I found an article in the net, Participative Design Approach by Frank Heckman. Some of the things he mentioned in the article were not discussed during the group report so I want to share it with the others.
"Instead of constantly trying to adapt to change, why not change to being adaptive?" is the opening line to his article. It struck me because it is true that most organizations are constantly trying to adapt to change but usually fail because they are not used to the situation. By being adaptive, the organization will be able to cope up with the changes that might face them in the future because they are ready for the change.
There are 2 design principles:
- DP1 - produces a bureaucratic organization where responsibility for coordination and control are located one level above where the work is being done
- DP2 - produces a democratic organization in which people are skilled in a wide variety of social and technical tasks and functions
In DP1, there is a redundancy of parts. This means that in order for organizations to respond adequately to market demand, they need to behave flexibly and adaptively. This behavior is only possible through a degree of redundancy. An example is the traditional assembly line, where a worker is limited to a segmented piece of work, and can be easily replaced by another worker who needs little, if any, training to do the simple tasks.
On the other hand, in DP2, there is a redundancy of functions. This means that by adding extra functions to each operating part, employees broaden their roles outside of sheer job classifications. Being skilled in a wide variety of social and technical tasks, it is now much easier to respond adequately, and flexibly to demands placed on the system.
To summarize PDW, the process of learning becomes as important as the final organizational solution.
Source: http://www.worldtrans.org/qual/workplac.html
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