Business Process Versus Coordination Process in Organizational Change

Abstract

Organizational change has been a key component in enhancing performance and organizational design. Previous process-oriented organizational change methods, however, focused on simplifying process flow without examining how it affects other organizational elements. Since an organization consists of several interdependent elements, a change within an organization can affect the other dependent organizational elements. Lack of coordination within an organization can result in unexpected poor performance and high coordination cost. In this research, we suggest a coordination theory approach to organizational process change by applying the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Process Handbook with simulation technique. For the validity test, we applied the Process Handbook to a real hospital. From the application case, we saw that the proposed approach is useful in minimizing the risk of the change project by validating change alternatives using simulation technique, coordinating the dependent organizational elements, and managing change effects on other organizational elements. In this article, we discuss the proposed method and the transformation of a new organizational design to the workflow system development.