ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF CWP
CWP’s role in enterprise development. By Kate Philip.(Power Point Document)
The CWP and Enterprise Creation By Howard Richards
Memo on the Evaluation of the Community Work Program (CWP)
[Note: For a basic introduction to CWP see the website of the International Labour Organization
www.ilo.org. Search under “South Africa” and “Community Work Program”]
“Some quotes with definitions of organization.”
“Human organizations are systems of interdependent activity.”
–Herbert A. Simon, (1952) “Comments on the Theory of Organizations,” American Political Science Review. Volume 46 pp. 1130-1139.
An organization is a network of relationships among human individuals.
–R.S. Burt (1999) “The Network Structure of Social Capital,” in R I Sutton and B M Staw (Eds) Research in Organizational Behavior. Greenwich CT: JAI Press.
Organizations are the players: groups of individuals bound by a common purpose to achieve objectives. They include political bodies (political parties, the senate, a city council, regulatory agencies), economic bodies (firms, trade unions, family farms, cooperatives), social bodies (churches, clubs, athletic associations) and educational bodies (schools, colleges, vocational training centers.)
Institutions are the rules of the game of a society. They are the formally devised constraints that structure human action. They are formal (law) and informal (norms) and the enforcement characteristics of both.
— Douglass North (1992), “Institutions and Economic Theory,” The American Economist. Volume 36, pages 3-6. p. 5.
An organization is a set of relationships based on power.
–J. Pffefer (1981) Power in Organizations. Baltimore MD: Ballinger.
An organization is a nexus of contracts among self-interested principals and agents.
— M.C. Jensen and W.H. Meckling (1976) “Theory of the Firm,” Journal of Financial Economics. Volume 3, pp. 305-360.
An organization at its best is a community of knowledge and learning.
–Chris Argyris (1993), Knowledge for Action: a Guide to Overcoming Barriers in Organizational Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Merton sees organization as an activity functionally related to a purpose. Barnard, Selznick and Parsons see organization as a social system. March and Simon define organization in terms of component contributors and inducement systems. “System” is the common element in these definitions.
–Charles A. Joiner(1961) , review of Amitai Etzioni, Complex Organizations, a sociological reader. In Public Administration Review. Volume 21, pp. 99-104, p. 102.
An organization is “…a collectivity with a relatively identifiable boundary, a normative order, ranks of authority, communication systems, and membership-coordinating systems; this collectivity exists on a relatively continuous basis in an environment and engages in activities that are usually related to a set of goals; the activities have outcomes for organizational members, for the organization, and for society.”
–Richard Hall (1987) Organizations: Structures, Processes, and Outcomes. Englewood Cliffs NJ, Prentice-Hall. P. 40.
Institutions are systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions. Organizations are a special kind of institution that involve (a) criteria to establish their boundaries and distinguish members from non-members, (b) principles of sovereignty concerning who is in charge, and (c) chains of command delineating responsibilities within the organization.
–Geoffrey M. Hodgson (2006), “What are Institutions?” Journal of Economic Issues. Volume 40, pp. 2-25, p. 2, p. 8.
Managers can view an organization as a machine, an organism, a brain, a mind or a tribe.
–G. Morgan (1997), Images of Organization. Hillsdale NJ: Sage
“Postmodern management can be understood as the design of successful action in a world of multiple competing paradigms ….”
“We posit the articulator role of the manager –that of talking the walk and bringing to a shared and intelligible language the relevant raw experiences of the many—….
–Mihnea C. Moldoveanu and Roger L. Martin (2008) The Future of the MBA: Designing the Thinker of the Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press p. 29, p. 33
“Now we are entering a third period of change: the shift from the command-and-control organization, the organization of departments and divisions, to the information-based organization, the or-
ganization of knowledge specialists.”
— Peter Drucker (1988), “The Coming of the New Organization,” Harvard Business Review, Volume 66, pp. 45-53