Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Question
Asked 25 July 2016
Are there any previous studies on participatory organizational design methodologies? If not, would it be necessary?
As many organizations are taking open innovation or crowdsourcing as their new strategies, their organization design also need to be adjusted to support their strategic changes. As I understood, such self-organizing organizations should be designed by different approach from the traditional organization design. That is, the activities of members should be encouraged by designing the protocols and environment of organizations rather than directly controlled in a hierarchical structure. When the members are perceived as the user of protocols and working environment of an organization, it can be inferred that the participatory design can contribute to improving organizational design.
In this context, I wonder if there are any previous studies on organizational design methods or tools to support the participation of organization members in designing their own organizations. If not, would the attempts to develop such organization design methodologies be necessary or helpful for improving the performance of organizations undertaking open innovation or crowdsourcing?
Most recent answer
@ Professor Kettunen,
Thank you for sharing valuable research. It seems to be a good reference for participatory organization design!
@ Mr. Pinarbasi,
I found that the paper you've introduced (The visible hand and the crowd: Analyzing organization design in distributed innovation systems) is very helpful! It supports the significance of my research as well as provide the beneficial information - design principles for organizing distributed innovation - for constructing my research framework. Thank you very much :)
All Answers (8)
Istanbul Medipol University
This could help about your question:
This could also help with Hypothesis 3;
1 Recommendation
Eindhoven University of Technology
Sojung, I've been engaged with researching selfmanagement, selforganization and circularity (incl. its impact on hierarchy, control, innovation and governance) for a number of decades. In my recently published "The Quest for Professionalism", I took stock of the body of knowledge in these areas. For other overviews, see my TU/e website as well as an entry on the MIX platform.
2 Recommendations
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
There are some studies on this, one of my favorites is McKelvey's article in Administrative Science Quarterly:
I believe most organization design methodologies assume that there must be some degree of participation in order to succeed (e.g., see the methodology I propose in my own book, published by Pearson Education, UK, 2012).
At the same time, in most cases, it is the prerogative of the leader to structure the process and make the final decision. I think Victor Vroom's decision model can be used to evaluate to what extent it is feasible to delegate the decision to a group.
Also, I think that one should take into consideration that the ability of individuals and groups to make organization design decisions (which are usually quite complex) is limited. That's the beauty of McKelvey's article - it combines input from the participants in a system (about how they work/would like to work) with an analytical method for structuring the data that is collected in this way. This is the approach I hope to contribute to developing myself.
Kind regards,
Nicolay
1 Recommendation
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
Thank you for many helpful comments!
I would like to reply to your advice after reading the recommended materials, but it would take quite long time because I am a slow reader...
@Professor Souleles,
Thank you for advice! I totally agree with you, and I am planning to facilitate an empirical evaluation after I develop an organizational design method. But before that, I am working on strengthening a theoretical basis of my design approach. I would like ask for your comments on my empirical evaluation plan when it is defined.
Turku University of Applied Sciences
Hyrkkänen, Ursula, Kettunen, Juha & Putkonen, Ari (2008). A participatory design project on mobile ICT, In Antonio Cartelli & Marco Palma (ed.), Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology, Hershey: IGI Global, 669-675.
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
@ Professor Kettunen,
Thank you for sharing valuable research. It seems to be a good reference for participatory organization design!
@ Mr. Pinarbasi,
I found that the paper you've introduced (The visible hand and the crowd: Analyzing organization design in distributed innovation systems) is very helpful! It supports the significance of my research as well as provide the beneficial information - design principles for organizing distributed innovation - for constructing my research framework. Thank you very much :)
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