Book Reviews

New Organizational Designs: Information Aspects. Bob Travica. Stamford, CT: Ablex Publishing; 1999: 174 pp. Price: $39.50 (ISBN: 1-5670-404-3.)

For almost every organization seeking increased productivity, open communications, and more access to information, the answer often lies in information technology (IT). Industry investments in technology are made with the expectation that the organization will change in some way. These changes and investments are made as organizations struggle to overcome the ties of old bureaucratic processes. However, IT alone does not free an organization from tradition. In information technology, as in life, expectations and reality are rarely the same. The resultant change is not always what planners thought it would be. In New Organizational Designs: Information Aspects, Bob Travica of Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, examines organizational de- sign as affected by the use of IT. He provides an introduction to the study of organizational design, describes the various trends away from traditional to several nontraditional organizational designs and then applies this information to an investigation of organizational design and the use of IT in the accounting industry.

The book is organized into 12 chapters, which can be grouped into the broad topics of new organizational designs, the nontraditional organization (focusing on structural, cultural, political, in- formation, and IT aspects), an examination of the accounting industry and the role and effect of information technology, especially in non-traditional environments. It closes with questions for further inquiry.

According to Travica, the new organizational designs are organic, adhocracy, networked, and virtual. Because he later sets forth a terminology for describing nontraditional designs based upon these new organizational types, I describe them here in some detail.

The organic organization changes and redefines itself for individual tasks, uses advice, rather than instruction and takes responsibility for problem solving.

In an adhocracy, the salient characteristics are low formalization of behavior, lack of standardization or clear role definition. This is because adhocracies must form and reform in response to changing needs. Adhocracies tend to be particularly high users of IT, which allow groups within the organization to form and disband as needed for problem solving.

Networked organizations, according to Travica, are becoming more popular in today's business environment. Networked organizations have overlapping managerial responsibilities, vague roles, organizational flux, and the potential for conflict. IT connects nodes within and between organizations.

Finally, Travica describes the virtual organization as one which produces a product customized to the individual consumer-"a virtual product." Its boundaries between customer, supplier and employee are blurred, as are the traditional roles of departments and operating divisions. Virtual organizations are high IT users because they need the ability to gather vast amounts of data to customize their offer to individual consumers.

After examining the new organizational designs described above in depth, Travica presents a five "F' method of characterizing the nontraditional organization: flexible, fluid, fickle, fit, and free.

The organic organization is characterized by its flexibility to vary itself in response to changing tasks and needs. A bit further on this continuum, adhocracies are described as fickle because of their ability to reorganize in rapid response to changing environment and needs. The fluid transfer of information marks the networked organization. Within the networked organization, information mixes into and becomes part of both process and social aspects. Travica aptly refers to the movement of information flows within this type of organization as the "blood circulation system" within the network.

Contrasted to the internal fluidity of the networked organization, the virtual organization is described in an external manner as "fit." This description stems from an examination of the individualized product of the virtual organization. The product is fit, or competitive, because, owing to customization, there is no substitute.

We thus arrive at the primary descriptor of new organizational design, the fifth "F'-free. No matter what structure they take, new organizations struggle to be free of the strictures imposed by the traditional organization. Yet there is not one way that works for every firm. How firms do it, how they determine what aspects of the traditional design they can keep, which must be changed and how IT affects each variable is still open for discussion. The five "F' framework, however, provides a starting point for further examination of individual companies and industries, as many of them move away from traditional design. According to Travica, although there is evidence that the type and amount of IT usage is a strong indicator of nontraditional design, there are no hard and fast rules to indicate that movement in any particular direction, or the application of any particular type of IT, will bring the desired results.

Following the detailed introduction to organizational design, Travica examines the public accounting industry. Public accounting presents an interesting hybrid of traditional and nontraditional organization, both in its basic organizational structure and its use of IT. Travica takes great pains to describe the workings of the industry. From the traditional notion of the accountant working alone with an adding machine or calculator, to the teams of consultants working at distributed client sites, the reader develops an understanding of the industry under study. Travica shows how large accounting firms use IT to create nontraditional, information organizations. The accounting industry evolved from providing accounting and tax services to broad-based business consulting. It was able to do this because its early adoption of IT provided a great deal of information about the client, which, when properly analyzed, aided in developing general business strategies.

The use of teams within accounting consulting firms also contributed to their development as nontraditional organizations and heavy users of IT because of the need to communicate with spatially dispersed teams. For those unfamiliar with consulting, the usual mode of operation is for the team to be at the client site for most of the engagement and only in the accounting firm's office between jobs. It is necessary for teams to communicate both with other teams at other client sites and the home office. Accounting/consulting firms are heavy users of such communication technologies as knowledge management systems, e-mail, and decision support systems.

The last chapter examines possibilities for further research, especially the need to study the relationship between hierarchy and IT and spatial dispersion and trust. The common consensus among info-enthusiasts (those who believe that IT alone will solve most of life's problems) is that IT flattens organizations and empowers employees. However, it has often been shown that IT can increase hierarchy within an organization by providing management with more tools and data with which to make decisions, removing independent action from subordinates.

In Travica's opinion, spatial dispersion and trust were worthy of further examination because management may be mistaken in its belief that IT alone is the answer to dispersed staff information and communication problems. Failure to consider the societal environment in which the technology is to be used may result in the "failure" of IT from management's viewpoint. If the technology itself hasn't failed (and management usually doubts that it has), then employees are often blamed if the expected results of IT implementation don't occur. Employees "don't get it" or worse yet, may develop end runs around technology they refuse to use.

The book is an exhaustive presentation of studies in organizational design, organizational behavior, and the role of information technology within these structures. For those new to the discipline and unfamiliar with academic studies of this type, it is a good resource. It provides an historical perspective on the topic that would be difficult to find duplicated anywhere else. For those more familiar with organizational design, the choice of the public ac- counting industry as a study against which to apply Travica's theories is an excellent choice because of the aforementioned characteristics.

I have two criticisms of this otherwise excellent book. The number of studies presented sometimes hindered the flow of the reading material. If the intended audience is strictly academic, this may be understandable, though nonetheless regrettable. If the targeted audience is broader, I think references to previous studies might have been better placed at the end of chapters so that the text flowed better and giving the reader a moment to breathe between references. 'Me concepts in New Organizational Design: Information Aspects are very relevant to today's business manager who struggles with IT and an evolving organizational structure. The insights into their dilemma which are provided in Travica's book-including the realization that even following a number of studies on the topic, there are no hard and fast rules for redefining an organization through IT-may be lost (because of the book's format) on those who would be most interested in implementing what is known about IT and organizational design.

There is also an editing oversight in which social economist Mark Granovetter's name is misspelled as "Grenovetter." Granovetter's work describing the embeddedness of economic actions in the larger social environment, provides a framework upon which to place an understanding of the embeddedness of IT in various organizational environments and it was disappointing to see his name misspelled several times.

But these are minor shortcomings in a book that manages to provide an excellent overview of a large body of work and a stepping stone toward new approaches in analyzing organizational design and information technology.

Patricia F. Katopol

The Aspen Institute

Communications and Society Program

E-mail: katopot@aspeninstitute.org

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 51(11):1061-1065, 2000

C 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.