Summary of lecture notes from the course introduction to organisation design given on Radboud University. The summary contains lecture notes en information regarding the literature (book & articles)
6. Organization design challenges in practice (guest lecture)
7. Sociotechnical design 1
(Paper Van Eijnatten & van der zwaan – Dutch IOR Approach to OD, section
1&2)
8. Sociotechnical design 2
(Paper De Sitter et al – From complex organizations with simple jobs to simple
organizations with complex jobs (STSD), until page 507)
9. Interplay between design and technology – augmented reality in assembly
industry
10. Lean management 1
(Papers of Wood)
11. Lean management 2
(Paper Christis & Soepenberg – Lowlands Sociotechnical Design theory and
Lean production, section 19.2 and 19.5)
12. Human centred job design 1
(Paper Trist & Bamforth)
13. Human centred job design 2
(Paper Cherns – The principles of sociotechnical design)
14. Organization design as a change process + Q&A on lean management and
HCJD
(chapter 12)
15. Temporary organizations: dealing with dynamics: Q&A on Burton and IOR
,Lecture 1 – introduction to Organization Design
What is design/designing?
→ Products/buildings/systems and user experience
→ Organizations and work experience
Designing is:
Making choices about function, form, structure → intended effect
Intended effect can involve:
- Desired/unwanted
- Known/unknown
- In terms of values/in what we think is desirable (technical or fundamental)
Questions:
→ What can we do with this?
→ How do we achieve this?
Organizational design involves two complementary problems
1. How to partition a big task of the whole organization into smaller tasks of the
sub-units
2. How to coordinate these smaller sub-unit tasks so that they fit together to
efficiently realize the bigger task or organizational goals
Managing as designing
→ Core aspects of designing
- Multiple models of different possible futures with continuous refinement
- Thrownness: not a blank slate, designer is dropped into conditions and had to
work his way out it
- Collaboration: no-one can know everything, against the heroic tale
- Liquid crystal: iterations between leaving open and fixing
- Legacy: being conscious of the effects of one’s actions
Design thinking
→ Applying the way designers think to business problems
→ Think in terms of possibilities and future problems
- Empathy: what’s the human need behind the business need
→ A good designer does not design for his/herself, but thinks about what the
actual user would need and how their needs would be made in design
- Ideation: using creative tools to generate many possible ideas, push past
obvious solutions
- Experimentation: ideas that you try out things, testing ideas with prototyping,
making ideas tangible → gives chance to learn/recover/come up with
something else
- Iterative approach: learning from mistakes
Designing as future-oriented activity → moving from the past to the future
The future is unknown → predictions
, ◼ Organization design as part of responsible organizing
Societal impact of design
Society → organizations
Society → The organization of work (kind of employment)
Organizational design as a motor of the industrial revolution
→ Assembly line
→ How should work be designed?
Organizational design as contribution to people’s quality of work
→ Give people autonomy
→ Good working environment
◼ Overview of course content: four approaches to organization design
Different perspectives
→ These exist on what organization design is and to what problems and solutions it
relates within organizations
This will be addressed by providing four different perspectives on organizational
design:
1. “Fit” approach
2. Sociotechnical systems design
3. Lean management
4. Human centred job design
1) Fit approach
→ Organization design consists of a number of components that should be
considered in a coherent way
→ More than just thinking about strategy
- Critique: often aspects of organizational design are implemented/changed
independent of each other
- Such as: strategy, division of labour and people
5 interrelated aspects:
1. Goals and scope
2. Strategy
3. Structure
4. Coordination and control
5. Processes and people
Two types of fit:
1) The five aspects should internally fit together
→ Design choices on structure, for example, cannot go without design choices on
coordination
, 2) And the five aspects should fit environmental demands (external fit)
→ Stable environments demand a different structure than turbulent environments
2) Sociotechnical systems design: Dutch / lowlands approach
→ Developed by Ulbo de Sitter
Aim at improving 3 different kinds of outcomes in organizations
- Design influences:
- Quality of organization:
→ Ability of org to effectively & efficiently realize and adapt its goals
- Quality of work:
→ Meaningfulness of work and possibility to deal with stress
→ Improve work environment
→ More autonomy
→ Reduce stress
- Quality of work relations
→ Effectiveness of communication in org
→ Can make collaboration more meaningful → teamwork
By tinkering by what is going on in the organization, you can influence these 3
outcomes
Guest lecture → how technology influences design and work in organizations
3) Lean management
→ Originated from car factory in Japan → aim: get rid of batch and que systems
→ How can organizations limit the negative effects of batches and queues in (line)
organizations?
- Delays cost time & money
- Overproduction (stocks)
→ Lean management: a critique on the old-fashioned way of producing
Different approaches on lean:
- Those only oriented on removing waste
- Those aimed at facilitating ‘flow’
→ grouping a product line for example → not all different kinds of departments
involved in making a product
Sometimes lean in organization only pick out the waste part, and sometimes the flow
part
4) Human centred job design
→ Value oriented perspective
→ Quality of work as a goal in itself:
- Humans have a need to fulfil a meaningful part within a community (ethical)
- A paid job is one from income but also fulfils other functions
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