On the control of complex industrial organizations
This book is concerned with control issues in complex industrial organizations. The word control is used here in a rather wide sense, including decision making, coordination and planning as well as activities such as the design and implementation of orga
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On the control of complex industrial organizations
J. E. VAN AKEN
tJv1artinuscfNiihQff Social Sciences Division ~eidenl~ostonl~ondon 1978
ISBN-13: 978-90-207-0791-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4615-7540-5 DOl: 10.10071978-1-4615-7540-5 ©1978 byH. E. Stenfert Kroese B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
for Marja
PREFACE
This book is concerned with control issues in complex industrial organizations. The word control is used here in a rather wide sense, including decisionmaking, coordination and planning as well as activities such as the design and implementation of organizational structures or computerized information systems. There are various ways of defining complexity; here we use this term to indicate that the organizations in question consist of many sub organizations which are operationally interdependent but at the same time have a fair degree of independence of control. The control of the interactions between these suborganizations through coordination will be a key issue in this book. The discussion will be confined to industrial organizations; our results are only applicable to a limited extent to other types of organizations such as universities, hospitals or government offices. The main contribution we intend to make in this book is the development of a system oj concepts on control and coordination in industrial organizations which can be used in the design of organizational control structures such as planning systems, information systems or relations between positions or departments. Rather eclectic use has been made of various scientific disCiplines in the development of this conceptual system with some bias towards the use of system theory and cybernetics. The book is intended for professional workers in the field of 'organizational control technology', such as automation and .organization specialists in complex organizations and workers in the related disCiplines at University. However, I have tried to write it in such a way that it is also accessible to non-specialists with a professional interest in the subject matter - in particular the users of organizational control structures: managers and 'managees'. The book consists of five parts: part I gives some background information, after which part II introduces some basic concepts concerning organization structures. Part III presents an analysis of the dynamics of complex industrial organizations. In part IV the basic features of organizational control systems are discussed, with special reference to the coordination mechanisms embedded in them. Finally, part V summarizes the whole book and gives some suggestions for further research.
vii
For a quick introduction to this book one could read the summary in section 17.1, followed by the chapter summaries preceding parts II, III and N. The material presented here is based on eight years' work on operations research, informatics and organization design in the research group of the Corp
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