Organisational Analysis: Organisations are everywhere and come in many different forms. Their ubiquity and complexity means many of our social problems are organisational in nature and that is why we need to study organisations.

From the moment a person is born he/she begins the lifelong process of organizational interaction. A person is usually born in a hospital where he/she is subjected to the policies and processes of the hospital, released to a family, whether biological or foster, and subjected to the cultures and traditions of that family, grows up in a society whose norms one must adhere to and delinquent behaviour is addressed using social organizations and one will grow and die whilst virtually all his/ her life is an interaction with organizations. Learning processes, behavioural reinforcement or punishment is through organizations. Some go on to argue that human beings are like objects thrust into the world to be manipulated by organizational circumstances. It is in light of the above view that this discourse seeks to critically explore the assertion that, “Organizations are everywhere and come in many different forms. Their ubiquity and complexity means many of our social problems are organizational in nature and that is why we need to study organizations.” This discourse will define operational terms, explore the social problem of unemployment at length and that of domestic violence briefly, highlight how these social problems are organizational, use theoretical approaches to establish how the organizations operate and create the social problems and ways of reinforcing the organizations to ameliorate the social problems. A personal perspective will conclude the paper.

Scott (1995) defines organisations as social structures created by individuals to support the collaborative pursuit of certain goals. Robbins and Barnwell (2012) state that an organization is a consciously coordinated social entity with a relatively identifiable boundary that functions on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or a set of goals. Silverman (1970) notes that the definitions of organizations have the aspect of goals, formality and/or integration. However, for the purpose of this discourse an organisations shall be defined as any social structures, formal or informal, that are created by individuals in pursuit of shared values.

The social problems faced by individuals in society may stem from a single source organization or a plethora of formal organisations which are interlinked by their multiplicity of interactions which in turn culminates in the problems indigenous to one organization being replicated in many others. Unemployment is one such social problem that has bedevilled Zimbabwe. With an unemployment rate of 95% (Worstall, 2017), Zimbabwe has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. This has led to a lot of other offshoot social problems like crime, prostitution, poverty, migration, HIV and AIDS, discordant families and many other social ills. Thus if the social problem of unemployment continues unabated it has the capacity to degenerate into a social catastrophe whose effects will be unsurmountable. It is thus important to solve the problem of unemployment at its grassroots levels to avoid future problems of an exacerbated magnitude.

The Government of Zimbabwe is a macro organization which is composed of numerous micro organizations whose sum make up the Government. It is therefore imperative that when the Government is analysed as a source of social problems, its constituent organisations be identified. Some of the organisations which are microcosms of the macrocosm of Government are political parties, President, Legislature, Judiciary, Ministers, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and Government departments. The reason for focusing on the Government instead of a single constituent organisation is the fact that the roles of the constituent organisations at times interlink and overlap and it would appear frivolous to attribute all challenges to a single constituent organization as compared to attributing the challenges to Government. This follows the Gestalt Principle that, ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ (Koffka as cited by Bruce, Green and Georgeson, 1996. P.110)

The Government of Zimbabwe through the ruling ZANU PF party and Legislature instituted a fast track land reform in a bid to consolidate the support of the electorate from the threat of the pro-labour MDC party in the YES/NO Referendum of 2000. The outcome of that referendum was a No vote which signified a victory for MDC. ZANU PF then intensified its land redistribution strategy culminating in rubber stamping the land reform through a ruling by the late Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, after the constructive dismissal/retirement of Retired Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay in 2001 (www.pindula.co.zw). This was in preparation for the 2002 elections. These sequence of events heralded the dawn of unemployment in Zimbabwe as farm workers of former white commercial farmers became unemployed as the new land owners had neither financial nor technical capacity to utilise the land as the previous owners did. This had a ripple effect as downstream industries that relied on agricultural produce like Cashel Valley, Cairns Foods, Victoria Foods, Blue Ribbon Industries, Grain Marketing Board, COTTCO and David Whitehead among others started facing viability challenges and resorted to retrenchments. This was the advent of high unemployment in Zimbabwe.

In a retaliatory manner the MDC sought to make the country ungovernable by calling for sanctions from Britain, United States of America, The European Union, Australia and Canada in 2002 (UK Telegraph, 14 January 2002). ZANU PF after 2003 tried to shore up local support as the momentum of the land reform had subsided and the negative effects of the land reform and sanctions were now apparent. They did this through the indigenisation policy which led to investment flight, further increasing unemployment. The policy was later signed into an Act of Parliament in 2008 (www.loc.gov). There are accusations and counter accusations between opposition and the ruling parties on who is to blame for some of the company closures and deals that failed to materialise during the tenure of the inclusive Government (2009-2013) chief among them the ZISCO Steel – ESSER deal (Chronicle, July 5 2016). These events though they were of a political nature and arose from the institution of Government as a whole, their effects transcended economic sectors and social structures to result in the current problem of unemployment.

The second social problem that is greatly affecting the Zimbabwean society is domestic violence. This social problem has far reaching consequences and has led to consequence problems like murders, body harm, disfigurement, and when solutions are offered by formal organisations it leads to incarceration, divorce and broken families. The problem seems to be stemming from the family unit as an organization. The family unit in Zimbabwe has evolved over time. The advent or technology, children’s rights, women’s rights, neo-feminism and anti-patriarchy legislation have drastically changed the value systems, cultures and norms of families. However, the differential acceptance rate and lack of consensus gives rise to disagreements which at times culminate in domestic violence due to perceived irreconcilability by one or more members of the family organisation. Thus, though bordering informality, the family unit is an organisation that has given rise to the social problem of domestic violence of late.

The bounded rationality theory of Herbert Simon as explained by Barros (2010) state that individuals seek a satisficing decision, one that satisfies and suffices for the decision maker. This holds true for the Zimbabwean Government as the organisational root cause of unemployment in Zimbabwe. The decisions that they have been making that led to high unemployment levels were satisfactory and sufficing at the time being as they achieved intended political objectives. They were also time bound by the impending elections in almost all of the scenarios they made these major decisions. The Government of Zimbabwe also seemed to have borrowed from Maslow (1987) in that they sought to motivate the electorate by providing them with physiological needs, land for shelter and land for food. However, adopting the whole hierarchy on needs was not sustainable hence the current high levels of unemployment the country faces.

The family and the Government of Zimbabwe as the root causal organisations seems to follow the trajectory of Henry Mintzberg’s (1985) theorising of organisations as a political arenas expounded by Karademir and Karademir (2015). Mintzberg (1985) describes politics as having the ability to capture a whole or part of an organisation, giving rise to what he termed ‘the political arena.’ This is a scenario where various factors are at play where one tries to push his/her personal agenda against that of a perceived rival. In the case of the Government of Zimbabwe the power dynamics that were at play entailed to elections and the need to sway the electorate. In the family set-up the power dynamics that are at play relate to how the father, mother or children perceive they are being treated according to their perceived importance as indoctrinated by their inclination towards either patriarchy, neo-feminism or children’s activism. 

The problem of unemployment whose root cause lie in the Government organization can be solved by trying to establish a social structure of Government as a negotiated order. Schulze (1986) who is a Symbolic Interactionist Sociologist argued that organisations should be formed on the basis of negotiations through different individuals. These negotiations are believed to be able to ameliorate the social problems that arise from the Government. A precedent was set in Zimbabwe during the period between 2009 and 2013 when the Government of Zimbabwe was a negotiated order named the Government of National Unity (GNU). This negotiated order led to economic stabilisation and the political antics that the political parties had been exhibiting prior to this period stopped and at times sought to be reversed. This is a clear indication that viewing organisations as a negotiated order, and forming Government out of negotiation, would result in solving the social problem of unemployment. Operationalising the new Zimbabwean constitution of 2013 that arose as a result of consultations and a referendum will also lead to the amelioration of the unemployment social problem as the constitution is a documentation of the negotiated order of Government as a macro organisation.

The social problem of domestic violence needs to be rectified by application of the view of organisations as cultural contexts. This brings to the fore an acknowledgement that at times members of the family organization fail to adapt externally and integrate internally. Organisations as a cultural context entails that new ways of doing things should have worked so well enough to be considered valid and to be gradually taught to new members as a correct way to feel, think and perceive. Thus if the concepts of patriarchy, neo-feminism and children’s rights are gradually taught, the family organisation will not encounter cultural shock which results in disagreements, confrontations and domestic violence. This would help in ameliorating the social problem of domestic violence. If this concept does not work then the idea of punishment to offenders as negative reinforcement should be considered in line of Michel Foucault’s approach to power, panoptic and the prison system.

Given the above discourse it is the view of the writer that the social problems being faced are organisational in nature, but they do not stem from a single organisation. Rather they stem from a multiplicity of organisations which are interrelated and which interface with each other such that at times it is not apparent were the true sphere of influence of one organisation ends. Thus the attempt to solve the organisational root cause to problems usually transcends organisations and the effects of such might actually in turn solve other social problems that might not have been initially targeted.

Reference List

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