The Information Organization: On Changes in Information Technology and Organizational Design

Policemen, managers, lawyers: New results on complementarities between organization and information and communication technology

This paper describes assumptions, rationale, and track-offs involved in designing the research methodology used in a longitudinal study of the relationships among changes in organizational contexts, designs, and effectiveness. The basic research question concerns when how, and why do different types of organizational change occur. Given this research question and a desire to develop and test generalizable theory about changes in organizational design and effectiveness, we conducted a longitudinal study of over 100 organizations. Data concerning the changes were obtained through four interviews spaced six months apart with the top manager in each organization. Each interview provided a short-term retrospective event history over the preceding 6-month interval in aggregate, the four interviews provided a 24-month event history for each organization. Additionally, periodic assessments of the state of the organization's context, design, and effectiveness were collected with two questionnaires spaced one year apart. Finally, in each organization, the top manager's personal characteristics were assessed after all other data were obtained. This paper examines the alternatives, advantages, and disadvantages of the research design decisions. With some hindsight, we also offer some suggestions for future researchers with similar goals of developing and testing generalizable explanations of change processes in organizations.

PurposeManaging internal supply chains is becoming increasingly complex, requiring managers to balance diverse needs. As a result, managers continuously face the need to change how they organize their internal supply chains. The purpose of this paper is to examine this phenomenon by addressing why multinational supply chain management organizations (SCMOs) change their designs, as well as how managers respond to pertinent change phenomena using complementary theoretical perspectives.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data, collected from 50 executives within 24 multinational manufacturers, is used to develop an understanding of the organizational design change phenomena. A theory elaboration approach is taken to illustrate how various theoretical perspectives explain organizational design change.FindingsThis study identifies and elaborates organizational design change phenomena in the context of multinational SCMOs, including internal and external drivers of design change. Managers also discussed key supply chain management capabilities that were developed in order to meet perceived changes in business needs.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to academic understanding of organizational design issues affecting SCMOs. Four theoretical perspectives are elaborated upon to illustrate their applicability for examining SCMO organizational design issues.Practical implicationsThis study provides managerial application of several organizational design change theories by elaborating principles for framing, interpreting, and implementing design change initiatives in internal SCMOs.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to investigate organizational design change in multinational SCMOs. This research highlights the complexity and evolving nature of SCMO organizational design decisions by describing the adaption, integration, and reconfiguration of firm resources and competencies in changing environments.

We study the impact of information technology (IT) on the profitability of individual organization designs and on the relative profitability of different organization designs. We develop models where organization design is defined by the location of investment decision authority. We consider global and local investment when there is an information asymmetry between a central authority and decentralized nodes—decentralized nodes make better local investment decisions because of their local knowledge. We define three separate organization designs: a hierarchy where all investments are made by a central authority, a market where all investments are made by the decentralized nodes, and a mixed mode where global investments are made by a central authority and local investments are made by decentralized nodes. Because of complementarities between global and local investment, we show that there is under investment relative to first-best in all three organization designs. We also find that IT can be used to mitigate that underinvestment, either by bringing information to the decision maker or by redesigning the monitoring and incentive structure. We demonstrate that IT does not necessarily favor decentralized organization designs, and we show how the costs of coordination may result in the mixed mode being dominated by one or both of the alternative organization designs. Thus, collocation of investment decision rights and information that results in decisions that require coordination might not be optimal when the costs of not synchronizing global and local investment are high.

This book is concerned with the ways in which organizations design, build and use information technology (IT) systems. In particular it looks at the interaction between these IT-centred activities and the broader management processes within organizations. The authors adopt a critical social science perspective on these issues, and are primarily concerned with advancing theoretical debates on how best to understand the related processes of technological and organizational change. To this end, the book examines and deploys recent work on power/knowledge, actor-network theory and critical organization theory. The result is an account of the nature and significance of information systems in organizations, which is an alternative perspective to pragmatic and recipe-based approaches to this topic that dominate much contemporary management literature on IT.

The rise of social media has fostered increasing instances of deviant behavior. Arguably, the most notable of these is cyberbullying (CB), which is an increasing global concern because of the social and financial ramifications. This has necessitated a new line of research aimed at understanding and preventing CB. Although much progress has been made in understanding CB, little is known about how to prevent it, especially through the information technology (IT) design. Based on the need for a better causal theory and more effective empirical methods to investigate and mitigate this phenomenon, we leverage the control balance theory (CBT) for system design. Our model examines the causes of CB from several novel angles, including (1) the strong nonlinear influence of control imbalances on CB, and (2) using the concept of fit to understand how different design features of information technology artifacts influence factors such as deindividuation and accountability, thus affecting control imbalance. Using an innovative factorial survey method that enabled us to manipulate IT design features to obtain a nuanced view, we tested our model with 507 adults and found strong support for our model. The results show that IT design features create a strong CB opportunity for individuals who perceive that they are controlled by others. Whether this perception is real or imagined, it creates a sense of vulnerability, prompting them to engage in CB. We can thus propose specific IT design feature manipulations that can be used to discourage CB. These results should have salient implications for researchers and social media designers, especially in developing social media networks that are safe, supportive, responsible, and constructive.

:We introduce a set of information technology variables which can be used in designing organizations. We first discuss traditional design variables and then present a series of options enabled by modem information technology (IT). We use these IT design variables to describe four prototypical organizations that are beginning to appear in the workplace: virtual, negotiated, traditional, and vertically integrated. It is argued that an organization designer must also consider how structure and technology influence job tasks and people in order to be successful. We then discuss potential implementation difficulties, particularly in motivating traditional organizations to take advantage of IT design variables. We conclude that the design of information technology and the design of organizations are largely becoming the same task.

It is a truism that the design and deployment of information and communication technologies is vital to everyday life, the conduct of work and to social order. But how are individual, organisational and societal choices made? What might it mean to invoke a politics and an ethics of information technology design and use? This editorial paper situates these questions within the trajectory of preoccupations and approaches to the design and deployment of information technology since computerisation began in the 1940s. Focusing upon the dominant concerns over the last three decades, the paper delineates an interest in design and use in relation to socio-technical theories, situated practices and actor-network theory. It is argued that each of these approaches is concerned with a particular form of politics that does not explicitly engage with ethics. In order to introduce ethics into contemporary debates about information technology, and to frame the papers in the special issue, it is argued that Levinas' ethics is particularly valuable in problematising the relationship between politics and ethics. Levinas provides a critique of modernity's emphasis on politics and the egocentric self. It is from a Levinasian concern with the Other and the primacy of the ethical that a general rethinking of the relationship between politics, ethics and justice in relation to information and communication technologies can be invoked.

This research paper will try to understand and explain how much and how is understood the nature, the importance and factors that affect the business organizational structure and design in Albanian Organizations, compared with theoretical factors researched from the literature. How a business does structure in our country, knowing how important are the theoretical factors in business organization performance and therefore how much and how the principles of organizational design are applied in Albanian Organizations. Why structure, strategy and organizational design? Organizational design and organizational restructuring remains one of the most important issues that management of organizations, in the global era and information technology, must deal with, for the fact that businesses today face some unprecedented challenges: increased competition, globalization, growing of social responsibility, technological changes, changes in taste and consumer’s exigency, new strategic thinking, etc. Referring the literature and contemporary researchers, a constant topic during these recent years has been the one of how globalization and economic crisis have obliged the organizations to review their strategies and to change the way they operate, trying often therefore to structure for surviving and achieving success. These challenges should be carefully managed in order to build and hold a high performance organization, to deal with tough competition and endless problem that this era we live does bear. It is also important to understand correctly that organizational structure and design, by dictating roles connection in an organization and consequently how people function, may often be the main cause of the problems, but also one more reason of success. The way that organizations structure or the specific model of business, may constitute their competitive advantage, or special strategic skills, so it can make a business organization unique and competitive in the market. For many researchers the prevailing conclusion is that the organizations either neglect the importance of organizational design, or they just do not know what to do about it and therefore they evolve in an indirectly, spontaneous or intuitive way. From what the paper identifies, most of organizational structuring in Albania are made in a hasty way, without seeing or paying attention to full frame or circumstances. This may result in some partial and fragmentary initiatives instead of aiming in organizational designing and general structuring. This is not surprising as the subject is complex, often poorly explained and not rightly understood even though the academics and the consulters have made a great work to address the organizational design topic. However the paper shows that entrepreneurs and managers still lack a practical and systematic framework in order to guide their choices of organizational structure. To find a practical approach for the organizational design, can be difficult, even though some business schools have tried to simplify the things. The study will try to achieve this task, through careful research, in order to diagnose the organizational design process and restructuring situation in Albania, highlighting the effect of the current challenges which have an impact on this difficult process, mainly based on a survey of 200 organizational businesses in Albania.

The distance learning industry has served society well for the continued education of professionals on a part-time, flexible, and remote basis. However, with the explosive development and deployment of advanced information technology (IT) such as digital libraries and electronic publishing, distance education will undergo major changes in organizational design and structure and in the way courses are taught, grades are assigned, and degrees are certified. Electronic commerce (e-commerce) as a form of IT is not just a new technological means that can make the conventional business model of distance education more efficient; it will also induce the transformation of the existing educational processes and organizational structures, thus creating new and more effective learning environments. In this article, we discuss why e-commerce will reshape the entire distance learning sector and how this change might come about. We examine conventional distance learning models, investigate the potential of automating distance learning processes, discuss relevant economic mechanisms, and propose a novel theoretical model for an e-commerce-based, distributed distance education (distriducation). Finally, we present some empirical evidence supporting our theory.

This book is concerned with the ways in which organizations design, build and use information technology systems. In particular it looks at the interaction between these IT-centred activities and the broader management processes within organizations. The authors adopt a critical social science perspective on these issues, and are primarily concerned with advancing theoretical debates on how best to understand the related processes of technological and organizational change. To this end, the book examines and deploys recent work on power/knowledge, actor-network theory and critical organization theory. The result is an account of the nature and significance of information systems in organizations which is an alternative perspective to pragmatic and recipe-based approaches to this topic which dominate much contemporary management literature on IT.

Information technology and organization design

The complex organisational design of the past Century proves to be too slow in adapting to the actual, ever-changing environment. During the past few decades, we used the distinction between routine and non-routine jobs to cope with this problem. Routine jobs are now executed quickly and accurately with the help of information technology (IT). Non-routine jobs make use of specific organisational structures in order to simplify coordination between people; organisational design now focuses on unity of time, place and - teamwork has become a central issue. This article explores the next phase in the inter-relationship between information technology and organisational design it shows that new challenges lie open for organisational design specialists. IT has now provided us with many new functionalities, and offers solutions for performing non-routine tasks; unity of time, place and action is no longer the first prerequisite to cope with today's dynamic environment. IT has incorporated important communication support features and has migrated towards; ICT human interaction can now take many expressions.

The overwhelming evidence of contemporary information technology (IT) design failures, or “soft-core disasters,” and the dynamic synergy within the IT industry promote an urgency for the adoption of new methodologies that will facilitate design-in-action and promote an organizational ability for “learning to learn.” An examination of the various methodologies and management techniques that underlie the IT industry reveals a common strategy of dividing organizational functions into tasks in a “top-down” fashion. One engineering analogy, the cybernetic control model, has been a major influence on IT management and design, and it underlies much of the management thinking of the engineer, the auditor, and, as such, IT design. The research and development approach is recommended for design-in-action development and an open-ended IT strategy to facilitate an organizational ability for learning to learn.

This article sets forth a theory of the effects that computer-assisted communication and decision-aiding technologies have on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making. Several components of the theory are controversial and in need of critical empirical investigation. The article focuses on those technology-prompted changes in organizational design that affect the quality and timeliness of intelligence and decision making, as contrasted with those that affect the production of goods and services.