Formal modeling for work systems design

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

This article presents work system theory (WST) as a body of theory for analysis, explanation, prediction, and design and action (Gregor, 2006) related to systems in organizations. It provides background about how WST evolved, summarizes major components of WST, and explains that each of the five types of theory identified by Gregor (2006) appears in WST. The discussion of WST emphasizes its overall contribution to knowledge by emphasizing areas in which it differs from commonly used terminology, frameworks, and beliefs within the IS field. In a discipline in which even basic terms such as system, service, implementation, and user have many contradictory meanings, a key goal of WST is to demonstrate the possibility of using an internally consistent set of assumptions, concepts, frameworks, and principles as a basis for analysis, explanation, prediction, and design and action.

… the organization: managing layoffs, divestitures, and …, 2003

Organizational design enhances a company’s business strategy by configuring and reconfiguring organizations through the alignment of processes, rewards, policies, structures, and practices. When the organizational design process takes place, the multiple changes involved have the potential to spur conflict that can adversely affect employees and the organization itself. Though conflict naturally ensues during organizational change, it can be successfully lessened with proper management. The purpose of this paper is to present a conflict management model for change agents to use when involved in organizational design. The model uses the acronym CHANGES, which stands for areas of attention for change agents to consider throughout the design process. These areas are: Communication, Help, Assessment, New Roles, Guidelines, Education, and Support.

This article reports on the development and pilot testing of a group exercise intended to improve participants’ understanding of two key organization design concepts: Work process interdependency and Coordination cost. In the exercise, participants are divided into groups representing departments and are then asked to reconfigure the groups while considering both benefits (reduced coordination costs) and costs (of reconfiguration). The exercise was supported by the development of a tool, quantifying the concepts of interdependency and coordination cost. Future versions of the exercise may be used to study more systematically the capacity of individuals and groups to take into account multiple interdependencies in optimizing a design at the individual, group and system level.

2020

This study focuses on Organizational Change as an example of Socio-Technical Design (STD). STD is an approach that aims to give equal weight to social and technical issues when new work systems are being designed [8]. It is widely acknowledged that implementing a sociotechnical design approach leads to systems that are more acceptable by stakeholders during organizational change. Despite this, STD is not often used or not correctly practiced in organizations. Baxter and Sommerville noted that even though many managers realize that socio-technical issues are important, socio-technical design methods are rarely used [1]. The study data was derived from the preliminary work done on the case study in a telecommunication company adopting an Action Research (AR) approach. It is based on the researcher and participants' experience together with reflection, a collaboration between the researcher and the employees’. Action research in an organizational setting draws the researcher and th...

Encyclopedia of Strategic Leadership and Management, 2000

With change an ever-present factor of life, one would expect great agreement on what the essential elements are for a successful change effort or a response to a changed situation. However, that is not the case and it is generally recognized that most change programs fail for a number of reasons that are only identified in hindsight. Many of these failures can be traced to attempts at replicating prior change efforts that were successful. This is based upon the assumption that a best practice for change can be identified through the processes that were used in the earlier attempt. However, this fails to recognize the myriad of factors that might be different, any one of which might invalidate a critical component of success in the earlier success. The attempt here is to focus on the core components of change with the realization that there is no simple answer that can be applied in all cases.

The leaders managing the organizational changes for this paper are two men I worked closely with, one I read about, and myself. I know this deviates from the assignment of choosing a single leader, but the uniqueness of my opportunity to work with these two executives precisely as they were overseeing very major institution changes is something I wish to take advantage of. I learned by watching these men. Their exclusive missions were restructuring and change. Now, in retrospect, and through applying the literature read in this course, there are valuable lessons for me. I will also refer to James Ingram the executive director of WFP for decade preceding Ms. Bertini. Although we read his book "Bread and Stones" for the course UN Managing for Change, we had no writing assignments based on this book, so my work here was done exclusively for this course (PPA 895-1). I feel it is relevant since the overwhelming focus of Mr. Ingram's tenure at WFP was struggling to institute direly needed change at the WFP. The book is almost entirely about his struggle to bring this about which he finally did achieve. This is significant for me since I wish to emulate many of the components of his leadership.

Estudios Gerenciales, 2014

Keywords: Organizational learning Processes of learning

Two empirical phenomena motivate our study. First is managers' ongoing pursuit of effective change management technology despite the gigantic normative body of knowledge on the subject. This pursuit is intensifying as planned changes become more complex, and as pressure to execute mounts. Second, an increasing number of organizations are experimenting with "self-assessment"--a process of evaluating the effectiveness of organizational systems with little or no outside help. The quality This work could not have been possible without the support and friendship of many people. First and foremost, I would like to thank my family for their loyalty, patience, and love despite my chronic absence from events that merited my presence. A strong family foundation has served as a sort of reference beacon for organizing my priorities.