Behavioural Approach of Chester Barnard in an Organization

Maintaining organization communication and formulation of purpose comes under the authority of the executive according to Barnard. Coordinating with the employees of different departments having diverse specification is must for the healthy functioning of any organization.

In this Behavioral approach, Barnard had explained that the top executive which formulates the plan should keep in mind the zone of indifference of the lower level employees. After the plan and policies have been formulated they need to be communicated to employees working in different departments of the organization. 

These departments are having employees of diverse specialization so owing to their diverse specialization there are chances that they may infer the communicated purpose in a different way than intended so coordination is required to make them understand the original purpose as mismatch in understanding the purpose may lead to undesirable results.

So we can see that at all the four steps of formulating purpose, communicating them to departments, making the purpose a common purpose for different departments having different specialization and doing all of this by exercising authority is nothing else but coordination. 

Barnard has given much attention to the formulation and implementation of purpose but the various processes and forms in which this formulation and implementation has to be done has not been detailed exactly.

Range of choice of purpose has been narrowed down because of the narrow zone of indifference of the lower level employees. Barnard in order to improve the functioning and efficiency of the organizational set up says that the executive should issue communication that lies within the range of zone of indifference of lower level employees.

Barnard focus was on the attainment of cooperative action among the employees of the organization and so he has tried to pacify both – the organizational purpose and the individual motive of the employees. So if more and more objectives are to be completed the choice of purpose will be restricted.

Barnard also did not focused much on how to formulate goals and objectives for the organization in abstract manner. It can be said that may be the ground level conditions of various organizations are different and being aware of this fact, Barnard would have thought that describing the exact process will become ineffective in different and diverse circumstances.