Knowledge Management: Organizational and Systems perspectives

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Please make sure to bring all the lecture notes
(up to week 10) as I will be summarizing all
the notes today
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LECTURE 10 Amare Michael Desta
Decision Support Executive Information Systems
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Organizational Leadership, Cultures and
Process Maturity Closed System View of Org.

• Many different perspectives
• - Closed system perspective
• Organization as instrument to achieve defined
  goals
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Flexibility / adaptability
• Job satisfaction
• - Four activities follow from the above
• Complexity and specialization of tasks
• Centralization of authority
• Formalization of jobs
• Stratification of employment levels

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Closed System View - Criticism

• View sees humans as machines
• Resources are optimised
• Not true in all cases
• Responses fit into the defined plan
• Environmental influence seen as only noise

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Open System View of Organizations

• Interested in both the objectives and responses
  to internal and external influences
• Organizational activities (Weick)
• Enactment, selection and retention
• Results of these are
• Understanding of the environment
• Recognizing problems
• Diagnosing causes for problems
• Identifying policies to solve problems
• Evaluating the efficiency of the policies
• Selecting priorities for problem solving

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Organizational Learning Model(Daft Weick)

• Three major components
• - Scanning
• Monitoring the environment
• - Interpretation
• Translating observations
• - Learning
• Knowledge about relations between organizations
  state and environment
• Actions

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Generic Roles for Executives

• To achieve the defined goals FOUR different
• Roles are needed by executives
• - Administration
• Caretaking role
• Management
• Concerned with efficiency
• Leadership
• Setting of a vision and seeing it through
• Governance
• Stakeholder management

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Organizational Topographies

• Inactive organization
• Tries to avoid problems
• Waits them to go away
• Reactive organization
• Problem solving organization
• Internal environment
• Interactive organization
• Tries to adapt to external environment
• Development of responses to external environment
• Proactive organization
• Learning to learn better
• Adaptive behaviour

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Organizational Learning

• Organizational learning is needed to anticipate
  changes and improve behaviour
• Situation assessment
• Problem detection
• Solution
• Evaluation of outcome
• Resulting discovery
• The learning is not always beneficial in practice
• E.g. improperly simplified causal models

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Theory of Reasoning, Learning and Action

• Two major inhibitions to learning
• 1) Distortion of information
• Quality of decisions affected
• 2) Lack of receptivity to feedback
• Types of organizational learning
• Single-loop
• Present policies to achieve present goals
• No questioning of goals
• Double-loop
• New understanding developed
• Goals are put under scrutiny
• Poor performance organizations usually use
  single-loop learning

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Theory of Reasoning, Learning and Action (2)

• There are other inhibitions to learning
• Distancing
• Not accepting responsibility
• Disconnectedness
• Limited information about theories in use and the
  associated actions
• Five dilemmas
• Incongruity
• Inconsistency
• Ineffectiveness
• Disusability
• Unobservability

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Learning Organization

• Organization where people continually expand
  their capacity to create results they truly
  desire, where new and expansive patterns of
  thinking are nurtured, where collective
  aspiration is set free, and where people are
  continually learning how to learn together
  (Peter Senge)
• Five disciplines enable this learning
• Systems thinking
• Personal mastery through lifelong learning
• Shared mental models of markets and competitors
• Shared vision
• Team learning
• Lack of capability in one of the five disciplines
  is called a learning disability

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11 Laws of Systems Thinking

• Future problems come about because of what were
  presumed past solutions
• Every action has a reaction
• Short-term improvements lead to long-term
  difficulties
• Easy solution is no solution at all
• Solution may be worse than the problem
• Quick solutions lead to more problems
• Cause and effect not necessarily closely linked
• Best actions not obvious at first
• Low cost and high effectiveness need not to be
  trade-offs
• The entirety is more than the sum of its parts
• Entire system must be considered together

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How to Build a Learning Organization?

• Leaders must be
• Designers
• Stewards
• Teachers
• Three pragmatic needs
• Meaning
• Management
• Measurement
• Five building blocks
• Systematic problem solving process
• Experimentation
• Learning from past mistakes
• Learning from others
• Transferring the knowledge through organization

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Problem Solving Process
Assess situation and select problem for resolution
Problem definition
Generate solution options
Evaluate options and select preferred option
Implement solution
Evaluate solution
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Organizational Cultures

• Culture closely related to learning
• Socially transmitted behaviour patterns
• Critical success factors of organizational
  character
• Shared vision
• Motivational faith
• Distinctive skills
• Change in culture must be controlled
• Reasons for failure
• No shared vision of impending crisis
• No shared vision of a way out of crisis
• Culture change produces wrong results
• People learn in a wrong way

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Changing Culture

• Change is often resisted even though it is known
  to be needed
• People do not know in which way or how to change
• Poor abilities at double-loop learning
• Past competence a path to success
• Stereotypical thinking
• Fall into ideological routines
• Multiphase approach to change
• Access corporate culture
• Identify approaches to culture change
• Negotiate a shared vision
• Deploy the shared vision

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Culture Clash

• Three different cultures
• Corporate culture stresses loyalty to
  organization
• Professional culture emphasises given knowledge
• - Loyalty to profession greater than loyalty to
  organization
• Social culture represents the values of
  individuals
• Clash areas
• Specialization
• Managers lt-gt Employees
• Overspecifying practice
• Underspecifying the end
• Employees want autonomy
• Tight supervision
• Formalization of control
• Principles more important than practice
• Short-term profits vs. ethics

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Culture and leadership

• A number of studies discuss the interaction of
  culture and leadership and the role of these in
  creating excellence
• E.g Hickman and Silva suggest strategy and
  culture as foundations for excellence
• They further identify six new age skills
  aggregated under three more generic (need)
  categories

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Hickman and Silva

• The need to forge a strong foundation for
  excellence through
• creative insight
• sensitivity
• The need to integrate organizational and
  individual skills through
• vision and
• patience
• The need for adaptation through
• versatility and
• Focus

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Kotter and Heskett

• Kotter and Heskett identified several important
  cultural realities
• Organizational culture has a significant impact
  on the long term performance of an organization
• The importance of culture will increase in the
  future
• Organizational cultures that are debilitating to
  long term performance are not uncommon
• Organizational cultures can be changed to allow
  enhanced performance
• Effort is primarily concerned with identification
  of the characteristics of cultures that will be
  most supportive of excellence performance.

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Leadership and management Studies of individual
and organizational leadership

• Coveys SEVEN habits of effective people
• First three relate to individual concerns
• Next three relate to group and organizational
  issues
• The last concerns learning and renewal
• counterbalance independence and
• dependence relations

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Covey

• Covey also identifies THREE primary traits of
  effective leaders (a) integrity (b) maturity and
  (c) abundant mentality and THREE types of power
• Principle-centered power, based on honor
• Utility power, based on fairness
• Coercive power, based on fear
• Related to various contexts for learning

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Covey

• FOUR paradigms that could be used as a basis for
  leadership
• The scientific management paradigm
• The human relations paradigm
• The human resources paradigm
• The principle-centered leadership paradigm

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Badaracco and Ellworth

• Badaracco and Ellworths identified THREE
  leadership philosophies based on a set of
  fundamental assumptions about human nature and
  the resulting behavior patterns of people in
  organizations
• Political leadership
• Directive leadership
• Value-driven leadership
• Philosophies are also provided with suggestions
  for operational management and task control

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Rothschild - identified FOUR major leadership
roles

• Risk-takers, often creators of an organization
  who have the dedication and talent to implement a
  strategic vision
• Care-takers, who nurture an organization beyond
  its growth stage into a healthy maturity
• Surgeons, who examine diseased portions of an
  organization and correct or remove those portions
• Undertakers, who harvest and/or merge the
  organization in order to mercifully lay to rest
  an unsalvageable organization rescue those
  portions that are capable in need of rebirth in
  a new form

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Kotter

• Kotter has distinguished between leadership and
  management
• Kotter indicates that leadership involves moving
  people from one state to a better state without
  transgressing on the rights of other
• To do this, leadership involves three principal
  activities that roughly correspond to the
  definition, development, and deployment effort in
  systems engineering

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Kotter continues

• 1. Agenda creation. Direction setting is needed
  to
• establish a future vision and strategies for the
• needed changes to enable realization of the
  vision.
• 2. Developing human networks. Communication of
• the vision and developing a set of shared
  assumptions
• and understanding the vision are needed to
  achieve
• an alignment of people who are committed to
• organizational progress.
• 3. Action implementation or execution. Motivating
• and inspiring people to move in directions
  appropriate to
• achieve the strategic vision despite the
  political
• challenges and bureaucratic barriers.

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Cultural Framework Models

• Sage introduces two separate works on cultural
  frameworks
• Bolman and Deals (1991), and
• Bergquist (1992).
• They all are built for a university environment.
• These are suggested to be applicable in a more
  general organizational setting.

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Bolman and Deals Cultural Framework Model

• Bolman and Deal (1994) identify FOUR frameworks
  for modeling organizational culture
• 1) structural framework formal rationality and
  analytical methodologic approaches are preffered
  for organizing
• 2) human relations framework purpose of
  organization is support for the people in the
  organization

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Dolman and Deal (cont.)

• 3) political framework organization viewed as a
  coalition of diverse interests - most of which
  based on differing values and perceptions of
  reality
• 4) symbolic framework sees that meaning, or
  interpretation, of the same event across
  subcultures will generally be very different
• ambiguity in organization
• -gt formal rational analysis becomes difficult
• -gt humans create symbols that become surrogates
  for more fundamental and meaningful events.

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Bergquists Cultural Framework

• Berguist (1992) divides organizational cultures
  into FOUR
• 1) collegial culture sees diversity of
  perspective and autonomy of effort -gt supports
  academic governance
• -gt supports disciplinary scholarship and
  research
• 2) managerial culture closely associated with
  junior- college culture and any very strongly
  top-down leadership
• -gt acceptance of detailed plans expected

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Bergquist (cont.)

• 3) developmental culture orgzns and their
  processes designed to effectively accommodate
  needs of university (organization)
• -gt supports fulfillment of university
  (organization) mission
• 4) negotiating culture very concerned with
  personal and financial needs of faculty and staff
• -gt change takes place through confrontational
  efforts and effective use of scarce resources -
  often includes bargaining efforts

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Cultural Dynamics Model of Oraganizational Forms

• This model is developed by Henry Minzberg and
  aims to describe organizational forms, to help
  design effective organizations.
• FIVE mechanisms describe work coordination
  approaches in industrial organizations
• Mutual adjustment
• Direct supervision
• Standardization of work processes
• Standardization of skills and knowledge
• Standardization of norms.

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Process maturity Process models

• 1) organizational lifecycle process maturity
• represents the extent to which specific processes
  are
• explicitly defined, managed, measured, controlled
• and effective in achieving their intended purpose
  
• 2) disciplined process, teams with common values,
• systems management infrastructure, strong
• Leadership ? process mature organization

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Crosby

• five stages of development of quality maturity
• inspiration for the other maturity models
• Uncertainty
• Awakening
• Enlightment
• Wisdom
• Certainty

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Capability Maturity Model (CMM)

• originally developed by the Software Engineering
  Institute (SEI) at Carnegie-Mellon University
• it provides software organizations with guidance
  on processes for developing and maintaining
  software
• five levels with key process areas

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1. Initial level

• the process is not under statistical measurement
  control at even the operational level, and no
  systematic process is possible
• no key processes

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2. Repeatable level

• a measure of thorough operational level product
  control is achieved through metrics associated
  with cost, schedule, and product configuration
  changes
• basic program management processes are
  established

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2. Repeatable level (cont.)

• Requirements Management
• SW Project Planning
• SW Project Tracking and Oversight
• SW Subcontract Management
• SW Quality Assurance
• SW Configuration Management

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3. Defined level

• the process has been understood and specified so
  that operational quality control is able to yield
  products with predictable costs and performance
  schedules
• the organization has a set of standardized,
  consistent, and repeatable processes
• process management is interactive and processes
  are well integrated five levels with key process
  areas

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3. Defined level (cont.)

• Organizational Process Focus
• Organization Process Definition
• Training Programs
• Integrated Software Management
• Software Product Engineering
• Intergroup Coordination
• Peer Reviews

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4. Managed maturity level

• comprehensive process-related measurements are
  possible and improvements in product quality are
  possible through the understanding and control
• interactive process management processes are well
  in place
• Quantitative Process Management
• Software Quality Management

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5. Optimizing level

• the highest possible level of maturity is reached
• the organization is able to make continuous
  improvements in products, services and processes
• process management is highly proactive
• there are also interactive and reactive controls
  and measurements

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5. Optimizing level (cont.)

• Defect Prevention
• Technology Change Management
• Process Change Management

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Key process areas

• Each of the key process areas have a set of SIX
  common features associated with them.
• Goals
• Commitment to perform
• Ability to perform
• Activities performed
• Systematic measurement and analysis efforts
• Implementation verification

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Process Maturity Conclusion

• The majority of organizations in practice today
  are at levels 1 and 2, with very few at levels 3,
  4, and 5
• There are only few programs which are at levels 4
  and 5 the further research will focus on them
  and the evolution of the CMM at these higher
  maturity levels