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ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT

Structural Interventions andThe Applicability of OD

Intervention

A sequence of planned activities, actions, and events intended to help an organization improve its performance and effectiveness

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INTRODUCTION

Termed of a broad class of interventions or change efforts aimed at improving organizational effectiveness through changes in the task, structural, technological, and goal processes in the organization.

Interventions include changes: How the overall work of the organization is divided into

units, Who reports to whom, Methods of control, The spatial arrangements of equipments and people, Work flow arrangements, and Changes in communications and technology.

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Types of Structural Interventions

Sociotechnical systems (STS). Self-managed teams. Work redesign. Management by objectives (MBO). Quality circles. Quality of work life projects (QWL). Parallel learning structures (or collateral organizations). Physical settings. Total quality management (TQM). Reengineering. Large-scale systems change.

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Sociotechnical Systems (STS)

Largely associated with experiments that emerged under the auspices of the Travistock Institute in Great Britain.

Efforts generally attempted to create a better “fit” among the technology, structure, and social interaction of a particular production unit in a mine, factory, or office.

Two basic premises: Effective work systems must jointly optimize the

relationship between their social and technical parts. Such systems must effectively managed the boundary

separating and relating them to the environment.

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Highly participative among stakeholders: Employees, engineers, staff experts, and managers.

Feature the formation of autonomous work groups (i.e. self-managed).

Theory suggested that effectiveness, efficiency, and morale will be enhanced.

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Self-Managed Teams

Problems in implementation: What to do with the first-line supervisors who are no

longer needed as supervisors. Managers that are now one level above the teams

will likely oversee the activities of several teams, and their roles will change to emphasize planning, expediting, and coordinating.

They need considerable training to acquire skills in group leadership and ability to delegate; skills to have participative meetings, planning, quality control, budgeting, etc.

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Work Redesign

Hackman and Oldham – theoretical model of what job characteristics lead to the psychological states that produce what they call ‘high internal work motivation.’

Model approach has the characteristics of OD; use of diagnosis, participation, and feedback.

Model suggested that organizations analyze jobs using the five core job characteristics; then redesign of group work: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback from job.

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MBO and Appraisal

Management by objective (MBO) programs evolve from a collaborative organization diagnosis and are systems of joint target setting and performance review designed to increase a focus on objectives and to increase frequency of problem solving discussions between supervisors and subordinates and within work teams.

MBO programs are unilateral, autocratic mechanisms designed to force compliance with a superior’s directives and reinforce a one-on-one leadership mode.

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Quality Circles

The concept is a form of group problem solving and goal setting with a primary focus on maintaining and enhancing product quality.

Extensively used in Japan. Quality circles consist of a group of 7 – 10

employees from a unit; who have volunteered to meet together regularly to analyze and make proposals about product quality and other problems.

Morale and job satisfaction among participants were reported to have increased.

Quality circles contributes toward total quality management.

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Quality of Work Life (QWL)

Organizational improvement efforts. Attempt to restructure multiple dimensions

of the organization. To institute a mechanism which introduces

and sustains changes over time. An increase in participation by

employees and increase in problem solving between the union and management.

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General Motors’ QWL: Voluntary involvement on the part of employees. Union agreement with the process and participation in it. Assurance of no less of jobs as a result of the programs. Training of employees in team problem solving. The use of quality circles where employees discuss problems

affecting the performance of the plant and the work environment.

Work team participation in forecasting, work planning, and team leader and team member selection.

Regular plant and team meetings to discuss such matters as quality, safety, customer orders, and schedules.

Encouragement of skill development and job rotation within work teams.

Skill training. Responsiveness to employee concerns.

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Parallel Learning Structures

Consists of a steering committee and a number of working groups that: Study what changes are needed in the

organization, Make recommendations for improvement,

and Then monitor the resulting change efforts.

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Physical Setting and OD

Physical settings are an important part of organization culture that work groups should learn to diagnose and manage, and about which top management needs input in designing plants and buildings.

Sometime, physical setting were found to interfere with effective group and organizational functioning.

Examples: A personnel director having a secretary share the same office; resulting lack of privacy and typewriter noise, thus adversely affect the productivity of the director.

Management encouraged group decision making, yet providing no space for more than 6 people to meet at one time.

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Total Quality Management (TQM)

Also called continuous quality improvement. A combination of a number of organization improvement

techniques and approaches, including the use of quality circles,statistical quality control, statistical process control, self-managed teams and task forces, and extensive use of employee participation.

Features that characterize TQM: Primary emphasis on customers. Daily operational use of the concept of internal customers. An emphasis on measurement using both statistical quality control and

statistical process control techniques. Competitive benchmarking. Continuous search for sources of defects with a goal of eliminating them

entirely. Participative management. An emphasis on teams and teamwork. A major emphasis on continuous learning. Top management support on an ongoing basis.

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TQM awards: ISO. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Prime Minister’s Award (Malaysia).

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Reengineering

Definition – the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Reengineering focuses on visualizing and streamlining any or all business processes in the organization.

Reengineering seeks to make such processes more efficient by combining, eliminating, or restructuring activities without regard to present hierarchical or control procedures.

Reengineering is a top-down process; assumes neither an upward flow of involvement nor that consensus decision making.

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Self-Design Strategy

It is a “learning model” to help organization develop “the build-in capacity to transform themselves to achieve high performance in today’s competitive and changing environment.

Basic components: An educational component consisting of readings,

presentations, visits to other companies, and attendance at conferences.

Clarification of the values that will guide the design process. Diagnosis of the current state of the organization using the

values as template. Changes are then designed and implemented in an

interactive manner.

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High-Involvement and High-Performance Work Systems

High-performance and high involvement are possible outcomes in organizations that are designed for high involvement, but may not occur if environmental conditions are unfavorable or if the high-involvement design is poorly implemented.

High involvement organizations feature decision making moved downward as far as possible, extensive use of self-managed teams, compensation systems that link rewards to individual and team performance, widely shared information, participative and shared leadership, and extensive training.

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Large-Scale Systems Change and Organizational Transformation

Large-scale systems change; mean organizational change that is massive in terms of the number of organizational units involved, the number of people affected, the number of organizational subsystems altered, and/or the depth of the cultural change involved.

Example: a major restructuring with objectives including a reduction in hierarchical levels from 8 to 4.

Organizational transformation; second-order change – requires a multiplicity of interventions and takes place over a fairly long period of time (5-year plan).