Agile and Pro-Active Public Administration as a Collaborative Networked Organization

In highly competitive, globalized economies and societies of always-on-line people intensively using the Internet and mobile phones, public administrations have to adapt to new challenges. Enterprises and citizens expect public administrations to be agile and pro-active to foster development. A way to achieve agility and pro-activity is application of a model of Collaborative Network Organizations in its two forms: Virtual Organizations (VO) and Virtual Organization Breeding Environments (VOBE). In the paper, advantages are shown of public administration playing a role of a Virtual Organization customer on the one hand, and a Virtual Organization member on the other hand. It is also shown how public administration playing a role of a Virtual Organization Breeding Environment may improve its agility and promote advanced technologies and management methods among local organizations. It is argued in the paper that public administration should provide a Virtual Organization Breeding Environment as a part of public services.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

An Approach to Transform Public Administration into SOA-based Organizations

Nowadays, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) is widely spread in private organizations. However, when transferring this knowledge to Public Administration, it is realized that it has not been transformed in terms of its legal nature into organizations capable to operate under the SOA paradigm. This fact prevents public administration bodies from offering the efficient services they have been provided by different boards of governments. A high-level framework to perform this transformation is proposed. Taking it as starting point, an instance of a SOA Target Meta-Model can be obtained by means of an iterative and incremental process based on the analysis of imperatives and focused on the particular business context of each local public administration. This paper briefly presents a practical experience consisting in applying this process to a Spanish regional public administration.Junta de Andalucía TIC-578

Agile methods for agile universities

We explore a term, Agile, that is being used in various workplace settings, including the management of universities. The term may have several related but slightly different meanings. Agile is often used in the context of facilitating more creative problem-solving and advocating for the adoption, design, tailoring and continual updating of more innovative organizational processes. We consider a particular set of meanings of the term from the world of software development. Agile methods were created to address certain problems with the software development process. Many of those problems have interesting analogues in the context of universities, so a reflection on agile methods may be a useful heuristic for generating ideas for enabling universities to be more creative

Managing at the Speed of Light: Improving Mission-Support Performance

The House and Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittees requested this study to help DOE's three major mission-support organizations improve their operations to better meet the current and future needs of the department. The passage of the Recovery Act only increased the importance of having DOE's mission-support offices working in the most effective, efficient, and timely manner as possible. While following rules and regulations is essential, the foremost task of the mission-support offices is to support the department's mission, i.e., the programs that DOE is implementing, whether in Washington D.C. or in the field. As a result, the Panel offered specific recommendations to strengthen the mission-focus and improve the management of each of the following support functions based on five "management mandates":- Strategic Vision- Leadership- Mission and Customer Service Orientation- Tactical Implementation- Agility/AdaptabilityKey FindingsThe Panel made several recommendations in each of the functional areas examined and some overarching recommendations for the corporate management of the mission-support offices that they believed would result in significant improvements to DOE's mission-support operations. The Panel believed that adopting these recommendations will not only make DOE a better functioning organization, but that most of them are essential if DOE is to put its very large allocation of Recovery Act funding to its intended uses as quickly as possible

Organizational agility in the public sector: A case study of the Office of the Auditor General of Norway

This master thesis explores organizational agility in the public sector through a case study of a state agency. Organizational agility is as a learned, permanently-available dynamic capability that can be performed quickly and efficiently to the degree necessary, and whenever needed, to increase business performance in a volatile market environment. Although the definition includes a focus on a volatile market environment and business performance, many public organizations strive for agility. This master thesis investigates whether the concept of organizational agility could be a good fit for the public sector, even without obvious competitors and profit focus. A literature review was conducted to get an overview of previous research on organizational agility within the public sector. This resulted in a conceptual model, which forms the theoretical lens for this study. The model includes three main elements: drivers (external and internal), organizational agility (agility enablers and agile capabilities) and organizational performance. The topic is explored through a case study of the Office of the Auditor General of Norway (OAGN) and their innovation lab. The research question is: How can an innovation lab influence organizational agility the public sector? Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted, and eight meetings were observed by the researcher. Strategic documents were analyzed to obtain an understanding of organizational performance. The empirical results show both external and internal agility drivers in the OAGN. The study identified some challenges in the organization, such as the organizational culture, communication style, the availability of technology, the development of competence for the future, and autonomy versus alignment. The challenges are mapped to the agile capabilities suggested by previous research. Competence, flexibility and courage are identified capabilities in the innovation lab. The innovation lab has indeed increased the organization’s awareness about new technology trends, which is seen as the sensing part of the responsiveness capability. The innovation lab improves the organization’s ability to pursue possibilities provided by new technology. Although, being agile is not the goal, a holistic view of agility can help organizations reach their strategic goals and the social mission. Measuring and monitoring the performance provide management with the necessary insight to adjust the enablers and improve the capabilities to tackle changes in the organization’s environment. This study provides insight into practice and can be of inspiration for other state agencies striving for agility. An adjusted conceptual model for organizational agility in the public sector is suggested. The model should be challenged and further tested in other cases and through other research approaches. Key words: organizational agility, public sector, audit, innovation la

Role of Organizational Structure in University Entrepreneurship A Case Study of Iranian Higher Education

One of the most important and new issues in the field of higher education is university entrepreneurship. Organizational structure can play an important role in this regard. The aim of this article was to study the role of organizational structure in university entrepreneurship in Iranian public universities. Research method was qualitative based on grounded theory. Data was collected through a semi structured interview which was conducted on a purposive sample of entrepreneurship experts. In total, 36 interviews were carried out in October and March 2012. They were selected through theoretical sampling, and Snow Ball and Theoretical Saturation. Analyzing method included open, axial and selective coding techniques. Results showed that university entrepreneurship requires entrepreneurial structure with entrepreneurial traits, for example, university total orientation toward entrepreneurship, agility, enriched roles, autonomy and flexibility. These are structural requirements for an entrepreneurial university. Moreover, structural mechanisms which are necessary for university entrepreneurship include managerial, legal and communication mechanisms. Keywords: university, entrepreneurship, organization structure, autonomy

ILR Faculty Research in Progress, 2014-2015

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.ResearchinProgress_2014_15.pdf: 17 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Blockchain, Leadership And Management: Business AS Usual Or Radical Disruption?

The Internet provided the world with interconnection. However, it did not provide it with trust. Trust is lacking everywhere in our society and is the reason for the existence of powerful intermediaries aggregating power. Trust is what prevents the digital world to take over. This has consequences for organisations: they are inefficient because time, energy, money and passion are wasted on verifying everything happens as decided. Managers play the role of intermediaries in such case: they connect experts with each others and instruct them of what to do. As a result, in our expert society, people's engagement is low because no one is there to inspire and empower them. In other words, our society faces an unprecedented lack of leadership. Provided all those shortcomings, the study imagines the potential repercussions, especially in the context of management, of implementing a blockchain infrastructure in any type of organisation. Indeed, the blockchain technology seems to be able to remedy to those issues, for this distributed and immutable ledger provides security, decentralisation and transparency. In the context of a blockchain economy, the findings show that value creation will be rearranged, with experts directly collaborating with each others, and hierarchy being eliminated. This could, in turn, render managers obsolete, as a blockchain infrastructure will automate most of the tasks. As a result, only a strong, action-oriented, leadership would maintain the organisation together. This leadership-in-action would consist in igniting people to take action; coach members of the organisations so that their contribution makes sense in the greater context of life