School of Computing
School of Computing
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To be effective, managers must be able to embrace and control change. People are the key to changing Business Processes. The research aims to enable managers to capture, analyse and present information on organisational structure and professional relations to support the management of change.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Organisation and Analysis Group in the School of Computing at the University of Plymouth, together with the University's technology transfer subsidiary PEP and partner company OPD, has been working on advanced organisational analysis techniques and their practical application by means of user friendly software tools. The work originated as a UK Department of Trade and Industry funded project, 'DESTINY', under the Manufacturing, Organisation, People and Systems (MOPS) programme. A related DTI project 'AAMECO' took the work into Europe and investigated company culture.
The Organisation and Analysis Group and PEP, together with OPD have continued to develop the software, which now exists as two products SPOTLIGHT and PRI. SPOTLIGHT is a generalisation and extension of the tools for eliciting and describing formal and informal organisational structures which originate din DESTINY. The software incorporates novel analytical techniques. PEP and OPD have applied the software in a number of companies in UK, Finland and Switzerland, bringing back ideas for improvement.
As an organisational audit tool, SPOTLIGHT provides a quick and cost effective method of reviewing:
As a survey tool, SPOTLIGHT provides rapid collection and analysis of data related to:
Current research is focused on extending SPOTLIGHT software by the incorporation of intelligent databases to allow information collected to be visualised and interrogated. The research suggests that hypermedia and navigation tools will allow analyses more complex than are now possible.
PRI has proved to be a powerful software tool in analysing relationships. It embodies complex psychometrics and powerful graphical representations of the models of relationships created.
The work in organisational analysis has developed from quantitative to qualitative analysis of management data with the support of an EPSRC CASE studentship and this will lead to an EPSRC grant proposal later in 1996.
Dr Peter Jagodzinski
Mr Brian Mushens
Mark Dixon
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Wittamore K, Lovitsky V A, Dixon M, 1996, Organisational Analysis Tools, Proceedings of the fifth International Conference on Management of Technology, Miami, Florida February, pp 577-578, ISBN 1-85617-316-X
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Dixon M, Wittamore K, Lovitsky V A, Mulhall D, Clark D, Lewis D M, Shepherd P M, 1995, People in Changing Business Processes, Proceedings of the European Conference on Management of Technology, Aston University, Birmingham, July, pp 812 - 814, ISBN 1-85449-275-6
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Dixon M, Wittamore K, Mulhall D, Clarke D V, Lewis D M, Shepard P M, Lovitsky V A, 1994, Destiny and organisational issues, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Human Aspects of Advanced Manufacturing and Hybrid Automation, Manchester, UK, July, pp 230 - 233, ISBN 90-5199-176-2
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Wittamore K, Mulhall D, Clarke D V, Lewis D M, Shepherd P M, Lovitsky V A, 1994, Diagnosing Organisational Structures by Destiny, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Management of Technology, Florida, USA, pp. 793 - 802, ISBN 0-89806-127-X
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Dixon M, Wittamore K, Lovitsky V A, Mulhall D, Clark D, Lewis D M, Shepherd P M, 1995, People in Business Processes, Proceedings of 5th International Forum on Technology Management ESPOO, Finland 5-8 June
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Wittamore K, Mulhall D, Clarke D, Lewis D M, Shepherd P M, Lovitsky V A, 1994, Destiny - Understanding How People Really Work in Manufacturing Organisations, IEE Colloquium/Workshop on "Management of Change"
Jagodzinski A P, Pearce P D, Wittamore K, AAMECO, To investigate what constitutes company culture and to determine the feasibility of developing and implementing a practical cultural change method, 1993 - 1994, £40,000, DTI.
Pearce P D, Jagodzinski A P, Wittamore K, DESTINY, To develop prototype methods and software tools for organisation structure analysis and the professional relations index including testing, validation and dissemination, £180,000, DTI.
In addition, related consultancy work undertaken by PEP/OPD.
For any additional information please contact:
Email: Miss Donna Bartlett donna@soc.plym.ac.uk (Secretary)
The pages are maintained by Andi Smart.
Email: andis@soc.plym.ac.uk