Data and Language in Organizations: Epistemological Aspects of Management Support Systems

This book contributes to the literature on management decision support systems (DSS). DSS research is motivated by the observation that much of what managers do involves unstructured problem solving. For the reason, the structured, procedural models implemented in management information systems (MIS) have had little impact on actual managerial practice. Actually, the terms "decision" and "problem solving" over-simplify the image of managerial activity, if what is meant is choosing from a set of well-defined alternatives. Management also includes such aspects as reality testing, problem finding, scenario generation, and just plain muddling through. A broader conception of management cognition -- of which decision making is only a part -- is therefore adopted. The challenge to technology development is to support these unstructured managerial activities. The emphasis is to amplify managerial cognition and to improve decision effectiveness. However, to achieve this we must go beyond platitudes and come to a better understanding of what managers actually do. The activity of managers is almost entirely linguistic. Computers, as symbolic processors, ought to be an effective complement. However, a fundamental problem, stressed repeatedly throughout the book, is semantic change. The context of managers is always changing, whereas computational inference depends on fixed semantics. Herein Lies the basis for a theory of management support systems. The theory takes the form of an applied epistemology: how do managers know their world and detect its changes? Thus, while this book is oriented towards improving information technology, its attention is primarily to the content of management information and only secondarily to technology. Technological innovations abound. What is needed now is a better understanding of what these technologies are to do

The prevalent theory of construction is a hindrance for innovation

It is argued that construction innovation is significantly hindered by the prevalent theory of construction, which is implicit and deficient. There are three main mechanisms through which this hindrance is being caused. Firstly, because production theories in general, as well as construction theories specifically, have been implicit, it has not been possible to transfer such radical managerial innovation as mass production or lean production from manufacturing to construction. Direct application of these production templates in construction has been limited due to different context in construction in correspondence to manufacturing. On the other hand, without explicit theories, it has not been possible to access core ideas of concepts and methods of these templates, and to recreate them in construction environment. In consequence, theory and practice of construction has not progressed as in manufacturing. Secondly, it is argued that the underlying, even if implicit, theoretical model of construction is the transformation model of production. There are two first principles in the transformation model. First, the total transformation can be achieved only by realising all parts of it. Thus, we decompose the total transformation into parts, finally into tasks, ensure that all inputs are available and assign these tasks to operatives or workstations. Second, minimising the cost of each task, i.e. each decomposed transformation, minimises the cost of production. It is argued that these principles, in which uncertainty and time are abstracted away, are counterproductive, and lead to myopic control and inflated variability. Practical examples show that these deficiencies and related practical constraints hinder the top-down implementation of innovations. Thirdly, empirical research shows that also bottom-up innovation - systematic learning and problem solving - is hindered by this deficient theory. Thus, the advancement of construction innovation requires that a new, explicit and valid theory of construction is created, and business models and control methods based on it are developed

The issue of design in managerial decision making

It is argued that the design of decisions is a process that in many ways is shaped by social factors such as identities, values, and influences. To be able to understand how these factors impact organizational decisions, the focus must be set on the management level. It is the management that shoulders the chief responsibility for designing collective actions, such as decisions. Our propositions indicate that the following measures must be taken in order to improve the quality of organizational decisions: 1. The identity of the people, involved in organizational decision making, affects the quality of decisions and should be taken into account in the design of decisions. 2. The decision maker or designer of decisions should engage the members of an organization to create a shared vision. 3. Getting the members of an organization to express and share common values should improve the decision making process. 4. Being able to socially influence the members of an organization, or other stakeholders involved, as well as letting them participate in the process, should improve the quality of decisions

Are Business Incubators helping? The role of BIs in facilitating tenants’ development

Business incubators (BI) are among a variety of initiatives to stimulate economic growth by promoting the creation and development of new companies. The rapid growth of BIs in recent years confirms their importance in the economic fabric. In this study, we conceptualize BIs using insights from knowledge based theory of the firm, resource-based view thinking and capabilities literature. BIs will be seen as service providers geared towards helping their tenants in solving developmental problems. The more problems the BI helps to solve the bigger the incubation value for tenants; further, as tenant firms solve problems they develop important capabilities which will yield increase their chances of survival once they graduate. Results show that tenants unequivocally seek support after experiencing problems. Solving those problems is a function of BI support and other external sources part of each tenant firm’s network of contacts. Age and human capital of tenant firms have a negative impact in the total number of the problems solved, suggesting BIs’ deficiencies in helping more experienced and older tenants. Our main contribution is to shed light on the processes of delivering support to young firms within BIs. Importantly, we assess the value of the BIs’ intervention by measuring the amount of developmental problems they help tenants to overcome. Finally, we discuss the implication of our finding to BI managers, prospective tenants and policy makers

Soft systems methodology: a context within a 50-year retrospective of OR/MS

Soft systems methodology (SSM) has been used in the practice of operations research and management science OR/MS) since the early 1970s. In the 1990s, it emerged as a viable academic discipline. Unfortunately, its proponents consider SSM and traditional systems thinking to be mutually exclusive. Despite the differences claimed by SSM proponents between the two, they have been complementary. An extensive sampling of the OR/MS literature over its entire lifetime demonstrates the richness with which the non-SSM literature has been addressing the very same issues as does SSM

The construction of global management consulting - a study of consultancies’ web presentations

Management consulting increasingly appears as a global endeavour as reflected in the increasing dominance of a few large, global management-consulting firms. However, features of the consulting service (e.g. its immaterial and interactional character) as well as aspects of management (e.g. its cultural anchoredness) highlight the locality of management consulting. In this paper we approach this tension between the global and the local by seeing consulting as involving the creation of generalised myths. More specifically, we ask the question: How do global consulting companies construct the viability and desirability of their services? Based on a view of management consultants as mythmakers, we study the argumentation on corporate web sites of four leading global consultancies in five different countries. Applying a framework based on the sociology of translation, we analyze the translation strategies used in making the service of global consultancies both viable and indispensable. We find that the need for consultants is to a large extent constructed through defining management as an expert activity, thus creating a need for external advisors possessing globally applicable expert knowledge. In this effort, the consultants ally with three widely spread rationalized managerial myths – the rationality myth, the globalization myth and the universality myth. We conclude, that global consulting firms are actively involved in creating and reinforcing the very same institutions, which are the prerequisites for their future success.management consulting; globalization; myth making

Paradox as invitation to act in problematic change situations

It has been argued that organizational life typically contains paradoxical situations such as efforts to manage change which nonetheless seem to reinforce inertia. Four logical options for coping with paradox have been explicated, three of which seek resolution and one of which ‘keeps the paradox open’. The purpose of this article is to explore the potential for managerial action where the paradox is held open through the use of theory on ‘serious playfulness’. Our argument is that paradoxes, as intrinsic features in organizational life, cannot always be resolved through cognitive processes. What may be possible, however, is that such paradoxes are transformed, or ‘moved on’ through action and as a result the overall change effort need not be stalled by the existence of embedded paradoxes