MGMT6012: Management Perspectives - Organizational Theory at Caltex

This case study provides an analysis of Caltex Australia Limited, focusing on organizational theory, management theory, communication strategy, ethics, and diversity. It explores Caltex's organizational structure, mission, vision, and values, comparing organizational and management theories, including Classical and Scientific Management theories. The report also discusses Caltex's communication strategy, ethical practices, and diversity initiatives, such as gender equality and workplace flexibility. Furthermore, it examines eight aspects of Morgan's metaphors for understanding organizational culture, including organizations as machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, systems of change, psychic prisons, and instruments of domination, concluding that organizations are multifaceted and require flexible judgment to address their issues.

Management Perspective 1
Management Perspective

Management Perspective 2
Executive summary
Management entails the interconnecting systems of developing corporate policy and planning,
directing, controlling and guiding the resources of the company for the purpose of attaining the
aims of the policy. This task covers the difference between the organizational theory and the
management theory by taking Caltex Company. The scope of the organizational theory is
categorized under two specific components such as formalization and the specificity of the goals.
The discussion is made on the 8 aspects of Morgan Culture and metaphors.

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Contents
Executive summary.........................................................................................................................2
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Background of the company............................................................................................................4
Comparison between Organization theory and management theory...............................................5
8 aspects of Morgan Culture and metaphors (refer to Gareth Morgan reading).............................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The role of the freedom and convenience keeps huge importance in the organization and it is
considered as the choice and the capability to handle the outcomes of the company. There are
some factors such as quality, range, perishes ability and time that are no longer preventive forces
in the marketplace (Taylor, Doherty, & McGraw, 2015). It has been found that the business and
the customers are come under in today’s generation and this eventually handles the absolute
freedom of choice for everyone. It is the report which will be discussed on Caltex Australia
Limited Company. Along with that, it would entail organizational structure, mission and vision
of the company that would help the company to amplify the better understanding regarding the
company. Organization theory management theory, Communication strategy, ethics, and
diversity are entailed under this report. Along with that eight aspects of metaphor will be
discussed under this assignment.
Background of the company
Caltex is the company that proudly fuelling Australia since 1900 (Caltex, 2018). This company
has grown from modest beginnings to become outright of the national leader in the fuels of
transport. The company has effective fuel supply chain by which the company forged a status for
giving reliable and protective supply of upper level of quality fuels to various numbers of
customer segments, entailing mining, aviation, small to medium enterprise, retail, automotive,
government, and marine. It is the company which is known for one of the largest convenience
retailers.

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Organizational structure
The organizational structure of Caltex is hierarchical that has two characteristics such as
hierarchy and function-based definition. The characteristics of the organizational structure of
Hierarchical have the potential to affect the vertical form of the authority and the demand of the
organizational structure. While talking about the functional based organizational structure has the
features of completing the goals by providing sufficient information to the employees.
Mission, vision, and value
The mission of the company is to increase the ability in order to drive the business as well as
leverages the core capabilities for the purpose of creating huge things occur easily, everywhere.
The vision of Caltex is to become the largest organization in Australia by which many
Australians get a number of opportunities (Caltex, 2018).
The value of the company is enough good in which the company focuses on connect to win,
search new path, grab it, create a different path for customers and never stop caring. These
values of the company elaborate the story reading what is vital to the company in the form of the
business and in what way they can do work together in order to attain the great things (Hossain,
Rasti, Tabassum & Abdelnasser, 2014).
Comparison between Organization theory and management theory
Organizational theory is the theory that has focused on the organizational structures and the
designs which consider the problem-solving approach and the process of productiveness for the
purpose of meeting the expectations of the stakeholders. Caltex follows the hierarchical

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organization structure for running their operation in a successful manner. In the context of the
Caltex Company, the scope of the organizational theory is categorized under two specific
components such as formalization and the specificity of the goals. It has been found that the
categorization of the labor in the company is the specialization of the individual labor roles
which is linked with amplifying the trade and output (Buettner, 2015).
Classical Organizational theory
It is the theory which economy is self-regulating. By applying this kind of theory in the operation
of the company, the company can easily maintain the economy that is able to attain the natural
level of real GDP. According to this theory, the company is considered as the machine and the
employees of the organization are considered as the part of the machine to compete for the tasks
within the time frame. It is entirely based on the assumption. The main focus of this theory is to
increase the production of the company (Hatch, 2018).
In the point of view of the company, it has been analyzed that as the leading company in
Australia, they want to make sure that the company should have an integral role in creating a
noteworthy difference to the lives of indigenous Australians by focusing in creating huge
capability of the market (Thompson, 2017). The nature of this theory is traditional but it is
applied by much organization to increase the profit as well as the goodwill of the company in
front of the outsiders.
Scientific Management theory
Scientific management theory is an effective theory that evaluates and synthesis the workflows
in order to develop economic efficiency and labor productivity. With the help of this theory,
Caltex is able to generate new ideas so that they can achieve the vision of the company as soon

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as possible. Fredrick Winslow Taylor is the founder of this theory that focused on developing the
productivity of each employee (Waring, 2016). This theory is basically dependent on the
performed work by the employees. It highlights the amplifying the production by making use of
the intensive technology in which human beings are taken into consideration as an attachment to
machines in the presentation of the routine tasks (Quirke, 2017).
It was apparent that both theories have its own characteristics as the company uses them at their
level so that the vision and mission of the company could be completed in an efficient manner.
Communication strategy, ethics, and diversity
A communication strategy can be referred as the plan or document that elaborates the aims and
procedures of the outreach activities of the organization by entailing the organization wishes to
distribute with the public (Örtenblad, Trehan & Putnam, 2016). There is an enclosure in Caltex
which defines the value of the company’s uniqueness. The communication strategy of the
company is different from others as it focuses on the step by step process. The long-term and
short-term goals are determined at the initial level by the organization and after that, they are
supported by the goals of the company. The company makes the message in clear form so that
the employee could understand what the objective of the company is. It is the strategy of the
company y to make an inclusive workplace because it would motivate various perspectives to be
shared (Kim, Tam & Bach, 2018). Caltex has the belief that different point of view has the
ability to flourish the innovation which can be done via effective communication strategy.
Ethics is the systematic analysis of the morality that has the potential of guiding human conduct
in a specific practice. The role of the ethics within the organization is huge as it helps the

Management Perspective 8
organization to determine what is wrong and right and as per the evaluation decisions are to be
taken by the company (Dissanayake, Xia & Wu, 2015). Ethical behavior can bring huge changes
within the organization which would give massive advantages to the company (Oswick & Grant,
2016). Caltex considers all aspects of ethics while delivering the services to the customer so that
the feelings and belief of anyone could not be hurt by any misacting.
In the context of the diversity, it has been found that the company has a number of employees
who come from different background. Needs of the employee are different in the company which
is supported by the company in an efficient manner so that they do not feel separate. Along with
that the company focus on the gender equality, it has been found that the groundbreaking
Babycare workplace is initiated by Caltex in 2012 that encouraged a number of women of
Australia to back to work after having a baby. The company is able to maintain the return rate of
near to hundred percent. There are various initiates have been taken by Caltex in order to
increase the attention of the people towards Gender Equality (Streb, 2018). It has been analyzed
that Caltex has taken big paces so that improvement can be increased in gender equality. It is the
belief of the organization that there should be workplace flexibility so that one can do work
without getting pressurized.
8 aspects of Morgan Culture and metaphors
The eight aspects of Morgan culture are defined below:
1. Organization as a machine: it is the simplistic metaphor which based on the machine
thinking in which the people are expected to complete the task within given time-frame.
According to this metaphor, machines managers are trained that the employee of the
company can plan in order to control the organizations.

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2. Organization as an organism: these kinds of organizations are observed to work such as
living organisms. Thus, the main focus of this kind of organization is on the survival. The
strong point of these kinds of the organization is the emphasis on bonding between the
organizations and the environment.
3. Organization as brain: according to this metaphor, the company cannot perform in a
well efficient manner without having proper processing system and information. it has
been contemplated by Morgan that the major ability of the brain is the connectivity that
refers to the various functions which should be performed by the company by applying
the similar structure.
4. Organization as culture: the main power of this kind of organization is that it can easily
draw the attention of the people towards the symbolic factors and prejudiced meaning of
the organizations in order to share the mental programs that develop the sense; it
facilitates to communication the effective bonding between the environment and the
organization (Morgan, 2016).
5. Organization as Political System: the real sense of politics is depended on the
perspective that when employers has a different point of views that should have the
capability to bring together them by negotiations and discussion.
6. Organization as System of Change and Flux: this kind of organization can be
considered as the transformative organization that is ready to bring change within the
organization. It has been suggested by the traditional approaches that amendments are
preferred by the organizational environment (Örtenblad, Trehan & Putnam, 2016).

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7. Organization as Psychic Prison: this metaphor shows that there is a number of
organizations that are not able to perform in well efficient manner due to unable to go
beyond the policies that created them efficient to start with.
8. Organization as an Instrument of Domination: As per this metaphor, it has been found
that people are gradually more being conquered through the process of strict
administration and policies by impersonal objectives and the mission for competence.
There is a number of organizations that has become politicized due to stratified jobs
between practiced career type and unpractised lower paid types job.
By taking consideration of the above discussion, Organisations are multifaceted and can be
implicated in the relation to numerous points of views. People who are rigid only see companies
in the relation of one of these metaphors, on the other hand, people who have flexible judgment
has the ability to identify the number of point of view which can disclose the number of
opportunities in order to deal with the company and their issues.

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Conclusion
It has been concluded that the role of the management perspective is massive in the organization
as it helps in making daily decisions and evaluating the business strategy. It has been analyzed
that there is a huge difference in organizational theory and the management theory which has
been considered under this assignment by taking Caltex Company. The discussion has been
made on the communication strategy, ethics, and diversity of Caltex Company. At last, the
importance and the meaning of eight aspects of Morgan culture have been elaborated in order to
understand various kinds of culture in the organization.

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References
Buettner, R. (2015). A systematic literature review of crowdsourcing research from a human
resource management perspective. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2015 48th Hawaii
International Conference on (pp. 4609-4618). IEEE.
Caltex. (2018). About Us. Retrived from: https://www.caltex.com.au/our-company#.
Dissanayake, N., Xia, B., & Wu, P. (2015). Measuring sustainability performance within the
Australian energy industry. In Proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on
Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate (pp. 135-143). Springer,
Berlin, Heidelberg.
Hatch, M. J. (2018). Organization theory: Modern, symbolic, and postmodern perspectives.
Oxford university press.
Hossain, E., Rasti, M., Tabassum, H., & Abdelnasser, A. (2014). Evolution toward 5G multi-tier
cellular wireless networks: An interference management perspective. IEEE Wireless
Communications, 21(3), 118-127.
Kim, S., Tam, L., & Bach, S. (2018). Understanding the effects of perceived ethics failure,
compassionate leadership, and communication strategy on anti‐government
sentiment. Journal of Public Affairs, e1848. doi:10.1002/pa.1848.
Morgan, G. (2016). Commentary: Beyond Morgan’s eight metaphors. Human relations, 69(4),
1029-1042.

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Örtenblad, A., Trehan, K., & Putnam, L. L. (Eds.). (2016). Exploring Morgan’s Metaphors:
Theory, Research, and Practice in Organizational Studies. SAGE Publications.
Oswick, C., & Grant, D. (2016). Re-imagining images of organization: a conversation with
Gareth Morgan. Journal of Management Inquiry, 25(3), 338-343.
Quirke, B. (2017). Making the connections: using internal communication to turn strategy into
action. Routledge.
Streb, J. (2018). An Analysis of Caltex Australia Lmtd's Management of Diversity Policies.
GRIN Verlag.
Taylor, T., Doherty, A., & McGraw, P. (2015). Managing people in sport organizations: A
strategic human resource management perspective. Routledge.
Thompson, J. D. (2017). Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory.
Routledge.
Waring, S. P. (2016). Taylorism transformed: Scientific management theory since 1945. UNC
Press Books.