What is Organization Theory and Management Theory?
You have to write the essay, but the main schools are strictly hierarchical like the Catholic Church versus modern organizations like those proposed by E. Etzioni (“Matrix organizations”). The development of technology and the skills needed in the creative processes calls for completely new ways of organizing the work. The “Director” cannot be in charge, to manage this requires more dispatching information and brokering work, stop the wild chases and support the right ones. Bear in mind that Bill Gates used to be a clever, ingenious writer of computer code. As director of the software company he was able to identify what was possible to make. But the smart code is not always what people want, and this is where “Marketing” comes in and delivers the painful truth about what can be sold “to the people out there”. This is where Steve Jobs was a genius, but lacked the skills. You have to make what the people will buy. Facebook is another example, there is no “pope” and no line of “middle managers” – the people at the top can step in and hack code – but someone has to be in charge. How you organize the work, and how you set goals, and motivate everyone to pull their share of the work so that the company is successful is management. The theory is to model how this should be done, so your views and skills can be exchanged with other people. Many fear formalization and comparative analysis, and I admit there is a pile of plain BS published in this discipline.