SESSION 16
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
The organization as a system of constituent parts
Ask yourself why a talk on design relates to a topic on organizational structure
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But Mintzberg is something we need to read to talk about it today
Mintzberg, H. (1980). Structure in 5's: A Synthesis of the Research on Organization Design. Management Science, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Mar., 1980), 322-341.
Organizational structuring, of course, focuses on the division of labor of an organizational mission into a number of distinct tasks, and then the coordination of all of these tasks to accomplish that mission in a unified way. The literature suggests that this coordination can be effected in at least five basic ways ...
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You don't have to read these unless you wish to,
but we might touch upon them in conversation
Choo, C. W. (2006). The knowing organization: How organizations use information to construct meaning, create knowledge, and make decisions. New York: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1, "The Knowing Organization: A Holistic View of How Organizations Use Information." 1-28
In an ideal world, rational decision making would require a complete search of available alternatives, reliable information about their consequences, and consistent preferences to evaluate these outcomes. In the real world, such demands on information gathering and processing are unrealistic. Instead of a comprehensive, objective rationality, Herbert Simon suggested that decision making in organizations is constrained by the principle of bounded rationality ...
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things we'll talk about
- we'll review Mintzberg's five basic parts of an organization
- how can we apply this to our personal experiences within organizations?
- can we place ourselves in this model?
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something to take away
Stephane Grappelli
It is rare with any jazz instrument that the field is so dominated by one musician as is the case with Stephane Grappelli and the jazz violin. True, the field is not large; jazz violinists with an international reputation are numbered in the dozens rather than the hundreds. Nevertheless, through his style and technique, the longevity of his career, the vastness of his discography, not to mention his personal charm, Grappelli has earned a place among the giants of jazz.
With Django Reinhardt in 1939
With Mark O'Connor in 1979