Summary: Organisational Design

Read the summary and the most important questions on Organisational design

• 1 Week 1 Introduction & Pragmatic validity

• 1.1 Lesaantekeningen

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• What is the difference between organizational design and interventions in organizations course relating to the intervention cycle?

  The entire intervention cycle ranges from:
  1. Interrelated problems
  2. Diagnosis (problem choice and analysis)
  3. Design plan
  4. Change implementation
  4. Evaluation check 
  
  The organizational design course focuses on the diagnosis and design plan. Courses such as interventions in organizations and organizational change focus on change implementation and evaluation check.

• What is a network of tasks?

  A network of tasks comes into existence when grouping and allocating activities into tasks that can be performed by capacities (humans).

• What is the benefits of approaching organizational structure as a network of tasks?

  Scalability: you can easily talk about bundles of activities.

• What is the difference between activities and tasks?

  Example: coffee shop. In a coffee shop we have three activities: taking the order, making the order and paying the order. When each activity is related to a different capacity (to one person each), then we have tasks equal to the activities. However, when one capacity does 2 activities, then we have a more complex tasks. 
  
  So, the activities are the actions that need to be done, and the tasks are the grouping of activities, which in turn can be allocated to capacities. 

• What are the four requirements of a design approach? Also elaborate on these requirements.

  The requirements of a design approach are the following: 
  
  1. Relevant variables 
  --> Variables are the output of the organization. It's about what they try to achieve. This is more operationable than a goal. 
  2. Relevant parameters
  --> Elements or characteristics of an organization which can be tuned. 
  3. Relationship between parameters and variables (why) 
  4. Pragmatic validity 
  is about the extend to which the idea or theory is useful for practitioners. 

• How can pragmatic validity be judged?

  Pragmatic validity can be judged by the extend to which goals (diagnosis and design) can be achieved by producing certain actions.

• 1.2 Artikel Worren et al. Pragmatic Validity

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• What is pragmatic validity and what are the three ways in which pragmatic validity can be represented?

  Pragmatic validity is the extend to which the theory is useful in practice.
  
  Three ways in which pragmatic validity can be represented:
  1. Propositional
  2. Narrative
  3. Visual
  
  
  Note that one of the three is often dominant, but they're not mutually exclusive

• What are the three elements on which pragmatic validity depends?

  1. Problem type 
  2. Process phase
  3. Organizational contextual factors 

• Elaborate on the propositional representation of pragmatic validity:- Short explanation- Benefits and drawbacks - Requirements to achieve pragmatic validity  

  - Short explanation: 
  Propositional representation is about prescriptive statements about potential managerial outcomes. It is deductive an generalized.
  
  - Benefits: 
  * Informative
  * Meaningful prescriptions to solve a problem 
  
  - Drawbacks: 
  
  * Specific
  * Theories can never cover the complexity of the context 
  * Undermines the role of improvisation and affective and sensory considerations, which are important for solution making. 
  
  - Requirements to achieve pragmatic validity 
  1) Testability through explicit causal propositions (if X, then Y) 
  2) Operational definitions whether it leads to predicted consequences 
  3) Elaboration on how implementation is to proceed: how it will create certain results. 

• Elaborate on the narrative representation of pragmatic validity. - Brief explanation - Benefits and drawbacks - Requirements to achieve pragmatic validity

  
  - Brief explanation 
  The narrative representation is about stories and anecdotes to illustrate a concept or course of action. Its about imagination and contextualized features. The ambiguous linguistic knowledge improves the ability to deal with uncertain situations and appeals to a wider range of stakeholders. 
  
  - Benefits 
  * Can function as an inspiration for others. 
  * Appeals for many
  * Provides cognitive support (to frame reality) 
  
  - Drawbacks 
  * Sensitive for reformulation 
  * Difficult to extract lessons 
  
  - Requirements to achieve pragmatic validity
  * Levendige beelden en overtuigingskracht (persuasiveness)
  * Flexibility in interpretation and adaptation 
  * Plausibility through logical consistency (novel encourages retelling)