Two Approaches to Organizational Practice (Ch. 20)

Stanley Deetz's idea of there being two approaches to organizational practice discusses the decision making process with in corporate organizations. The first approach systematically exclude the ideas of other members of the organization who are mostly the ones being affected by these decisions. Deetz calls this "managerial control." Then he goes on to explain the idea of codetermination, where there is collaborative decision making promoting democracy within the organization. In the organization that I work for, we do more collaborative decision making rather than managerial control. Being an arts institution, we try to come up with different ideas, and often ask each other for their opinions with certain issues. It helps promote creativity and trush between the members of the organization. We always have some sort of say in what goes on. I don't think I would be able to handle the idea of a corporation making all of my decisions for me. I don't think that it is fair for a small group of people to be the only ones allowed to make decisions for a large group of people. I feel that makes the company "un-human", not taking the time to care about how their decisions affect others. I feel that there is little communication among the members of an organization when a small group is making all of the decisions.