Untitled

Peter Krimmel Brad Coffiner	The
	Changing
	Nature
	Of the
	Organization

Organizations are changing at an unprecedented rate and requiring individuals to change with them. With technological advances, expanding global markets, and increasing global competition, organizations are struggling as never before to adapt business processes and redefine job and work opportunities. Organizational survival and growth depend on effective change management. The ability to successfully manage such change has become not only a necessity, but a strong competitive advantage.

Changing
Paradigms

"Contextual shift is exactly what management has to undergo
before it can move into the new organization models of the new
economy" (Davis, S., 1987).

Change is in the air

Nine-dot problem and the New economy

	The key to the puzzle lies in your ability to redefine the context in which you see the nine dots. The same concept applies to organizations.
	In the industrial economy, managers considered time, space, and matter as constraints, whereas in the new economy they will come to think of them as resources (Davis, S., 1987).

Information
Technology

"Information technology provides a formal method for
overcoming limitations" (Davis, S., 1987).

Information technology creates an "any time, anywhere workplace" whereby telecommuting and computer-mediated interaction eliminate the constraints of space.
Additionally, the technological ability to transform micromatter, by compacting it in space, is very much at the heart of the new economy: transforming time, space, and mass to be more useful to people (Davis, S., 1987).

Organizational
Structure

The structure of the modern organization resembles the flexible, interlinked web of a fishnet. Unlike the rigid industrial-era "pyramid" structure, a "fishnet organization" is characterized by blurred company boundaries and borders. Electronic information systems enable parts of the whole organization to communicate directly with each other, whereas the hierarchy wouldn't otherwise permit it (Davis, 1987). The result is that the new organization is able to deal with changing roles, attitudes, expectations and cultures at a moments notice.

Employee
Involvement

"An office is not merely a building but a complex collection
of very human processes" (Johansen, R., 1995).

The well-being of the modern organization depends on the successful integration of employee and management processes. Successful teamwork, communication, and commitment, combined with vision and an ability to adapt, will allow any organization to effectively reach its goals.

"Workers think like owners" (Fradette, M., 1998).

Workers of today create new solutions on the fly, share in financial rewards of the organization's success, cooperate and share responsibility, tackle unexpected challenges, and risk failure for success. The worker takes on many roles that workers in the past would not have the opportunity to take on (Fradette, M., 1998).

Global
Competition

"In the world of unpredictability, you're either kinetic or you're dead" (Fradette, M., 1998).

Deregulation, globalization, technology, and synthesis of industry have increased global competition. Organizations must become a "Kinetic Enterprise" whereby workers contribute ideas as they come across them, there is constant innovation, and companies win by rewriting the rules of their business (Fradette, 1998).

Consumers

"Customers need products and services ANY TIME" (Davis, S., 1987).

The rules with customers go as follows:
(1) Customers need products and services ANY TIME (i.e. in their time frame, not the providers').
(2) Producers who deliver their products and services in REAL-TIME, relative to their competitors, will have an advantage.
(3) Operating in real-time means no LAG-TIME between identification and fulfillment of the need.

Email us with comments
Peter Krimmel--pjk9@cornell.edu
Brad Coffiner--bsc6@cornell.edu

Idea Book 1--Planning and Managing the Workplace
February 19, 1999