Organizational Effectiveness

Citation

Latemore, G.M. (2013), "Organizational Effectiveness", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 34 No. 1, pp. 98-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731311290008

The Editor begins with the sobering comment that the “validity police” (citing Hirsh and Levin, co‐authors of Chapter 30) have killed the very concept of effectiveness as being uninteresting and unfruitful in understanding the performance of organizations. It has been abandoned in favour of single indicators such as share price, productivity, financial ratios, employee turnover and customer loyalty. Overall, the umbrella concept of effectiveness has fallen out of favour to “performance”.

The strength of this impressive collection is in the actual choice of scholars and representative papers in the field. The many authors include Burns and Stalker, Lawrence and Lorsh, Pfeffer, Salancik, Nadler, Mayo, Likert, Argyris, Quinn, Cooper and Cameron himself. Over the years, various attempts to describe and measure organizational effectiveness have ranged from goals, to systems, to efficiency, to HR and to competing values models.

The audience for this book is scholars of strategy and organizational behaviour as well as scholarly practitioners. Indeed, in my consulting work as a practitioner, I have long been both interested in and confused by the literature on performance, effectiveness and excellence. Interestingly, even Jim Collins, whose popular books Built to Last, Good to Great and Great by Choice are much used by managers and practitioners, is mentioned in the “Introduction” as a contributor in this rich and confusing field. Cameron himself is at the forefront of attempts to wrestle with the very criteria for effectiveness scholarship.

This book endeavours to shift through the plethora of approaches to provide some clarity (if not certainty) about the construct “effectiveness” and whether it can be measured. Given the title, it would be reasonable to expect that the editor and the various contributors offer some insight into the issue of “organizational effectiveness”. However, in the final analysis, most authors seem to question the very viability of the construct itself, and to continue to puzzle over how to measure “effectiveness” anyway. It is a sobering legacy.

One of the early chapters rightly begins with the familiar and apt quote by Peter Drucker (1974, p. 45) who said” Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing”. However, a deep understanding of “effectiveness” is not as simple as this albeit clever distinction.

To elaborate on various approaches, there are 33 chapters in nine parts:

I Early Treatises

II The Goal Model

III The System Resource Model

IV The Internal Congruence or Efficiency Model

V The Human Relations Model

VI The Multiple Constituencies Model

VII The Paradox or Competing Values Model

VIII Measurement and Methods

IX The Transition to Alternatives

The earliest models of organizational effectiveness emphasized ideal‐types, organizational forms that maximized certain attributes. We see the “rational‐legal” approach of Weber. Later, scholars such as Barnard, Simon and Selznick challenged these bureaucratic assumptions. Then, “contingency” models took over with more organic and less mechanistic forms in the work of Burns and Stalker, and Lawrence and Lorsch. Disillusioned with these apparently insular approaches, scholars such as Williamson and Zammuto later highlighted the need to satisfy the needs of strategically critical stakeholders, and thus to the “multiple contingencies” approach where “competing values” and a “paradox” operates in a dynamic flux.

Some of these well‐known models are summarized by Cameron in his excellent “Introduction”. An organization is effective if:

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  it accomplishes stated goals (goal model);

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  it acquires needed resources (system resource model);

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  it has smooth functioning and an absence of strain (internal process model);

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  members are satisfied and collaboration occurs (human relations model); and

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  all constituencies are at least minimally satisfied (strategic contingencies model).

Further, Cameron (p. xviii) provides a clever, “two by two” integration of these main models. The vertical axis has flexibility (top) and stability (bottom) while the horizontal axis has internal maintenance (left) and external positioning (right). The top left quadrant is the human relations model; the top right, is the system resource model. The bottom left, is the internal process model and the bottom right is both the goal and multiple‐contingencies models.

Citing Allen Bluehorn in Chapter 5, it is worth remembering that the goal achievement conceptualization of organizational effectiveness is “one of the oldest and most prominent definitions” (p. 478). In other words, effectiveness is the degree to which an organization achieves its goals. The open systems approach is another approach. A third and often residual category is the process and structure approach. This third approach is not an approach to effectiveness but a study of the assumed determinants (emphasis his) of effectiveness. Here, the process is regarded as a surrogate for effectiveness, assuming a causal linkage between the surrogate and effectiveness.

I have seen this assumed causal relationship in other publications such as the three broad indicators by Graetz et al. (2002, pp. 122‐3) who listed industrial relations, human relations and quality management as the indicators of high‐performing work organizations (HPWO), itself a parallel area of research.

Cameron further asserts that while the concept (emphasis his) of effectiveness has faded, the need to assess organizational performance has not, nor has the need to make judgements about excellence, or to enhance organizational performance. He is adamant that effectiveness as a phenomenon (emphasis his) has not been abandoned (p. xxiv).

Cameron later outlines three alternative approaches to effectiveness – a focus on quality, a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and a focus on positive deviance performance, or extraordinary success (rather than effectiveness). Here “Olympic fitness and flow” and “generosity of spirit” are reflective of abundance thinking or virtuousness, not deficit thinking.

A helpful insight by Kim Cameron, as co‐author with Robert Quinn in Chapter 22 (p. 410), is that any approach to effectiveness should be considered in the light of the organization's life cycle. They postulate four stages: entrepreneurial, collectivity, formalization and elaboration, and suggest that the open systems model (flexibility and resource acquisition) together with human relations (cohesiveness and development) best fit with the stages one and two. In the formalization stage, information management, control and productivity, for example, would become increasingly important. In the fourth stage, elaboration, open‐systems and growth strategies would be needed to ensure sustainable performance.

This book advances the proposition that we should not assume we already know what “effectiveness” actually means. The appropriateness of an understanding of effectiveness or the measures employed to operationalize it may indeed depend upon the constituency interested in the issue, and the stage of the organization's history.

The book's last chapters praise the return to social welfare and offers Positive Organization Scholarship (POS) as a way forward in scholarly research and debate on organizational effectiveness. There are three core aspects of this POS perspective: a concern with flourishing; a focus on the development of strengths or capabilities; and an emphasis on the generative, life‐giving aspects of organizing (p. 713). The POS lens highlights positive meaning making, positive emoting and positive interrelating. Perhaps heralding a return to the best of “ideal forms”, the book concludes with the proposition that normative aspects of organizational behaviour (i.e. the “good”) are worthy of serious study (p. 714).

I offer a couple of (albeit minor) criticisms of this otherwise excellent collection. First, the editor clearly respects the original publishing integrity and text formatting of the original papers. Still, when reduced to fit this publication, the original font sometimes becomes very small and difficult to read. This reduces the accessibility of the publication.

Second, I felt that a full index of topics is still needed, in addition to the “Table of Contents”. Apart from the key words listed at the commencement of each chapter, a concluding and separate list of all topics and concepts being examined by all the contributors would have been helpful. I would have appreciated knowing which scholars and which articles were addressing which topics apart from those listed in the “Table of Contents” itself.