Human Systems Management

The design of a Knowledge Organization has to exhibit congruence between the human and the technological dimensions. In this paper we propose a methodology that diagnoses the failures found within an organizational design of a Knowledge Organization due to an absence of equilibrium between these different dimensions. We argue that this disequilibrium stems from the absence of knowledge intensive relations linking the agents of an organization. For this reason we have investigated the minimal set of conditions necessary for the existence of knowledge intensive organizational relations, that is for the existence of a Knowledge Organization. In order to illustrate the features and the implications of the proposed methodology we apply it to the diagnosis of two cases.

In the debate between marginal decision-making and full absorbance that has been going on since the nineteenth century, activity-based costing/management (ABC/M) appeared as a promising decision support tool which answers the criticism leveled against traditional cost accounting. This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of ABC/M from a global value creation perspective, in an effort to explain why it failed to live up to its promise and why not too many companies retained it beyond a short pilot period. The paper suggests the global decision-making methodology (GDM), as an effective alternative to costing methods, which improves the quality of decisions and enhances organization value. The paper illustrates its implementation by presenting a case study of a large international financial services organization that abandoned the ABC/M system it had been using for seven years in favor of GDM. The ABC/M system was transformed to a throughput focused “light ABC” system that supports GDM. The article describes the circumstances that led the organization to adopt GDM, and provides general guidelines for its implementation.

This paper presents an argument centered approach to defining new large projects which focuses on the fundamental of human social activity, thinking and dialogue. Specifically, the approach makes explicit certain pragmatic attributes of both argumentation theory and reflective thinking; it can therefore be seen as an extension of Ulrich's boundary critique and Mason and Mitroff's surfacing strategic assumptions approaches. The paper identifies these attributes of argumentation theory and reflective thinking which are then used to enhance small and large group project development discussions. This is done to support the argument that these attributes are pragmatic. The dialectic of argument and the a priori of participants are seen as significant resources which allow avoidance of the pretence of an idealistic search and quantitative evaluation of all issues and options when designing large organizational projects.

This paper develops a framework of incentive reward match to organizational life cycle from the viewpoint of competitive advantage. Different strategy, such as differentiation, overall cost leadership and focus, can create different competitive advantage in each stage of organizational life cycle. Implementing different types of incentive reward strategy to motive unique human resources to execute the corresponding strategy and then competitive advantage can be built. Three types of incentive reward strategy, human capital, output and position, are proposed respectively in each stage of organizational life cycle to attract, nurture, and retain distinctive manpower. It will create and sustain competitive advantage in the long run.

With the explosion in information technology, deploying desktop Internet access for corporations is becoming common place. Corporate managers are dealing with issues of protecting their corporations from legal exposure, especially in relation to downloading of pornographic or racist material, and from unwanted content. While the reasons offered by employers for doing computer-based monitoring may appear ethical and legal, employers who aggressively monitor must stay current on the laws because they may be liable for multiple violations of federal and state laws. This paper reviews surveillance technologies and discusses different arguments of computer-based monitoring. This is followed by the discussion of related federal and state laws and judicial decisions. The paper concludes with guidelines for developing computer-based monitoring policies.

At this time of hyper-competition and rapid environmental changes, one of the most critical sources of competitive advantage is to attract and retain talented workers. E-recruiting is one of the most rapidly growing e-commerce areas. Since the mid-1990s, a number of e-recruiting sources such as job boards, corporate career web sites, and e-recruiting consortia have been introduced into the labor market. While corporate career web sites have been touted as the most efficient and cost-effective recruiting source among them, no formal evaluation method has been developed to measure their practices. This study develops a two-step career web site evaluation method and analyzes Fortune 100 companies' career web sites. Twenty-nine attributes of the career web sites are identified based on a content analysis of the career web sites. Three meaningful clusters are derived and profiled. Implications for managers are also discussed.