Page 345 - Cultures and Organizations

310 CULTURES IN ORGANIZATIONS

Whereas Taylor dealt only implicitly with the exercise of authority
in organizations, another American pioneer of organization theory, Mary
Parker Follett (1868–1933), did address the issue squarely. She wrote:

How can we avoid the two extremes: too great bossism in giving orders,
and practically no orders given? . . . My solution is to depersonalize the
giving of orders, to unite all concerned in a study of the situation, to dis-
cover the law of the situation and to obey that. . . . One person should not
give orders to another person, but both should agree to take their orders
from the situation. 12

In the conception of Taylor and Follett, the authority is neither in the
person nor in the rules but rather, as Follett puts it, in the situation. We
recognize the model of the organization as a market, in which market con-
ditions dictate what will happen.
Sun Yat-sen (1867–1925), from China, was a scholar from the fourth
corner of the power distance–uncertainty avoidance diagram. He received
a Western education in Hawaii and Hong Kong and became a political
revolutionary. As China started industrialization much later than the West,
there is no indigenous theorist of industrial organization contemporary
with Fayol, Weber, and Taylor. However, Sun was concerned with orga-
nization, albeit political. He wanted to replace the ailing government of
the Manchu emperors by a modern Chinese state. He eventually became,

for a short period, nominally the first president of the Chinese Republic.
Sun’s design for a Chinese form of government represents an integration of
Western and traditional Chinese elements. From the West, he introduced
Montesquieu’s trias politica: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Unlike in the West, though, all three are placed under the authority of the
president. Two more branches are added, both derived from Chinese tra-

dition—the examination branch (determining access to the civil service)
and the control branch, supposed to audit the government—bringing the
total up to fi ve. 13
This remarkable mix of two systems is formally the basis of the present
government structure of Taiwan, which has inherited Sun’s ideas through
the Kuomintang party. It stresses the authority of the president (large
power distance): the legislative and judicial powers, which in the West are
meant to guarantee government by law, are made dependent on the ruler
and paralleled by the examination and control powers, which are based on
government of man (weak uncertainty avoidance). It is the family model,