Organisational Design

There may be room for legitimate debate over the extent to which coherent managerial strategies exist, as we saw in the previous chapter. But it is incontestable that the various dimensions of organisational life are subject to some degree of conscious planning and patterning through design processes. The accompanying issues have been central to the discipline, Donaldson arguing that, ‘Organisation theory seems to be distinguishable as a body of thought by a concern for internal characteristics such as differentiation, standardisation, specialisation, integration, co-ordination and the like’ (1985: 118). Indeed the notion of design is central to the whole idea of rational organisation. Structures, tasks or cultures are seen as manipulable by management, design being central to the achievement of corporate goals. It is also, therefore, the key to ‘good’ or ‘effective’ organisation (Child, 1984: 3). If you get it wrong, much of the investment in people or other resources will be likely to go to waste. For example, Cummings and Blumberg’s case studies on the introduction of advanced manufacturing technology showed that ineffective use was primarily linked to a failure to redesign the work process and context when the technologies were implemented (1987: 54–5).