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Organization Gap Kemball Cook

A practical guide to bridging the gap between organization theory and daily management practice through Decision Centre Analysis, a systematic method for analysing and designing organization structures and management information systems.

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What it’s about

The Organization Gap addresses the frustration of practising managers who find that abstract organization theory offers little help with the concrete task of redesigning an actual organization or specifying the information each manager needs. Drawing on years of P-E Consulting Group experience, R. B. Kemball-Cook introduces Decision Centre Analysis (D.C.A.), a disciplined, detail-oriented procedure that treats an organization as a lattice of interlinked decision centres — combinations of roles, tasks, objectives, and information flows — all derived from and serving the corporate aims of the business. The book walks the reader from concepts through the practical steps of specifying, collecting, summarizing, and analysing data, to designing or revising structures and their supporting management information systems, extending the method to large multi-divisional groups via Group Structure Analysis. It is a hands-on manual for managers, students, and consultants who want a rational, repeatable way to diagnose organizational weaknesses and build purposeful structures that fit the real work people actually do.

The through-line

Who it’s for
A practising manager (or student/consultant) who wants to design or revise a workable organization structure that fits the real needs of a particular business.
The problem
An actual organization has become inadequate — responsibilities are unclear, deliveries are late, reports are irrelevant, and the manager must decide who does what and what information must circulate. The manager feels perplexed, frustrated, and alone, sensing a yawning gap between the theory he has read and the urgent day-to-day problems he must solve.
The plan
  1. Gain a thorough understanding of the total business situation, corporate aims, environment, and resources.
  2. Specify and code the data needed for each decision centre — roles, tasks, objectives, and information.
  3. Collect the data through recorded sources, questionnaires, interviews, and observation.
  4. Summarize and analyse the data using matrices, edge-punched cards, or computer summaries.
  5. Design or revise the structure by testing each role-task combination against sound criteria.
The payoff
A purposeful organization structure in which every task serves an objective that contributes to corporate aims. · Managers carrying fair workloads with clearly defined responsibilities matched by authority. · An information system that delivers only significant, relevant, timely data to each decision centre.

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Additional reading

  • Industrial Organisation: Theory and Practice · Joan Woodward

    Explains the foundational concept, used in D.C.A., that a firm's production technology is a primary determinant of its optimal organization structure.

  • The Management of Innovation · T. Burns and G. M. Stalker

    Introduces the idea that the rate of environmental and technological change dictates whether an organization should be flexible ('organic') or rigidly defined ('mechanistic'), a key factor in D.C.A.'s contextual analysis.

  • Administrative Behaviour · H. A. Simon

    Critiques the classical 'principles' of management and introduces concepts like 'programmed' versus 'unprogrammed' decisions, which are used directly in the D.C.A. method for analyzing managerial tasks.

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