Research On Barnard’s Thoughts Of The Cooperation System

Chester I. Barnard is the founder of Social System School in Western Modern Management and called the Father of Modern Management. For a series of basic issues of organization and management theory, Barnard brought totally different opinions with traditional theory. He believed organization is a complicated social cooperation system and should be analyzed and investigated from viewpoint of Sociology. According to Barnard, the reasons which organizations cannot meet the two necessary criteria for survival are:effectiveness and efficiency. If fulfills the motivation of its participants and keeps its effectiveness within organization, cooperation will sustainable and the organization will keep operating. The two principles of Effectiveness and Efficiency combine the requirement of organization and individual. It is considered a big breakthrough in management thinking.This article includes four parts to briefly investigate and analyze Barnard’s cooperation system. The first part is to introduce the rationale and purpose of topic selection, domestic and international research dynamics, basic ideas and methodology of the study. The second part is to analyze the background theory which deduced cooperation system. The rationality of cooperation system theory is generated by the analysis for scientific management theory and interpersonal relationship theory. The inevitability of cooperation system theory is generated by the analysis for the imperfection of scientific management theory and interpersonal relationship theory. The third part is to introduce the main content of cooperation system theory, define related concepts, expatiate the effectiveness and efficiency respectively for individual behavior, for cooperative behavior and for cooperation system and clarify the intrinsic logical relationship among them. The fourth part is to make an all-round evaluation for Barnard’s theory, by three aspects:the update, complementarity and innovation of cooperation theory for previous theory; the response for management theory and practice, the impact on modern management theory and practice. In this part, three enlightenments are also generated by the combination of cooperation system theory and domestic administrative management:people oriented, build up public service-oriented government, combine effectiveness and efficiency and strengthen communication and cooperation.This article followed the logical mainstream of starting from effectiveness and efficiency of individual behavior, to effectiveness and efficiency of cooperative behavior and to effectiveness and efficiency of cooperation system, summarize and clarify scattered cooperation system theory from Barnard’s book and article, investigate and analyze intensively for the theory to make it logical and systematic. Based on domestic current reformation of administrative management and government management innovation, explore sufficiently the enlightenments and reference of Barnard’s theory for domestic administrative management.