Читать книгу Reframing Organizations - Lee G. Bolman - Страница 40

A frame is a coherent set of ideas or beliefs forming a prism or lens that enables you to see and understand more clearly what's going on in the world around you. In Part Two, we embark on the first stage of a tour that will take us to four very different ways of making sense of life, at work or elsewhere. Each frame will be presented in three chapters: one that introduces the basic concepts and two that focus on key applications and extensions. We begin with one of the oldest and most popular ways of thinking about organizations: the structural frame.

If someone asked you to describe your organization—your workplace, your school, or even your family—what image would come to mind? A likely possibility is a traditional organization chart: a series of boxes and lines depicting job responsibilities and levels. The chart might be shaped roughly like a pyramid, with a small number of bosses at the top and a much larger number of employees at the bottom. Such a chart is only one of many images that reflect the structural view. The frame is rooted in traditional rational images but goes much deeper to develop versatile and powerful ways to understand social architecture and its consequences.

We begin Chapter 3 with cases contrasting the structural features of racing crews, Amazon, and rescue efforts in New York City's 9/11 terrorist attacks. We then highlight the basic assumptions of the structural view, with emphasis on two key dimensions: dividing work and coordinating it thereafter. We emphasize how structural design depends on an organization's circumstances, including its goals, strategy, technology, and environment. In addition, we show why tightly controlled, top‐down forms may work in simple, stable situations but fall short in more fluid and ambiguous ones.

In Chapter 4, we turn to issues of structural change and redesign. We describe basic structural tensions, explore alternatives to consider when new circumstances require revisions, and discuss challenges of the restructuring process. We compare traditional organization charts with “Mintzberg's Fives,” a more abstract rendering of structural alternatives. We close the chapter with examples of successful structural change.

Finally, in Chapter 5, we apply structural concepts to groups and teams. When teams work poorly, members often blame one another for problems that reflect design flaws rather than individual failings. We begin with Seal Team Six's operation to track down Osama bin Laden. We examine structural options in five‐person teams and then contrast the games of baseball, American football, and basketball to show how optimal structure depends on what a team is trying to do and under what conditions. We close by examining the architectural design of high‐performance teams.