Month: March 2010

A friend sent an enquiry to me and a couple of others yesterday which set me thinking. Here's what she asked:

I'm trying to think of an article or book chapter to give to a group of Arts students that would provide the "classic" background on what an organization is – the basic theory piece.

I'm hoping to give them something that will help frame a discussion around what an organization really is – sort of the classic thinking. There must be a chapter or article – perhaps from an org. textbook. What would you give a group of "beginners" about how to think about organizations?

What I liked about the question (apart from the opportunity to delve into my folder "Articles" on my computer and wonder why I had the same article under different titles in more than one case) was that it's a challenging one to answer. Like her I have hundreds of articles on various aspects of organization theory, design, psychology, behavior, and so on but none that tackled head on the discussion of 'what is an organization?'

So my response back to her read "I haven't got anything that defines what an organisation "is". When I start off an organization design program I do an exercise with the group that runs as follows.

There are five questions (below). I reveal the questions one at a time asking the group, (or small groups) to answer them. This enables the participants to work out what an organization is. Usually, in answer to question 1 they come up with lists that include: a group of people, common purpose, delivering a product or service, sets of systems, and so on. Then you ask question 2 and generally they come up with rules, policies, governance structures, codes of ethics, regulatory frameworks, and so on.

Putting the answers of questions 1 and 2 together you get a good feel for what an organization 'is' and can arrive at a common understanding for all practical purposes. I then go into the next three questions to start the design thinking.

1. What is an organisation?
2. What is an organised organisation?
3. What is design?
4. What is an organisation design model?
5. How useful is a model?

However, I have combed through what I have in the way of articles and think that these might be useful.

Anand, N. and Daft, R. (2007) What is the right organization design? Organizational Dynamics, Vol 36. No. 4.

Osterwalder, A. (2006). How to Describe and Improve Your Business Model to Compete Better. Arvetica (see the overview on slideshare )

Child, J. and McGrath, R. (2001) Organizations Unfettered: Organizational Form in an Information Intensive Economy. Academy of Management Journal. Vol 44. No. 6.

Additionally Mary Jo Hatch is co-author of a book used on the Capella program on organization theory that I teach on Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives and she writes extensively on organizations. For the most part it is very readable and gives a good insight into various aspects of organization/organizing."

The others chipped in with various suggestions – only one of which (the Gareth Morgan) I knew about. So this whole exchange was very productive in terms of my own learning. Here are their suggestions:

Wertheim, Edward, G. (undated) A Historical Background of Organization Behavior
Kurshner, T. (2007) Angels in America. Nick Hern Books.
Wilson, E. (1998). Back From Chaos. The Atlantic Monthly, Part 1 March pp. 41-62 and Part 2
McNamara, C. (undated) Basic Definition of Organization. Free management library.
Kleiner. A. (2008) The Age of Heretics: a history of the radical thinkers who reinvented corporate management. Jossey Bass
Morgan, G. (2006). Images of Organization. Sage Publications

Yesterday I also came across a quote "Whatever you learn it is never enough" amply proved in the email exchange above!

On Saturday I went to see the Oscar Short Films (Live Action) nominations. There are five in this category. The sequence started with the showing of Kavi that tells the story of an Indian boy and his parents who are forced to work as slave labor in a brick kiln. It was very hard to watch and in a sense is a story everyone knows about. The movie site is well worth looking at as it, and the film, is a vocal advocate of ending slavery – making the point that:

"Today, slavery is illegal almost everywhere, yet it continues to flourish. Bonded labor, a form of slavery, often occurs when people are tricked into taking loans from creditors who have no intention of letting them repay the loan. The creditor then uses violent intimidation to keep his workers slaving with no hope of escape."

According to Anti-Slavery International:

"A person becomes a bonded laborer when his or her labor is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world."

(Compare the thoughtful Kavi website with Slumdog Millionaire's purely commercial site).

There are certain groups and organizations working to inculcate principles of good and decent work. The International Labour Organization, for example, is running the Decent Work Helpdesk. The purpose of this is to help "companies to put decent work principles into practice". There is information to download on decent work and a lot of information on the website about work trends. The purpose of the ILO itself is to "advance opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity."

A similar project is the GoodWork Project . This defines good work as "work that is excellent in quality, socially responsible, and meaningful to its practitioners" and the organization describes itself as "a large scale, multi-site effort to identify individuals and institutions that exemplify good work". The Project is a research unit of Harvard Project Zero, Stanford Center on Adolescence, and the Quality of Life Research Center at Claremont Graduate University.

On this website you can:

• Browse a timeline of our work
• Learn about our Developing Minds and Digital Media Project
• Read about our GoodPlay Project
• Download The GoodWork Project Overview
• Learn about The GoodWork Toolkit
• Explore The GoodWork Toolkit interactive website

The toolkit is an excellent resource as the blurb says "to draw upon whether you are framing an entire course about good work, enhancing existing instructional designs, or facilitating small-group discussion about excellence, ethics, and engagement". It includes a values sort activity that I got hooked into, and spent a fair bit of time on. (I wonder how the values of Gregg Helvey who produced Kavi, and Slumdog Millionaire's director Danny Boyle compare?). That exercise, in itself, would form the basis of a very good discussion on the values that underpin an organization. (Or that people would like to underpin the organization).

Although ending slavery feels like the classic 'boiling the ocean' task the Goodwork Project, and the Decent Work Helpdesk offer ways of breaking down the task into manageable pieces, starting from where you are and offering the possibilities of making a greater difference.

I've just come across a short piece about business culture and innovation that precedes an article to be published – date unspecified – in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (you can order a sample copy of this journal). The paper is written by William Qualls of the University of Illinois and Jelena Spanjol. (NOTE: March 3, 2010. My thanks to him for subsequent to my writing this sending the full paper to me).

This piece sent me in two directions. The first direction was a question to myself "Is there a Journal of Service Innovation Management'? The answer to this appears to be "No". There is the International Journal of Innovation Management which has some interesting looking articles in it. For example: Implementing Best Practices to Support Creativing in NPD Cross-Functional Teams "The use of cross-functional teams increases creativity in new product development leading to shorter development time and higher product innovativeness. Research in new product development [NPD] has identified a number of organisational practices associated with supporting organisational creativity in cross-functional teams including frequent and open communication, building organisational slack, attitude to risk and top management commitment."

And there is the Journal of Service Management this too has some interesting looking articles. One I skimmed Manufacturers forming successful complex business services: Designing an organization to fit the market says that "The purpose of this paper was to isolate and characterize organizational factors that enable the formation of high-performing business services in product manufacturing firms". (This uses Galbraith's Star Model of organizations as a starting point), and is a good discussion on organization design.

The second direction I went in related to the content of Quall's piece on business culture and innovation. This is summarized in the sentence "Groundbreaking ideas spring most from companies that stress technology, rather than customer needs or staying ahead of competitors." The short description of the about to be published article makes some standard observations e.g. "Customer- and competitor-oriented companies are more likely to come up with variations of existing products because they watch their markets closely and react to demands rather than building on breakthrough technology." But there is also the point (again fairly obvious but not always acted on) that launching innovative products or services depends on good marketing "If innovation and marketing don't get equal attention, good ideas might never reach the marketplace or firms could sink millions of dollars into innovations that will ultimately have no appeal to consumers," he [Qualls] said. The marketing angle should come in at the ideas stage of innovation generation he suggests.

Since I haven't yet seen the full article I don't know if there are any suggestions in it on how to help people make the link he implies is necessary between what are often functions operating independently of each other – R & D, marketing, finance, and IT (the last to get the systems enabled for customer input to the innovation process). Qualls then observes that the study "shows firms that fail to broaden their cultures or seek outside input will lag behind companies that do." Again I'm wondering if there are any ideas in the article on how to 'broaden their cultures' or 'seek outside input' – both potentially complex organization design tasks.