Transcript Organizational Analysis - Nancy Leveson's Home Page at MIT

Organizational Risk Analysis:
Human Nature and
Socio-Technical Systems
John S. Carroll
MIT Sloan School
presented at
16.863 doctoral seminar
April, 2009
Agenda
 Major
approaches to organizations,
organizational behavior, organization
theory, and the like
 Organizational analysis
 Organizational approaches to safety
 Let’s talk
Major Disciplinary Approaches
to Organizations
Theory first
Application/content first
Economics
Business
Political Science
Law
Anthropology
Public Policy
Sociology
Military
Social Psychology
Health Care Mgmt
Individual Psychology
I/O Psychology
Disciplines Work Within Level
Discipline
Prototype
Key Concept
Economics
markets
efficiency
Political Science
states, parties
power
Anthropology
tribes
culture, kin
Sociology
networks
status, norm
Social Psych
families, teams
motives
Individual Psych
couples
personality
Organizations Are In the Middle
Macro approaches start from institutions and
work down to organizations, e.g., corporation
as a legal entity. Org’n-in-environment
 Micro approaches start from individuals and
work up to organizations, e.g., “neurotic”
organization. People–in–org’n
 Meso approaches try to examine
organizational phenomena at a middle level

No “Unified Field Theory”
 Academic
research rewards depth over
breadth
 Disciplines grow as communities with
close ties within; weak ties across
 All theories/models have boundaries
 This is a very difficult, complex problem
 The devil is in the details
Major Theoretical Approaches
Natural Selection: evolutionary metaphor,
population ecology, environmental determinism
 Structural Functionalism/Rational System:
organizations have goals, create tasks and
roles to adapt contingently to environment
 Collective Action/Natural System: political
negotiations, norms of cooperation, networks
of relationships
 Strategic Choice: individual enactment,
retrospective rationality

Social Science/Management
Principles
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Humans are general purpose action learners (note limited
rationality; attention is a scarce resource)
Individuals have varied inborn and learned capabilities,
motives, values, styles
People live and work in groups/organizations
Both hierarchy and networks are organizing principles and
forms
Self-interest is both natural and learned, along with other
social motives (power, status, achievement, affiliation, selfactualization). [No real economist would have children (net
loss) – note that people are becoming more economic.]
Purpose and meaning are socially constructed; the past,
status quo, and future are invested with emotions
An Example: Power of Norms
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Cialdini: how to get people to reuse hotel towels?
Messages about how much water would be saved or
being good to the environment didn’t help at all
Offering to donate savings to a cause helped a little
Saying the hotel already donated, now “it’s your turn”
helped a lot (reciprocity, note who goes first)
Saying “most people” in this hotel reuse their towels
helped a lot
Saying “most people in this room” in this hotel reuse
their towels helped even more!
Organizational Analysis
Strategic
Design
Lens
Political
Lens
Cultural
Lens
ORGANIZATION
Open Systems Model
Inputs
Transformation Processes
Money
Informal
org’n
Information
People
Environment
History
Products
Formal
Org’n
Tasks
People
Outputs
Services
Satisfaction
Identity/Brand
Strategic Design Lens
Model: organizations are designed
(engineered) to achieve agreed-upon goals
 Key processes: grouping (formal structure),
linking, alignment, fit
 Key concepts: goal-directed, information
flows, interdependence
 Leader: strategist, designer, architect
 Drivers of change: lack of fit to environment,
internal lack of alignment

Processes in Strategic Design
Assess Environment
(threats, opportunities)
Assess Organization
(competences, capabilities)
Strategic Intent
Strategic Organizational Design
(grouping, linking, alignment)
Results
(fit of output to environment, internal alignment)
Political Lens
Model: organizations are contests for power
and autonomy among internal stakeholders
 Key processes: conflict, negotiation, coalition
building
 Key concepts: power, influence, autonomy,
interests, networks, dominant coalition
 Leader: coalition builder, negotiator
 Drivers of change: shifts in power of
stakeholders (can be influenced by changes
in design, environment, or strategy)
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Cultural Lens
Model: organizations are shared
mental maps, identities, assumptions
 Key processes: meaning and interpretation,
attribution, “taken for granted” (cognitive),
“invested with value” (normative)
 Key concepts: artifacts, symbols, myths,
values, assumptions, identities, subcultures
 Leader: symbol of the culture, shaper of the
culture, articulator of symbols and vision
 Drivers of change: challenges to basic
assumptions, new interpretations

Schein’s Model of Culture
Artifacts: what you see,
objects, structures
Values: strategies, goals,
philosophies, justifications
Assumptions: taken for granted
beliefs, mental models, habits
An Example: Project Teams
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Team composition
Strategic design: know-how & capabilities
Political: represent key stakeholders
Cultural: variety of mental maps
Key roles and behaviors
Strategic design: project & task management, expertise
Political: manage conflict, get commitment, build coalition
Cultural: reframe and communicate, give meaning
Key outcomes
Strategic design: create results within budget, schedule
Political: broader coalitions, shared interests, new status
Cultural: value openness & learning, new assumptions
Organizational Safety Design
 Traditional
safety management is
heavily “strategic design” oriented
 Calculate risks (PRA, etc.)
 Design redundancies, defense in depth
 Monitor and regulate key factors
 Train and supervise people
 Proceduralize
Political and Cultural Critique
Perrow’s NAT was skeptical of design, e.g.,
redundancy adds complexity and invisibility,
elites only care about their own safety
 Vaughan analysis of Challenger argued that
people have to maintain systems (cf.
Giddens’ structuration)
 Professional subcultures create barriers and
miscommunications (Schein, Carroll)
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Different Worlds
CONCRETE
ANTICIPATION
J. S. Carroll, J. Mgmt
Studies, 1998, p. 712
RESILIENCE
Design Engineers
Equipment/Drawings
Visual
Planning/Fixing
Operators
Equipment/People
Tactile
Adapting
Executives
Money
Numerical
Planning
Social Scientists
Ideas/Systems
Verbal
Learning
HRO Theory
HRO took the “appreciative inquiry” approach
to characterizing excellence
 After early observational studies, many HRO
scholars have tended to focus on culture:
sensemaking, mindfulness, respect for
expertise, preoccupation with failure, building
communities-of-practice
 Conundrum: hard to change culture by trying
to change culture (Schein)
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Example #1: CR Problem
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During an outage, a design modification was installed
to replace old electromechanical indicators in the
control room with new computer-based indicators
Operators were trained, and told “there is nothing you
can do to harm the new system”
A few months later, an operator entered improper
keystrokes and the computer system froze
Root causes were traced to operators and designers
Operators were disciplined
No one in engineering is “singularly responsible”
Fall From Roof
Joe Smith, an electrical maintenance worker, climbed
onto the thin roofing of a shed inside the hot machine
shop, an area used to decontaminate equipment with
radiological residue. His goal was to replace burned-out
fluorescent lights. Joe was advised to stay on the 1.5”
steel frame of the shed. As he crawled on the roof, his
hand slipped through a Plexiglas skylight, but he caught
himself and continued. He then slipped again off the
steel frame and fell through the roof to the floor 10 feet
below. His injuries included 5 fractures and severe
lacerations. Joe had been counseled two months before
for failing to use fall protection while painting.
Report’s Cause Maps
Employee Injured
from Fall
Viewed as
routine
Warnings
ignored
Failed to use
manual
Employee Injured
from Fall
Tunnel
vision
Hazards
not assessed
Corrective actions:
Reinforce expectations
Detail/training on working aloft
Counsel workers involved
No fall
protection
Failed to use
manual
Misused
stepladder
Learning Activities Mature
LOCAL
CONSTRAINED
OPEN
DEEP INQUIRY
Deny
problems
Comply
w/rules
Benchmark
the best
Systems
models
Bounded
know-how
Fix
symptoms
Find “root
causes”
Challenge
assumptions
Reactive
Components
Inputs
Single-loop
Proactive
Systems
Processes
Double-loop
Let’s Talk
Major Philosophical
Approaches
Positivist: cause-effect relations, empiricist
(data are “objective reality”)
 Naturalistic: description, classification
 Interpretive/constructive: subjective
perceptions and interpretations
 Action research: participate in change
efforts
 Critical/Postmodern: deconstruct, politicize,
self-referent, ironic, views of the marginalized
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The Nature of Theorizing
What is an “organization”? What is a “system”
or, gasp, an “engineering system”?
 Abstraction of “reality” into “concepts:
“Organization”, “Profit”, “Leadership”,
“Information”, “Authority” are created, not
given
 Heavy use of analogy, e.g., evolution
 Cause-effect linkages, usually simple or
conditional, sometimes feedback loops
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Controversies of Ideology:
Theories of Human Nature
Rational goal seeking vs. environmental
determinism
 Can general laws explain organizations?
 Competition vs. cooperation as basis of
society: individual vs. collective success
 Efficiency/optimality vs. relativistic
values/culture
 Seek to describe, understand, or help?
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Current Controversies
Are organizations getting larger, smaller, or
both?
 What new theories do we need in dealing
with networked and distributed organizations?
 How much is different across national
cultures? Will we have a mono-culture?
 What is the role of emotions (cf. POS)?
 Structuration: structure and action
 Is diversity good or bad?
 ESD seems to be creating a “design science”
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