Varning, det här kanske mest intressant för de av läsarna som identifierar sig som “organisationsnördar”!
Jag letade efter ett exempel på olika typer av teknologisk design som blir organisatorisk design, och hittade ett av mina egna paper som jag märker har influerat mitt tänkande väldigt mycket sen 2014. Jag tyckte till och med att det var värt att publicera det, så nu kan man läsa det på https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/fsj63
Centralt här var exemplet med företaget Xerox som utvecklade allt mer avancerade kopiatorer, som behövde servas av allt mer utbildade servicemän. Fanns alternativ?
Paul Adler and Bryan Borys compare formalization with technology, in that it is a kind of objectification of know-how. You can objectify know-how into a software package, and/or into a formal procedure. Addressing the issue of whether objectification of know-how leads to alienation and de-skilling, or upgrading and augmentation of work, they consider it a matter of design. In design of equipment technology, you can design with a “fool-proofing” - and deskilling - rationale, or a usability rationale. In the first case, the user is seen mainly as a source of error and problems to be eliminated; in the latter, the user is a source of intelligence and skill, to be supported.
As an illustrative example they mention Xerox - as their copiers became more sophisticated, they were increasingly complicated to deal with, resulting in users more often choosing to simply walk away than trying to fix the machine when problems happened. As a solution, Xerox could have tried to perfect the machine so user intelligence was unnecessary, or train specialized repairmen for longer and longer. The third way was to design the machine to work together with user intelligence - to design successful interactions between user and technology rather than fool proofing the technology against the user. Thinking about decision support systems, Griffith, Northcraft, & Fuller (2008) suggest that the goal should not be to supplant human decision makers but rather to supplement, and support. Approaching organizational design with a similar mindset, we could try to design successful interactions between “users of organizations” (employees) and the organization. What happens when the organization “breaks” when the employee tries to use it to accomplish something - is it transparent about how to fix it? Is it for example possible to get an idea of who knows what, thus enabling finding someone to ask about helping you? Is there a way to reach out to others with your problem or idea so that, while you do not know what it is they know, they can “self-select” and reach out to you if they think they can, and want, to help (and building transactive memory).
The argument made by Adler & Borys (1996) is that bureaucracy can be designed with a “user as a source of intelligence”-perspective, and they call this “enabling bureaucracy” and contrasts it to “coercive bureaucracy” (low formalization organizations are typified as “organic” and “autocratic”).