Identifying how automation can lose its intended benefit along the development process : a research plan

Doctoral Consortium Presentation © The Authors 2009Automation is usually considered to improve performance in virtually any domain. However it can fail to deliver the target benefit as intended by those managers and designers advocating the introduction of the tool. In safety critical domains this problem is of significance not only because the unexpected effects of automation might prevent its widespread usage but also because they might turn out to be a contributor to incident and accidents. Research on failures of automation to deliver the intended benefit has focused mainly on human automation interaction. This paper presents a PhD research plan that aims at characterizing decisions for those involved in development process of automation for safety critical domains, taken under productive pressure, to identify where and when the initial intention the automation is supposed to deliver can be lost along the development process. We tentatively call such decisions as drift and the final objective is to develop principles that will allow to identify and compensate for possible sources of drift in the development of new automation. The research is based on case studies and is currently entering Year 2

Darwinism, probability and complexity : market-based organizational transformation and change explained through the theories of evolution

The study of transformation and change is one of the most important areas of social science research. This paper synthesizes and critically reviews the emerging traditions in the study of change dynamics. Three mainstream theories of evolution are introduced to explain change: the Darwinian concept of survival of the fittest, the Probability model and the Complexity approach. The literature review provides a basis for development of research questions that search for a more comprehensive understanding of organizational change. The paper concludes by arguing for the development of a complementary research tradition, which combines an evolutionary and organizational analysis of transformation and change

The social foundations of the bureaucratic order

This article views the bureaucratic form of organization as both an agent and an expression of key modern social innovations that are most clearly manifested in the non-inclusive terms by which individuals are involved in organizations. Modern human involvement in organizations epitomizes and institutionally embeds the crucial yet often overlooked cultural orientation of modernity whereby humans undertake ac-tion along well-specified and delimited paths thanks to their capacity to isolate and suspend other personal or social considerations. The organizational involvement of humans qua role agents rather than qua persons helps unleash formal organizing from being tied to the indolence of the human body and the languish process of per-sonal or psychological reorientation. Thanks to the loosening of these ties, the bu-reaucratic organization is rendered capable to address the shifting contingencies un-derlying modern life by reshuffling and re-assembling the roles and role patterns by which it is made. The historically unique adaptive capacity of bureaucracy remains though hidden behind the ubiquitous presence of routines and standard operating procedures –requirements for the standardization of roles– that are mistakenly ex-changed for the essence of the bureaucratic form

Inter-organizational learning in drifting environments - Experiences from a multi-firm software development project

This paper examines conditions under which organizations can acquire and profitably utilise knowledge generated in joint product development ventures. Past research states that such learning depends on relationships between knowledge accumulation at the level of joint venture and the evolution of knowledge structures in the wider organizational environment. An important argument of this paper is that such relationships might drift abruptly due to unforeseen events taking place during project operation, creating new challenges and opportunities for learning. Drawing upon previous research on project-based learning, the paper proposes a model of interorganizational learning aimed to help managers and researchers visualising links between drift and learning in distributed project contexts. The paper illustrates and assesses the empirical relevance of the analytical framework through a case study of a multi-firm product development project in the European software industry.

Mitigating risk in computerized bureaucracy

This paper presents an important aspect of the pragmatic dimensions of mitigating the risks that stem from computerized bureaucracy, and thereby, preserving the organizational integrity of a firm. A case study is used to provide valuable insights into the mechanics of such mitigation. The case refers to the problematic implementation and use of a computerized reservation system in a large budget hotel in London, United Kingdom. Following the empirical findings, Ciborra’s notions of bricolage, improvisation and tinkering are examined as practical and useful ways of addressing the downsides of computerized bureaucracy

On the Design of IT Artifacts and the Emergence of Business Processes as Organizational Routines

Much of the BPM literature views business process design and implementation as a top-down process that is built on strategic alignment and managerial control. This view is inconsistent with the observation that information infrastructures, including a company’s business process infrastructure, are at drift, a term that refers to the lack of top-down management control. The paper contributes to resolving this inconsistency by developing a framework that conceptualizes business processes as emergent organizational routines that are represented, enabled, and constrained by IT artifacts. IT artifacts are developed in processes of functional-hierarchical decomposition and social design processes. Organizational routines have ostensive and performative aspects, forming a mutually constitutive duality. A literature review demonstrates that the propositions offered by the framework have been insufficiently considered in the BPM field. The paper concludes with an outlook to applying the framework to theorizing on the emergence of business processes on online social network sites

Exploring the Interplay of the Design and Emergence of Business Processes as Organizational Routines

Much of the BPM literature views business process design and implementation as a top-down process that is built on strategic alignment and managerial control.While this view has enabled the design of many IT artifacts for business processes, it is inconsistent with the observation that information infrastructures, including a company’s business process infrastructure, are at drift, a term that refers to the lack of topdown management control. The paper contributes to resolving this inconsistency by developing ameta-framework that conceptualizes business processes as emergent organizational routines that are represented, enabled, and constrained by IT artifacts. IT artifacts are developed in processes of functionalhierarchical decomposition and social design processes. Organizational routines have ostensive and performative aspects, forming a mutually constitutive duality. A literature review demonstrates that the propositions offered by the meta-framework have been insufficiently considered in the BPM field. The paper concludes with an outlook to applying the meta-framework to theorize about the interplay of design projects with the subsequent emergence of business processes in organizations

On Organizations and Oligarchies: Michels in the Twenty-First Century

[Excerpt] A central problem for those interested in studying and explaining the actions of organizations is how to conceptualize these social phenomena. In particular, because organizations are constituted by individuals, each of whom may seek to achieve his or her interests through the organization, questions of how decisions are made in organizations and whose preferences drive those decisions are critical to explaining organizational actions. Although early organizational scholars spent much time wrestling with these questions (e.g. Barnard 1938; Simon 1947; Parsons 1956; March and Simon 1958), more recent work in organizational studies has tended to elide them, adopting an implicit view of organizations as unitary actors, much like individuals, and in particular, like individuals who operate with a coherent utility function that they seek to maximize (e.g. Porter 1985; Baum et al. 2005; Casciaro and Piskorski 2005; Mezias and Boyle 2005; Jensen 2006). Thus, organizational behavior is seen as reflecting efforts to achieve a specific goal, which is, presumably, that of enhancing the organizations interests. While this may be the dominant conceptualization underlying much contemporary research, other work sharply questions the validity and usefulness of this approach to organizational analysis (March and Simon 1958; Cohen, March, and Olsen 1972; Jackall 1988). Studies in this tradition suggest that it is more appropriate in most instances to conceive of organizations as battlefields, constituted by shifting factions with differing interests that vie for control of the organization; hence, organizational actions should be viewed as reflecting the preferences of a victorious coalition at a given point in time. We suspect that, although most people’s experience in organizations may make them sympathetic to the coalitional view and skeptical of the unitary actor view, the continuing predilection for the latter stems at least in part from problems of deriving systematic predictions of organizational behavior from a more chaotic, coalitional kaleidoscope perspective. A different model of organizations is represented in the work of Robert Michels (1876-1936), who, nearly a century ago, offered his now-famous, pithy summary of the fundamental nature of organizations ([1911] 1962: 365): ‘Who says organization, says oligarchy.’ Drawing on his own experiences with early twentieth-century German political party organizations, Michels presented the drift to oligarchy as an ‘iron law’, inevitably resulting in the division of even the most expressly democratic organizations into two parts: a small stable set of elites and all the other members. His analysis offered a catalog of the processes and forces that produced such a division, and he postulated that the directives of the elite, while nominally reflecting the set of interests shared by all members, in actuality are driven by their own personal interests in the organization. His provocative (and very pessimistic) arguments have served as the basis for many studies over the years, particularly of organizations specifically formed to represent the interests of groups seeking to promote change in political arenas. Much of this work has been focused on assessing the purported inevitability of the emergence of oligarchies and defining the conditions of the iron law—i.e. those that affect the realization (or suppression) of oligarchic tendencies. In this chapter, we argue that Michels’s core arguments about the nature of oligarchies in organizations, and research generated in response to his work, are not only relevant to understanding the dynamics of political organizations but can be extended as a useful framework for thinking about important aspects of contemporary economic corporations as well. In making this argument, we highlight the parallels between Berle and Means’s analysis (1932) of modern, publicly held corporations and that of Michels. Both analyses address the general organizational problem of ensuring representation of members’ interests. In political organizations, it is the rank-and-file members’ interests that leaders are charged with representing; in publicly held organizations, leaders are primarily responsible for representing the interests of stockholders, as the nominal owners’ of the firm. In this context, we consider evidence and research on problematic corporate behavior to show how Michels’s work provides a useful framework for understanding these problems and for formulating ways of addressing them