Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multiorganizational Systems by Donald Chisholm

Author:Donald Chisholm [Chisholm, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: University of California Press
Published: 2011-09-02T18:37:04+00:00

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formal training are essentially interchangeable, individuals in the informal system are valued for knowledge and skills that are rarely interchangeable. An individual's value within the informal system is based on human assets deriving from circumstance, personal skill, and motivation.

In the Bay Area transit system, one frequently sees disjunctures between formal position status and informal importance.[13] This is especially evident when an individual leaves an organization, taking with him his portion of organizational memory and his set of intraand interorganizational informal contacts. The vacant position may be filled immediately, but the loss to the organization is not made up for some time, if at all. Take the case of the planner, who, by virtue of his informal contacts, skills, and willingness to engage in informal activities, is more important than his formal superior in determining some areas of policy. If he is replaced with another person whose formal training and background are comparable, the formal duties will still be performed, but the replacement's utility and importance will be far less until the time when he can establish his own informal status. The problem of nonsubstitutability derives from the time and investment it takes to learn the informal system; professional training does not appreciably decrease that time. The new individual may also lack the skills to work effectively within the informal system. Recall the planner at BART in this regard.[14]

Chapter 6 noted that the interorganizational informal system is benefited by a moderate degree of turnover because of the effects of cross-fertilization. However, an informal system is quite vulnerable to high rates of turnover, especially when they result in exits from the system instead of movements within the system. The more an organizational system (such as Bay Area transit) depends on informalities for coordination, the more it becomes vulnerable to these effects.

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