Organizational Constraints

4 Key excerpts on "Organizational Constraints"

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  Stress, Wellness, and Performance Optimization

  Promoting Sustainable Performance in the Workplace

  • Nilesh Thakre, B. Udaya Kumar Reddy, Nilesh Thakre, B. Udaya Kumar Reddy(Authors)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Apple Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Webster et al., 2010 ). As a result, researchers generally treat a given constraint as an undesirable condition that should be addressed via organizational intervention.

  Table 1.1 Examples of Specific Organizational Constraints

  Cumbersome policies and procedures Disruptive or uncooperative coworkers Disruptive or uncooperative supervisor Disruptive physical work environment Incompatible job demands Insufficient budget Insufficient equipment Insufficient instructions Insufficient supplies Insufficient time to complete work tasks Insufficient training

  Note: These example Organizational Constraints are drawn from several sources, including Eulberg (1984 ); Peters & O'Connor (1980 ); and Spector & Jex (1998) . Global measures are computed by summing items that assess conceptually distinct Organizational Constraints, such as those depicted in the current table.

  1.2.2 Overlap Between Organizational Constraints and Other Work Stressors

  Organizational Constraints share conceptual overlap with other work stressors, such as role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, and workplace aggression (see Table 1.2 ). Consider, for example, the potential overlap between workplace aggression and Organizational Constraints: A coworker or supervisor may intentionally impose constraints on a target worker by either creating disruptions or by failing to provide the assistance needed for the target worker to effectively perform his or her job. Such behavior could be interpreted as social undermining—a form of workplace aggression that a perpetrator uses as a means to disrupt the target worker’s job performance (see Duffy et al., 2002 ). Several studies have found that Organizational Constraints are positively related to other work stressors, thus providing support for this conceptual overlap hypothesis (see Bowling & Eschleman, 2010 ; Pindek & Spector, 2016a ; Spector & Jex, 1998 ). A meta-analysis by Pindek & Spector (2016a ), for instance, found that Organizational Constraints were positively correlated with role ambiguity (mean r =.39), role conflict (mean r =.51), role overload (mean r =.39), and interpersonal conflict (a form of workplace aggression; mean r

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  Manufacturing Handbook of Best Practices

  An Innovation, Productivity, and Quality Focus

  • Jack B. ReVelle(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  Although the concept of constraints limiting system performance is simple, it is far from simplistic. To a large degree, the constraint/nonconstraint distinction is almost totally ignored by most managerial techniques and practices. Ignoring this distinction inevitably leads to mistakes in the decision process. The implications of viewing organizations from the perspective of constraints and nonconstraints are significant. Most organizations simultaneously have limited resources and many things that need to be accomplished. If, due to misplaced focus, the constraint is not positively affected by an action, then it is highly unlikely that real progress will be made toward the goal. A constraint is defined as anything that limits a system’s higher performance relative to its purpose . When looking for its constraints, an organization must ask the question, “What is limiting our ability to increase our rate of goal generation?” FIGURE 18.1 The 40,000 ft perspective. (Courtesy of Chesapeake, Inc., Alexandria, VA.) 386 The Manufacturing Handbook of Best Practices When we’re viewing an organization from the functional perspective, our list of constraints is usually long. When we’re viewing the organization from the 40,000-foot perspective, we begin to consider it as an interdependent group of resources, linked by the processes they perform to turn inventory into throughput. Just as the strength of a chain is governed by its weakest link, so is the strength of an organi-zation of interdependent resources. 18.1.3 T WO I MPORTANT P REREQUISITES TOC prescribes articulated a five-step improvement process that focuses on manag-ing physical constraints.

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  Breakthrough Strategic It And Process Planning

  • Bennet P Lientz(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • World Scientific

    (Publisher)

  This is valuable because it is often hard to imagine in a business person’s mind how some seemingly arcane technical net-work or software problem affects a general business objective or issue. Politically, this shows the relevance of the plan and the need to address the issues. It helps to sell the plan. Define Objectives and Constraints Objectives are directional goals for both processes and IT. Ideally, an objective should be timeless. That is, while you can make progress toward it, the resources, money, state of the technology, and other factors prevent you from achieving the objective in less than five years. Here are some areas of objectives. • General IT objectives; • General business process objectives; Planning 47 • Application systems objectives; • Architecture and infrastructure objectives; • Project objectives; • Methods and tools objectives. What prevents the achievement of objectives? Constraints. You can think of constraints as immovable issues which you cannot overcome. Categories of constraints include: • Financial constraints; • Time constraints due to business pressures; • Resource constraints; • Technology constraints. But this is just a start. There are more from the business side. • Competitive constraints; • Nature of the business and industry constraints; • Geographical constraints; • Regulatory and legal constraints; • Cultural and social constraints; • Customer constraints; • Product and service constraints. Why are constraints important? After all, they sound so negative. Constraints in the plan are a means of showing both IT and the busi-ness the factors that have to be accepted and restrict what is possible in terms of actions, strategies, and objectives. Now you can proceed to relate these to each other and to the processes. The first table is that of objectives versus constraints. The entries here reveal how constraints restrict the objectives. Next, you can relate the objectives to the processes in a second table.

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  Managing Boundaries in Organizations

  Multiple Perspectives

  • N. Paulsen, T. Hernes, N. Paulsen, T. Hernes(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  35 2 Enabling and Constraining Properties of Organizational Boundaries Tor Hernes Introduction In mainstream organization theory the idea of the organization as essentially a boundary maintaining system is widely entertained. The idea stems largely from Parsonian influence in sociology and has influ- enced many works in various branches of organization studies. Implicit in the idea lies another idea; that of organizations as essentially systems that function in an exchange relationship with the environment, but where the environment is the acting factor and the organization the responding one (Burrell and Morgan 1979, 64). On the whole, the pic- ture is drawn of organizations as relatively passive entities that are shaped in terms of form and activities by expectations in the environ- ment. In this exchange relationship the boundary essentially becomes a device of internal ordering and external protection. Students of organi- zation have in this way provided a somewhat inward looking view of organizations, and the idea of the organizational boundary as an ordering entity of human actions and interactions is what directs our view inwards. The contrary view that organizations act outwards is a perspective rarely taken in social science (although taken frequently in economics). We know relatively little, for example, of the characteristics of organizations that make them more apt at influencing processes in the external environment. The focus of this chapter is on how the texture of organizational boundaries may contribute to the ability of an organization to influence processes in other organizations. In this chapter, boundaries are not simply constraining influences, or internal ordering devices. The possi- bility is left open for boundaries to constitute enabling mechanisms, that is, to act as a means of establishing the organization as an actor in

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