Exploring Dilemmas and Choices in Organizational Design
Presentation by Fiddy Abraham, Principal Researcher / Consultant (TIHR) to the European Organizational Design Forum Meeting Vienna 2013: Designing Thriving Organizations: Resilience, Partnership, Enablement.
The presentation outlined Fiddy Abraham’s (oscillating) theory-in-use and improvisation in a set of case studies in inter-organizational cross-sectoral design undertaken between 2005 and 2008 in similar settings. Different approaches, including socio-technical systems design, conversational enquiry, and others were foregrounded in different settings and this enquiry sets out to explore what drove those choices, in the system and in the scholarly practice of the consultant.
This session set out to provide a framework for participants to join with the presenter in exploring how different approaches to organizational design get mobilized through different organizational processes and life cycles. Participants were invited to work individually and in different sized groups to identify alternative theories-in-use which might have resulted in different outcomes and to reflect on the way different organizational dilemmas mobilise different theories-in-use in their own practice.
