Organizational Boundary Defense; an Experimental Design
Authors
Shigley, Paul
Morton, Clare
Tanner, Robert
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2021
Date
2021
Publisher
HICSS
Language
Abstract
Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) discussion revolves around the distribution of leadership authority and execution across the organization. Leadership must be distributed across the organization, leveraging all available expertise in decision-making and direction. Jerry Hazy and Mary Uhl-Bien developed three tenants of Complexity Leadership and refined them into five functions in their work (11). We discuss how that system should include Organizational Boundary Protection which, we believe, is the missing part of CLT. This study works to explain organizational boundary definition and protection, and seeks to expand CLT to include the idea of Organizational Boundary Protection. This study begins from the accepted position that a Pareto Power Law distribution (commonly known as the 80/20 Rule) (3) should explain the ideal execution of tasking in an organization. That is to say that ideally an organization that aligns with complexity leadership theory and utilizes a distributed decision-maker process executes work to a Pareto distribution: 20 percent of incoming tasking (information) is important to the organization and absorbs 80 percent of the organization’s resources and effort (transformed into organizational knowledge). Accordingly, the collective decision-makers should commit 20 percent of their time dispatching the 80 percent of inconsequential tasks (information that will not be transformed into organizational knowledge). To gain some early insight on this potential phenomena, this proposed study collects a medium size organization’s e-mail volumes and includes a self-assessment by e-mail recipients on the value of the information provided by the mail. The hypothesis of this study is that there will be a delta between the ideal Pareto Power Law distribution and the organization’s distribution. The study assesses that this delta is a measure of the organizations knowledge processing inefficiency. Finally, the study attempts a first order validation of this hypothesized inefficiency through an online workforce survey. The survey participants are further categorized by level of experience and organizational position to determine the impact of these factors.
Type
Conference Paper
Description
17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under temporary embargo.
Series/Report No
Department
Organization
Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.)
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
U.S. Government affiliation is unstated in article text.
Format
8 p.