Increasingly, engineering forces emerging from the information revolution are shaping the flow of
work in organizations. For example, it is safe to say that the very large majority of large and many
medium-size organizations around the world have adopted ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
systems. ERP packages make a lot of sense in managerial terms since they relieve managers of the
vague and unreliable nature of small-scale, in-house software development.
Behind each ERP there is a great deal of organizational design (or engineering?) in the form of a
model of the enterprise’s ‘target’ workflows. Often, such a model is developed within an engineering
and mechanistic worldview, without a sufficient consideration of what we know about informal
interactions within organizations. Much research has shown that this approach is doomed to failure,
and especially so in the increasingly common large scale, interconnected, rigid systems such as ERPs,
with significant costs for the organizations involved. Yet, we seem to have still great difficulties in
bringing together the engineering, optimizing approach that is essential to the design of effective
organizations with a deep understanding of the emergent nature of social processes.
The impact of IT on economies in general and on organizations in particular has been the locus of
attention – for more than 20 years – of researchers from world renowned institutions such the MIT
or the LSE. Much of the existing research has been carried out under the social science-oriented
discipline of information systems in a fairly apparent split from the world of engineering and hardnosed
technology. However, these intellectual paradigms are coming ever closer together through
the forces at play on the ground. The ERP-dominated bureaucracy, the new business models entirely
dependent on information technology, mobile communications, social software or near-real-time
organizations are all part of the new organizational landscape where design and engineering are ever
more difficult to disentangle.
The First Workshop on Organizational Design and Engineering (IWODE09) which took place in Lisbon,
Portugal attracted researchers from nine countries and different academic backgrounds (see
http://iwode09.ist.utl.pt/doku.php). The motto of the workshop was that the "either-or" mindset has
been a major obstacle to the development of organizational thinking in the 21st century and that this
artificial divide must be abolished. Hence, the emphasis was not on organization theory, computer
science or information systems, but on a push towards an innovative mix of the three disciplines.
The motto proposed for the Second Workshop is how to research the intangible parts of
Organizational Design and Engineering with both rigour and relevance? While both social scientists
and computer engineers agree that intangible issue exist which play a huge role in the way that
organizations are designed or engineered, little is known about how we should we deal with such
intangibles. They are to be found in all strategic and operational aspects of the planning, design,
implementation and use of IS in organizations, but with a focus on organizational design/engineering. |
