Digital Garden of Paul

Paradigms for designing organisations

Various organisational paradigms can be found in designing and managing organisations. A technical and clinical approach can be found in Scientific Management. Market thinking is found in Economical organisational thinking and Business processes and chains. Self organisation and chaos thrives on positive feedback as control mechanism. Lastly Organising as meaning production orients around interpretation of people regarding the goal of the organisation. These paradigms relate to the different Perspectives on rationalities.

Sociologist Dr. Ron Westrum offers a Typology of organisational cultures. These cultures are a predictor of performance of an organisation. Another perspective is offered by the Competing Values Framework. This framework offers a view on internal versus external views & flexibility versus control. These axes inherently hold a tension in them. You can't be dominantly internally and externally focussed. The same goes for the paradox of exploration and exploitation. Hybrid Ambidexterity captures this tension and how to deal with it when designing an organisation.

When designing an organisation designers need to think about coordination versus integration. Where coordination typically means more hierarchy does integration strive for more collaboration and co-creation. As such it is important to think about Integration in organisation. An elaborate way of handling integration can be found in Matrix organisations.

Paradigms for designing organisations