Leading Innovation Papers
Paper #1: The first paper is an analysis and my thoughts on the reading by Naomi Stanford titled Guide to organization design: Creating high-performing and adaptable enterprises. She presented three organizational theories of which I found the complexity theories and their associated structures to be the most interesting. In this paper, I focus on the Life-Form structure and a recent program management organization that seems to fit this model. The Life-Form structure is true to its name in that it seems to be comparing the characteristics of this organizational structure to those of a life form “with the capability to think and be in the world.” Stanford gives four specific characteristics of this organizational structure of which I would like to expand upon two of them: Life-Form structures “continuously recreate themselves” and “learn to tap into a larger field to guide them toward what is healthy for the whole.”
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Unique user requirements are met but because one organization maintains the software baseline, the coalition or the whole benefit from each contribution. The genius of this organization is that it is available for those who want to seek their solution through this agency versus being mandated to participate. As a result, the program office is incentivized to deliver on their user’s requirements as a small percentage of the funding is used to maintain the overhead and needs of the program office. The competitive marketplace environment and this Life-Form organizational structure seem like a huge potential in the Department of Defense to motivate and breed a culture where innovations would be rewarded much more than the current structure and
The challenge is some of the past development work was done by a consultant. We have option to scale the current work which is not an industry standard and end up paying more money and band aids fixes or develop a new program that we can design and manage for our future growth knowing future growth is inevitable. The risk of continuing the current information system program is low for now, but it will be a major replacement issue for the future growth that could cost the company millions and lost business opportunities. Developing a new information system program is a risky choice from time
The relationship between an organization’s strategy and structure are extremely important because it “directly impacts a firm’s performance” (Rothaermel, 2013, p. 309). Also, as an organization grows, it should reevaluate the current strategy and structure to ensure that it remains the optimal choice for the organization (Rothaermel, 2013). The four types of organizational structures, listed in order of least to most complex according to Rothaermel (2013), are: (1) simple, (2)
An organization must align its strategy and structure to allow itself to achieve performance improvements over time. The four different structures, simple, functional, multidivisional, and matrix, are all suited to allow companies with different strategies to succeed but the company must decide which of these is correct for itself. A small start-up company will overburden itself with excessive cost if it seeks to implement a functional structure because it clearly will not have the talent on hand to create whole departments of HR employees or accountants. On the other hand, a company that grows to become a large multi-national
In the Article, "The Dean of Invention", the phrase 'leapfrogged the globe" recommends about Dean Kamens work on the television series is that Kamen adventured the world to understand and comprehend what biologist was doing. Not only does Kamen appeal to the "Dean of Invention" but wants to persuade kids that science is very captivating, amusement and significant to society.
Earlier in my career, while working for the Coast Guard assigned as an intelligence officer and program manager, I was assigned to develop an information sharing system to support the Coast Guard Intelligence activities. In evaluating the situation, it was easy to see that the Coast Guard was technically disadvantaged. At this time, the Coast Guard IT infrastructure consisted of a custom designed workstation, sever and network. It was a head of its time and offered the capability of unclassified agency wide e-mail and file sharing, and in the early 90s this was far beyond other services. The Coast Guard did not
Structure is the basis through which an organization seeks to create control the direction of an organization. This is completed through clear definitions of the allocation of work, differentiation, and the coordination of having those responsibilities working together towards the efforts of the organization, integration (Bolman & Deal, 1993, pp). Through these methods, the organization is able to devise a division of labor that collaborates to bring about the missions and goals of an organization. The structure that comes about from this can be varied in their rigidness and flexibility it allows, and to an extent this is a great contribution to its success.
Budgets and Planning. To begin with, the program, like the organization, fosters an open and collaborative environment for the process to take place. In this regard, it is, therefore, impossible for any one space or environment to be able to accommodate every conceivable project or application that is “thought up”. Therefore, certain perimeters and guidelines need to be established to assess costs with the program and help determine a course of action in future planning. As we are discussing costs, we assume there is a
Daft, Richard L. Organizational Theory and Design: 12th edition. South-Western College Publisher. 24 April 2015
The design of an organization is a “formal, guided process for integrating the people, information, and technology of an organization” (Glickman et al., 2007). A good organizational design increases the likelihood that an organization will succeed; that its’ values will be realized and its mission will be attained. An organization begins with a strategy or a purpose, is followed by its philosophy or values, then identifies the mission and finally evaluates the environment and its’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the organization (Kelly & Crawford, 2008).
Complex organizations can offer different challenges while trying to move toward the same collective goal. In terms of the education industry we will consider all the stakeholders involved to be our organization at hand. Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal in their book, Reframing Organizations (2008) point out that, “complex organizations [have] made most human activities
Without centralized IT leadership defining program goals, alignment within the agency’s IT programs was not possible. Culturally, existing tools, such as the Automated Case Support (ACS) system, were under-utilized, and agents did not trust them to protect evidence and confidential sources (OIG Audit Report 05-07, 2005). Numerous techniques exist that would have allowed Trilogy leadership to gain key input from system users, which would have had the dual benefit of creating understanding of the ground-level needs of users and fostering user buy-in at the project’s outset.
According to Miles et al. (1978, p. 547), an organization is both its purpose and the mechanism constructed to achieve the purpose. It means that the concept of organization is embracing both goals and all the elements that represent unique combination. Miles et al. (1978, p. 553) draws the conclusion that structure and the processes taking place inside the organization are closely aligned; it is hard to speak about one without mentioning the other. It is important to understand the conclusion drawn by Miles et al. (1978). It illustrates how the
The words “complexity” and “complex” have been used in the context of management. While the word “complex” suggests dynamics rising from the interaction between elements, factors, parts, it results in nonlinear and ongoing changes in the parts. The word “complexity” is used different ways in many organization systems. The different uses of this word is dependent on the systems being chartered and organized. Nowadays, complexity theory is at the center of what systems are today and it is attached with the concept that a system is more than a set of machines. Regarding complexity theory, Margarita Mayoral (2012) stated that “Complexity theory enables the identification, characterization, and comparison of the structure and dynamics of many
Moving away from “Mechanistic” metaphor originated from the bureaucratic organizational theories in the early 1920s. Morgan (2006) presents a more biological view of the organization. Described as a living system the “Organism” metaphor is dependent on wider environment and functions. Such organizations are open systems and more inclined to adapt, grow, survive and to meet the needs of organizations to operate more efficiently. The flexibility to change to the best-suited structure also introduced. As organizations tend to appear and thrive in certain environments, the functions are adjusted to establish more orderly and stable environments. In line with Morgan’s “Organism” metaphor (Morgan. 2010), if they do not adapt, organizations become week and die when those needs not met.
2. There are different types of organisational structures. Two of them are Organic and Mechanistic.