New Approaches To Organization Design

Organization design is a key feature of management theory and practice. It addresses the challenges of constructing and maintaining effective organizations. Essential to organizational design is the assumption that it can improve organizations. Faced with the ever-accelerating pace of technological change and the restructuring of markets, many firms have been questioning their own organization. This book is the third to emerge from a series of workshops on organization design, featuring new empirical research and theoretical insights. The chapters are organized around four central themes: 1) Towards New Organizational Forms, 2) Dynamics of Adaptation and Change, 3) Theoretical and Practical issues, 4) Fit and Performance. Collectively, the chapters reflect the state of the art of OD as well as provide a further step towards the evolution of this important field of research.

Using a mix of design and social science theories and concepts, Rodrigo Magalhães outlines a new human-centric interpretation of design, design principles, and design culture. He puts forward a paradigm which considers the organization, for purposes of its design, as a social actor in a permanent state of transformation.

This upper-level textbook provides a practical guide to the field of organization design, grounded in academic literature. It is set apart from other books on the topic by its commitment to be relevant to Master’s students, as well as practitioners looking for evidence-based guidance. The book provides a solid theoretical background for students, defining what organization design is, exploring the history of the field, and describing established frameworks and theories. It then investigates why organizations may seek to embark on a re-design, and what a well-designed organization looks like, referencing case studies and the author’s own research. From there, it takes students through how organization design occurs, examining various models for intervention, the core steps in designing an organization, and what challenges a practitioner may face, all illustrated by stories from the field. This book includes a wide range of didactic elements for students, including learning objectives, case study examples, review questions, and further reading. It examines the impact of new ways of organizing, and draws on the author’s years of experience as a consultant to ensure that academic theory is seamlessly melded with practical application.

Praise for Leading Organization Design "Sheds light on the challenges of organization design in a complex enterprise and more importantly provides an insightful and practical roadmap for business decisions." Randy MacDonald, SVP, human resources, IBM "Designing organizations for performance can be a daunting task. Kesler and Kates have done an admirable job distilling the inherent complexity of the design process into manageable parts that can yield tangible results. Leading Organization Design provides an essential hands-on roadmap for any business leader who wants to master this topic." Robert Simons, Charles M. Williams Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School "Kesler and Kates have encapsulated their wealth of knowledge and practical experience into an updated model on organizational design that will become a new primer on the subject." Neville Isdell, retired chairman and CEO, The Coca-Cola Company "In today's world of global business, organizational design is a critical piece of long-term success. Kesler and Kates have captured multiple approaches to optimize global opportunities, while highlighting some of the keys to managing through organizational transition. A great read for today's global business leaders." Charles Denson, president, Nike Brand "Leading Organization Design has some unique features that make it valuable. It is one of the few and certainly only recent books to take us through an explicit process to design modern organizations. This is accomplished with the five-milestone process. The process is not a simple cookbook. Indeed, the authors have achieved a balance between process and content. In so doing, Kesler and Kates show us what to do as well as how to do it." Jay Galbraith, from the Foreword

Optimizing Organization Design offers a comprehensive resource and valued guide for anyone interested in improving organization performance. The book presents an approach to optimizing organization design that is based on over 100 large scale projects and 23 research studies that have been completed by Capelle Associates over the past 25 years. In addition, the book includes insightful comments from executives on their success in using this approach. Capelle’s research and client experience reveal that optimizing organization design leads to better financial performance, customer satisfaction and employee engagement. It can provide a competitive advantage and a significant return on investment. It can also become the foundation of both strategy implementation and human resources management. Capelle shows that organization design includes the alignment of a number of critical factors, including positions (vertical and functional); accountabilities and authorities (managerial and cross functional); people; deliverables and tasks. He shows that manager – direct report alignment is the single most important organization design variable. His research also shows that it is suboptimal nearly half the time. This is a horrendous waste of talent and capability, but also provides a significant opportunity for improvement in organization performance. Optimizing Organization Design clearly explains how to implement organization design improvements. This approach includes people change management, project management, and a cascading, iterative approach that is based on teams and involves education, doing real work and feedback. In addition, Optimizing Organization Design includes special sections on the role of the Board of Directors, project management, process management and compensation. In addition, the author has included four case studies and a useful glossary.

New Approaches to Organizational Communication brings together three major conceptual developments. First, it sheds new light on standards used to evaluate processes and practices of organizational communication. Second, individual chapters delineate new, vital mechanisms of organizational communications. Third, the book outlines the practical consequences of these new mechanisms of organizational communication.

Ten years ago, critical theory and postmodernism were considered new and emerging theories in business and management. What will be the next new important theories to shape the field? In one edited volume, Daved Barry and Hans Hansen have commissioned new chapters that will allow readers to stay one step ahead of the latest thinking. Contributors draw on research and practice to introduce ideas that are considered ′fringe′ and controversial today, but may be key theoretical contributions tomorrow. Each chapter sets these ideas in their historical context, lays out the key theoretical positions taken by each new approach and makes it clear why these approaches are different to more mainstream concepts. Throughout, contributors refer to existing studies that show how these developing themes will change the business and management arena. Researchers, teachers and advanced students who are interested in the future of Business and Management scholarship will want to read this Handbook.