Scenario A by ZHOU, Junze 53853876
A pyramid organizational structure is a
hierarchy with the executive level at the top and descending levels from middle
management to the lower levels of the organization. The idea behind the
structure is that each upper level is able to function because of support from
the lower portions of the pyramid.
Pyramid-like organizational structures are commonplace (La Porta,
Lopez-de-Silanes, and Shleifer, 1999; Claessens, Djankov, and Lang, 2000;
Khanna and Yafeh, 2007). On the apex of a pyramid sits a controlling owner who
controls a firm indirectly through layers of intermediate companies.
During the role play we found some interesting phenomenon. The
supervisor wanted to control the whole project to move forward as he decided.
Teammates only have rights to obey the order, though they could give ideas and
advice. The atmosphere in the meeting is depressive and some people even feel
hard to breathe. They are afraid to get blame from the supervisor.
After the role play we wanted to get more information about the
reasons for the phenomenon. At last we realized that centralization should be
the major reason which is the most dominant feature of this structure.
Centralization is the degree to which the tip of the
organizational pyramid is top-weighted. In highly centralized organizations,
decision making tends to be highly concentrated at the top of the structure,
leaving less autonomy for individual workers to make decisions. This often
works hand-in-hand with formalization, which is the degree to which the rules
about communication and decision making must be followed, and how complicated
they are. Highly centralized and formalized organizations tend to have very
rigid structures.
The higher a person is in this structure, the more authority he
has, but also more responsibilities.
Because of the feature centralization of pyramid organization
structure, the communication has some unique traits.
In this structure employees receive their policy directions and
day-to-day assignments from their direct manager, who interprets orders from
the top, and employees send information about their work as well as their ideas
up the hierarchical structure, reporting first to their direct manager.
This organization structure is like the structure of army, members
know to whom they report and who reports to them. This means that communication
gets channeled along defined and predictable paths, which allows those higher
in the organization to direct questions to the appropriate parties. It also
means that individuals tend to know who does and does not possess the authority
to assign or change tasks. A clear chain of command also generates clearly
defined sets of responsibilities. Military structures rely heavily on this
division and assignment of responsibility and authority to maintain discipline.
As hierarchical organizational structures tend to
channel communication vertically, interdepartmental or inter-agency
communication suffers. Departmental specialization can lead to communication
barriers when no shared jargon exists that allow members of different
departments to communicate on the same level. In worst-case scenarios,
departments purposefully withhold information from each other.
People are more likely to develop into cliques, which in turn
compete for power. You don't just see this kind of competition at the
departmental level. Managers might become territorial about their own
department, and they might more often approach organizational-level issues from
their own departmental perspective.
As we have mentioned before, the structure is rigid. Hierarchical
organizations inhibit timely transformations, which are essential if a business
is to survive in a rapidly changing environment. Organizations that cannot
adapt to new market demands or advancing technologies in pace with or ahead of
other organizations often end up marginalized.
Creative thinking refers to how people
approach problems and solutions-their capacity to put existing ideas together
in new combinations. The skill itself de-pends quite a bit on personality as
well as on how a person thinks and works (Teresa
M. Amabile. May 2009). Employees need flexibility to share ideas with you and with
others in the company.
They are the people who interact directly with suppliers and
customers. If you select a flexible structure, such as self-governing teams,
you provide more ways for employees to be innovative. The top-down
decision-making structure means that business units are unable to respond
rapidly to competitive threats. Make this choice with the realization that the
allocation of power is not the same; with teams, there is a democratic method
of dividing up work, but this comes with joint responsibility. Hierarchical
systems can stifle creativity and innovation.
Scenario B by Ling Beibei 53846559
Structure of the organization
In this
scenario, the organization was structured as a flat one. Although in this
scenario the team still has a supervisor, the power distance between he and his
subordinate was much less than it is in the scenario A. It is more like the
picture shows, there is a key person (the supervisor) in the team, but he is on
the same flat with the team members.
Because
Power distance is one element of Hofstede’s Cultural
Dimensions model (Hofstede,
Geert 1984), this model is used to analysis the culture differences, when the
elements changed we can equally take it as culture changed. That means the
organizational culture is changed.
Communication regulation
Based on
the McKINSEY 7-S Framework (Robert H. Waterman, Jr. and Tom Peters 1982), we
changed the communication regulations.
On the first stage, structure changed
which impact the “shared value” (culture) of the organization. In
order to maintain the alignment, we changed the communication regulation
(style) accordingly.
The new
communication regulation shows bellow:
1. Peers
can communicate with each other freely.
2. It is
not necessary to ask for an approval from supervisor unless for critical
factors, such final decision.
3. Team
members are encouraged to make mistakes.
Generally
speaking, team members are delegated more authority and have more freedom to
manage the creativity. A Peer Culture is applied
in this scenario-“the way people at all levels support one another. Everyone is
fully invested in helping everyone else turn out the best work. They really do
feel that it’s all for one and one for all. Nothing
exemplifies this more than our creative brain trust and our daily review
process.” (Ed Catmull, 2008)
Feeling analysis
Supervisor had to
explain the task to everyone very clearly and be sure that everyone was on the
same page of what to do and when to complete. This part took time, because
everyone held different perspectives and always tried to discuss instead of
listening.
After the kick off
meeting, supervisor had been released from the meaning less administration
tasks and good delegation practice made sure that everyone had his own
responsibility and know what to do.
During the
discussion, supervisor only did process checking twice to make sure every thing
would be completed on time and to see wether there were any challengers need
his support.
Team
members were more enthusiastic in this task. Because of the freedom of
communication with peers, the team members generate more ideas than it in the
scenario A.
What makes
them feel frustrated was that when there was a person who was to tough and
dominant， the discussion was very hard to continue. This dominant person
will automatically took the leader role. In this situation, team members had to
start a negotiation process. It also took time and very easy to drive the
discussion beside the point.
General comments of Scenario B
Generally
speaking the open culture is more effective and workable for creative tasks, since the knowledge transformation
process is a good approach to turning creative ideas into innovations in
organizations. Team members
can stimulate each other and help each other to generate more ideas.
The
premises of a good collaboration under this scenario are these as bellow:
1.
Supervisor gives a good instruction and guideline of what to achieve
2. Team members have good communication skills and build up trust
quickly. The ability to
quickly establish and build trust is becoming even more important in today,
where partnerships and strategic alliances are common practice.
3. Team
members share the team role(R Meredith Belbin 2010) efficiently.
There are different roles in a team, sometime one person takes one
role, but some time one person takes more than one role or more than one person
who take one roles. If there is a role conflict, the collaboration will be very
likely to fail.
4. The
risks are put ahead of the collaboration started.
Since the
team is more self-organized, the collaboration risks are put ahead of the
beginning of collaboration. Supervisor need to have a sense of team members
characters which will impact what kind of role they are going to take in the
team. And this kind of understanding will be very helpful in the group forming
stage(Gina Abudi, 2010 )
Reference
La Porta, R., Lopez-de-Silanes, F., Shleifer, A., 1999. Corporate
Ownership around the World. The Journal of Finance 54, 471-518.
John Kotter. Hierarchy
and Network: Two Structures, One Organization. May 2011.Havard Business Review.
Teresa M. Amabile. How to kill
creativity. May 2009.Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions.
Hofstede, Geert. Culture's Consequences:
International Differences in Work-Related
Values (2nd ed.). Beverly Hills CA: SAGE
Publications.
Robert H. Waterman, Jr. and Tom Peters
(1982). In Search of Excellence.
Ed Catmull, hbr.org | September
2008 | Harvard Business Review 69
R Meredith Belbin, Team Roles at Work,
(Butterworth Heinemann, 2nd ed., 2010)
Gina Abudi The Five Stages of
Project Team Development, 2010
"Supervisor need to have a sense of team members characters which will impact what kind of role they are going to take in the team. " Yes, absolutely, or else team members discussion will be forever at stage of "storming".
回复删除Thanks, great
删除Dear Group (10) H2O
回复删除It’s teacher Frank here. I have a fun time reading this. I especially appreciate your scenario introductions and the conceptual analysis you performed. I like how you pointed out the exception to the rule where Steve Jobs as a tyrannical, controlling leader can still lead a group innovation process quite well with his expertise and charismatic personality to the various stakeholders. However, there are several missing items such as logo, group picture, and explanation behind your team name. Please check off all items on the list Joy sent out about fulfilling group short assignment 1.
You have put your writing structurally in separate posts; however, this is not preferred because it’s harder to formulate thesis statement, and reach to a concluding insight while assessing the proper analysis at separate glances in separate posts. It also ricks administrative mistakes where items were not checked out and points are taken off because the necessary items are harder to locate.
Nice use of visuals and graphics. I especially appreciated the original artwork drawn by computer software and the original cartoon speech bubbles by Zhou. I like the clarity and coherence your group arrives at in writing with clear subsections and with rhetorical persuasion of concepts in literature that carry the story forward without distraction or going to the tangents. Nice job!
However, you rely on too little literature and conceptual grounding to carry your story forward in ways that can be reflexive at the group level. And you don’t refer to and cite group processes enough as evidence and insights; there are no primary data or arguments that prove or address group innovation processes and outcomes during your experiential exercises. You can further analyze and reflect on your group processes and individual experiences in the group by examining the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience? How do feelings and perceptions relate to each other? What do you do when they are in contradiction? How do the different decision contexts create anticipation and expectation of your roles that affect the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience? What might this experience mean in the context of your course?
I recommend you work on having a nice introduction that situates your analysis and your readers well about the issues and thesis statement you intend to address and the concluding insight or culminating lesson learned about the group process of the innovation process that sums, typifies, extends your thesis statement in the introduction. This is a pretty nice first draft, though there is still room for improvement. Please adopt suggestions as you see fit. Please post a separate new post of this assignment, and keep the old post intact with comments from me and others. This way it shows your revision effort and gets you bonus points. Enjoy writing and learning!
Also, this is not meant to be a blog comment as a peer; rather, it's written as recommendations for improvement. So, please do not emulate my style in making blog comments on each other's blogs. Please see Trello cards on tips on making constructive comments. Thanks.
Best, Frank
回复删除ORIGINALITY AND AESTHETICS:
Using comics and popular TV series clip in your blog is absolutely a good way to convey your idea. To arrive at parallel structure, you can find two comics and two TV series to show different scenarios in the instructions to arrive at better sense of aesthetics and balance. You can then have a reflection on the methods of communication and delivery of information that are informative and educational in different ways, depending on the methods and media of communication in relation to their desired effects.
INSIGHT AND PROVOCATION:
I like the product concept of the scenario exercise where you totally changed the direction of innovation: “Timer is not a product but a function of cooking stove. Because of the value added to stove, we increased the price of it.” However, I cannot find any analysis of the group’s innovation process reflection anywhere in your blog. It is not enough to arrive at very good and innovative products, services at the end of the exercise because it is not what the assignments ask for. It asks specifically for the analysis of the group innovation processes to arrive at insights that shed light on teamwork, innovation, creativity, or any other collaborative concepts or collaborative phenomena of your choice.
To attract readers’ attention and motivation to read and find out your positions behind your analysis, you need to both provide clear insights to me, as well as the means the individual and the group adopt to arrive at those insights. In your blog, large parts of content contribute to description without making arguments. For the readers, they know the situation quite well. Thus, there is no need to provide so much description.
SUPPORT AND EVIDENCE:
回复删除It is important here to unpack how and why of the choices the group make the decision impact of these choices under decision contexts rather than just describe your group has solved a problem; reached a conclusion; found an answer; reached a point of understanding.
What did you discover about the advantages and disadvantages of working as part of a group during the two different contexts of group innovation, especially as it relate to performance outcomes such as innovation quality and product or group effectiveness and creativity?
How does good teamwork influence success in innovation activities when time and resources are limited? As everyone had their own point of view, many different ideas could be produced in a group. How the energy of group participation influences and encourages other team members to feel more energetic about contributing something.
The description of the scenarios and the frameworks are explained quite clear. You provide a very relevant and informative conceptual grounding that uses organizational structure and examines various ways that hierarchy mediates communication in group processes in negative and distortive ways that diminishes creativity and creates organizational roles for reasons other than innovation. Your approach is theoretical appropriate and conceptually sound. However, you still need to link this analysis on communication, structure, and hierarchy in organizations to the group innovation processes, as the latter is the main focus of the process analysis and group reflection on group innovation processes.
MASTERY AND UNDERSTANDING:
You made good use of concepts talked in the class and readings. But, do not forget to link the concepts with the key factors that required in the assignment such as trust building, creativity and teamwork.
You need to include more detailed information the illustrates the real teamwork that evidence the group innovation progress itself, in turns of both outcomes and process, which would make it more credible and persuasive in making arguments that build on the prior reflection of each step of the group process learning. Relating your group performance outcomes to the steps, insights, problems, or observation during the group process can help formulate reflective insights on the group processes while engaging in innovation in different decision contexts.
You can further analyze and reflect on your group processes and individual experiences in the group by examining the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience? How do feelings and perceptions relate to each other? What do you do when they are in contradiction? How do the different decision contexts create anticipation and expectation of your roles that affect the feelings and perceptions surrounded the group and individual experience? What might this experience mean in the context of your course?
You can even address what other additional perspectives, theories or concepts could be applied to the situations to offer alternative interpretations and explanations, and address why you have made the choices that you have made for what intentional effects.
CLARITY AND COHERENCE:
回复删除Reflection is learning to learn from experience. Reflection is a skill, more accurately a cluster of skills, involving observation, asking questions, and putting facts, ideas, and experiences together to add new meaning to them all. Learning to learn in this way, and instilling the practice as a habit, can allow students to learn meaningful future experiences based on the roles they assume in a group experiential exercise or counterfactual, or pre-factual simulation. Reflection is thinking for an extended period by linking recent experiences to earlier ones or to other knowledge-based assumptions, to promote a more complex and interrelated arguments, insights, innovations, positions, understanding, or problem solving. Being able to analyze problems, generate alternatives, and anticipate consequences are critical skills in any area of life. The existence, regularity, and quality of a reflective component (Conrad & Hedin, 1982) that continually develops an individual’s higher level thinking and problem solving through reflective moments and practices.
Reflection on group processes is the process by which participants mentally and emotionally synthesize direct group processes with their attendant individual experiences, group processes and outcomes.
Your analysis is too descriptive. You need to engage in critical reflection about the dynamics of the group processes itself and the feelings and perceptions evoked at the individual and group level while engaging innovation two different decisions which constrain and channel both group and individual behaviors. In engage in critical reflection of group processes, one can identify what helped and what hindered the quality of learning and whether certain behaviors had a positive or negative effect. Team members can reflect on both the processes and products of group work.
Oh, a very unique blog! A pyramid organizational structure is introduced firstly, which tells the audience the basic theory of building an organization.I learnt something about the theories through reading your blog! Good Job! Then, you tell the effects of the structure and the effect of setting different roles in the deciding process. With someone being the supervisor and no-one being the supervisor, the environment of communication is different. As hierarchical organizational structures tend to channel communication vertically, interdepartmental or inter-agency communication suffers. Centralization is the degree to which the tip of the organizational pyramid is top-weighted. THEN, you tell "Creative thinking refers to how people approach problems and solutions-their capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations. The skill itself de-pends quite a bit on personality as well as on how a person thinks and works." However, I think you should contain some sentences to link two parts up. I did not find some words that transfer the idea from structure of an organization to the topic of creativity. Next, you put forward the Scenario 8 and emphasize the importance of freedom, YEAH, I like this part!
回复删除Very good especially use pictures and some shots in US TV series. But there is a problem is the font size is too small that make me read difficulty, I want you change the font size and do some mark that make readers can know the key points.The good thing is you make some charts that make your idea clearly.
回复删除I think the pictures of your blog are very interesting and could illustrate the points. As some other students mentioned in their comments that this interprets the hierarchy organization. I think it would be better if you could find the similar styled pictures of Senario A and B's organization structure. Also, I found there are some principle descriptions in the Senario B while none in the counterpart of Senario A, I think the structure of this whole bog would be better if you could add those parellel structure parts. And I think if we could see a independent paragragh of comparisons between the 2 senarios would be much more clear and organized. It would be nice of you to bigger your font.
回复删除The elaboration of army structure helps me to understand more clearly on the pyramid organizational structure. And the thinking of the hierarchical organizational structures cause lack of communication is quite logical. However, I didn’t find any comparison between scenario A and scenario B. It would be better to add this part if you want to convince readers to support your idea.
回复删除the format of having a dialogue to show the difference between two scenario is really vivid and easy to understand ,the analysis behind is also in detail and convincing,some mataphor like "the structure is like the army"is clear and precise.and some critical thinking part really make me think ahout the relationship more.compare to our team's analysis ,we could learn some method from your team.
回复删除two different edition shows your improvement,and distinctly show your didvision of the assignment.however to make sure the whole essay is a entirety, maybe you can unify the anaylsis style of both scenario1 and scenario2 because we can easily discover that the writing style of different scenario is totally different