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  • 5 dimensions affecting the organization’s growth

    In the last blog, we began our discussion on understanding how the organization grows, in today’s blog we look at the key forces that affect the organization development. We shall discuss 2 of these forces and the remaining in the next blog. 
    It has always been a hard call on whether the organization’s structure would define its strategy or is it that the organization’s strategy would define the organization strategy. Though each of these approaches could have a long and detailed discussion, to understand the way we look at the current blog, we would take the approach that it is structure plays a critical role in influencing corporate strategy. We can look at 5 key dimensions that are important in building a model for organization development, these are:
    1. Age of the Organization
    2. Size of the Organization
    3. Stages of Evolution
    4. Stages of Revolution
    5. Growth rate of the industry

    Let us begin looking at each of these dimensions:
    Age of the organization: 
    This is one of the most obvious of the dimensions that one can think of. A simple observation would clarify that the same organization practices are not maintained throughout a long time span. – Management problems and principles are rooted in time. The passage of time is also the factor that enables institutionalization of managerial attitudes.
    Size of the organization:
    A company’s challenges and theirs solutions tend to change a lot as the company scales up – both in terms of the number of employees and the sales volumes. Organizations that grow in size need to change their structure and management practices over a longer time frame. Along with the increase in size, come problems of coordination and communication, new functions emerge, levels in the management hierarchy multiply, and jobs become more interrelated.
    Let us continue the discussion in the next blog.

  • Growth of Organization – Evolution & Revolution

    In the last blog, we summarized the relation between technology and task interdependence. From today’s blog over the next few blogs we look at some of the theories that deal with the growth of an organization, these are mostly based on the HBR paper – “Evolution and Revolution as organizations of growth” by Larry E Greiner.
    The basic principle on which the growth of an organization could be predicted is that it is less determined by the environmental forces and more defined by the history of the organization! To understand the paper further, we would need to understand the 2 terms
    1. Evolution
    2. Revolution

    Evolution stands for a phase in the growth of the organization where no major upheaval has occurred. It is relatively a stable period.
    Revolution stands for a phase where substantial turmoil is felt in the organization. 
    The famous adage – what goes up comes down it something that could be related to in this scenario. Every Evolutionary phase would be creating its own revolution. The nature of the management solution is what would determine whether a company would move forward into the next stage of evolutionary growth.
    Let’s take an example to get this clearer – Generally start ups begin with a phase where entrepreneur is the central decision making authority. He/She works out most of the decisions to be taken regarding the company or the firm single handedly. As the company scales up, we begin seeing that the complexity of the decisions to be made would not be best decided by the entrepreneur. There needs to be a decentralization of these decisions to ensure that the company moves ahead smoothly.

  • Task interdependence and Technology summary

    In the last blog, we looked at intensive technology and reciprocal interdependence. In today’s blog we take a look back at all the various interdependence and technologies to get a comprehensive view of the topics discussed over the last 10 blogs.
    We could summarize the complete discussion on task interrelation and technology in the following diagram. 
    (based on Thompson)

    It is to be noted that task interdependence increases from pooled to sequential to reciprocal, mechanisms of coordination get added to the organization. Pooled interdependence only requires rules and procedures, sequential interdependence uses rules, procedures and scheduling. Reciprocal independence uses all these coordination mechanism and “mutual adjustment”.
    To provide an alternate view of what define the organizational structure we would like to take the focus on to what Galbraith has suggested. He claims that it is communication that shapes the organization structure. He also argues that technical complexity leads to structural complexity, uncertainty promotes organic forms, and interdependence increases demands for coordination, because these factors increase the communication load carried by organization. This in turn affects its structural form. Thus – technology is related to social structure through the mediating effects it has on communication. 

  • Intensive technology – Reciprocal task interdependence

    In the last blog, we looked at long-linked technology and the task interdependence associated there with. In today’s blog we look at intensive technology and the nature of task interdependence. 
    Intensive technology generally comes with a lot higher complexity compared to the long-linked technology. The scope of the task is much task is much higher that an individual’s capacity to transform things; it mandates exchange of information between the people working on the task while performing it. 
    Let us take an example of restaurant to understand the scenario at hand better. The kitchen staff waits for the wait staff to provide orders, and the wait staff is dependent on the kitchen staff to provide meals prepared to the customer’s satisfaction. The situation becomes even more complex when we take the situation of a surgeon at work.  The surgeon needs to continuously exchange information with the anesthesiologist, assisting doctors and nurses while performing the operation. 
    We see that in addition to the existence of pooled and sequential task interdependence, we find a new type of task interdependence called – reciprocal task interference. We could diagrammatically understand this through the image shown below.
    The primary difference between the sequential and reciprocal task interdependence is that while long-linked technology involves work flow in a single direction, but the intensive technology has complementary work flows. “Mutual adjustment” becomes extremely essential to the operation of intensive technology on the parts of the individuals and units involved due to the reciprocal nature of their task interdependence. 
    Extreme mutual adjustment mandates the requirement of team work. In teamwork, work inputs to the transformation process are simultaneously acted upon by members of the work team, rather than passing inputs back and forth as in the case for less intensive forms of reciprocal task interdependence. The second example of surgical process is an example for this.

  • Long-linked Technology – sequential interdependence

    In the last blog, we looked at the realign between mediating technology and the related task interdependence – pooled task interdependence. In today’s blog we look at the long-linked technology and the related task interdependencies. 
    To begin with, let’s take an example of assembly line. We sometimes see that there are lots of functions operators can perform independent of one another. So the different lines are pooled in the sense that their outputs are aggregated into the total output of the organization – this is an example of pooled task interdependence. 
    In another situation, we see that within a production line, we see that each worker is dependent on the work of the others located at positions prior to theirs in line; this means that there is a sequential dependence of the tasks – this is called sequential task interdependence. This can be visualized as shown in the diagram below. 
    Such sequential task interdependence requires more planning and scheduling than pooled interdependence. Getting back to the context defined earlier, we would   need to design tasks and assign workers and schedule to work together in order for the assembly line to work properly. Any break in the line can interrupt production, careful planning of tasks and scheduling of workers is imperative. Rules and procedures are also necessary and these don’t need any explanation.

  • Mediating Technology – task interdependence and coordination

    In the last blog, we looked at the relation between Technical complexity, Uncertainty and Routineness. In today’s blog, we begin the discussion on relation between task interdependence and mechanism of Coordination.
    Thompson recognized that the objects being processed or the work processes of a technology may be interrelated so that changes or problems in one part of the technical system affect other parts. This is defined situation as task interdependence.
    In this blog, we look at specifically at mediating technology. To understand this, let’s take the example of a bank.
    Bank employees mediate between borrowers and savers or investors. The mediation cab is accomplished simultaneously by several bank branches that operate independently of one another.  Little direct contact is needed between the various units. In such cases, the output of the organization is simply the sum of the efforts of each unit. – This is called “pooled task interdependence“. 
    We could visualize this as shown in the diagram below.
    Another interesting point to note is that, if the organization wishes to achieve a coherent organizational identity or ensure services are consistent across units, this can be achieved by setting up and following rules and standard procedures.

  • Technology Complexity, Uncertainty and Routineness

    In the last blog, we discussed about the technology imperative and how it affects the structure of an organization. In todays blog, we look at how technical complexity, uncertainty and routiness are related.
    Woodward’s study indicated that both unit and continuous processing technologies are associated with low routineness while mass production technologies have high routineness. Thus the relationship between routines of work and technical complexity takes the form of an inverted U. The following diagram indicates the same. 
    We could represent Perrow’s two dimensional topology of technology into once single dimension of routiness as shown in the following diagram. 
    The above 2 diagram shows how both the topologies link technology and social structure in terms of routines and non-routinesss of work.

  • Technology and Implications on Organization Structure

    In the last blog, we looked at Perrow’s topology of technology. Beginning with today’s blog we begin understanding the relation of the technology on the social structure of an organization. We could classify the affects of this social structure into one of the following 3 classes. 
    1. Technology Imperative
    2. Relationship between Technology complexity, Uncertainty and Routine-ness 
    3. Task interdependence ant Mechanism of Coordination

    In today’s blog, we begin the first of these – The Technology Imperative.
    The early works of Woodward’s indicated that technology used by the organization would determine what sort of organization structure was best. This belief was called “Technology Imperative”. However, when this was studied extensively by the researchers at “Aston Group”, they found the result which Woodward’s had indicated was contingent on the organization size.
    The study by Aston Group summarized is as follows – technology has a greater significance for the structure-performance relationship when organizations are small than when they are large. 
    This becomes clear when we have a closer look a these small organizations. [Relating back to this blog on the structure we had defined something called operational core, which we could here call as technical core]. In these smaller organization, most employees work directly on the core technology, but in larger organizations many employees are involved in technologies which are not directly related to the core. The structure in large organizations reflects greater differentiation and integration of a wider array of technologies than do social structures in smaller organizations.

  • Organization Theory – 42 (Perrow’s typology of technology with examples)

    In the last blog, we looked at Thompson’s Topology of Technology. In today’s blog, we look at Perrow’s Topology of Technology.
    In the topologies described by Thompson and Woodward, a common problem was that there was only one dominating technology in the organization and it would be challenging if an organization would have more than one technology. For this he used 2 dimensions:
    1. Task variability
    2. Task analyzability

    Task Variability could be defined by the number of exceptions to standard procedures encouraged in the application of a given technology.

    Task Analyzability could be defined as the extent to which, when an exception is encountered, there are known analytical methods for dealing with it.
    Put on a 2×2 matrix, we could look at it as shown in the diagram below.

    The classification of the technology could be as:

    1. Routine
    2. Craft
    3. Engineering
    4. Non-routine

    An example for each of these is:
    1. Routine – The job of a clerk generally has low variation on the kind of activity that (s)he performs and almost always has a known method of solving the problem at hand
    2. Craft – The job could be that of a construction worker. The number of exceptions to the standard procedures could be minimal, but when such exceptions occur there is almost always a new case at hand to handle which a new method needs to be involved
    3. Engineering – Consider the case of aerospace engineering, every challenge at hand would different exceptions to face and handle every time each requiring a special method to solve. There is a high task variability and high task analyzability in such a scenario
    4. Non-routine – A case could be in an RnD lab, when high task variability could be found but there are standard ways to handle the exceptions that come in the means of achieving the objective

  • Organization Theory – 41 (Thompson’s topology of technology)

    In the last blog, we looked at Woodward’s Topology of Technology. In today’s blog, we looked at Thompson’s topology of technology. 
    Thompson classified the technology as one of the following 3 varieties:
    1. Long-linked
    2. Mediating
    3. Intensive

    Long-linked technology covers’ Woodward’s mass production or continuous processing categories. Essentially, this technology indicate linear transformation process that can be thought of as having inputs entering at one end of a long line of steps from which products emerge at the far end.
    Mediating technologies bring clients and customers together in an exchange or transaction. Mediating technologies are called so because firms using these technologies act as go-between (i.e. mediators) in bringing together the interest of two or more different parties to a transaction.
    An example of Intensive technologies is hospital emergency rooms, research laboratories etc. This technology requires coordinating the specialized abilities of two or more experts in the transformation of a usually unique input into a customized output.
    Thompson’s theory could be visualized in a 2×2 matrix as below, on 2 dimensions.
    • standardization of inputs and outputs
    • standardization of transformation process

    The interesting part is the 4th quadrant – where we have standardized inputs/outputs with un-standardized transformation processes. It could be interpreted as a nonexistence due to enormous inefficiencies associated with such a system, hence not a very serious impact
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