1. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 HRM: Work process design Overview

2. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Fundamentals of organizational design (Kieser & Kubicek, 1983)  Specialization: Distribution of labor, resulting in different kinds of work tasks  Coordination: management of dependencies among subtasks, resources, and people  Configuration: Structure of line of command  Delegation of decision authority: Distribution of decision authority regarding actions and decision rules  Formalization: Determination of rules and procedures, e.g. structures, flow of information, performance measurement/assessment

3. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Approaches to organizational design  Top-down: Strategic decisions determine choices of organizational design (e.g. high degree of formalization chosen to keep qualification costs low and permit behavior control)  Bottom-up: Problems in existing work processes inform changes in organiza-tional design (e.g. incidents of badly coordinated work processes are handled by increasing formalization)  Importance of contingencies, in particular regarding internal and external uncertainties

4. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Early example of contingency theory: Mechanistic vs. organic organisation (Burns & Stalker, 1960)

5. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Socio-technical systems approach  The beginning - Studies by the Tavistock Institute in English coal mines in the late 1950s: One-sided adaptation of the work organization in accordance with the demands of a new technology lead to a suboptimal work system  Three core assumptions: 1)Every work system comprises a social and a technical sub-system. 2)The social and technical sub-system have to be jointly optimized. 3)The main criterion for the joint optimization is the control of variances at their source.

6. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Organization as socio-technical system

7. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08

8. Managing uncertainty in organizations (Grote, 2004) * Uncertainties may stem from the system environment and/or from the transformation processes within the system.

9. HRM: Work Process Design – G. Grote ETHZ, Fall08 Loose couling: How to achieve concurrent stability and flexibility  Enabling bureaucracy Adler et al., 1999: car model changeovers through meta-routines, units specializing in routine vs. non-routine tasks, job enrichment  Semistructures Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997: IT project management based on decision latitude combined with extensive communication, probing the future, and clear project transitions  Ambidextrous organization Benner & Tushmann, 2003: Parallel organizations for exploitation and exploration  Mastery of opposites and paradox in leadership Kaplan & Kaiser, 2007: Concurrent directive and enabling, strategic and operational ledership