BUS603: Managing People

Many practitioners make a distinction between "content" and "process" issues with regard to organization design. By "content," they typically refer to knowledge, tools, and principles related to the organizational models that are developed and implemented. By "process," they refer to knowledge, tools, and principles related to the process that one follows during a reorganization or other major organizational change.

It is clear that practitioners view process issues as critical in order to succeed in a redesign initiative. At several practitioner conferences that we attended, more time was spent on discussing how to manage a redesign effort than on the actual organizational model that was developed. Another indication is that the consulting firms that we have worked in (or with) have all had process frameworks or methodologies. Most of these frameworks do not contain prescriptions regarding content (e.g., which organizational model to select in which circumstances) but focus on process: They divide the organization design process into steps or phases and may also contain recommended tools for each major step.

This situation is not reflected in academic research. The majority of journal articles that are published are theory-driven rather than practice oriented, even though organization design is usually considered an applied field. This includes the current journal: Few of the articles published in the Journal of Organization Design are concerned about the design process.

Nonetheless, several books - including some written by scholars - do offer prescriptions for how one should plan and manage the organization design process. We have used these books in our work and believe that they provide sensible advice to practitioners. However, they seem to be based on the author's personal observations or consulting experience. There is little or no systematic knowledge about how practitioners view the design process, and more importantly, what they consider to be the main challenges in planning and managing organizational redesign processes. Such knowledge would seem to be important for at least two reasons. It might help practitioners (e.g., consultants) improve training courses and develop new tools and frameworks to support the design process. Secondly, it might help scholars in identifying research projects that might produce findings that help improve the way organization design is performed.

The purpose of our project was thus to better understand the challenges facing practitioners. We conducted a survey among 176 consultants who are engaged in organization design projects. The survey contained 25 items and was divided into four parts, corresponding to phases covered in most organization design methodologies. The first is "Scoping the engagement and preparing the project". In this phase, one establishes the project and creates a plan for the work together with the client. The second phase is "Analyzing the current organization". The purpose of this phase is to gain an understanding of how the organization works today and the key opportunities and challenges. The third phase is "Developing the new design". In this phase, one typically identifies a set of design criteria and creates one or more alternative options (i.e., new organizational models or adjustments to the current model). One also evaluates the proposal(s) and makes a decision about implementing the proposed model (or a revised version of it). In the final phase, "Implementing the new organizational model," employees are allocated to roles according to the new model, and other changes may also be implemented to support the new model.

In the following, we report on the key findings for each part of the survey. The questionnaire included an open text field; we include some representative quotes (see the Appendix for further details about the methodology).