Tools for Inventing Organizations: Toward a Handbook of Organizational Processes

Thomas W. Malone, Kevin Crowston, Jintae Lee, Brian Pentland, Chrysanthos Dellarocas, George Wyner, John Quimby, Charles S. Osborn, Abraham Bernstein, George Herman, Mark Klein and Elissa O'Donnell
Additional contact information
Thomas W. Malone: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Kevin Crowston: Center for Science and Technology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
Jintae Lee: University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii
Brian Pentland: School of Labor and Industrial Relations, Michigan State University, E. Lansing, Michigan
Chrysanthos Dellarocas: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
George Wyner: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
John Quimby: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Charles S. Osborn: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Abraham Bernstein: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
George Herman: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Mark Klein: Center for Coordination Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Elissa O'Donnell: Fidelity Investments, Boston, Massachusetts

Management Science, 1999, vol. 45, issue 3, 425-443

Abstract: This paper describes a novel theoretical and empirical approach to tasks such as business process redesign and knowledge management. The project involves collecting examples of how different organizations perform similar processes, and organizing these examples in an on-line "process handbook." The handbook is intended to help people: (1) redesign existing organizational processes, (2) invent new organizational processes (especially ones that take advantage of information technology), and (3) share ideas about organizational practices. A key element of the work is an approach to analyzing processes at various levels of abstraction, thus capturing both the details of specific processes as well as the "deep structure" of their similarities. This approach uses ideas from computer science about inheritance and from coordination theory about managing dependencies. A primary advantage of the approach is that it allows people to explicitly represent the similarities (and differences) among related processes and to easily find or generate sensible alternatives for how a given process could be performed. In addition to describing this new approach, the work reported here demonstrates the basic technical feasibility of these ideas and gives one example of their use in a field study.

Keywords: business process redesign; knowledge management; process handbook; organizational design; organizational learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:45:y:1999:i:3:p:425-443

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