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College notes Interventions In Organization Organizational Development, ISBN: 9781317442301
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Interventions in OrganizationLecture 1: introduction (9 Nov)
Episodic intervention is a kind of change in organizations, it changes the structure of organizations.
It’s about the change in the structure.
Problems have to be related to the structure of organizations. Structure of organizations the way you
define tasks (allocated activities) and how you relate them to kind of networks of tasks and
individuals. Example of structure = bureaucratic. Many societal issues are related to the structures of
organizations. Problems are related to the structure; you want to change that structure. But often
these structures require a fundamental structural change. Changing from bureaucracies to horizontal
structure requires a fundamental change. Then you need an episodic intervention in structure.
Two relevant questions:
1) What are episodic interventions (theoretical framework in book)
a. You need something to know about organizations
b. About the organizational structure
c. And about interventions
2) And how do you conduct them?
a. 3D model
Question 1 what are episodic interventions?
- What are organizations? Is a social system and having an effect, a societal contribution:
o Products & services
o Positive side effects of producing products/services e.g., employment, quality of
work (is not itself the production)
o Negative side effects e.g., unemployment, pollution etc.
CSR can be defined by the three effects above, where you want to maximize as much as positive
effects and minimize negative side effects. Social system = system of interlocking interactions
(realizing the societal contribution). It has four basic activities:
o Setting goals (mission/vision)
o Designing conditions (Infrastructure = HR, technology, structure (allocating tasks))
o Operational regulation
o Performing transformation processes
1
,Culture = shared, implicit set of values, norms, basic assumptions of guiding behavior. In some
organizations you have like “here we work until late”. This guides people’s behavior, so people are
going to work late.
- What is the organizational structure? / What are interventions?
Structural development = important. Improve structure. You want organizations to recognize bad
structures and to change them. Structure development is actually always there is normal health
organization. It redesigns and adjust/accept change. Organization has a current structure, which is
not working well, so they redesign their structure (two teams to one team), they implement it,
monitor it, and then adjust/accept the new design and then there is a new structure.
Organizational development = Intended improving interaction premises of organization. Improve
your goals, infrastructure etc.
Sometimes organization cannot do structural development itself, then you need episodic
intervention. You need a separate organization to implement change in organizations.
- Example: Large strategic change. From country-based units to customer-based units. Within
the customer-based units, representatives of different countries. This change is simply too
large while performing your regular job, you need a separate organization to help implement
this.
- Example: self-inhibiting structures. They lose the capacity to implement structural change. A
structure itself is so bad, that based on that structure you cannot improve the structure. E.g.,
bureaucratic organizational structure.
Episodic intervention definition = on PowerPoint slide.
Intentional = it’s not by accident, you want to change it
Deliberate = change is based on deliberation, different alternative options, pro/cons of different
structures. You implement the right one
Comprehensive = it’s not only one department that will be changed, the whole organization will be
changed. At least a large part of it.
Having its own separate, temporary intervention organization = a project with its own organization
that helps to change the structure of organization that cannot do itself. This is temporary. The
change is not done by the organization itself, but by a separate one.
2
,Goals of episodic intervention (EI)
Overall goal of episodic intervention is to solve organization problems by changing the structure of
the organization.
- Present a new and better structure, well-designed structure, example from bureaucracies to
team-based structure functional goal
- You can design a proper structure, but if it’s not accepted by the members of the
organization and is not integrated, then of course nothing happens. So episodic intervention
needs to be accepted and integrated by those who have to work with the new structures.
Most new structures fail because this is not taken into account social goal
Question 2 how do conduct them?
3D model is a way of helping to organize the EI.
1. Functional dimension thinking about a new well-designed structure, redesigning,
implementing, and monitoring it.
2. Social dimension the new well-designed structure has to be accepted and integrated by
the members of the organization
3. Infrastructural dimension how to design the separate interventions organization, it needs
a separate intervention organization. What HR, what task should they have? What
technology should they use? HR, structure (tasks), and technology used by the separate
intervention organization to change the structure of the organization itself.
Most EI fail because people take not all three dimensions into account.
Lecture 2(+3): Theoretical background (16 Nov)
Two relevant questions:
1) What are episodic interventions?
- Organizations
- Organizational structures
- Episodic interventions
2) How to conduct episodic interventions?
3D model for EI, three dimensions with the model:
- Functional dimension = relating to thinking about what a proper structure is for a specific
organization
3
, - Social dimension = making sure that proper structure is integrated and accepted by members
of organizations
- Infrastructural dimension = is about how to build a separate intervention organization, how
to build the EI.
By means of EI you want to change a bad organizational structure to a proper structure.
In this lecture, we are going to take a look at the first question (what are EI) by looking at the
theoretical background Chapter 2,3 and 4 relevant)
What are episodic interventions?
- Organizations = extended model
- Organizational structures = what are adequate structures
- Episodic interventions = EI in structures
Theoretical background 1: Organizations extended model
Basic assumptions = shared values and norms that guide the behaviour of employees.
4
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