Workarounds arise from a brokerage structure in the organisation: Case study insights.

Abstract

While research suggests that workarounds are generative mechanisms for an organisation's innovation, it remains unclear what organisational structure facilitates workarounds’ emergence. This study investigates the organisational structure that underpins workarounds to manifest. It examines four Indonesian case studies focusing on the units producing managerial reports, where workarounds are widely observable. Open coding is used to analyse interview texts. It finds that a brokerage structure creates workarounds: a “data” broker retrieves data from various sources, processes them, and transfers them to various stakeholders. Therefore, these insights contribute to workarounds research and practices regarding the workaround-enabled structure, which is previously unknown.