(Simulated) Organizations in Action: A reconfiguration exercise

Journal of Organization Design, 2012

Coordination, and the lack of it, is frequently ascribed as a key role in successful and less successful building processes. Over the last four decades, the understanding of coordination has shifted from emphasizing formal structures to emphasizing informal mechanisms. A review of four articles shows this development as well as how the formal and informal structures and mechanisms relate. The review is done from a perspective of a large design-build project in Denmark. The review indicates, that formal and informal coordination mechanisms alone are not sufficient to explain coordination in practice. The main coordination mechanisms discussed are mutual adjustment, direct supervision, standardization, relational coordination, adaptive capacity, and IT as a tool to accomplish task and impose a chronological rhythm and schedule on the work processes. From this point of departure a new set of coordination mechanisms for practice is developed rooted in current institutional theory. The mechanisms are internal building of an institution and external building of relationships between a number of institutions. The conclusion is that existing literature on coordination does not fully describe the complexity of coordination in an institutionalised design-build organisation and that a new set of coordination mechanisms rooted in institutional theory contributes to our understanding of complex coordination.

Academy of Management Annals, 2020

for their thoughtful feedback.

While there have been numerous empirical and theoretical contributions in both the accounting and management literatures examining independently the implications of strategy and structure on control system design, there has been little research examining the interdependencies among the various elements of organization design. Hospitals represent an empirical setting where a diversity of structural arrangements and strategic orientations are both readily observable and recognized as having implications for other elements of control systems. Using data collected from chief executive officers and medical directors in hospitals, this study examines how strategic choices influence adaptations in structure and performance measurement systems. The findings from this study suggest that there are significant interdependencies between strategic choice, structure, and performance measurement system design and that when the separate elements of organization design complement each other, performance is enhanced.

This paper introduces a set of information technology variables which can be used in designing organizations, We first look at traditional design variables and then present a series of options enabled by modern information technology. We use these IT design variables to describe four prototypical organizationsn which are beginning to appear in the workplace: virtual, negotiated, traditional and vertically integrated. It is argued that an organization designer must also consider how structure and technology influence job tasks and peopld in order to be successful. The paper discusses potential implementation difficulties, particularly in motivating traditional organizations to take advantage of IT design variables. The paper concludes that the design of information technology and the design of organizations is largely becoming the same task.

DS 112: Proceedings of the 23rd International DSM Conference (DSM 2021), Montréal, Canada, October, 12 - 14, 2021, 2021

A key organization design principle is to group interdependent elements in the same clusters. This principle is the basis for the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), which can be used to automate the identification of clusters (e.g., teams). However, it may sometimes be necessary to depart from this design principle. We focus on one such situation, where the expected value of consolidating resources is deemed to be higher than the reduction in coordination costs from grouping resources in a modular cluster. We propose a set of criteria that can be used to assess consolidation potential as well as consolidation costs. We describe a solution for collecting subjective assessments of the value of consolidation and for incorporating this information into the DSM. This approach makes it possible to continue the use of the already established MDL clustering algorithm. We demonstrate the approach utilizing a simple data set with hypothetical values.

1993

We are developing a prototype of a simulation development tool to aid administrators in the process of redesigning organizational structures. The purpose of the system is to help organization designers to more precisely model their hypothetical designs, and, by simulation, to predict key facets of the overall behavior of their proposed organizational structures. The tool will help them to evaluate the restructured organization's potential for improved efficiency, or spot potential weaknesses in the system during peak loads. With this tool, organizational models are built using a library of simulation components characterizing commonly used coordination structures and communications mechanisms. Our hypothesis is that the structuring of the design tool around a model construction library of coordination mechanisms will allow designers to readily compose existing and proposed organizational structures to effectively evaluate their options.

Ann Arbor

Organizational Self-Design (OSD) is a model of Organizational Change from the perspective of Distributed Arti cial Intelligence (DAI). We present a topdown model of OSD in the context of Cooperative Distributed Problem Solving (CDPS). We emphasize the task environment as an important factor in determining an e ective organizational structure. We provide an example of an analytical model of organization performance for an addition task using tree structure organizations, and show how such model can be used to endow a Distributed Network Mangement system with the capability to adapt to changing task environments via OSD.

1997

Journal of Organization Design, vol. 4, no. 2, 2015

Much of the literature linking organizational design to performance falls into two broad streams. One conceptualizes structure bureaucratically, i.e. in terms of a hierarchical pattern of authority or reporting relationships, as well as the degree of standardization, formalization, specialization, etc. The impact of structure and other elements of design on performance is most typically contingent upon other factors such as strategy, task characteristics, and environmental conditions. The other stream conceives of structure more informally, i.e. as a network of interpersonal and intra-organizational relationships. Properties of informal structure are typically shown to have a more direct (less contingent) impact on organizational performance. Despite these rather pronounced differences, considerable overlap and complementarity exists between the two streams. Little of it has been systematically examined, however. In this paper I compare and contrast a pair of exemplars from each stream—the information-processing perspective and the social network perspective—with respect to their conceptualizations of organization design and its relationship to performance. The paper concludes with several specific recommendations for future research combining the two approaches.

2017

Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 1996

Large scale and multidisciplinary engineering projects (e.g., design of a hospital building) are often complex. They usually involve many interdependent activities and require intensive coordination among actors (i.e., designers) to deal with activity interdependencies. To make such projects more effective and efficient, one needs to understand how coordination requirements are generated and what coordination mechanisms should be applied for given project situations. Our research on the Virtual Design Team (VDT) attempts to develop a computational model of project organizations to analyze how activity interdependencies raise coordination needs and how organization design and communication tools change team coordination capacity and project performance. The VDT model is built based on contingency theory (Galbraith, 1977) and our observations about collaborative and multidisciplinary work in large, complex projects. VDT explicitly models actors, activities, communication tools and organizations. Based on our extended information-processing view of organizations, VDT simulates the actions of, and interactions among actors as processes of attention allocation, capacity allocation, and communication. VDT evaluates organization performance by measuring emergent project duration, direct cost, and coordination quality. The VDT model has been tested internally, and evaluated externally through case-studies. We found three way qualitative consistency among predictions of the simulation model, of organization theory, and of experienced project managers. In this paper, we present the VDT model in detail and discuss some general issues involved in computational organization modeling, including level of abstraction of tasks and actors' reasoning, and model validation.

The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 2007

Herbert Simon once suggested that the social sciences are actually the hard sciences due to the enormous complexity and interconnectedness of the elements within social systems. This insight is also critical in understanding the nature of change and development of large organizational systems. Adopting a science-based design approach, the authors place emphasis on the importance of developing construction principles and design rules for the implementation of large-scale organization development (OD) interventions. The empirical part of the article draws on several case studies of OD projects that employ the methods of circular redesign. The first case illustrates how implementation may fail as a result of a lack of awareness of the complexity of OD implementation and experimentation processes. The second case suggests that a coherent set of principles and rules can provide a common framework and language for scholars, managers, and consultants working together in large-scale organizational change projects.