Enterprise systems enabled organisational change : a qualitative critical realist approach on organisational routines dynamics (original) (raw)
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Problem-based analysis of organisational change
Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Advances and applications of problem frames - IWAAPF '06, 2006
An organization's competitive advantage is increasingly reliant on the alignment of its socio-technical systems with its business processes. These are complex and volatile due to the rapid pace of change in the marketplace, hence an organisation's continued success is increasingly reliant on its ability to adapt to change. In this paper, we take a small step towards providing tools which can help in the analysis and synthesis of change which impacts on an organisation's sociotechnical systems, in the identification and codification of recurrent change scenarios, and in the application of codified wisdom to new change problems. The tools we propose are inspired by Problem Frames. We exemplify the approach on a small real-world example.
Complexifying Organisational Development
Organisation Development (OD) is a well-established soft methodology used extensively to engineer cultural change in organisations. However, there are arguments that it is not capable of dealing with complex situations. However, it can be transformed to enable it to do this by setting into a framework defined by Viable Systems Theory (VST), itself a conceptual development of the managerial cybernetic theory that underlies the Viable Systems Model (VSM). Indeed, the relationship between traditional OD and the new form of OD is that they each belong to distinct paradigms. Indeed, paradigms metamorphose when they develop a new frame of reference, and this will be illustrated. The outcome for the new development for OD is that it will include cybernetic aspects that can improve the way that organisations can be diagnosed in the complex change situations that must be managed.
Some Inherent Sources of Change in Formal Organisations
Social Policy & Administration, 1967
The sociology of formal organisations, together with some other parts of the discipline, has now matured to the point where there is now some serious interest in the problems of dynamics and change.l Yet significant advances are slow to appear largely on account of lingering attachments to a stable-equilibrium model of functionalism. The model of social systems as tension-management systemsa seems at this point more promising than either the functionalists' stability-integration model or the Marxists' change-conilict model. The concept of tension serves to underline the potential for continual modification in social systems and permits us to escape the restricting implication of both the Parsonian and Marxian models that systems have a rigid internal logic such that structural change is always cataclysmic. We view social systems as being in tenuous equilibrium: some elements in harmony and some in tension. If one of the elements in tension becomes more powerful, it forces a modification of the structure and a new equilibrium is struck-just as tenuous as the previous ones. This is to say that formal organisations, although created by the purposive actions of men in order to attain specific goals by means of a specified structure, are nonetheless subject to unintended change. This change comes not merely from external influences but is rooted in at least four intrinsic sources of tension. Each one is intrinsic because it is rooted in some conflict of incompatibIe functional requirements of formal organisations.
Management Decision, 1991
The last 40 years have revealed a number of significant changes inside Western organisations. In general, we have shifted away from organisations dominated by simple, physical tasks and mechanical technology to those characterised by increasingly complex, intellectual tasks and electronic (even biological) technology. Problems and decisions which were characterised by direct cause and effect relationships are increasingly being replaced by situations in which multiple cause and effect links are evident. Stable markets and suppliers are gradually giving way to more fluid, dynamic market environments, and the clear distinctions which existed between "management" and "workers" no longer apply[l].
Why Information Technology (IT) systemsled organisational change does not work
… Journal of Business, …, 2010
Information Technology (IT) systems-led organisational change has been the main agent for change since computer systems became available to commerce in the 1960s; IT systems-led organisational change as a phrase is used to describe a process or proprietary method (e.g. SAP have amongst others, ASAP methodology for their ERP implementation) where a new or revised IT system (computers and/or software) is introduced to an organisation and as a result the organisation's structure is modified to obtain maximum use and benefit from the new system. It has become apparent over the years that despite the continuous use of IT and associated change methodologies, the success rates achieved remain poor. Why is it that some decades on from when this process became prevalent, when organisations use continuous improvement methodologies such as six sigma, kaizen and many others, to reduce costs and increase effectiveness of commercial processes that this approach has not been applied to change methodologies? -This paper aims at investigating this. The paper reviews relevant academic literature on the subject at component and process levels. Then, a primary survey was constructed to gather facts and opinions from professionally qualified Project Managers to investigate whether there was any correlation with the lead author's experiences gathered over a lifetime of working in this field. From the study four main points emerged. One; culture, cannot be easily changed. Two; cultural and psychological forces are responsible for a high percentage of project failures. Three; project resources and structures lack the skills required to address points one and two. Four; the holistic approach to organisational change offers a philosophy capable of addressing the issues identified in this research as it encompasses a multi discipline combination of methods appropriate to each risk in a project; and additionally an unexpected finding that one third of all relevant projects are judged to have failed by some measure.