Summary Introduction to Organisation Design

A snapshot of the summary - Introduction to Organisation Design

• IOD Intro

• what are the five core aspects of designing

  1. multiple models of possible futures with continuous refinement
  2. thrownness: not a blank state, designer dropped into conditions and has to work his way out of it
  3. collaboration: no one can know everything, against the heroic tale
  4. liquid crystal: iterations between leaving open and fixing
  5. legacy: being conscious of the effects one's actions
• What does the design process look like?

  • search for goals: situation analysis and goal definition
  • search for solutions: concept synthesis and concept analysis
  • selection: evaluation and decision
• What are the five interrelated aspects of OD?

  1. goals and scope
  2. strategy
  3. structure
  4. coordination and control
  5. processes and people
• What are the four perspectives on design

  1. contingency/information sharing
  2. sociotechnical systems design
  3. lean management
  4. human centred job design

• contingency approach

• Which two questions does OD deal with?

  1. how to partition a big task into smaller sub-unit tasks
  2. how to coordinate these smaller sub-unit tasks so they fit together efficiently to realise the bigger task
• what is a closed system approach?

  an organisation is seen as a machine, predictable, with defined norms of behaviour from within the system, not adapting to the environment
• What is an open systems approach?

  Change is the center, and it is essential to sense contingencies in the environment and adaption to these changes is perceived as a necessity
• What are the main premises of Burton et al.?

  1. all five aspects of OD should be aligned in such a way that best fits with challenges in the environment
     
  2. all five aspects influence information processing in the organisation (stability of the environment)
• what are the four main premises of Gailbraith's information processing perspective?

  1. an organisation uses information to coordinate and control its activities
     
  2. by processing information, the organisation sees what is happening, analyses problems and makes choices on what to do
  3. the more uncertain the organisational environment, the more information needs to be processed within the organisation, but the quicker the response is needed
  4. the five aspects can be used to taylor the way organisations can process information to environmental demands 
• Characteristics of predictable environment

  1. tasks are characterised by routine work
  2. little information sharing (long response time)
  3. tasks can be standardised 
  4. hierarchical control