Organizations and Unusual Routines: A Systems Analysis of Dysfunctional Feedback Processes [Hardcover]

This book examines the way that people deal with dysfunctional feedback and unusual routines in organizational contexts.Everyone working in and with organizations will experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. This is an unusual routine. This book provides a new vocabulary for identifying, understanding, and dealing with this pervasive organizational phenomenon.Everyone working in and with organizations will experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. This is an unusual routine. This book provides a new vocabulary for identifying, understanding, and dealing with this pervasive organizational phenomenon.Everyone working in organizations will, from time to time, experience frustrations and problems when trying to accomplish tasks that are a required part of their role. In such cases it is normal for people to find ways of completing their work in such a way that they can get around, or just simply avoid, the procedure or system that has caused the problem. 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. Using a wide range of case studies and interdisciplinary research, this book gives researchers and practitioners invaluable information on the nature of this pervasive organizational phenomenon and shows how they can be dealt with in order to improve 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-theoreticalƒ+