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，本研究聚焦于管理领域一个长期存在的理论争论，即大规模的组织变革是应该通过连续的阶段渐进地管理，还是应该在单一的转型中不连续地管理。对这一问题的系统实证研究很少。拟议的项目将在一组医院系统（即共同拥有的两家或两家以上医院）内调查这一问题，这些医院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转变为产品线结构。中心假设是，增量过渡过程比不连续过渡方法与更大的过渡成功相关。拟议的项目有可能对组织的知识状态产生重大影响，填补了关于增量与不连续过渡变化相关的相对风险和收益的文献空白。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家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。在医院系统的试点研究中，研究小组确定了大约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策略。这些产品线实施的时间安排为研究团队提供了一个机会，可以前瞻性地研究组织设计从基线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组件，分析的主要单位是产品线。对于该研究的统计部分，将对每条产品线进行为期三年的前瞻性跟踪，以评估相对于转型成功的几个指标的转型方法。过渡方法将按照项目首席研究员以前为按照功能-产品连续体对组织结构进行分类而制定的完善的概念框架来实施。研究小组将根据是否以及哪些中间结构用于管理从功能结构到产品线结构的过渡来检查几种类型的过渡方法。转型成功的指标将包括员工对变革的准备，员工满意度，以及实现转型预期收益的程度。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。在这六种情况中，三条将是计划以增量方式实现的产品线，三条将是计划以不连续方式实现的产品线。这项研究的结果将对医疗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更好的问题，以及对更普遍的大规模变革过程的见解。

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.