Organization Theory Perspectives
QUESTION:
Apple is a global giant whose success has been built on outsourcing to a range of other organisations located across the world. How can different organisational theory perspectives assist us in acquiring different understandings of Apple, its organisational networks and influence? In this essay you must use at least two perspectives to analyse Apple.
Introduction
The concept of organisational theory has been discussed and its multiple perspectives have been debated by academics throughout the years. What can be agreed about it is that, organisational theory in essence, uses a framework of various academic disciplines to theorize and conceptualize organisations in order to analyze and allow a better understanding of it and its behaviour towards its various levels of environment. The predominant perspectives of organisational theory are the Modern perspective, Critical Theory perspective, Symbolic Interpretive perspective and postmodern perspective. This essay however, will only be covering on the modern and the postmodern perspective while discussing various aspects of these 2 perspectives relative to each other. In addition, this essay will be using these 2 perspectives to show that Apple as an organisation uses a hybrid of both modernism and postmodernism approaches towards its organisational network and influences while suggesting some limitations on some of these theories.
Theoretical framework
In order to have a clearer understanding on the two chosen schools of thought, each of it must first be defined.
In its basic definition, modernism refers to the perspective of organisational theory that knowledge is discovered and generated through actual scientific and quantifiable methods. According to Hatch and Cunliffe (2006), the modernist perspective states that having knowledge is being able to comprehend how and why organisations function, the method or way in which they do so and how their functions are influenced by its environmental conditions.
Apple is a global giant whose success has been built on outsourcing to a range of other organisations located across the world. How can different organisational theory perspectives assist us in acquiring different understandings of Apple, its organisational networks and influence? In this essay you must use at least two perspectives to analyse Apple.
Introduction
The concept of organisational theory has been discussed and its multiple perspectives have been debated by academics throughout the years. What can be agreed about it is that, organisational theory in essence, uses a framework of various academic disciplines to theorize and conceptualize organisations in order to analyze and allow a better understanding of it and its behaviour towards its various levels of environment. The predominant perspectives of organisational theory are the Modern perspective, Critical Theory perspective, Symbolic Interpretive perspective and postmodern perspective. This essay however, will only be covering on the modern and the postmodern perspective while discussing various aspects of these 2 perspectives relative to each other. In addition, this essay will be using these 2 perspectives to show that Apple as an organisation uses a hybrid of both modernism and postmodernism approaches towards its organisational network and influences while suggesting some limitations on some of these theories.
Theoretical framework
In order to have a clearer understanding on the two chosen schools of thought, each of it must first be defined.
In its basic definition, modernism refers to the perspective of organisational theory that knowledge is discovered and generated through actual scientific and quantifiable methods. According to Hatch and Cunliffe (2006), the modernist perspective states that having knowledge is being able to comprehend how and why organisations function, the method or way in which they do so and how their functions are influenced by its environmental conditions.