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Management Practices and Organisational Behaviour

Notes
The workers also pointed out that the management was indifferent to their complaints of
attacks by electricity customers over the service failures and was hindering the discussion
about the collective contract.
“Today we have taken control, just as the president has said in his speeches. We are doing
this in order to guarantee a service to the people and provide a solution to the problems.
We want to provide a timeline of when electricity will be suspended and why, something
that the authorities couldn’t do,” said Jesus Granados, general secretary of the Electrician’s
Union of Carabobo.

The electricians accused the management of keeping such information from the community,
a situation which has provoked annoyance in the population over not knowing how long
the blackout will last.
Workers also said that management didn’t care that this was happening and it is the
workers who suffer the consequences, who are the victims of abuse and insults by people
from various communities.
The workers stressed that they are prepared to create a timeline of rationing and make it
public, as the population has the right to know such information so that they can take
necessary previsions while the electrical problems in the country are being solved.
Electrical workers agree with the statements by [Venezuelan president Hugo] Chavez,
that, “the problem isn’t just technical, the problem is also political. Much of the management
in the electrical companies are resisting the changes. Not all of them resist, but there’s a
kind of knot, a Gordian knot, that resists the full participation of the workers.”
Source: www.venezuelanalysis.com

2.2 Neoclassical Management Theory

The classical organisation theory focused attention on physiological and mechanical variables
of the organisational functioning in order to increase the efficiency and productivity. But positive
aspects of these variables could not produce the positive results in work behaviour and the
researches tried to investigate the reasons for human behaviour at work. They discovered that
the real cause of human behaviour is somewhat more than the physiological variable. These
findings generated a new phenomenon about the organisational functioning and focused attention
on human beings in the organisations. These exercises were given new names such as ‘behavioural
theory of an organisation’, ‘human view of an organisation’ or ‘human relations approach in an
organisation.’
The neoclassical approach was developed as a reaction to the classical approach which attracted
so many behaviourists to make further researches into the human behaviour at work.

Did u know? This movement was started by ‘Mayo’ and his associates at Hawthorne Plant
of the Eastern Electric Company, Chicago in the late twenties, gained momentum and
continued to dominate till the sixties. An impressive account of thinking of human relations
has been given by Douglas M. McGregor in his book entitled ‘The Human Side of Enterprise.’

The classical theory was the product of the time and the following reasons were responsible for
its development:
1. The management thinking was showing signs of change because of the improved standards
of living and education level. The technological changes were forcing the management to
expand the size of the organisation and complexities were increasing. This also led to the

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