Neoclassical Organization Theory: From Incentives of Bernard to Organizational Objectives of Cyert and March (Published)
Organization is a relatively young science in comparison with the other scientific disciplines. (Ivanko, 2013) Accounts of the growth of organizational theory usually start with Taylor and Weber, but, as Scott (1987) mentions, organizations were present in the old civilizations which goes back to Sumerians (5000, BC) and which experiences its maturation phase with Taylor, Fayol and Weber, continuing to come up to present with modern management methods and principles. The modern organization may be the most crucial innovation of the past 100 years and it is a theory which will never complete its evolution as the human being continues to exist. Understanding how organizations work has been the focus of scientists and scholars until the early part of the 20th century. Just as organizations have evolved, so to have the theories explaining them. These theories can be divided into 9 different “schools” of thought (Shafritz, Ott, Jang, 2005): Classical Organization Theory, Neoclassical Organization Theory, Human Resource Theory, or the Organizational Behavior Perspective, Modern Structural Organization Theory, Organizational Economics Theory, Power and Politics Organization Theory, Organizational Culture Theory, Reform Though Changes in Organizational Culture and Theories of Organizations and Environments. This paper will concentrate on theory named neoclassical organization theory and the paper is divided as follows. The introduction talks about the developments of the organization and organization theory from its early stages with detailed definitions. In section 2, theoretical roots in other words literature review on the subject will be presented. At further section, by looking at the perspectives of the 5 pioneering people (Simon, Selznick, Merton, Cyert and March) main principles of the neoclassical organization theory are presented one by one. Section 4 mentions strengths and weaknesses of the neoclassical organizational theory and section 5 discusses and concludes the paper.
Keywords: Neoclassical, Organization, Organization Theory.