Transitions in Organizational Design: A Study of Product Line Implementation

在美国国家科学基金会创新与组织变革项目的支持下，本研究关注管理领域长期存在的理论争论，即大规模组织变革是否应该通过连续的阶段进行渐进式管理，还是应该在一次变革中不连续地进行管理。很少有系统的实证研究这个问题。拟议项目将在一组医院系统（即，两个或两个以上共同所有的医院），每一个都在经历组织设计的重大转变，具体来说，从功能到产品线结构的某些服务。中心假设是，增量过渡过程是与更大的过渡成功比是一个不连续的过渡approach.The拟议的项目有可能产生重大影响的知识状态，关于组织，填补了一个空白，在文献中的相对风险和利益与增量与不连续的过渡变化。随着组织科普重大变革，这种见解越来越重要。合作伙伴组织是工业咨询委员会（IAB），这是一个由16个医院系统组成的联盟，旨在支持与医院系统有关的管理和临床问题的研究。在对医院系统的试点研究中，研究团队确定了约75条产品线，计划在未来两年内实施，因为医院系统使用重新定义的产品线作为减少服务重叠和促进医院之间客户服务的战略。这些产品线的执行时间使研究小组有机会前瞻性地研究组织设计从基线期到产品线全面执行的过渡，项目将包括统计和个案研究部分，主要分析单位是产品线。对于研究的统计部分，将在三年内前瞻性地跟踪每个产品线，以评估与过渡成功的几个指标相关的过渡方法。过渡办法将根据一个完善的概念框架实施，该框架是项目的主要研究员以前为将组织结构沿着功能-产品线连续体分类而制定的。研究小组将研究几种类型的过渡方法的基础上，是否和哪些中间结构用于管理从功能到产品线结构的过渡。过渡成功的指标将包括员工对变革的准备程度、员工满意度以及预期从过渡中获得的收益的实现程度。在个案研究部分，研究小组将选择六个产品系列作为深入调查的个案。在这六个项目中，三个项目将是计划逐步实施的产品系列，三个项目将是计划不连续实施的产品系列。这项研究的结果将进行医疗保健的变化管理的影响，无论是大规模的变化是更好地管理增量或不连续的问题，以及更普遍的大规模的变化过程的见解。

With support from the National Science Foundation's Innovation and Organizational Change Program, this research focuses on a long-standing theoretical debate in the field of management around whether large-scale organizational change should be managed incrementally through successive stages or discontinuously in a single transformation. There have been few systematic empirical investigations of this issue. The proposed project will investigate this issue within a group of hospital systems (i.e., two or more hospitals under common ownership) that are each undergoing a major transition in organizational design, specifically, from functional to product-line structures for certain services. The central hypothesis is that an incremental transition process is associated with greater transition success than is a discontinuous transition approach.The proposed project has the potential to have a substantial impact on the state of knowledge regarding organizational, filling a void in the literature concerning the relative risks and benefits associated with incremental versus discontinuous transition change. This insight is of increasing importance as organizations cope with major change.The partner organization is the Industrial Advisory Board (IAB), a consortium of 16 hospital systems established to support research on managerial and clinical issues pertaining to hospital systems. In a pilot study of the hospital systems, the research team identified approximately 75 product lines that are slated for implementation within the next two years, as the hospital systems use redefined product lines as a strategy for reducing service overlap and promoting customer service among their hospitals. The timing of the implementation of these product lines provides the research team with the opportunity to study the transitions in organizational design prospectively from a baseline period to the full implementation of the product line.The project will comprise statistical and case study componentswith the primary unit of analysis being the product line. For the statistical component of the study, each product line will be followed prospectively over a threeyear period to assess transition approach relative to several indicators of transition success. Transition approach will be operationalized in accordance with a well-developed conceptual framework that the project's principal investigator previously developed for classifying organizational structures along a functional-product-line continuum. The research team will examine several types of transition approach based on whether and which intermediate structures are used for managing the transition from functional to product-line structure. The indicators of transition success will include employee readiness for change, employee satisfaction, and degree to which the expected benefits from the transition have been realized. For the case study component the research team will select six product lines as cases for in-depth investigation. Of the six cases, three will be product lines that are slated to be implemented incrementally and three will be product lines that are slated to be implemented discontinuously. This results of this study will carry implications for health care change management, for the issue of whether large-scale change is better managed incrementally or discontinuously, and for insights into the large-scale change process more generally.