Organisations love borders. Departmental borders, leadership borders, those little short wall borders between desks, physical walls to keep the lower levels out of the snazzy offices… the list is endless. But the real struggle, is how to translate these borders into information systems. What the use of that fancy office door if Linda from accounts has direct email access to the big man behind it (or woman, or puppy)?
Organisational Theory
Borders are set in an organisational theory context, but they must be implemented by the information systems of that organisation. Implemented by the people who love walls around them most of all, the IT guys (or girls, preferably puppies).
An organisation is defined as one with 3 main characteristics:
- Formal reporting relationships
- Grouping of individuals into departments and departments into whole
- System design for effective
- Communication
- Coordination
- Integration
of efforts across platforms (Daft, Murphy, and Willmott, 2017)
Theory suggests only the last point requires the IT guy, however in organisations that utilise technology (which is basically all of them these days), the IT guy is a powerful resource for facilitating formal reporting relationships and grouping of individuals.
Formal reporting relationships
Who’s in charge of who and how do we solve problems. For mechanistic structures this requires a narrow structure of reporting, the question goes from employee to manager to his manager and up the hierarchy. People require information systems that facilitate this one way stream of information. For organic structures, problems go to the group (think an agile development scrum), then they may move up a level, where they will be discussed in that group of experts. This demands a broader structure, information systems that are collaborative and allow the sharing of information between those on the same level with different skill sets (Courtright, Fairhurst, and Rogers 1989).
Grouping of individuals in departments
Keep everybody in their departments. Don’t let accounting stray to marketing, they’ll never come back the same. Don’t let human resources have access to the accounting software, they’ll somehow manage to blow it up. Organisation is crucial to keep people where they belong and out of trouble. For the savvy IT guy this means a well-managed intranet and customised login and accounts for the varying departments, giving them the business applications they require without the clutter, or the opportunity to break it (Scott, 1998).
Effective Communication, Coordination, Integration
COMMUNICATION IS KEY. Did you hear that? It’s CRUCIAL to the modern organisation. Well sort of. We talk a lot about communication. But it’s up to the IT guy to decide how a lot of that is facilitated. Are we using email? Slack? Internal memos? Do we actually talk to each other? How do we contact poor IT guy so he can fix the printer for the 5th time this week? The management of this system is core to the smooth running of the organisation.
Organising resources, information and processes is a massive coordination challenge. In increasingly complex and ever growing organisational information systems offer wide reaching benefits (Vasconcelos, Kimble and Rocha 2003). The IT guy is here for you, and your coordination needs.
How does one CEO manage a global enterprise from his snazzy desk in New York? Integrated systems that’s how. With multiple IT guys, the power of information systems to shrink the world and enable globalisation is mighty. Oracle uses a global information system to aid in their management of employees. They utilised a global system that allowed control and monitoring of the entire organization across continents by a central managerial group. (Daft, Murphy, and Willmott, 2017).
Organisational Borders
People are the building blocks of organisations, but information systems are the cement that stops the walls crumbling down around us. In mechanistic organisations, where workers are divided by individual functions they complete. Technology maintains the operations by departments, it gives everybody exactly what they need. For a more organic approach, where teams are comprised of varying skills and expertise, the need is for collaborative technology. Information systems facilitate the increased need for communication and flexibility in employee needs.
References
Daft, R.L., Murphy, J. and Willmott, H., 2017. Organization theory and design. Cengage learning EMEA.
Courtright, J.A., Fairhurst, G.T. and Rogers, L.E., 1989. Interaction patterns in organic and mechanistic system. Academy of management journal, 32(4), pp.773-802.
Vasconcelos, J.B.D., Kimble, C. and Rocha, Á., 2003. Organisational memory information systems an example of a group memory system for the management of group competencies. J. UCS, 9(12), pp.1410-1427.
Scott, J.E., 1998. Organizational knowledge and the intranet. Decision Support Systems, 23(1), pp.3-17.
Beyond The Border 