Leadership and Management Report: Weber, Hawthorne Studies Analysis

This report delves into two key areas of management theory: Max Weber's principles of bureaucracy and the Hawthorne studies. The first section examines how Weber's principles, including defined roles, record-keeping, merit-based hiring, and appropriate working relationships, contribute to effective decision-making within organizations. The second section analyzes the Hawthorne studies, exploring their impact on our understanding of teamwork and motivation, including the Hawthorne effect and the importance of informal group dynamics. The report highlights the significance of these concepts for leadership, emphasizing the need for managers to support employees, foster innovation, and create a positive social environment to boost productivity and overall organizational success. It provides insights into how managers can apply these principles to improve workplace dynamics and achieve organizational goals.

REPORT

Q1: Weber developed the Principles of Bureaucracy to build organizations that would
make the best possible decisions for a business. How do these principles work together to
produce this kind of decision making?
The principles of Weber need to be worked upon through precision, testing, knowledge of files
and continuity. The theory helps in focusing over:
a. Roles Defined for the employees: This helps in analyzing the skills and abilities. The
employees have to be aware of the different positioning responsibilities and staying out
of the roles will lead to the disruption of the authority.
b. Record-Keeping: According to this, the leaders need to take notes for the different
positioning standards, occurrence and concerns (Cingolani et al., 2015). The
responsibilities of the employees have to be recorded by the managers so that there are no
negative patterns. It is important to understand about how the workers are able to keep a
proper track for the different hours at working and then handling the progress of the
assignments in an effective manner.
c. Hiring is based on specifications: Weber highlights about how the candidates need to be
plan about the skill set which is for a better result. The probability that there should not
be any problem of nepotism has to be required in the workplace. The hiring decision
should be based on the expertise and the experience not on the talent, worker has, in
different fields (Ang, 2017).
d. Working-Appropriately: The planning is done for the personal relationships, where the
notion is that all work relationships are followed through the rules and regulations. There
is no need of any small talk or collaboration or sharing of ideas.

Hence, considering this, the task needs to be divided and the routine categories are set based on
the competencies or the functional specialization. The employees associated to the project is
responsible for the activity and everyone should know what they have to work upon. The
hierarchy of authority and the formal selection needs to be done for the management. The
employees are selected depending upon their skills acquired from training, education and
experience (Őnday, 2016). The rules and the requirements are for ensuring the uniformity at work.
All the administrative processes are defined in the official rules. Hence, the enforcement of the
strict rules, could help in achieving uniformity and the efforts of the employees can also be
coordinated accordingly. The regulations and the clear requirements are also helpful for creating
a distance and personal relationship between the employees.
Q2: What did the Hawthorne studies contribute to our understanding of Teamwork and
Motivation?
The Hawthorne effect is one of the psychological phenomenon where the participants are
working on the behavioral study change which tend to change the performance in response for
being observed by individual conducting the study. For the workplace, the effect can explain
more attention for the employees from the mangers, coworkers and the customers. The
productivity increases when the employees are being watched continuously (Mathieu et al.,
2017).
Hence to improve the working behavior, depending upon the changing work environment, there
is a need to focus on supporting and listening to employees about their innovative ideas, as an
add-on for the project. It is important for the team managers to review and observe the work that
has been done by the team members and support them to understand which can boost

productivity (Li et al., 2016). The productivity is generally affected by the informal organization
of group. The Hawthorn researchers have been working on finding the informal groups which
are formed among the workers. The focus has to be on maintaining relations with the workers as
it will affect the work-out done by them. The major finding of the study includes the
experimental manipulation employed, where the production of the workers need to improve. The
workers are generally pleased to receive the attention from team managers and get appraisal for
their work. Hence, some of the factors that can include are:
a. The productivity is affected by informal organization. Hence, Hawthorne researchers
need to discover a proper group life among the workers. As per the study, the relation is
developed between the supervisors and the workers that tend to influence the manner of
working (Jungert et al., 2018).
b. The workplace is the social system that has been made of independent parts.
Hence, the workers need to be given more freedom to determine about the conditions of the
working environment and setting their standards of output. The intense interaction and
cooperation also help in creating a higher level of cohesion. This is depending more on
cooperation than on physical working conditions.

References
Ang, Y.Y., 2017. Beyond Weber: Conceptualizing an alternative ideal type of bureaucracy in
developing contexts. Regulation & Governance, 11(3), pp.282-298.
Cingolani, L., Thomsson, K. and de Crombrugghe, D., 2015. Minding Weber more than ever?
The impacts of state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy on development goals. World
Development, 72, pp.191-207.
Jungert, T., Van den Broeck, A., Schreurs, B. and Osterman, U., 2018. How colleagues can
support each other's needs and motivation: An intervention on employee work
motivation. Applied Psychology, 67(1), pp.3-29.
Li, N., Zheng, X., Harris, T.B., Liu, X. and Kirkman, B.L., 2016. Recognizing “me” benefits
“we”: Investigating the positive spillover effects of formal individual recognition in
teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(7), p.925.
Mathieu, J.E., Hollenbeck, J.R., van Knippenberg, D. and Ilgen, D.R., 2017. A century of work
teams in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Journal of applied psychology, 102(3), p.452.
Őnday, Ő., 2016. Classical Organization Theory: From generic management of Socrates to
bureaucracy of Weber. International Journal of Business and Management Review, 4(1), pp.87-
105.