The Changing Nature of Organization

---------Change is for most organization today a matter of survival, and that change is hitting every area of the organization

- ---Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele,

 

Organizational ecology is about how an organization's leaders choose to convene their employees in space and time in pursuit of a long-term competitive edge. The characteristic that most distinguishes organizational ecology from the more traditional disciplines of organizational behavior (including human resources, organizational development, human factors, architecture and engineering, and industrial engineering) is concern for total work place, this concern draws on all these disciplines but is broader in its scope than any one of them individually.

 

Organization ecology seeks to consider elements of a workplace system as part of an integrated workplace strategy that defines a total workplace in two distinct ways: through the scope of the physical settings considered and through the social processes used to plan and manage------and link----the physical settings over time.

----Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, "Workplace by Design", p.11-13

………..organizations need to conceive that workplace as a system of loosely coupled settings that are linked by the physical movement of people and the electronic movement of information in a way that enhances the organization's ability to meet its fundamental business objectives. And the Nature of the physical workplace is only one set of elements to consider in designing the overall ecology of the work place. Thus, Changes in any of these kinds of factors are likely to stimulate changes in the ecology itself. When we want to make some changes to an organization, we should consider factors which might influence the organizational ecology in order to attain a new equilibrium of the organizational ecology. Here are some factors we should consider before making changes to an organization.

• The nature of the work and business processes themselves.
• The particular organizational culture and corporate values in which the work is carried out.
• Externalities such as air quality and transportation demand regulations that affec how employees come to work and where they work.
• Real estate supply and demand that affect the cost of space and thus how it is used and where it is located.
• Safety, security, and other quality-of -life issues that affect both where and when people want to work…
• Workforce demographics such as age, gender, household composition, and life style that influence work styles and work locational preferences.

----Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, "Workplace by Design", p.13

Organization that are effective over the long run must create a total workplace in which the physical setting of work, and the process through which it is planned and managed, get as much executive attention as any other aspect of the business. Understanding how space, the second most expensive resource and organization has (its people being the first), can be leveraged to help those people work more effectively, and to attract and retain the right people in the first place.

Status symbol problem

The most constraining symbolic use of work place comes not from concern about external message, but from the ubiquitous medium of internal communication, the language of Status Symbol. The language is made up of all the rules about provision of space, location, and accouterments based on a person's standing in the organizational hierarchy.

Leaders' assumptions about the necessity of using personal space, location, and furnishings as rewards and indicators of organizational status place them in a kind of Straitjacket with two kinds of constraints: how a total workplace can be designed, and how it can be used.

Once you have satisfied all the requirements for varying sizes of personal workplaces as dictated by the space standards, there is usually a real squeeze placed on providing other kinds of spaces…… The constraint on use pattern occurs when managers need to change groupings quickly and redeploy the existing workspaces and areas….. it becomes very difficult to regroup people because it is very likely to violate the rules of entitlement imposed by the space standards. Two costs are likely to be incurred: either the facilities cost of restructuring walls, lighting, wiring, and furnishings to make the new pattern fit the status language; or the "inertia cost" to performance of not moving people into the new configuration. The latter cost is potentially more damaging to the organization because it is less obvious and it has a cumulative negative effects.

 

Remedies for Status Symbol Problem

"universal plan" called by Aetna Life and Casualty. This approach is to create one basic size of workplace for everyone. These one-size-fits-all work stations are tailored to meet different work styles and job functions by fitting out the standard footprint with different furniture components arranged in different ways. When departments are reorganized the only things that move are people and some furniture components. The time, expense, and disruption of moving walls or panels are eliminated.

...........to have varied workplaces but allocate them on some basis not tied to rank or status. This got rid of the status tie-ups, and has had the side benefit of helping people to get acquainted with others in different disciplines who had tended to keep to their separate group areas in their previous, more traditional functional group arrangement. To promote this mixing even further, they plan to reshuffle all their spots periodically.

From the above, we can see that layouts, workplace design, and locations of individuals and groups are important influences on organizational performance. As such, they should not be overdeterrmined by the pecking order, which only occasionally will match the configuration needed to get the job done. All locations and facilities should be thought of as a dynamic system, changing as needs change, rather than a relatively fixed allocation of goodies based on rank.

----Franklin Becker & Fritz Steele, "Workplace by Design", p33-37

Other than organizational culture and corporate values, we think that different business cultures should also be considered when making organizational changes in different cultures. For example, we think that the resistance on elimination of status symbol custom might be much more intense in Taiwan than in the United States because ofTaiwan's different business culture. In Taiwan, hierarchy is thought to be a cornerstone of the success of a company because the proper arrangement of hierarchy can make supervision and management easier. (This thought might be influenced by Confucianism which emphasizes that the order of a society should be maintained by the proper "positioning" of the members.) So, giving better treatments to upper level staff implies higher authority they enjoy and this can help them run the company more smoothly. As a result, the resistance of eliminating the status symbol custom in Taiwan's company should be more intense than other countries.

The luxurious consference room locating on the top floor simbolized the dignities of top managers

So, we think that cultural difference should also be taken into account when making changes to a company locating in a different country...........