Organizational factors

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Organizational factors

• Terry Tonkin
• BUSN 653

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Devotional

• Melissa Brugh - campus
• Christian Oleck - distance

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Administrative

• Transformation assignment due 9/17
• Check external links and web resources
• Textbooks?

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Quality activity - Affinity diagram

• This tool gathers large amounts of idea data,
  organizes it into groupings based on the natural
  relationship between each item, and defines
  groups of items. It is largely a creative rather
  than logical process.

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Why use an affinity diagram?

• It encourages true participation because every
  persons ideas find their way into the process.
• Stimulates gut level rather than intellectual
  responses.
• Continuous improvement requires that new logical
  patterns be explored at all times.

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When to use an affinity diagram

• A large number of facts or thoughts are in chaos
• A breakthrough in traditional concepts is needed.
• Support for a solution is essential for
  successful implementation

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Steps in the process

• Assemble the right team
• Phrase the issue to be considered done during
  week 1 brainstorming session
• Generate and record ideas (done)
• Display the completed cards
• Arrange the cards into related groupings silent
  process
• Create header cards
• Arrange groupings and draw lines around related
  groupings

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Examples and lessons learned

• Compare results of various groups look for
  variety, potential different solutions
• Ex Value-Options, MPS desktop procedures
• Opportunities Care manager model, others?
  (Bring examples back to class)

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Review

• Where have we been? OM, its everywhere..(next
  slide)
• Where are we going? professionalism in the
  workplace expertise ---- corporate body
  --- responsibility
• Transition Firestone tires
• 88 deaths, 259 injuries but.
• Company doesnt consider claims valid
• Small statistical number
• How important is this issue???? Idea data!!!!

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What is operations management?

• Operations management is about the way
  organizations produce goods and services.
  Everything you wear, eat, sit on, use, read or
  knock about on the sports field comes to you
  courtesy of operations managers who organized its
  production. Every book you borrow from the
  library, every service you expect in the shops
  and every lecture you attend at university -- all
  have been produced. Slack et al.

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Learning objectives

• Explain why effective operations managers are
  skilled in reading situations
• Explain that organizations are complex and
  paradoxical phenomena that can be understood in
  many different ways.

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Learning objectives (cont.)

• Explain the influence of environment and culture
  on OM activities.
• Describe various organizational metaphors and
  explain how to use them to assist in reading
  situations and making decisions

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Pick an organization

• Each student to identify and post in blackboard
  an organization that will be used for various
  assignments throughout the course including
• Project management application
• Quality assessment
• Interview with individual responsible for
  quality within the organization.
• Decision-making exercise

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History of organizational factors

• Agrarian society with skilled craftsman (prior to
  1900s)
• Industrial age (power, standardized parts)
• Scientific management (Frederick Taylor, assembly
  line)
• Hawthorn Studies resulted in HR
• Deming involved in these studies
• OR (quantitative tools) to OM plus IT

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Ways of thinking

• Organizations are complex and paradoxical
  phenomena that can be understood in many
  different ways. Our styles of thinking rarely
  match this complexity. We persuade ourselves
  that the situation is simpler than it really is.
  Thus, we need to engage a process of
  critical-thinking.

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The art of reading

• Effective managers and professionals in all
  walks of life, whether they be business
  executives, public administrators, organizational
  consultants, politicians, or trade unionists,
  have to become skilled in the art of reading
  the situations that they are attempting to
  organize or manager.

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What does it mean to read a situation?

• Intuitive process, learned through experience and
  natural ability get a handle on
• Process of reading and rereading occurs at an
  almost subconscious level
• Sometimes seems like a magical ability
  effective managers are born rather than made
• Skilled readers develop the knack of reading
  situations with various scenarios in mind, and
  forging appropriate actions.

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What does it mean to read a situation?

• Remain open and flexible, suspending immediate
  judgements.
• New insights come when looking at situations from
  new angles.
• Alternatives can be found when barriers develop

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How does this relate to Operations Management?

• Individuals routinely settle for a bounded
  rationality of good enough decisions based on
  simple rules of thumb and limited research and
  information because people
• usually have to act on the basis of incomplete
  information about possible courses of action and
  their consequences,
• are able to explore only a limited number of
  alternatives relating to any given decision, and
• are unable to attach accurate values to outcomes.
  (Herbert Simon)

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How does this relate to Operations Management?

• The OM is well served to explore rival theories
  or points of view rather than be committed to
  fixed or unshakable point of view. (Ex
  diversity, medical director)
• Effective operations managers are primarily
  problem solvers recall OM issues at the
  strategic, tactical and organizational levels

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How does one develop the art of reading and
better understanding organizations?

• Explore various metaphors that will allow us to
  develop new ways of thinking
• Metaphors are used to understand one element of
  experience in terms of another.
• Forms an understanding in a distinctive yet
  partial way. (describe some metaphors Peter the
  Rock, slow as a Turtle, others?)
• Our ability to achieve a comprehensive reading
  depends on an ability to see how these different
  aspects coexist in a complementary or even
  paradoxical way.

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.Images of organizations

• As a machine underpins the development of the
  bureaucratic organization
• As an organism consider various species of
  organization and their relations with the
  environment through a life cycle born, grow,
  develop, decline and adapt to a changing
  environment or .die
• As a brain draws attention to the importance of
  information processing, learning, and
  intelligence.

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Images of organizations

• As cultures -- resides in the ideas, values,
  norms, rituals and beliefs that sustain
  organizations as socially constructed realities.
• As political systems focus on the different
  sets of interests, conflicts, ad power plays that
  shape organizational ideas.

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Group activity

• Six groups, each is assigned a metaphor plus case
  study
• Each group will provide an overview of the
  metaphor, the strengths and weaknesses of the
  metaphor, faith integration and a critique of an
  actual organization applying this
  informationapproximately 20 minutes.
• All members of the group will participate and the
  presentation will be submitted in an electronic
  format to digital mailbox.
• A critique will follow each presentation. This
  is a graded activity.

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Assignments/format

• Leader/facilitator
• Overview of metaphor
• Strengths of metaphor
• Weaknesses of metaphor
• Faith integration
• Application of metaphor

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The Multicom case

• This case study provides an example of how to
  generate, integrate, and use insights of
  competing metaphors.
• The sixth group will review this case study for
  the class
• Recommend one person do overview and others apply
  one metaphor each

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Questions?