Control in organizations comes from a number of sources, formal and informal, cultural and environmental, but control can also be attributed to technical and bureaucratic sources. This research examines the technical and bureaucratic sources of organizational control by considering the work of four different authors writing over a period of 15 years. The goal is to come to a better understanding of how technology and bureaucracy influence control in organizations, and to determine a direction for future research into this area.
Four readings have been selected from diverse writers: Peter Drucker, writing in 1993 about post-capitalist society; Edwards, writing in 1979 about technical and bureaucratic control; John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in 1979 about technostructure and its impact on the organization; and, Bensman and Lilienfeld writing in 1991 about bureaucracies and planning. These readings stretch across a time period in which much attention was paid to how organizations are structured and also during a time when significant advances were made in technology which changed the technical environment of many organizations. As a result, these readings offer insights into the business world of both of these periods and also help today's business professional understand how bureaucracy and technology can both influence the structure of organizations.
Drucker provides a historical perspective from which the other readings can be considered. He suggests that the explosion of knowledge that resulted in the Industrial Revolution was the result of the speed with which capitalism was able to spread across the globe and the same speed with which technical advances coalesced into the industrial revolution (Drucker). Drucker suggests that capitalism became a system and expanded to encompass all of society in the past 250 years where it previously had been confined to smaller groups. At the same time, technological change began to i...