to be grounded in a ‘theory of organization.’ Managerial work generally and human
resourcing work speciWcally is ‘organizing work.’ And it occurs in formally
structured enterprises which utilize human labor. These work organizations con-
stitute the topic of organization theory.
6.2 Organizations and
Organization Theory
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Organization theory can be characterized asan intellectual activity which utilizes
methodological and conceptual resources from social science disciplines such as soci-
ology, social psychology, and anthropology in order to provide explanations of how
things happen in the sphere of authoritatively co-coordinated human enterprises.
The wording ‘authoritatively coordinated human enterprises’ is a more sociologic-
ally sophisticated way of referring to work organizations. It recognizes that the
social arrangements under consideration—companies, schools, churches, armies,
public administrations, and so on—are all characterized by their use of bureau-
cratic ways of coordinating task-based activities. And Max Weber’s classic charac-
terization of bureaucracy emphasized the centrality of ‘authority’ (legitimized
power) in these organizing processes (Weber 1978 ). Bureaucracy, in the seminal
Weberian formulation, involves the control and coordination of work tasks
through a hierarchy of appropriately qualiWed oYce holders, whose authority
derives from their expertise and who rationally devise a system of rules and
procedures that are calculated to provide the most appropriate means of achieving
speciWed ends. This characterization comes from Weber’s ‘ideal type’ of bureau-
cracy (a construct of what a bureaucracy would look like if it existed in a pure
form—nota description of what an bureaucracy ideallyshouldbe). Managers in
work organizations are ‘appropriately qualiWed oYce holders’ in this sense. An HR
manager is thus appointed, in principle, on the grounds of their experience and
qualiWcations as the best person available to do the HR tasks speciWed in a formal
organizational ‘job description.’ Their ‘right’ or their authority to appoint people,
instruct staV, or make workers redundant derives from their technical HR expertise
and its linking, through their formal role in the managerial hierarchy, to speciWc
organizational tasks.
Whilst recognizing the necessity of organization theory’s attending to the formal
aspects of organizational life, we must remember that the formal or ‘oYcial’
aspects are always in interplay with the informal or unoYcial within the ‘negotiated
order’ of every organization (Strauss et al. 1963 ; Strauss 1978 ; Day and Day 1997 ;
Watson 2001 a). And we must also remember that organizations are ‘sites of
organization theory and hrm 109