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Category: Organizational Development ವ್ಯವಹಾರಿಕ ಉನ್ನತಿ

  • Designing the right context for organizational knowledge creation

    In the last blog we began understanding the concept of organizational innovation pretty closely – it also involved a very good commentary from one of our readers which enables us gain a significant insight into the way organizations foster innovation. In today’s blog, we look at the “context” of knowledge creation, how this functions and in the next blog, we look at what are the essential ingredients that would have to be taken note of to get this context to be working for an organization.
    In this blog we significantly refer to one – Nonaka – a management theorist who has done some significant work in the area of organizational knowledge creation. It is important to acknowledge that “tacit” knowledge is the origin of all human knowledge, and organizational knowledge creation essentially the process of mobilizing individual tacit knowledge and fostering its interaction to the explicit knowledge base of the firm.
    Nonaka, also illustrates the importance of a context for knowledge creation called “Ba”, this context provides the shared social and mental space for the Interpretation of Information, interaction and emerging relationships that serve as a foundation of knowledge creation.
    “Ba” is very similar to another concept “community of practice” that suggests that organizational members construct their shared identities and perspectives through “practice” that is shared work experience. This practice enables the sharing of practices and cognitive repertoires to facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer. 
    Hence a group placed at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal flow of knowledge within an organization, serves as the bridge between the individual and organization in the knowledge creation process. Thus even a semi-autonomous project team play an extremely crucial role in knowledge creation. 

  • Understanding Organizational Innovation

    In the last blog we defined the terms – Innovation and Cognition. In today’s blog we begin looking at organizational innovation in the context of Knowledge Creation.
    Innovation is a learning process by which new knowledge is created to solve the new problems that are defined. The core concept of study in all theories of Organizational Learning and knowledge creation is that of how organizations translate individual insights and knowledge into collective knowledge and organizational capability.
    Such collective knowledge could be the accumulated knowledge of the organization stored in its rules, procedures, routines and shared norms which guide the problem solving activities and patterns of interaction among its members. It resembles the “collective mind” or “memory” of the organization, it could also be the hard data that is “static” or could be “flowing” in the interactions. It exists between the individuals of the organization, rather than within them. 
    In some cases it could be more than the sum of the individual’s knowledge and in others it could be less than the sum, it’s a matter of how the mechanisms to translate the individual knowledge to collective knowledge are designed. Both Individuals and Organizations are learning entity and it is important to understand that any learning takes place in a social context and this is what makes every learning outcome different.

  • Innovation, Organizational Cognition – definitions

    In the last blog, we looked at the Industrial Economics angle of Organizational Innovation. In today’s blog, we begin looking at the relation between Organizational Cognition, Learning and Innovation. Since these terms sound too “BIG” for a first time reader, the attempt would be to really set the context in this blog and build on it over the next few.
    Let’s begin with the most familiar term – Innovation. While we all intuitively we all understand “innovation”, management theorists like to define it as “a process of bringing new, problem-solving, idea to use” some also look at it as “non routine, significant, and discontinuous organizational change that embodies new ideas that is not consistent with the current concept of the organization’s business”. Innovative output is a product of prior accumulation of knowledge that enables innovators to assimilate and exploit new knowledge – hence organizational learning and cognition begin to play a significant role.
    “Cognition” or “Cognitive” refers to the idea that individuals develop, mental models, belief systems, and knowledge structures that they use to perceive, construct, and make sense of their worlds and to make decisions about what actions to take – I refer here to another theorist Weick and also to Walsh. One could also extend this analysis to the level of group and organizations and we would find out how organizations & groups would behave. 
    Organizations develop collective mental models and interpretive schemes which influence the decisions the organization takes as well as the actions it performs. – We could call this Organizational cognition. It however differs from Individual cognition in terms of the social dimension. 
    Hence we would talk about socio-cognitive connected, and understand how it accounts for the social processes in the formation of collective cognition and knowledge structures.

  • Industrial Economics angle of Organizational Innovation

    In the last blog, we did look at the concept of organizational innovation using the classification of Contingent Theories. In today’s blog we look at organizational innovation using the lenses of Industrial Economics.
    The micro-economists in the field of strategy consider organization structure as both cause and effect of the managerial strategic choice in response to the market opportunities. The central argument here is that – certain organizational types or attributes are more likely to superior innovative performance in a given environment because they are more suited to reduce transaction costs and cope with alleged capital market failure.
    The theory of “the innovative enterprise” focused on how strategy and structure determine the competitive advantage of the business enterprise. The theory postulates that over time, business enterprises in the advanced economies have to achieve a higher degree of “organizational integration” in order to sustain competitive advantage. The model most supported by the success of the Japanese against the American companies.  However it is important to note that such an integrated approach would be best suited in case of incremental innovation, but there isn’t sufficient proof that it works well in the cases of radical innovation as a means to competitiveness.
    Another theory by Teece suggests that the formal (governance modes) and informal (culture and values) structures, as well as firms’ external networks powerfully influence the rate and direction of their innovative activities. He classifies innovation into “autonomous” and “systemic” and relates it to the organizational structure. The definition of these 2 innovations is itself pretty clear and helps understand the relation:
    1. An Autonomous innovation is one that can be introduced to the market without massive modification of related products and processes. – A classical example is that of introduction of power steering where no much modification had to done to the existing set up to introduce this change.
    2. Systemic Innovation on the other hand, favors integrated enterprise because it requires complex coordination amongst various subsystems and hence is usually accomplished under one “roof” – The introduction of front wheel drive requiring the complete redesign of many of the automobiles is an example of such systemic innovation.

  • Organizational Innovation in the context of Contingency Theories of Management

    In last blog we began our discussion on organizational innovation and also mentioned about the 3 classifications of the study one could do. In today’s blog we look at the first category of the classification the one relating organizational structure to innovation and specifically the group of theories under “contingency theories“
    The contingency theory generally argues that the most appropriate structure for the organization would be the one that best fits the operating contingency in terms of scale of operation, technology, or environment. Mintzberg is one of the most noted of the contingency theorist and we have already discussed him in this earlier blog. We have also discussed about the Mechanistic and Organic models in this blog. 
    Just to summarize and complete the discussion relating organizations it could be said that Organic structures would be a more fluid set of arrangement, adapting to conditions of rapid change and innovation. It would be interesting to note that both mechanistic and organic structures can coexist in different parts of the same organization depending on the demand from the functional sub-environment. We could also call such structures as “ambidextrous structures”.
    In the next blog we move on to the next class of theories – Industrial Economics and see how they relate to organizational innovation.

  • Organization Innovation and streams of thought


    In the last blog, we talked about some of the tests that anyone who intends to redesign his organization would have to take note of. In today’s blog, we begin our discussion on one of the common reasons for forcing an organization redesign – Organization Innovation.

    Organization’s ability to innovate is a necessary precondition for it to successfully utilize the inventive resources and new technologies. It could also be seen that many a times, by introducing a new technology, the organization is often pushed into complex puzzle of opportunities and organization challenges. These in turn lead to change in management practices and sometimes lead to the emergence of new organizational forms. Clearly organizational and technology innovations could be seen as being intertwined.

    A simple generic that the term “organizational innovation” could refer to would be – the creation or adoption of an idea or behavior that is new to the organization.

    Broadly as a field, the study on Organizational Innovation could be classified into 3 broad streams of thoughts

    1. Organizational Structure and Innovation
    2. Organizational Cognition, Learning and Innovation
    3. Organizational Change and Innovation. 

    Over the next few blogs we shall talk bout these and some of the constituent theories these streams might find.

  • Tests for Organization Redesign

    In the last blog, we looked at the classification of management theories and their variations across the policies and expectations. In today’s blog we refer to an HBR tool kit by Michael Goold and Andrew Cambell that deals about how to test if we have a well designed organization. While the details may be looked at on purchasing the links, I would only summarize what the article intends to talk about.
    Any person looking at redesigning the organization would have to make some essential tests before really getting on with the change and here are a few of the suggestions.
    Again it is a continuous process and like any management, it’s more an art in these cases of organization redesign than having a standard way to handle this. We would encourage you to read the original article at the following link to get a more comprehensive understanding of these tests.

  • Classification of Management theories continued…

    In the last blog, we looked at the ways we could classify the various theories of management into different buckets. In today’s blog we summarize the basic assumptions, policies and expectations that the managers who follow these 3 styles of management use. Please refer to the table below.
    The diagram is an adaption from Raymond E Miles, Theories of Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975)

  • Classifying the Management Theories

    In the last blog, we looked at how the “analyzers” category of organizations perceives the adaptation cycle challenges. In this blog, let’s take an independent look at how the various organization theories itself could be classified and how the view the relation between strategy and structure where the discussion about adaptation cycle actually began.
    If we look at the way management theory has evolved over the timeframe of the early 1900 to late 1900s, we could categorize them into the following sections 

    1. Traditional Model
    2. Human Relations Model
    3. Human Resource Model

    The Traditional model suggests that there are a select group of owner-managers who would ably direct larger number of employees by careful standardization and routinizing the work and by placing and planning functions completely controlled by the top managers. Under such a system, only few employees could be expected to perform to outstanding levels but most of them would perform to certain minimum standard.
    The Human Relations model agreed to the Traditional model but went ahead emphasizing the universality of social needs for belongingness and recognition. This model argued that, it was interpersonal treatment that was the source of subordinate resistance to managerial directives. Managers would have to engage the organizational member’s feeling of involvement and importance in order to improve organizational performance.
    The Human Resource model approach though is debated to be a contingent theory, looks at the organization as having decision making in the pursuit of organizational objectives widely dispersed and that most organization members represent the untapped resources which if properly managed could considerably enhance the organizational performance. 
    In the next blog we shall have a graphical comparison of the same for clarity purpose.

  • Characteristics of Analyzers when attempting to handle adaptation cycles

    In the last blog, we took a closer look at the approach taken up by Prospector to handle the adaptation cycle challenges. We shall today move to the next of the categories – 
    Analyzers .
    Continuing to understand our classification and their characteristics better we move on from Prospectors to Analyzers. The Analyzers in contrast to the prospectors have a constant challenge of handling 2 cores simultaneously. The following diagram is a summary of the characteristics of a Prospector.

    [do download the pic and read the complete text.. apologies for the small font]
    The diagram summarizes the characteristics of defenders (adapted from Miles and Snow – Organizational Strategy, Structure and Processes)