparison with the roles of hierarchical structures, specialization, and the management functions of planning and controlling. Similarly, the criticisms by the behaviourists viewed that the classical pioneers totally ignored the behavioural dimension of organization and also oversimplified the mechanistic assumption for the smooth running of the organization. They assumed human beings as a cog in the machine who simply obeys the orders and