Message-ID: <970317211031_-2006863574@emout11.mail.aol.com> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 21:12:29 -0500 From: Stephen Miles Sacks PhD <mailto:Scipolicy@AOL.COM> Subject: The Hipbone is Connected to the Legbone To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
What comes first, TQM, Re-Engineering, organization development, or strategic management? Neither? Consider the following in deliberations:I posit that research and development leads the parade because without it, the organization is casting its future to its past endeavors in a world when change is rampant and in-turn affects all the organization's stake holders. Some of the most conservative institutions are adopting information technology and perhaps unintentially unlocking Pandora's Box. Trying to keep the old institution while adopting new technology is like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube.
The hipbone is connected to the legbone (I love mixed metaphors). And logically, R&D is the lower order genre that leads to higher order processes like TQM, Re-Engineering, organization development and the like. To do otherwise can strategically deform the organization as well as transform it. And since the lower order process becomes the platform for the future, the very essence of change depends upon the route and substance of lower order R&D and not upon the higher order processes.
While one may argue that the introduction of TQM and Re-Engineering processes and the like open up the stagnant organization to allow R&D to occur, the argument is a non-sequator in the context I have presented.
Consider the following corporate example: I recently made proposal to a global environment products firm to apply for Federal funding for R&D for generic technologies to develop a new generation of products. The middle and top management of the firm considered the ramifications of the proposal upon its existing priority of reorganizing itself to handle its existing workload better and the firm decided that the reorganization should come first and they will consider R&D in the future.
Well, I immediately sold my stock in the firm because the competitor that takes the technology lead in industrial renewal has the best opportunity to capture the largest share of the market. It just does not make sense that a technology company would put R&D on the low burner. Is that not what happened at Apple Computer and is that firm not a case study par excellence in TQM?
Is not the logical extension of all organization change interventions ultimately to better the quality of life? Therefore, I conclude that the application of processes like TQM and Re-engineering are limited by their logical positioning in the order of things no matter how well or thorough the interventions may be. Is not such a thought consistent with Norbert Wiener's approach to Cybernetics - that information, feedback, growth and change are limited by the structure of the organism or organization? Much to the chagrin of the TQI/m and Re-engineering gurus and groupies, over emphasis on the processes can be misguided and have short term gains while doing long term damage - because the processes do not truly change the essence of what needs to be changed.
Stephen Miles Sacks Phd Science, Technology and Health Management mailto:scipolicy@aol.com
(website is under construction and not qute ready for downloading files and papers - for future use: http://www,members.aol.com/scipolicy/index.html)