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September 9, 2005

Roles, Jobs and Self-Organization

Organizations increasingly seek agility as a target characteristic of their capabilities.

The value of this characteristic is usually measured at the level of change in external requirements on operations; but meanwhile, agility is really dependent on the ability to re-align the underlying internal functions on demand.

This is borne out by a view of operations over time.

For example, some external requirements do not mean that the type or strength of underlying functions must be changed, but instead merely their deployment; while others call for functions that are not yet executable in the current operations.

Re-organizing implementation might be approached through various steps that add, move, modify or remove functions, and more than one pattern of implementation may satisfy the requirements.

But typically, as the number of functions and the frequency of changes increases, it becomes increasingly difficult to effectively supervise the re-organization of their implementation.

And within the class of patterns that prove to be viable, the first concern is feasibility. Some patterns of implementation are preferable to others due to timing, durability, efficiency, cost, or other matters.

The supervisory perspective becomes the source of rules reflecting any policies and objectives that prioritize implementation preferences. But even assuming that funtional agents can keep up with the rules, can the rules keep up with requirements?

Because change and complexity run fiercely both through and around organizations, an alternative to elaborating rules endlessly is probably more important now than ever before. Organizational performance will depend on whether functional agents meet demand, moreso than whether they meet rules.

The two main ways of looking at functional agents are "jobs" and "roles". This determination can be applied -- as is the tradition to point out -- to technology, processes, or people alike.

We know that jobs are classically defined in a way that anticipates their consulting and following rules. But roles are different. Whereas a job "packages" a set of responsibilities into an assignment, a role distinguishes a contribution and benefit of involvement, without specifying the responsibilities in advance.

Logically, many different jobs can address a role, and in fact it makes sense to see a job as a particular implementation of a role. But while it's important for assignees to know their job, the dynamics of the organization are not revealed at the job level. Instead, describing the interaction of roles is a basic way of identifying how an organization works.

This role-perspective offers a profound potential benefit to agility: when awareness of roles is high, members of the organization can more readily recognize when alternatives at a functional level might still work. This allows them to change within and across the roles -- a behavior that can be called "self-organizing".

One of the most evident drivers of role-behavior is the "self-interest" or stake in the dynamics. Self-organization can be seen as a case of the participants seeking to optimize the investment of their involvement in the organization. Whether this is a survival tactic or a value-enhancement tactic is not irrelevant, but the two possibilities reflect the same essential behavior.

Below, the schematic picture shows a role model in a way that identifies the terms important to the flexibility of the role. The main importance of the terms is that they indicate where the role may coordinate with others (for example, by sharing or complementing) and with other managerial aspects (e.g. as compliance or protection) of the organization.
- Because the many elements of a role are independently variable, a role is inherently flexible, but its flexibility is constrained primarily by management standards and expectations.
- At the same time, adoption of a role by a member of the organization can be spontaneous if the role appears to offer a better "stake" in the organization.

Posted by Malcolm Ryder at September 9, 2005 7:21 AM

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