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Organisation Design Seen through Systematic Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Thomas Cornelis*
Affiliation:
Arts et Métiers ParisTech; Proconseil
Patrice Dubois
Affiliation:
Arts et Métiers ParisTech;
Jean-François Omhover
Affiliation:
Arts et Métiers ParisTech;
Alain Fercoq
Affiliation:
Proconseil
*
Contact: Cornelis, Thomas, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, LCPI, France, thomas.cornelis@outlook.com

Abstract

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Organizations seeking to improve their performance, like Corporate Social Responsibility targets, face a key organisational design challenge. Designing the key components of the organization and their layout will have major impact on performances, and needs thus a robust design process. Organisation theory provides several models and methods to answer that need. Yet this design process has not been confronted to design methods literature, such as systematic design. The aim of this paper is to provide a synthesis of multiple theoretical elements coming from organization sciences, confronted with a classical engineering design model, to reveal similarities, differences and lacks of current literature on organization design. Our analysis of the available literature on organisation theory, organisation design and change management showed that this design process is close to systematic design, but we also highlighted several breaks in the design process, such as the lack of functional approach.

Type
Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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