Format:
1 online resource (401 pages)
Edition:
1st ed.
ISBN:
9780521768641
,
9780511857942
Content:
Everyone working in and with organizations will experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. This is an unusual routine. This book provides a new vocabulary for identifying, understanding, and dealing with this pervasive organizational phenomenon
Note:
Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Boxes -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Crazy systems, Kafka circuits, and unusual routines -- Two stories of mundane complexity and dysfunctional feedback -- Sweeping it under the rug -- A poetic license to steal -- Just stories? -- Crazy systems -- Causes -- Conflicting goals -- Poor feedback -- Symbolic uses and manipulation -- Barriers to perception -- Kafka circuits -- Symptoms -- Unusual routines -- The rest of the book -- 2 Causes, symptoms, and subroutines of unusual routines in six computer information/communication systems -- Causes of unusual routines in three ICTs -- Labor cost system -- Conflicting goals -- Poor feedback -- Symbolic uses and manipulation -- Barriers to perception -- Conflicts in more sophisticated construction systems -- Home Sale Automation system -- Conflicting goals -- Poor feedback -- Symbolic uses and manipulation -- Barriers to perception -- Voicemail system -- Poor feedback -- Symbolic uses and manipulation -- Causes, symptoms, and subroutines of unusual routines in three ICTs -- Technical issue help request system -- Cause: conflicting goals -- Cause: poor feedback -- Cause: symbolic uses and manipulation -- Symptom: secrecy -- Symptom: manipulation -- Symptom: rigidity -- Online database query system -- Symptom: non-responsiveness -- Symptom: secrecy -- Symptom: manipulation -- Symptom: denial -- Symptom: rigidity -- Subroutine: work -- Subroutine: delay -- Subroutine: error -- An employee time reporting system -- Symptom: denial -- Subroutine: error -- Subroutine: blame -- Conclusion -- Invisibility, embeddedness, and routinization of unusual routines -- Unusual and unintended consequences of unusual routines -- 3 Getting personal: unusual routines at the customer service interface
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Customer service, dissatisfaction, and complaining -- Complaints and satisfaction -- Service fairness -- Service feedback mediation -- Technology and service literacy as feedback mediator -- Perceptions and attributions of service quality -- Mediation of service feedback through roles and positions -- Mediation of feedback by blocking and non-responding -- Problematic customers -- Examples and analysis of unusual service subroutines, routines, and organizational (non-)response -- 1. Your checks are safe with us -- 2. Risky investment: figuring out how to fill out forms (in homage to Sless, 1988) -- 3. Running out of gas -- 4. Please call back at your convenience -- 5. Next time we just wreck your car -- 6. Reproducing problems -- Conclusion -- 4 A multi-theoretical foundation for understanding unusual routines -- Five foundational theories for a preliminary model of unusual routines -- Systems theory -- Sensemaking theory -- Diffusion of innovation theory and socio-technical systems theory -- Organizational routines theory -- Definitions and conceptualizations of routines -- Benefits of routines -- Variability in discretion, effort, and performance of routines -- Change in routines -- Workarounds -- Meta-routines -- Developing a preliminary model of unusual routines -- Complexity of unusual routines -- Parameters and components of unusual routines -- Subroutines -- Meta-routines -- Scripts -- Symptoms -- Consequences -- Organizational substrate -- Organization values as support for unusual routine scripts -- Subunit coupling -- Five propositions -- Conclusion -- 5 A detailed case study of unusual routines -- Method -- The research site -- Data collection -- Sampling -- Analytical method -- Proposition One -- The system as just a new computer: the first-level effects -- More than just a new computer system: second-level effects on the social system
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Feedback challenges inherent in organizations -- Reporting errors through feedback, and errors of reporting feedback -- The nature of errors -- Barriers to identifying and reporting errors -- Timing of feedback -- Learning by doing rather than by learning -- Learning from feedback or memorizing responses? -- Organizational memory processing -- Learning through memory -- Rational but unreasonable, even schizophrenic, systems -- Vicious circles -- Defensive routines and mixed messages -- Conclusion -- 8 A multi-level and cross-disciplinary summary of concepts related to unusual routines -- Cognitive and social processing errors -- Personal heuristics -- Cognitive dissonance -- Errors in logic and logics of errors -- Predictable surprises, worst-case scenarios, and the precautionary principle -- Social traps and dilemmas -- Varieties of social traps and dilemmas -- Social traps and unusual routines -- Organizational complexity -- Organizational interactions are inherently complex, difficult to identify, and generate unanticipated consequences -- Organizational complexity and rationality -- Organizational paradoxes -- The nature of paradoxes -- Positive and negative aspects of paradoxes -- Types of organizational paradoxes -- Examples of organizational paradox -- Organizational deviance -- Systemic and normal -- Employee mistreatment -- Technological complexity -- Technology is inherently complex and difficult to understand or predict -- System manipulation -- Technology generates normal accidents -- Automated systems and system error -- Working around errors, and system drift -- Conclusion -- 9 Recommendations for resolving and mitigating unusual routines and related phenomena -- Encourage customer service feedback from all stakeholders -- Apply socio-technical systems theory, involve stakeholders from design through walkarounds
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Reduce blaming and defensive approaches to cognitive dissonance -- Manage paradoxes and sensemaking -- Foster learning through feedback -- Heighten awareness of predictable surprises and avoid overreacting to worst-case scenarios -- Understand and resolve social traps and social dilemmas -- Discuss and resolve conflicting goals, vicious cycles, and workplace deviance -- Avoid simple and individual approaches to complex technology and system error -- Apply and combine linkage and routines analysis -- Linkage analysis -- Routines analysis -- Conclusion -- 10 Summary and a tentative integrated model of unusual routines -- The allure of unusual routines -- Our preliminary models -- A proposed integrative model of unusual routines -- Conclusion -- References -- Index
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The system as a catalyst for policy change: a major second-level effect -- Much more than just a new computer system: second-level effects on value chains -- Proposition Two -- The difficulty of managing a loosely coupled structure -- Loose coupling and change resistance -- The system implementation and subunit coupling -- Proposition Three -- How a blame subroutine can camouflage negligence -- How a delay subroutine can protect a perquisite -- How "good" decision-making can lead to an error subroutine -- Proposition Four -- Inclusion, collegiality, work subroutines, and delay subroutines -- Representation and process losses -- Respecting all stakeholders, and an error subroutine -- Student-centeredness, and a work subroutine -- The problem of dominance and power relations in open meetings -- Ideology and change resistance -- Contradictions, opposing perspectives, and ideological myths -- Proposition Five -- Inclusive decision-making and its discontents -- The problem of leadership in an inclusive organization -- Conclusion -- 6 Summary and discussion of the case study results -- Proposition One -- Proposition Two -- Proposition Three -- Proposition Four -- Proposition Five -- Discussion -- ICT implementation and unusual routines -- Unusual routines beyond the ICT -- Validity challenges -- A revised model of unusual routine dynamics -- Implications for other theories of organizational communication -- Practical implications -- Directions for future research -- Conclusion -- 7 Individual and organizational challenges to feedback -- Feedback challenges inherent in human communication behaviors -- Desperately seeking feedback -- Discourse and language -- Contextualizing meaning by layers -- Reflexive loops, paradoxes, and undesired repetitive patterns -- Skilled incompetence and the contradictions of competence
Additional Edition:
Print version Rice, Ronald E. Organizations and Unusual Routines Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,c2010 ISBN 9780521768641
Language:
English
Keywords:
Electronic books
URL:
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