Organizational Problem Solving Research Articles

Strategies for Success in the Academy for Black Women

Strategies for Success in the Academy for Black Women

The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application

In the last few years, “Design Thinking” has gained popularity – it is now seen as an exciting new paradigm for dealing with problems in sectors as far a field as IT, Business, Education and Medicine. This potential success challenges the design research community to provide unambiguous answers to two key questions: “What is the core of Design Thinking?” and “What could it bring to practitioners and organisations in other fields?”. We sketch a partial answer by considering the fundamental reasoning pattern behind design, and then looking at the core design practices of framing and frame creation. The paper ends with an exploration of the way in which these core design practices can be adopted for organisational problem solving and innovation.

Cultural Differences and Improving Performance: How Values and Beliefs Influence Organizational Performance

One of the most significant and yet largely overlooked factors influencing performance and workplace problem solving in many large organizations is that of national culture. Managers, and the organizations for which they work, need to be able to understand the influence of cultural values and beliefs on performance in order to identify appropriate solutions; strategies appropriate in one part of the world may be ineffective or even counter-productive in another. Bryan Hopkins' ground breaking book relates the concept of cultural dimensions, as developed by writers such as Hofstede and Trompenaars, to the performance engineering approaches of Gilbert and Mager and Pipe, to show how strategies for solving workplace performance problems need to consider the cultural composition of the workforce. It then provides a practical structure for problem solving within the context of an international, multi-cultural environment. This is a book for both managers working in an international setting or for those in national organizations who are dealing with the challenge of culturally diverse workforces. It's also a book for governments seeking to understand the potential implications of national culture on civilian or even military interventions.

Research Versus Problem Solving for the Education Leadership Doctoral Thesis: Implications for Form and Function

Background: A growing literature is questioning the appropriateness of a research dissertation for practitioners in education doctoral programs. Although this literature persuasively critiques the prevailing theory-research orientation of most programs and theses, it goes little beyond exhorting change and describing extant alternatives in a few programs. There is little attention in this literature to the powerful structures and values holding in place the traditional research dissertation. This literature has not examined in-depth distinctions between research and organizational problem solving and the implications for an alternative thesis design for education leadership doctorates. Findings: This article presents four “qualities of acceptability” that alternatives to the traditional research thesis must address: (a) developmental efficacy, (b) community benefit, (c) stewardship of doctoral values, and (d) distinctiveness of design. The author comments on existing proposals from the standpoint of this framework, noting their strengths and shortcomings; elaborates on five key distinctions between research and organizational problem solving; presents theory and research supporting a thesis based on organizational problem solving; and proposes a specific and distinctive thesis design.

Accomplishing Knowledge

This article proposes a shift in how researchers study knowledge and knowing in organizations. Responding to a pronounced lack of methodological guidance from existing research, this work develops a framework for analyzing situated organizational problem solving. This framework, rooted in social practice theory, focuses on communicative knowledge-accomplishing activities, which frame and respond to various problematic situations. Vignettes drawn from a call center demonstrate the value of the framework, which can advance practice-oriented research on knowledge and knowing by helping it break with dubious assumptions about knowledge homogeneity within groups, examine knowing as instrumental action and involvement in a struggle over meaning, and display how patterns of knowledge-accomplishing activities can generate unintended organizational consequences.

The division of labor in the firm: Agency, near-decomposability and the Babbage principle

Abstract:This paper devises a simulation model that combines insights from the evolutionary perspective on the division of labor with ideas from the labor process literature. It characterizes technical change and the development of a near-decomposable production process as the outcome of technological search and of organizational problem solving, where the conflict between workers and firms over the organization of work plays a central role. It is argued that a near-decomposable organization of the production process also allows management to tighten its control over workers. Consequently, more extensive divisions of labor within a firm develop where the power of workers to oppose decisions by the management is low. In these scenarios the performance of firms is also highest. The model is used to interpret historical evidence about different development paths in technical change in the UK and the US at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Pedagogy and Process in 'Organisational Problem-Solving'

This paper outlines a case study in which a management development learning process was tightly coupled to organisational change and development objectives. The case discusses how a research and consulting team came together to develop highly reflexive pedagogy to support the work of internal managers who were organized into teams (learning sets) to undertake 'organisational problem solving'. These learning sets had as their objective, to become catalysts of organisational change and 'performance improvement' within a large organisation. In order to structure the discourse amongst learning set members, a range of principles and constructs were used. Central to these was a form of process modelling, (termed 'models of teleological human process'), derived from Systems Theory. These were carefully introduced to learning set members, and were used to provide a 'basis for a discourse' amongst set members about 'problematic' organisational processes and how to change them. Each learning set was considered a social process in which the principles and constructs had an intrinsic power role, in a process which was purposely designed to integrate the subjective understandings of complex organisational situations of the set members. The learning sets were operationalised in a 2-day workshop followed by a three month period which was supported by an e-learning technology infrastructure. During each phase, the learning sets were facilitated bylearning set advisers. The pedagogy, methods and learning outcomes are outlined in this paper. (Less)

External knowledge acquisition, creativity and learning in organisational problem solving

The role of knowledge in firm strategy and performance is well documented in existing literature. Numerous studies conclude that, in general, the higher the level of knowledge acquired, the greater the level of firm performance. In this study, we take a more micro-level approach. Specifically, we examine the impact of external knowledge on the processes of creativity and learning in problem solving. We also investigate the role of absorptive capacity in knowledge acquisition, creativity and learning. As we will show, simply having access to a pool of external knowledge is not enough. If the firm is to use this knowledge to improve its performance, it must be able to do the following: absorb that knowledge; act creatively upon that knowledge; create new knowledge from these activities.

Critical incident technique: a learning intervention for organizational problem solving

PurposeThis article promotes the versatility and usefulness of critical incident technique (CIT) as a method for addressing organizational problems and challenges.Design/methodology/approachA brief overview of CIT is provided and a worked example is given from the author's professional experience. A process map is outlined to assist organizations plan the course of a CIT intervention.Practical implicationsCIT is a practical tool that can be used by organizational members to resolve a diverse range of issues across any industry.Originality/valueCIT has tended towards a three‐question approach to guide the intervention process and analyze the issue at hand. This paper proposes that practitioners need to address a fourth question. The fourth question is designed to help organizations prioritize a proposed CIT intervention.

Automatically composed workflows for grid environments

Once the realm of high-performance computing for scientific applications, grid computing is rising as a key enabling infrastructure for resource sharing and coordinated problem solving in dynamic multiinstitutional virtual organizations. Grids build over networking technology to provide middleware support such as locating files over a network of computers, scheduling the distributed execution of jobs, and managing resource sharing and access policies.2 The need of scientific communities to interconnect applications, data, expertise, and computing resources is shared by other application areas, such as business, government, medical care, and education.

Bridging contested terrain: linking incentive-based and learning perspectives on organizational evolution

In this paper we present a general model of organizational problem-solving in which we explore the relationship between problem complexity, decentralization of tasks and reward schemes. When facing complex problems that require the co-ordination of large numbers of interdependent elements, organizations face a decomposition problem that has both cognitive dimensions and reward and incentive dimensions. The former relate to the decomposition and allocation of the process of generation of new solutions: since the search space is too vast to be searched extensively, organizations employ heuristics for reducing it. The decomposition heuristic takes the form of division of cognitive labour and determines which solutions are generated and become candidates for selection. The reward and incentive dimensions fundamentally shape the selection environment which chooses over alternative solutions. The model we present begins to study the interrelationships between these two domains of analysis: in particular, we compare the problem-solving performance of organizations characterized by various decompositions (of coarser or finer grain) and various reward schemes (at the level of the entire organization, team and individual). Moreover we investigate extensions of our model in order to account for (admittedly rudimentary) power and authority relationships (giving some parts of the organization the power to stop changes in other parts), and discuss the interaction of problem representations and incentive mechanisms. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Aligning organizations and their information technology infrastructure: How to make information technology support business

A modern organization, in order to develop or survive, has to encounter decision issues that are simultaneously complex and unpredictable. Such a decision-making or problem-solving environment directs attention to the problem-solving and information-processing properties of the organization. The concepts of organizational problem solving and information technology management are instantiated and the problem-domain of organizational information technology investments looked into. Referring to research mainly in the fields of economics, organization theory, information theory and information systems management, key concepts in this problem domain are explored and reasoned. The reason is that these very concepts are often misunderstood when actual decisions about information technology are made. The key concepts are: information technology infrastructure, information technology application, communication, message transmission, learning and knowledge, especially the variants of partial knowledge called risk and uncertainty. Also included is an experimental conceptual fitting of the theoretical reasoning in the concept of solving information technology issues with methods based on simulation.

Introducing Organizational Development (OD) Practices into a County Human Service Agency

Organization development (OD) is one approach to managing change within an organization. In this case study, organization development is defined as a top-management-supported, long-range effort to improve an organization's problem-solving and renewal processes, particularly through a more effective and collaborative diagnosis and management of the organization's culture. It is rare that a public county human service agency has the opportunity to incorporate an internal organizational development (OD) function to assist with managing organizational change. This is a case study of one such agency which hired an internal OD specialist to facilitate organizational restructuring related to the implementation of welfare reform. The case study is based on the first three years of implementation (1996-1999).

Models of Cognition, the Contextualisation of Knowledge and Organisational Theory

This paper examines the importance of cognitivefoundations for theories of organisationalbehaviour. Three different conceptions of humancognition and reasoning are examined: theinformation processing, situated learning andcultural-historical perspectives. The papershows how each conception of cognition leads toa different understanding of organisationalroutines and organisational problem-solving, aswell as to the adoption of a differentempirical methodology for observingorganisational behaviour and for testinghypotheses about the nature of routines andproblem-solving. The paper demonstrates that ofthe three approaches to human cognition, onlythe cultural-historical one gives rise to anunderstanding of organisational knowledge asembedded within a wider cultural andinstitutional setting.

The structure of problem-solving knowledge and the structure of organizations

This work presents a rather general model of organizational problem-solving able to account for the relationships between problem complexity, decentralization of tasks and problem-solving efficiency. Whenever problem-solving requires the coordination of a multiplicity of interdependent elements, the varying degrees of decentralization of cognitive and operational tasks shape the solutions which can be generated, tested and selected. Suboptimality and path-dependence are shown to be ubiquitous features of organizational problem-solving. At the same time, the model allows a precise exploration of the possible trade-offs between decomposition patterns and search efficiency involved in different organizational architectures. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.

Developing services for substance-abusing HIV-positive youth with mental health disorders

Models of program development have primarily focused on the internal organizational processes needed to plan, implement, and evaluate new service programs. However, creating an external demand for new programs by policy makers, administrative bureaucracies, public health officials, and funders is critical to establishing new programs. A series of deaths of seropositive youth and an absence of local service settings with staff trained to address the needs of youth living with HIV provided the impetus for Larkin Street Youth Center. In particular, the agency had to overcome stigma associated with having both substance use and mental health disorders to establish service programs to recruit and mobilize staff within the agency and the local community and to establish a comprehensive housing program for symptomatic HIV-infected adolescents. This article examines how a residential assisted care facility for HIV-seropositive adolescents was established using organizational strategic planning processes, problem solving, and social marketing frameworks.

A Field Study into the Organizational Application of Group Support Systems

Results from laboratory studies and field studies suggest that Group Support Systems (GSS) may have an added value to organizational problem solving. However, few studies have been reported on the actual in situ organizational application of this technology. This field study investigated the use of a GSS in a large insurance firm over a number of sessions. Data was gathered with respect to participants ’ perceptions on the GSS used, the meeting process, and the meeting outcomes. The results suggest that the use of GSS increased productivity by 55 percent both in terms of man hours and project time span. Productivity gains seemed to increase in larger projects. Both initiators and participants considered the GSS meetings to be more efficient and effective than manual meetings and to yield higher quality results. Critical factors to the success of GSS meetings included the translation of meeting objectives into a structured agenda, the active motivation of group members to participate, and enough time for groups to digest (intermediary) meeting results. The results of this study bear many similarities to earlier in situ studies at IBM and Boeing. They yield further evidence to support that GSS are perceived to have a considerable added value to organizational problem solving.

Improvisation in Public Administration and Policy Making in Israel

Although improvisation stands outside of conventional models for rational policy making and Weberian administration, it is nonetheless prevalent in public life. This article argues that improvisation is both a natural consequence of bounded rationality as well as a product of cultural and personal predilections and environmental circumstances. Drawing on a number of instances of improvisation in public administration and policy making in Israel, it attempts to shed light on its uses, motives, and implications, as well as on the issues involved in considering its utility.

Telling It Like It Is: The Use of Certainty in Public Business Discourse

Write with confidence. Use definite language. Avoid weasel words. Deliver bad news in clear, positive, forward-looking language. Business communication authors (see, for example, Hattersley & McJannet, 1997; Lesikar, Pettit, & Flatley, 1996; Ober, 1998; Penrose, Rasberry, & Myers, 1997) routinely advise managers and future managers to avoid hedging-to tell it like it is. But is such resoluteness always the best tactic? Or does its use depend upon (or is it affected by) such variables as the organization's industry or profitability? These questions motivated us to investigate the corporate use of certainty in public oral and written business communications. In this study we used a commercially available text-analysis software program, Sage's DICTION 4.0 (Hart, 1997), to measure the use of certainty in Fortune 500 companies' recorded oral and written business communications. The research question addressed in this study was to determine if and how large profitable and unprofitable (or least profitable) business organizations in different industries differ in their use of certainty in public oral and written business discourse. We tested four hypotheses: H1: Corporations with the largest profit increase and those with the largest profit decrease will differ significantly in their use of certainty in public business discourse. H2: Corporations in different industries will differ significantly in their use of certainty in public business discourse. H3: Public written business communication and public oral business communication will differ significantly in their use of certainty. H4: Public business discourse and public general discourse will differ significantly in their use of certainty. We did not analyze the use of certainty in internal communications such as memoranda, e-mail messages, reports developed for internal use, and other private communications. The purpose of the study was to provide empirical findings that can serve as a theoretical basis for recommending the use of certainty in business communication. Review of Related Literature Literature related to our research question comes from three areas: (a) relationships among communication, information, certainty, and profitability; (b) the relationship between certainty and verbal communication; and (c) the validity of computerized content analysis. Communication, Information, Certainty, and Profitability In business and organizational activities, information is an outcome of communication that provides people with a greater understanding of their environment, enabling them to coordinate activities, predict the future, make decisions, and solve problems (Kreps, 1990). Information theorists Shannon and Weaver (1949) referred to information as the reduction of uncertainty; that is, something has informational value to the extent that it reduces a receiver's and increases the predictability of future events. Thus, information helps to decrease the number of decisions an individual has to make and to increase the certainty with which the individual can direct his or her behavior. Weick (1979, p. 5) uses the term instead of uncertainty in his theory of organizing. Equivocality is the level of understandability of messages to which organization members respond. Some aspects of Weick's definition of equivocality are ambiguity, complexity, and obscurity of messages. The equivocality of a message relates to the certainty with which an organization member can decode that message. Weick suggests using his communication model of rules and cycles to process highly equivocal information input by reducing and transforming it into understandable information output with a high degree of predictability. Managers often face three different environments for decision making and problem solving in organizations: certainty, risk, and (Schermerhorn, 1993). …

Performance management for participatory democracy: thoughts on the transformation process in South African local government

The White Paper on Local Government in South Africa signals the intention to establish a performance management system for the sector. This paper suggests that current approaches to performance management, as used, for instance, in the UK public sector, would need substantial revision to be supportive of effective municipal development in South Africa. There is a need for low cost systems that fit the capabilities of the administrations that exist in many municipalities. A focus upon how municipalities manage their governance role would in the end be the best way of ensuring that liveable communities as well as improved services are created in the towns and rural areas of South Africa. The paper provides some ideas on the design of such a performance management or enhancement system. Its principal features would be that it is: based on mutual organisational learning and problem solving; using simple, indirect, low cost information gathering and dissemination techniques that are within the capabilities of existing leaders and officials; focused on processes in priority to outcomes.