Organizations and Unusual Routines
A Systems Analysis of Dysfunctional Feedback Processes

This book examines the way that people deal with dysfunctional feedback and unusual routines in organizational contexts.

Ronald E. Rice (Author), Stephen D. Cooper (Author)

9780521768641, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 October 2010

400 pages, 4 b/w illus. 15 tables
23.5 x 16 x 2.4 cm, 0.77 kg

“Meet the enemies of organizational effectiveness and acquire the weapons for their destruction. Rice and Cooper methodically analyze the dysfunctional routines that sap the usefulness from organizational procedures and information systems. The absence of contextual understanding, perverse feedback loops, conflicting goals, and destructive panopticon effects are all part and parcel of the deep systems analysis of the case studies presented within the overarching theoretical framework in this book. You will learn how to avoid them. Rice and Cooper will lead you to wisdom in structuring organizational processes.”
–Vladimir Zwass, Gregory Olsen Endowed Chair and University Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and MIS, Fairleigh Dickinson University

Everyone working in and with organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. This is an unusual routine - a recurrent interaction pattern in which someone encounters a problem when trying to accomplish normal activities by following standard organizational procedures and then becomes enmeshed in wasteful and even harmful subroutines while trying to resolve the initial problem. They are unusual because they are not intended or beneficial, and because they are generally pervasive but individually infrequent. They are routines because they become systematic as well as embedded in ordinary functions. Using a wide range of case studies and interdisciplinary research, this book provides researchers and practitioners with a new vocabulary for identifying, understanding, and dealing with this pervasive organizational phenomenon, in order to improve worker and customer satisfaction as well as organizational performance.

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Crazy systems, Kafka circuits and unusual routines
2. Causes, symptoms, and subroutines of unusual routines in six computer information/communication systems
3. Getting personal - unusual routines at the customer service interface
4. A multi-theoretical foundation for understanding unusual routines
5. A detailed case study of unusual routines
6. Summary and discussion of the case study results
7. Individual and organizational challenges to feedback
8. A multi-level and cross-disciplinary summary of concepts related to unusual routines
9. Recommendations for resolving and mitigating unusual routines and related phenomena
10. summary and a tentative integrated model of unusual routines
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Sociology [JHB]