Article Review

A Review
of
A Tale of Complexity: The Effects of Organizational Behavior on Project Outcomes
Marie A. George, RN, BSN
Duke University School of Nursing
April 3, 2004

“A Tale of Complexity: The Effects of Organizational Behavior on Project Outcomes” is a research work carried out by Marie A. George in a small, privately held healthcare software vendor (Phoenix) in New England. The study intends to research the use of different organizational and managerial practices and their perceived challenges that managers are facing and practical insights and prospects that could be applied to achieve success. Therefore, it strives to use principles of complexity theory and complex adaptive systems management to describe what could have been done differently in the past, as well as what can be done in the future.

The researcher has studied the case of a healthcare software company that was brought to the brink of destruction by absentee executive management. Actually the company was sold once and repurchased. The original owner of the software company had a style of management that was informal and unstructured whereas, the new owner was geographically remote and visited the office infrequently. Because he was remote and was under a great deal of pressure from the investor, he had to rely on the Vice President of Technology. Particularly, because of the management style of the Vice President, this changed the structure of the organization form one of informal leadership to one where the structure was Newtonian and mechanistic. According to Wheatley (1999), in the Newtonian view, organizations and projects are broken down into parts and the parts are supposed to make up the whole. Managers manage from the top, down and subordinates have little influence on decisions. While the organization chart showed the hierarchy that mixed ‘legacy’ and ‘new’ employees together, the grapevine of the company’s shadow system exposed an ‘us vs. them’ culture. Upper management did not listen to the shadow system and the organization became polarized. A consultant recommended creating cross-functional teams represented by both legacy and new employees to pool the knowledge and develop creative solutions to difficult tasks and features. This not only gave the legacy employees a feeling of security and belonging, it also served to give new management an appreciation for the value and creativity of the legacy employees, despite the fact that they did not have all the skills to support the new technology.

The study makes some recommendations like the manager of the company should adopt relationship-based leadership fostering open communication(exchange of information) and giving value to the ideas of the diversity, focusing on professional values and expertise (listening to the shadow system to avoid losing more employees until she can restore the pay cuts). Therefore, leaders should pay attention to the management of relationship rather than management roles. Similarly, the company should not fear change, but should embrace it. It is still important for the company to listen to the users and discuss their suggestions and ideas for incorporating into the new product. One way for Phoenix leadership to embrace change is to give up control. Another recommendation was to use minimum specifications since people do not have the time or resource to write extremely detailed specs for the remainder of the project. If the teams continue to meet frequently, and are allowed to communicate freely; minimum specifications will serve as a way to speed up development while fostering creativity and independence. And finally it makes a claim that to work collectively smarter is to remain in touch with those around us, both with their ideas and with their energy. And to work spiritually smarter is to pay more attention to one’s own spiritual qualities, feelings, insights, and yearnings.
By taking advantage of complexity management strategies such as creating relationship-based leadership, embracing change, using minimum specifications and working collectively and spiritually smarter, Phoenix is currently in a position to finish the software project and introduce a comprehensive innovative product into the homecare market. While Phoenix should continue to listen to its users and develop its new product according to the feedback from its beta project, the use of probes is probably not a good idea at this point. Another strategy that should be used with caution at this time is conflict management. Therefore cultivating management roles such as activist, devil’s advocate, and counselor to stimulate and manage conflict would be another alternative which could have been taken.

I liked the researcher’s style of putting the ideas in an interesting narrative way. While reading this article, I felt more like reading a story than perusing a research article that is mostly facts-and-findings loaded. I found the article worth having in my shelf to help me think about what kind of adaptive system management and different complex managerial skills I need to develop in me. I know I am not Wonder Man and I may have similar predicament in my professional career, so I think I have learned something of the management of relationships and management of roles that are worth the price in any organizations even today.



- Rebat Kumar Dhakal
10 March 2010
Organizational Behavior
M. Phil. in Educational Leadership
Kathmandu University
Balkumari, Lalitpur

Nepal