Future organizational design: the scope for IT-based enterprise
- PDF / 130,112 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 598 x 796 pts Page_size
- 62 Downloads / 190 Views
Book reviews
References Booth W, Columb G and Williams J (1995) The Craft of Research. The University of Chicago Press, Chigaco, ILL. Cornford T and Smithson S (1996) Project Research in Information Systems: A Student’s Guide. Macmillan, London. Czarniawska B (1997) A four times told tale: combining narrative and scientific knowledge. Organisation Studies 4(1), 7–31.
Easterby-Smith M, Thorpe R and Lowe A (1994) Management Research: An Introduction. Sage Publications, London. Phillips EM and Pugh DS (1994) How to Get a PhD. Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Future Organizational Design: The Scope for IT-based Enterprise
tive limits to processing (better hoses, same nozzles!), what interactive databases can and cannot do along with discussions of automation, hyper-automation, and extensions to the constructible space. This concept of constructible space is central in the book and it is expressed as delineating the realistically available alternatives for organising work within a given culture and with a certain technological level. In essence, it asks how IT allows us to make organizations more effective. For example, is it by making them more efficient, that is, cleaning up what they are currently doing through automation, or is it in providing new information and communication possibilities which makes a design, such as a global matrix, eminently more feasible than was previously the case? Over and above this, it raises the possibility of not just redesigning/re-engineering current ideas of organizational form, but of creating a different form altogether and to make organizations more effective by extending the range of constructible spaces that way. It is naturally very difficult to work with two languages at the same time particularly when the translations may not be exact. The definition of ‘reality’ given by the social constructivist view which informs the organization side, for example, sits somewhat uneasily with the IT-based one, and so it is best to work largely in one. And for this, Groth uses organization design as his first language. To be more precise, he utilises Henry Mintzberg’s (1979) work on organization design and structure as a means of articulating this concept of constructible space. This is an excellent choice because as Child (1984, p 18) remarked, ‘The Structuring of Organizations provides a masterly review of research organized around an imaginative analytical framework’. And it is this framework which Groth uses to locate the discussion as to what IT can do for the five structures identified in Mintzberg’s 1979 book: the simple (later renamed the entrepreneurial); the machine bureaucracy; the professional bureaucracy; the divisionalised (diversified); and the adhocracy (innovative). Each configuration, as Mintzberg has it, uses a particular coordinating mechanism and Groth explains how IT effects this. For example, he shows how information systems will allow the entrepreneur in the simple structure to extend their ability to manage through direct supervision beyond a size where pre
Data Loading...
