Organizational engineering

Abstract: This paper differs from previous examinations of organizational learning in that it is broader in scope and more evaluative of the literatures. Four constructs related to organizational learning knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory are articulated, and the literatures related to each are described and critiqued. The literature on knowledge acquisition is voluminous and multi-faceted, and so the knowledge acquisition construct is portrayed here as consisting of five subconstructs or subprocesses: 1 drawing on knowledge available at the organization's birth, 2 learning from experience, 3 learning by observing other organizations, 4 grafting on to itself components that possess knowledge needed but not possessed by the organization, and 5 noticing or searching for information about the organization's environment and performance. Examination of the related literatures indicates that much has been learned about learning from experience, but also that there is a lack of cumulative work and a lack of integration of work from different research groups. Similarly, much has been learned about organizational search, but there is a lack of conceptual work, and there is a lack of both cumulative work and syntheses with which to create a more mature literature. Congenital learning, vicarious learning, and grafting are information acquisition subprocesses about which relatively little has been learned. The literature concerning information distribution is rich and mature, but an aspect of information distribution that is central to an organization's benefitting from its learning, namely how units that possess information and units that need this information can find each other quickly and with a high likelihood, is unexplored. Information interpretation, as an organizational process, rather than an individual process, requires empirical work for further advancement. Organizational memory is much in need of systematic investigation, particularly by those whose special concerns are improving organizational learning and decision making.

Abstract: This article outlines a conceptual model of entrepreneurship as an organizational-level phenomenon. The model is intended to depict the organizational system elements that relate to entrepreneurial...

Abstract: This paper presents a framework for organizational analysis. The empirically derived approach does not emerge from the observation of actual organizations, but from the ordering, through multivariate techniques, of criteria that organizational theorists and researchers use to evaluate the performance of organizations. In a two-stage study, organizational theorists and researchers were impaneled to make judgments about the similarity of commonly used effectiveness criteria. The model derived from the second group closely replicated the first, and in convergence suggested that three value dimensions control-flexibility, internal-external, and means-ends underlie conceptualizations of organizational effectiveness. When these value dimensions are juxtaposed, a spatial model emerges. The model serves a number of important functions. It organizes the organizational effectiveness literature, indicates which concepts are most central to the construct of organizational effectiveness, makes clear the values in which the concepts are embedded, demonstrates that the effectiveness literature and the general literature on organizational analysis are analogues of one another, and provides an overarching framework to guide subsequent efforts at organizational assessment.

Abstract: Organizations seek to establish congruence between the social values associated with or implied by their activities and the norms of acceptable behavior in the larger social system of which they are a part. Insofar as these two value systems are congruent we can speak of organizational legitimacy. When an actual or potential disparity exists between the two value systems, there will exist a threat to organizational legitimacy. These threats take the form of legal, economic, and other social sanctions. In this paper, it is argued that an empirical focus on organizational efforts to become legitimate can aid in explaining and analyzing many organizational behaviors taken with respect to the environment, and further, can generate hypotheses and a conceptual perspective that can direct additional attention to the issue of organizational legitimacy. This paper provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of organizational legitimacy and the process of legitimation through which organizations act to increase their perceived legitimacy. It presents a number of examples including a discussion of the American Institute for Foreign Study as a demonstration of these ideas in action. Both the particular circumstances which can lead to problems of organizational legitimacy and some of the actions that can be taken to legitimate an organization are illustrated.