Organisational and Human Issues in VE

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Organisational and Human Issues in VE

• Kulwant S Pawar
• University of Nottingham, UK
• VIVE Workshop, Rome, Italy
• 24th March, 2000

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Overview

• Introduction
• Teaming within CE
• Collaboration ........ Collocation (physical
  virtual)
• Communication survey
• Establishing concordance
• Summary

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Introduction

• Situation
• globalisation of markets is demanding a major
  rethink of working practices
• formation of global trading alliances
• changed user requirements
• customers can pick choose increased consumer
  awareness
• rapid developments in communication technology
• product development times and lifecycles are
  shrinking
• Response
• Collaborative product development across virtual
  enterprises

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Typical CE Context

• Empowerment - project manager versus functional
  manager
• Uncertainty amongst project members and conflict
  of loyalties
• Prioritisation between day-to-day team activities
  and functional responsibilities
• Dissemination, exploitation and utilisation of
  knowledge gained
• Information flow
• - who needs informing
• - controlling information to from
• - authorisation from the right authority.
• Challenge for Managers - How do you achieve
  Integration in Virtual enterprises?

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Who is involved in CE?
Quality
Assembly
Production
Development
Personnel
Testing
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Typical issues to address in CE Teams

• Changes in empowerment
• Changes in resource management
• Changes in rewards and penalty systems
• Changes in communication

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Team Requirements

• Complementary Skills
• human resource focus as an organisational
  development factor
• Establish Goals and Individual and Collective
  Accountability
• reduction of complexity by establishing complete,
  process oriented areas of responsibility
• Common Approach
• goal oriented system behaviour through
  overlapping work domains between functional teams
  / members
• Common Purpose
• face to face meetings- collocation

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Analysis Hierarchy for New Product Development
Level 4- Analysis at Stage level
Level 3- Analysis at Team level
Level 2- Analysis at Discipline level
Level 1- Analysis at task level
TASK-
Level 0- Basic Units of Analysis
PERSON ROLE- names given to person or machine
and role assigned to complete task.
Element of work
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Collaboration to ... Collocation
Collaboration is the process intended
to foster sharing that is necessary among
involved or affected groups or organisations in
order to achieve the collective gains or
minimise the losses. Bryson Eden,
1995 It is promoted by collective goals,
mutual understanding, informal activity,
shared resources, and common vision.
Kahn, 1994
collaboration between different functional
disciplines can be created by means of
Collocation.
Background
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Functional Link Evaluation
Process Modelling Analysis
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Cookwell Ltd - Physical Collocation

• Company Profile
• Medium sized company with over 2000 employees
• Design Team of approximately 100 staff of various
  functional specialisms
• Turnover 260 million

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Cookwell Collocation Team Objectives

• to shorten product design and development lead
  time
• to break down functional barriers
• to improve communication
• to eliminate reiteration in the design process
• to empower engineers

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Lean Automotive Ltd - Virtual Collocation

• US subsidiary
• a largest supplier of automotive seats
• consistently focused on improving manufacturing
• currently moving towards virtual collocation of
  design developments
• Design centres UK, Germany USA
• 60 manufacturing plants

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Comparison of Physical vs Virtual Collocation

• In terms of
• Proximity and Nature of interactions
• Utilisation of resources
• Control and Accountability
• Working environment
• Cultural and educational background
• Technical Compatibility
• Strategic and Operational Management

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Management Challenges - How do we manage..???

• multi-cultural multi-lingual multi-skilled
  multi-disciplined
• individualism versus teamism
• differing objectives, expectations and
  aspirations
• variable skill levels
• variable upbringing/educational backgrounds
• conflicting national working patterns (ie
  holidays/number of hours)

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Thus challenges facing are..

• How do we move from relatively loosely coupled
  Virtual Enterprises ???
• to..
• .Tightly coupled Virtual Enterprises using the
  available people processes structures and
  decision support technology

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Moving Towards Virtual Collocation
Relative degree of discretion
Low
High
High
Project team Design activities are carried out
by a team whose members are not physically
collocated
Physical Collocation Design Team whose members
are operating in physical proximity of each other
Relative degree of interaction
Virtual Collocation Design team whose members are
dispersed geographically and are collocated
via technology
Over-the-wall Design activities are
fulfilled by relevant functions discretely and
sequentially
Low
High
Low
Relative opportunity to be creative
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Characteristics of different organisational
arrangements in NPD
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Communication, Communication, Communication,
Communication.....

• For successful virtual enterprises there has to
  good communication and culture of concordance
• UoN (Amy Horton) conducted a survey on email
  communications
• 120 responses
• Currently following up with detailed case studies

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Email survey - summary of findings

• 68 believe email makes considerable cost savings
• 44 respondents disagree that it is the best form
  of communication for their organisation
• 20 claim email causes stress
• 37 receive junk emails
• 48 receive irrelevant emails
• 54 check emails when they arrive
• 17 believe they could not live without emails
• 39 check their emails when not at work (i.e.from
  home)

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Email survey - summary of findings continued

• 6 received extensive email usage training
• 2 received extensive video conferencing training
  (n 37)
• 36 would benefit from training
• 15 received regular IT training
• 13 had company handbook to support email network
  
• 79 had IT specialist to support employees
• 33 concerned about email security

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Average time per day spent dealing with emails
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Management Challenges and Dilemmas
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Lessons Learnt to date

• Collocation is mutually beneficial.
• However a number of Pre-requisites need to exist
• Acceptance of Virtual Collocation.

towards the creation of a culture of concordance
END
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Definition of Concordance

• ...an agreement or understanding between two or
  more parties (individuals, functions or
  organisations) in order to work towards a common
  purpose or goal using mutually acceptable
  resources (both human and technical), processes,
  procedures and communication means.

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Typical characteristics of physical virtual
design teams (1)
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Typical characteristics of physical virtual
design teams (2)
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Principles of Culture of Concordance

• Convergence towards common goals
• Encourages creativity
• High degree of discretion- allows freedom of
  expression
• Relatively high degree of interaction
• Utilises the latest compatible communication
  technologies and languages
• Engenders vertical and horizontal perspective
• Capitalises on the Emotional Intelligence of
  team members
• Builds on consensus

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Culture of Concordance model for NPD environment
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How do you get concordance if a virtual musical
concert?
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How do you get concordance if a virtual musical
concert?
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Virtual Collocation
Knowledge transfer to the organisation
Physical Collocation
Experience Warehouse
Unused Knowledge
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Summary

• Moving from CE to Concurrent Enterprising
• Virtual Enterprises gaining momentum
• Degree of desired coupling and integration
  between enterprises
• Operational issues (individual vs group think
  development)
• Innovative training methods requried
• Post operation - knowledge diffusion transfer
• Need to create a culture of concordance!!
• How to achieve concordance in practice????

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Respondents views (1)

• ... our company ill prepared to assimilate new
  technology into the workplace
• e-mail communication leads to many
  misunderstandings and too many put fingers to the
  keyboard without engaging brain cells
• e-mail is a poor substitute for face-to-face
  communication
• .. e-mail is the tool of the future. Companies
  often do not invest enough time or money in
  training
• e-mail can and has been used to great advantage
  within my company. Equally it can be poorly used
  and cause productivity to suffer
• has created a situation where people do not
  communicate verbally, lack of personal
  communication
• Its a love hate relationship. Its quick and
  facilitates good communications, but it also has
  a down side message overload, its open to
  inappropriate use (when the message should be
  face to face) and can take up too much time in
  the day that could be used more productively.

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Respondents views (2)

• sending large documents/reports tends to create
  a lot of large unread messages - taking up a lot
  of memory, sometimes network servers cant cope
  i.e. slow e-mails arriving.
• ..is the loss of personal contact. Often, I will
  receive mail from the person next door.
• ..e-mail has an informal writing chat style.
  People often type, as they would speak, that can
  cause problems. It is easy to not think before
  writing whereas a memo gave space for thinking
  time. Training should include learning to react
  carefully. Training in e-mail usage is not a
  technological rather a psychological training
  issue...
• .. there is pressure/expectation to respond
  immediately- it can cause time management
  problems (tendency to jump from one issue to the
  next!!). The personal side of communication is
  disappearing i.e. face-to-face communication and
  sometimes problems can be sorted out through a
  quick chat.
• e-mail a useful tool but it can stop people
  talking/meeting face to face.
• ..a great asset, particularly for international
  communications. Can be impersonal or
  misinterpreted phone call better summarised
  by e-mail as a follow up.