Organizations, competition and environment Essay

There are different kinds of organizations. All of which exemplify the complex nature of organizational relationships. The public sector is an excellent illustration of the interaction and tensions both within the organizational essentials, as well as those operating between the organization and its environment. Besides, government policy of privatization, deregulation and the commercialization of the public sector has destined that the peculiarity between public and private concerns is becoming ever more blurred, further explanatory our focus. Though, we will discuss them briefly for better understanding. Private organizations sprang up equally for economic and non-economic purposes. Scientific relations, propaganda leagues, religious, sports and tourist associations, etc. , became global in scope. The growth of private organizations for economic rationales is connected with the capitalist expansion of this period. A large numbers of commercial firms implicit an international character by extending their activity to all parts of the world. And so international companies came into being; international competition was synchronized by agreements, ententes and cartels between private organizations, which at times took on a quasi-public form. The public services are those public sector organizations giving public goods to citizens, excluding the public corporations. The major UK public services are central and local government, health care, education, the police, fire services and the armed forces and their employee relations have always be different from those in the private sector. This difference does not relate mainly to the absence of profit, a characteristic the public service sector shares with the private ‘not for profit’ sector, though clearly this limits the resources and strategies of both types of organizations. Nor does it relay to the greater strength of trade unions and communal bargaining in the majority of the public services compared with the private sector, as this has not always been the case and in several public services, i. e. the police and the armed forces, trade unions are outlawed. The difference is that, unlike the private sector, the fabric of public service employee relations is turn through with the key dimension of political power. As Storey has commented, the dilemmas for public sector managers ‘derive . . . rom the inherently political nature of the values and objectives which should inescapably govern the way taken’ (Storey 1992a: 55). Though tere are also Voluntary organizations that held responsible (to funders and to the public) for the grants they receive, and may as well be competing for funding in an added stringent environment. But the extent to which voluntary organizations are held to account for the grant they obtain and the involvedness of the accountability mechanisms needs to be perceptively tailored to the size of the grant, the stage of development of the organization, and the nature and purpose of the organization. Major accountability for the welfare of its citizens, the charities and other voluntary organizations which had established and delivered so many services were to be displaced to the margins, to become little more than icing on the constitutional cake. In Britain the development of voluntary sector studies was led by David Billis and his colleagues, initially at Brunel University and now at the London School of Economics. Other main contributions have been made by the Open University’s Business School and by Martin Knapp and his colleagues at the University of Kent, while scholars at another dozen British universities have turned their consideration to the study of the sector. Developing and disseminating visions and missions for organizations is considered as a basic component of alignment to facilitate stakeholders to know what an organization’s values are and what it stands for. Though, there are definitely those who believe that this has been, in several organizations, a purely cynical process to influence alignment. The gap practiced by staff and customers between the rhetoric of espoused values and the policies, procedures and practices supports this view. Expressions such as ‘we need buy-in’, ‘how will we get staff to sign off’, ‘developing ownership of the vision and values’, while professing to reveal a concern for alignment may simply obscure a deliberate and conscious choice of language somewhat than making real changes in the way things are done. Ever more, the shift in the relationship between an organization and its stakeholders facilitated by technology is resulting in ongoing, dynamic and receptive processes being developed. Organizations view themselves as communities and to act similar to communities not only inside the walls of the corporate offices, plants and outlets but as well outside in the wider society. Corporations do not function in a vacuum. The reason governments’ worldwide proffer giving incentive schemes to entice businesses to their shores is because governments know that the existence of such businesses can provide community benefits least of which are jobs. There are also well documented instance of the desolation that a company pulling out of a country can have on the community it leaves behind. The impacts can be massive. Corporations, consequently, exist within a context a framework which they cannot ignore and a framework in which they have certain responsibilities. There are substantial international differences in the ways in which the local and national economy and the affiliation of the economy to market, state, and civil society are envisioned. The ways in which the local and national economy is conceptualized and understood, and the ways in which it is seen to relay to social exclusion, have taken a variety of forms, partly reflecting changeable national cultural and political traditions and policy choices (Jouen 2000:15-26). In the UK, ‘†¦a country characterized by a welfare system of an enduring type†¦the distribution and production of goods and services was undertaken mainly by†¦non-profit organizations’ (Borzaga and Maiello 1998:25). Reflecting the dearth of a strong welfare state, there has been an entrenched tradition of seeking to build a sense of community and persuade local ‘bottom up’ community development progressively distanced from the politically-inspired community activism in which it was initially rooted. The Third Sector became a new form of organizing welfare via non-profit and voluntary organizations. Planned or command economic system place in the employment of large workforces to mass produce goods for a mass consumer market persistent by growing wages, state demand management policies and state welfare provision. A distinguishing combination of state and market – centered on the economics of mass production/consumption and Keynesian regulation catered for economic and social need transversely the social spectrum. ‘The free market and restricted government form the space in which all the institutions that stand between the individual and the state can develop and thrive’ (Willetts 1999:31), stress the virtue of self-responsibility. The social economy can instill an ideology of self-motivation and self-provision, serving to return individuals as free market agents. Whereas, the capitalist system underline on individual greed, profit, and market value relatively than social need. The linkage between the local and national economy through evocations of community and local connectivity is ever more justified through the specificity of problems at the local level. The localized notion of the economy emphasizes the capability to address specific local needs and tackle localized social segregation. The mixed system, therefore, conceptualized as an aggregation of localized Third Sector organizations, ready and competent to combat localized social exclusion. For ‘the free market/capitalist system approach makes obvious the extent to which alterations in the division of labor between monetized economic activity and non-monetized activity depends on the local context and culture’. As a result, the ‘national’ and, reflecting well-established or further recent forms of regional devolution in a range of advanced capitalist states; ‘regional’ social economies might be simply heterogeneous agglomerations of localized practices. The role of the state in the economy mostly influences organizations. The capacity for adapting organization new open and competitive framework and significant investments in territorial infrastructures, with the resultant risk of an overly heavy presence of the state in the economy. This risk in turn leads to a requirement for institutional reform, to bring the Union closer to citizens, and at the national level to push a considerable amount of power towards lower institutional levels which are closer to the individual citizen, as laid down in the principle of subsidiary which is enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty as one of the basic principles of the Union, and as has been forcefully reasserted during the Intergovernmental Conference. Regulations by the government have the economic result of segmenting the market according to diverse qualities of the product, subject to the government’s authority, on which the public administration depends and which firms recognize. Inside a single regulated segment there can be cost advantages from a more competent use of internal economic resources, from a lessening in transaction costs, and from the generation of constructive externalities. Amongst the different segments subject to different regulations, however, these advantages turn into disadvantages, making entry into the segment in question more arduous. If the qualitative regulation is on a per-country basis, these increased demands take on the uniqueness of non-tariff barriers. It follows that the means by which such regulations are arrived at has been measured extremely relevant, politically, by national governments, all the more so the greater the force of commercial relations among states. Types of market certainly influence the organization; international production mainly comes from the proponents of the ‘internationalization of capital’ school. As focus on monopoly is based on a neoclassical-type ‘quantity theory of competition’, which observes competition and monopoly as polar opposite types of market structure. In fact, competition must be viewed as a process which dialectically links competition and monopoly. Accordingly, escalating concentration need not entail monopoly power, given actual and prospective competition by rival firms. The market forces is a nexus of horizontal relations in which virtual power is not given, but is contestable on the basis of the capability to influence organization productive activity. The organization of production and industrial competition are as a result the instruments for affirming the rights of individuals in society. The economic dynamic is therefore associated to institutional change, and this is linked to the existence of a multiplicity of subjects, free of institutional restrictions and economically independent, capable to compete to confirm their power and their social position. n economy based on the development of market forces needs a strong state to guarantee property rights and to legal private contracts, but also to guarantee those positive externalities that no one individual citizen could set off by himself, like defense, justice and public works, and those essential for collective growth such as communications, educational and health systems, and finally to avert any risk of monopolization (Robbins 1978:37). Organizations of the European Union try to pack the political gap by developing regional alliance as a condition to EU membership. It resulted in the creation of a committee of cooperation in Central Europe between Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1991. This sub-regional cooperation, validated by the Visegrad Agreements, evolved lastly into a quadrilateral free trade agreement (CEFTA). The Treaty on European Union appeared to induct a new era in European foreign policy that appear to imply that European Political Cooperation (EPC) would relent to a more obligatory intergovernmental procedure. The planned use of Community institutions as well appeared to indicate a reduction of the attempt to sustain control over EPC by governments at every levels of the progression. Yet, if the economic effects of Visegrad are worldwide positive, it was not part of a progressive scheme of assimilation into the EU. On the contrary, it has formed a feeling of the marginalization of the eastern countries on the Western European scene. If it was thought that the CEFTA symbolized a structure of dialogue with the EU, the increasing number of eastern countries applying for membership provided such a proposition indefensible. Yet, even though the EU was rather slow in recognizing the goal of the eastern countries to assimilate with Western Europe, the different trade agreements showed the evolution of the EU towards the question of the enlargement. Hence, the approach between the EU and the eastern countries might be illustrated by bilateral Agreements, support programmes (like the PHARE programme) and mainly by the Association Agreements. Certainly, the appreciation of the enthusiasm of the eastern countries to become members of the EU is illustrated in the preamble of the Europe Agreements: ‘Having in mind that the final objective†¦is to become a member of the Community and that this association, in the view of the Parties, will help to achieve this objective’. Official Journal of the European Communities, No. L 347, Brussels, Vol. 36, December 1993). Centrelink co. UK is the coordinated efforts of numerous persons toward common objectives. At the same time, the structure of organization is almost inexorably a hierarchy of superiors and subordinates in which the higher levels exercise power over the lower levels. The thriving leaders of organizations, or more precisely the organization builders, are in any s ociety a small, but aggressive minority. But they feed the aspirations, give expression to the goals, and shape the destinies of peoples. They play the principal roles on the stage of history; they systematize the march of the masses, and they are responsible for the direction, the pace, and the definitive success of the march. The objectives within private and public sector is a result of choice and diversity in the provision of public services has been greater diversity in the range and type of public or near-public bodies used to provide public services. The range of bodies has given significance to the ecology heuristic in decision making about public services. The ecology heuristic is used more when there is an assemblage of stakeholders associated with a service. Like Pascal’s sphere the new and diverse public sector has its bounds everywhere and its centre nowhere. Rhodes (1995) argued that the public sector is increasingly comprised from networks, as well as from hierarchies and markets, as government moves from a system of government into a system of governance: This use sees governance as a broader term than government with services provided by any transformation of government and the private and voluntary sectors. Inter-organizational linkages are a defining feature of service delivery and I use the term network to describe the numerous interdependent actors involved in delivering services. These networks are made up of organizations that need to exchange resources (for example money, information, expertise) to attain their objectives, to maximize their influence over outcomes and to evade becoming dependent on other players in the game (Rhodes 1995:9). The growth of firms’ diversification is a significant element in companies such as Centrelink co. adopting a divisional structure. Over the past ten years over three-quarters of British companies have upturned their diversification; in contrast German companies have been disinclined to pursue refocusing strategies. Stakeholders are constituted to co-ordinate wider goals as if they are a type of social contract, undervalues the extent to which dominant power groupings have set those goals and shaped the appropriate structures. In fact, co-ordination or co-operation might reflect pressure, constraint or acquiescence to power as much as shared goals. Moreover, the development of organizational culture as an analytical device leaves much to be desired. There are troubles of defining the elements which comprise organizational culture, and, until we develop some systematic measures of organizational concept then its utility as an analytical tool should be limited. Even then, culture is much more complex than many credits. It is dynamic, in that the behavior and expressed feelings of staff can adapt a culture over time. Many organizations are also multicultural. Furthermore it is very hard to observe and measure something that is implicit, informal and very often invisible. Given such problems it is difficult to establish consistent links between culture and performance, let alone recognize how such a relationship operates.