Strategic Workforce Planning Under Uncertainty

A new study in the INFORMS journal Operations Research proposes a data-driven model for conducting strategic workforce planning in organizations. The model optimizes for recruitment and promotions by balancing the risks of not meeting headcount, budget, and productivity constraints, while keeping within a prescribed organizational structure. Analysis using the model indicates that there are increased workforce risks faced by organizations that are not in a state of growth or organizations that face limitations to organizational renewal (such as bureaucracies).

Towards emancipation through organizational (re)design? Exploring integral organizational renewal from a critical management perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more pragmatic critical management studies (CMS), by exploring the emancipatory intent of organizational (re)design concepts and ideas from the modern sociotechnical approach integral organizational renewal (IOR). Design/methodology/approach This paper is of a conceptual nature in that it engages with relevant literature from the fields of CMS and IOR, guided by a focused conceptualization of emancipation from CMS literature. Findings It is found that although IOR can to a large extent be considered as an emancipatory project, it contains a number of dangers which jeopardize its emancipatory potential. Complemented with other sociotechnical approaches and ideas, however, it appears that IOR could make some valuable contributions to a pragmatic CMS. Originality/value This paper is unique in engaging in an exchange of ideas between CMS and IOR. By doing so, it contributes, first, to the debate on a more pragmatic CMS; second, to the dialogue between CMS and “mainstream” organization science; third, to the field of organizational (re)design.

Adaptive management of dynamic changes of the enterprise

Introduction. This paper describes the adaptive management of dynamic changes in a present-day enterprise. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the interaction of the key elements of the system of adaptive management of dynamic changes in enterprises, with regard to the influence of the external and internal conditions. Results. The vast majority of enterprises today require changes, which are implemented through the use of adaptive management, which ensures that the company is able to respond adequately to external and internal changes. To ensure the competitiveness, a significant portion of the enterprise requires dynamic changes, which are characterized by high intensity and radicality. For their implementation, the enterprise, on the one hand, must have the necessary potential to achieve this, and on the other hand – the appropriate mechanisms for their implementation. The mechanics of realization of the enterprise potential is defined as a set of its dynamic capabilities and key competences. Key competencies, which enable the company to carry out dynamic changes, are created by the influence of dynamic capabilities on its functional competencies. Dynamic capabilities have a decisive importance in the creation of key competences. The most important key competencies include the following: Constant monitoring of the level of adaptation of the company to the conditions of the environment; the presence of a system of alignment of the goals and objectives of the company with the intensity and pace of development of the target segment of the market; organizational renewal, innovation-friendly internal environment of the company; motivating the company's staff to use the specified capabilities. Conclusion. Efficiency of implementation of changes in the enterprise is achieved by adaptive change management, which ensures adequate response of the management structure of the enterprise to changes in the external and internal environment. Adaptive management of dynamic changes is ensured by the purpose-oriented formation and widespread use of mechanisms for the implementation of the company's potential, as an aggregate of its key competences. The key competences that will provide the company with competitive advantages are created by influencing the dynamic capabilities on the functional competences.

Nigeria’s Bank of Agriculture: An Agenda for Organizational Renewal

Bank of Agric (BoA) was establish as a special purpose specialized financial institution to provide agricultural loans to deserving customers as a way to promoting access to affordable credit facilities to segments of the Nigerian society that have little access to the services of conventional banks while accepting savings deposits from customers and encouraging banking habits at the grass-roots. However, the performance of the bank has been below expectation because it has not fulfilled purpose. In a country like Nigeria of N200 million population, where agriculture currently provides about 54 per cent of employment and the quest for economic resilience and sustainability is further driving diversification into agribusiness, improving access to agricultural credit, is imperative. It is against this background that the need to reposition the bank becomes necessary. It is recommended that the bank be partially privatised for access to increased / private capital, while its operations should be modernized and computerized to improve customer convenience and operational efficiency.

Knowledge Management in Emergent Amateur Organizational Cultures

This chapter examines issues of knowledge management and cultural knowledge in the context of Formula SAE student engineering teams. Approximately 500 student teams field a small formula-style racecar in a series of annual competitions held globally. Despite being small, student-run teams with limited resources and high organizational turnover, strong teams have developed strategies to sustain knowledge creation and work to build the team's cultural knowledge over multiple annual design cycles. This chapter highlights three knowledge management challenges: organizational renewal due to graduation of senior members, capturing vital yet departing tacit and explicit knowledge, and engaging multi-year and collaborative projects. The chapter recommends that strong faculty and institutional support can help FSAE teams develop into stable knowing organizations with deep tacit, explicit, and cultural knowledge bases.

How digital fantasy work induces organizational ideal reversal? Long-term conditioning and enactment of digital transformation fantasies at a large alternative bank (1963–2019)

Digitalization, that is, organizational renewal through new information and communication technologies, has long been invested with a fantasmic logic of affording alternative organizational ideals – democratic and not-for-profit rather than hierarchical and for-profit. Responding to calls to study the darker side of Silicon Valley inspired utopia, this paper investigates how and when organizational work on digitalization fantasies undermines organizational ideal renewal. In particular, this paper draws on the extended case of Alternative Bank (1963–2019) to shed light on how the long-term co-evolution of fantasy sublogics and power types in successive digital transformation projects induces organizational ideal reversal. I provide a theoretical model of how organizational ideal reversal comes about through the co-evolutionary conditioning of ‘have your cake and eat it’ affordances, mimetic neglect of real ethical affordances, and structural transgression of the ideal in the name of market and technical discipline. Ideal reversal occurs through consecutive phases of unwitting ideal transgression, followed by increasingly cynical and instrumentalizing transgression, and finally a cathartic moment of liberating ideal reversal. I advance several theoretical propositions on how digital fantasy work induces organizational ideal reversal, situating the dark side of fantasy work within a larger societal critique.

Leading Change With Intelligence: The Power of Diagnosis in Creating Organizational Renewal

The success of any organizational change effort relies first and foremost on expert diagnosis—the ability to gain intelligence about the system you are trying to change. The Burke–Litwin Model of Organizational Performance and Change, as developed by W. Warner Burke and George H. Litwin, represents one of a critical body of work contributing to the efficacy of leadership and its essential role in both diagnosing and managing organizational change from a holistic, open-systems view. An in-depth study of the model in practice is presented in the case of Electric Boat during a time of significant growth, technology adaptation, and demographic/attitudinal shifts in the workplace.

Luottamus johtamisjärjestelmän uudistamisessa – Narratiivinen tapaustutkimus ei-henkilöityvän luottamuksen kehittymisestä vähittäiskaupan ketjuorganisaatiossa

Trust within the renewal of the management system – A narrative case study on impersonal trust development in retail chain organizationThis article examines and illustrates understanding of the role of trust as intangible resource in organizational renewal. The qualitative case study was conducted in the retail organization undergoing a renewal process. In the prior organization research, trust is recognized supporting change implementation. The theoretical framework draws on the trust research of organizations. Trust is still scarcely studied as impersonal resource from the management system perspective. The data was gathered from managers and supervisors. The findings suggest a transparent management system as the basis of organizational trust. The study makes an interesting conclusion on the development of the nature of trust towards impersonal trust.