In this assignment, I will apply the Burrell and Morgan's Four Paradigms framework to analyse the organisational structure of Bank of China. The data for my analysis is mainly based on my past working experience in this organisation. In order to support for my structural analysis, the theory of bureaucracy developed by Max Weber (1947) will be employed. The assignment begins by discussing Burrell and Morgan's multiple paradigms with emphasis on the Functionalist Paradigm, as the preferred paradigm and the Weber's theory that I will apply to my study. The main part of this assignment will focus on analysis of researched organisation. It then draws some conclusions and recommendations based on the findings. .
My Analytical Framework/Paradigm.
The Four Paradigms of organizational analysis developed by Burrell and Morgen (1979) is one of the most widely applied paradigmatic frameworks in analysing organisations (Grant & Perren, 2002). The model classifies sociological theories along the two dimensions of regulation versus change and subjectivity versus objectivity (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). Four Paradigms include Radical Humanist, Radical Structuralist, Interpretive and Functionalist. The four paradigms specify four way of thinking about the social world based upon "different meta-theoretical assumptions" about the nature of an organization (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). Each paradigm therefore reflects a different view of social reality. It regards to researchers to researcher's basic assumptions which are often unconscious (Morgan, 1980). Therefore, a researcher rarely moves out from his or her particular paradigm.
Each paradigm has some shared and different feature with others in term of two dimensions (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). The functionalist and interpretive paradigms are regarded as sociology of regulation while radical humanist and radical structuralist paradigm refer to the sociology of radical change.
