Transitions in Organizational Design: A Study of Product Line Implementation

组织设计的转变：产品线实施研究

• 批准号: 9906227
• 负责人: Martin Charns
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-01 至 2003-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9906227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Transitions; Organizational; Design; Study; Product

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.

在国家科学基金创新与组织变革计划的支持下，本研究围绕大规模组织变革是应该分阶段递增管理还是在一次变革中不连续地进行管理，集中讨论了管理界长期存在的理论争论。关于这一问题的系统的实证研究很少。拟议的项目将在一组医院系统(即，两家或两家以上共同所有的医院)中调查这一问题，这些医院系统都在组织设计方面进行重大转变，特别是从某些服务的功能结构到产品线结构。核心假设是渐进式过渡过程与更大的过渡成功相关，建议的项目有可能对组织的知识状态产生重大影响，填补了文献中关于渐进式与非连续性过渡变化相关的相对风险和收益的空白。随着组织应对重大变化，这种洞察力变得越来越重要。合作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，研究小组确定了大约75条产品线，这些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。实施这些产品线的时间安排使研究小组有机会前瞻性地研究组织设计从一个基准期到产品线全面实施的过渡。该项目将包括统计和案例研究部分，主要分析单位是产品线。关于这项研究的统计部分，将在三年内前瞻性地跟踪每一条产品线，以评估相对于若干过渡成功指标的过渡办法。过渡办法将根据项目首席调查员先前为将组织结构按职能-产品线连续体分类而制定的完善的概念框架付诸实施。研究小组将检查几种类型的过渡方法，基于是否以及哪些中间结构被用于管理从功能结构到产品线结构的过渡。转型成功的指标将包括员工对变革的准备程度、员工满意度以及转型预期收益的实现程度。对于案例研究部分，研究团队将选择六个产品线作为案例进行深入调查。在这六个案例中，三个将是计划逐步实施的产品线，三个将是计划不连续实施的产品线。这项研究的结果将对卫生保健变革管理产生影响，对于大规模变革是增量管理还是间断管理的问题，以及对更广泛的大规模变革过程的洞察具有重要意义。