MBA 669 Special Topics: IT-enabled organizational Forms

1. MBA 669Special Topics: IT-enabled organizational Forms Dave Salisbury salisbury@udayton.edu (email) http://www.davesalisbury.com/ (web site)

2. Where we want to go today • Some general thoughts to help frame stuff we’re going to do today • Organizational impacts • Recruiting and staffing • Organizational structure • Virtual organizations • Cisco and their Intranet

3. More stuff for today • Management control • Monitoring • Evaluation • Feedback • Reward

4. Framing today’s stuff • Context • Analysis versus reality • This stuff is heavily intertwined in reality • For analysis, we’re breaking it up • Some things will cycle back, and you’ll see themes recurring from time to time

5. Stakeholders • What it Means to the User • What it Means to Management • What it Means to the Organization

6. Organizational impacts • IS&T changes the who, what, where, & how of organizations and their work • Who & What • needs for IT skills • changes or eliminates needs for other skills • wider spans of control • limits the need for middle managers

7. Organizational impacts • Where & How • hierarchies v. matrices v. networks • T-form organizations • workflow design changes • heavy emphasis on integration & standards • telework • physical location of work and workers

8. Management & employee relationships • Monitoring • more detailed information on performance of tasks (easier to count stuff) • greater accuracy of counts of stuff (e.g. minutes spent per call, $ per call, etc.) • Evaluation • Careful not to reward “A” while praying for “B”

9. Management & Employee Relationships • Feedback & Process Control • easier to engage in continuous improvement – nobody has to be the scribe and keep notes • care in selecting media for certain messages • continuous monitoring without anybody having to do it…

10. Management & employee relationships • Reward and compensation • means to easily identify high performers • means to easily publicize high performers • ties reward structure to easily measurable metrics • easier to keep tabs on shared or team-based incentives • still, “It’s the measurement & reward system, stupid”

11. Advanced IT characteristics • Increased speed of communication • Decreased cost of communication • Increased bandwidth • Vastly expanded connectivity • Integration of communication & computing technologies

12. Organizations & technology • Greater complexity • Global presence • Increased economic pressures • Innovativeness/entrepreneurship • Learning orientation • From bureaucracy to network

13. Intra-Organizational Coordination • Vertical Control • Flattening hierarchy • Technology control replaces human management • Horizontal Control • Electronic workflow • Concurrent engineering • Stockless production • Virtual organization

14. Intra-Organizational Coordination • Organization and unit size • Reduction in size • Not vertical integration, but virtual integration • Outsourcing • Coupling • Spin-off entrepreneurial • Federation

15. Intra-Organizational Coordination • Core product • Information • Communication protocols • Learning and innovation • Influence rather than fiat • Weak ties • Ownership/control • From hierarchies to markets (Dell in week 5)

16. Inter-organizational forms • Inter-organizational coupling • Again, from hierarchies to markets (Dell in week 5) • Electronic integration • Integration in terms of strategic alliances enabled by IT • Interstitial links

17. Information technology provides assistance to... • Communicate and/or distribute knowledge (later) • Routinize procedures (later) • Collaborate with other workers (tonight) • Capture and codify knowledge (later) • Create knowledge (later)

18. Technology to communicate or distribute knowledge • Internet and World Wide Web • PUSH-type technology • “Active” rather than “Passive” Internet • E-mail • Desktop Video Conferencing

19. Technology to collaboratewith other workers • Group Support Systems • GroupSystems • MeetingWorks • Groupware • Lotus Notes • Internet-Based Collaborative Tools • NetMeeting

20. Work & structure map Different Times Same Time Same Place Any Time, Any Place Different Places

21. The organizational character of information technology • Structure-Enforcing • reinforcing traditional norms • Structure-Preserving • being compatible with existing systems • Structure-Independent • operating outside existing functions or hierarchies • Structure-Transforming • proposing new structures and processes for adoption

22. Agency versus structure • Information technology can provide a structure • constraints • opportunities • Other sources of structure may also apply • Human agency has the capacity to override structure

23. Unintended consequences • De-skilled workforce • Lowered job satisfaction • Eliminated jobs • Expansion of job skills required • Screwed up reward structures • Workforce migration

24. Organizational culture • What is it? • How is it transmitted? • Can it be transmitted using information technology? • How (i.e. what would this look like)? • How do we maintain loyalty in a “virtual organization”?

25. Elements of culture • Business Environment • Values • Heroes • Rites and Rituals • The Cultural Network

26. How is it transmitted? • Shared Rituals • the “Attaboy” • Common Procedures • using a particular common decision methodology • Communication • written or spoken (e.g. “storytelling”)

27. Can culture be transmitted electronically? • Organizational character of information technology • Media characteristics • Agency versus Structure • Socially Created Meaning (a.k.a. culture)

28. Media characteristics • Lean Media • communicates a restricted range of information • written word, sequential • example--e-mail • Rich Media • communicates a wide range of information • example--video conferencing

29. Organizational “belonging” • Electronically mediated communication tends to inhibit interaction, hence reducing cohesion • The distance-learning model (cohesion lower in distant groups); cf. Salisbury, Pearson, Miller and Marett, 2000). • If I’m out of the office all the time, to whom am I loyal? Where do I belong?

30. The new organization • Virtual • Team-based • Specialists and leaders; limited hierarchy • IT-enabled • What are the problems that can arise? • Do you see this happening at your firms?

31. Cisco • Linking strategy and structure using information technology • IT strategic alignment • Organizational scaling • Employee acculturation • Intranet management

32. Intranet advantages • Publishing ease • Cost (existing TCP/IP infrastructure) • Ease of use • Low maintenance (information in one place) • Scalability • Easy software distribution • Easy to monitor use

33. Intranet disadvantages • Apps may not be as powerful as those offered by traditional groupware • Data replication • Directory services for remote users • Programming standards for Internet/Intranet are emerging • Back-end integration

34. Management challenges • Meeting coordination and efficiency needs without destroying independent decision-making • Defining quality of service and support levels • Organizing information (can grow like Topsy) • Growth and acculturation

35. SPIN • Segmented • Polycentric • (I’d argue) Information-based • Networked • Organizations as object-oriented networks – see Seattle, 1999 • How much more effective will be these organizations in the Internet age?

36. A visit to the dark side(not the last this term) • Blurring the boundaries between home and work • “Forced to endure continuous, unremitting, almost unendurable transmutation” • Lack of job security (at least as defined traditionally) • Deskilling

37. How Friedman fits in (IMHO) • DOS Capital • Operating systems • Randall Collins & the non-rational foundations of rationality (no, you weren’t supposed to read Collins – it’s just something that came to mind) • How does basic underlying systems influence ability of firms to be virtual?