MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM – MIS 523

 How do flat organizations differ from traditional bureaucratic hierarchies?

First, let’s discuss what is flat organization and then what is traditional bureaucratic hierarchy:
Flat Organizational Structure: A flat structure is an organisational structure with only a few
layers of management. In a flat structure, managers have a wide span of control with more
subordinates, and there is usually a short chain of command.
Traditional Bureaucratic Organizational Structure: A bureaucratic organization is a form of
management that has a pyramidal command structure. Organizational charts generally exist for
every department, and decisions are made through an organized process. A strict command
and control structure is present at all times.
The benefits of a hierarchical organization are better control of work flow and expert
supervision. Where errors can be highly costly, hierarchical organizations tend to be more
common. The military is a very tall organization for example; every layer of soldiers supervises a
relatively small workforce and is therefore able to do so with extreme attention to detail. A flat
organization helps build team spirit and is nimbler. Information travels faster from the bottom
up and orders from upper management can be implemented far more quickly down on the
"floor," whether that refers to the factory, dealership or retail outlet.
Hierarchical organizations are notorious for demotivating workers. When there are eight levels
one must get promoted through between shop supervisor and factory manager, it is easy to
give up. In addition, upper management may not be able to keep up with critical developments,
which take a long time to filter up to the CEO or VP level. Flat structures, on the other hand,
may force managers to be a "jack of all trades and master of none." If a supervisor has to
oversee the production of sneakers, kids' shoes, sandals as well as dress shoes in a factory, he
may never develop the expertise that is required for the job.

 How has information technology made it possible to eliminate middle

manager positions?
As the main responsibility of the middle management is to take care of routine decisions and
operations which are normally performed in a standardized form, thus the different types of
software and automation of processes such as SAP are used to replace the middle managers.
This software can also perform standardized decision making and thus replace the middle
managers.
 What management, organization, and technology issues would you
consider if you wanted to move from a traditional bureaucracy to a flatter
organization?
If I would like to move from a bureaucratic to flatter organization, first of the management
must be having multiple disciplinary expertise as in case of flat organization, the management
has to look after the number of responsibilities They have to be more accepting towards free
communication, lesser barrier between the employee and them. The company must use the
latest software so that the various layers of the management can be replaced by this software
and which will make the organization flatter. This will also boost the decision making and
communication between the different layers of the management. The organization has to be
more dynamic in nature, that it must accept the new forms of governance and management. It
should be having a positive attitude towards free communication, accepting the opinions of the
employees.

 Can AI replace managers? Explain your answer.

Given that artificial intelligence is increasingly overtaking people on a range of expert tasks, will
it someday make human managers obsolete? Luckily, there’s one cognitive ability where people
still have a big edge: reframing. Reframing is not about solving a problem (with either intuition
or conscious reasoning) but about defining what exactly is the problem to be solved. It isn’t
easy, and it’s usually time-consuming, but it is key to both discovering breakthrough
innovations and adapting to a rapidly changing environment. Four tactics can help you cultivate
this ability: dedicating time to not thinking about the problem, making hidden assumptions
explicit, playful exploration, and leveraging surprising analogies.

Of all the tools managers use to lead their businesses, thinking is the most crucial. It involves
two distinct ways of processing information: intuitive and conscious, which the Nobel laureate
Daniel Kahneman labeled thinking fast and slow. Today computers increasingly outperform
people in both. With their raw calculative power, computers easily beat humans in conscious-
reasoning tasks, as long as the rules and parameters of the situation are known. Managers
routinely turn to mathematical optimization and simulation to build investment portfolios,
make pricing decisions, and understand supply-chain risks. And while humans used to be
superior at pattern recognition, which is largely intuitive, computers now can be trained to
develop their own intuitions from large masses of data using machine learning. In recent
studies they proved better than humans at expert tasks such as detecting cancer in computer
tomography scans and choosing investment targets.

Given the way things are going, can managers continue to add value to organizations? Luckily,
there’s one cognitive ability where people still have the edge over computers: thinking really
slow.
Really slow thinking is used in reframing — the process by which we reexamine the parameters,
objectives, and assumptions we approach decisions with. Reframing is not about solving the
problem (with either intuition or conscious reasoning) but about defining what exactly is the
problem to be solved.

Reframing isn’t easy. The way in which managers frame decisions can be deeply entrenched in
industry traditions, organizational history, and executives’ own education and experience.
Reframing can be extremely time-consuming, which is why we see it as thinking really slow.

Reframing is crucial because groundbreaking business model innovations often result when
companies break away from established ideas about how value is created and captured. Look at
Amazon. In 1999 a CNBC reporter challenged Jeff Bezos because the company, with its large,
expensive distributions centers and many employees, was no longer the pure internet play
investors were high on. “Internet, shminternet,” Bezos replied. He rejected the view that a low-
cost online business model was essential to competing. Instead of accepting the “pure internet”
versus “traditional retail” dichotomy, he reframed the conversation in terms of an obsession
with delivering a great customer experience and explained how all Amazon’s strategic choices
focused on that goal.

When market dynamics change, reframing can be especially critical. Consider Nokia. In the
feature phone business, it had learned to expect that with successful new offerings, sales took
off quickly and profits were good. As a result, the company decided against some costly
investments and walked back courses of action that didn’t produce immediate results. In the
early 2000s it pulled the plug on many pioneering innovations that were seen as too risky or
didn’t initially experience widespread adoption, including touchscreen phones, tablet devices,
and mobile gaming. This approach was particularly damaging when competition moved to the
ecosystem level. While Nokia continued to flood the market with new hardware, “software
development kits and third-party ecosystem and apps were a second priority,” a former Nokia
executive lamented. Moreover, as a former Nokia manager put it in an interview, “Large-scale
consumer services are not made in a year or two. We have often lacked patience for that.” The
smartphone era required a new long-game mindset that the quickly moving hardware king
lacked.

Humans’ ability to think really slow also is key to state-of-the-art AI, which doesn’t function
unless people first reframe a business problem as an AI problem. As Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans,
and Avi Goldfarb have argued, AI is simply a variety of prediction algorithms. Reframing
problems that demand time-consuming human judgment and careful analysis (such as
identifying insurance fraud and assessing creditworthiness) as prediction problems is precisely
how the likes of Lemonade and Kabbage have shaken up mature businesses such as consumer
insurance and small-business lending.

In a world where managers can use computers to enhance their ability to think fast and slow,
the ability to reframe will increasingly separate the wheat from the chaff. Here are four
strategies to help you cultivate it:
Dedicate time to not thinking about the problem. Research suggests that a period of
incubation helps produce more creative solutions. When you set aside a problem for a period,
you distance yourself from its current framing, making room for restructuring and spontaneous
insights. So after you initiate the process of solving a problem, go and do something completely
different for a while, letting it cook slowly on your back burner.

Make hidden assumptions explicit. We’re mostly unaware of the limiting, self-imposed
assumptions with which we approach situations. Group processes that are designed to induce
cognitive conflict can help surface them. You can make one group argue against another
group’s solution (devil’s advocacy) or make two groups develop opposing solutions to a
problem (dialectical inquiry). Building a mathematical model of the problem can also be helpful,
because it forces you to spell out assumptions about what is causing the problem and how
proposed remedies are supposed to work. Modeling often reveals unanticipated dynamics,
triggering shifts in mindsets about how to best manage certain things. When Fluor Corporation
introduced simulation modeling to help predict changes in the costs and schedules of complex
projects, managers started to see that those changes could be managed proactively rather than
dealt with the retrospectively, as was industry practice at the time.

Engage in playful exploration. Injecting an element of the imaginative into decision making can
help managers mentally distance themselves from tacit assumptions and “industry recipes” —
what everyone who knows the industry understands — and unleash creativity. This liberation
from ordinary constraints can be accomplished by, for example, asking teams to build Lego
models of their business ideas in order to communicate them to others.

Leverage (surprising) analogies. Analogies are powerful tools for reframing familiar problems.
Ideas and practices from one industry can be used to reshape another. Berry Gordy Jr., for
instance, made Motown Records into a hit factory by modeling it after the Ford Motor
Company’s assembly line, where he had previously worked. In some cases, exposing yourself to
something completely different — like combat sports, opera, or superhero comics — can be a
great way to gain fresh insights that other insiders lack. Apple’s minimalist design, for instance,
was inspired by the calligraphy classes, Zen Buddhism lessons, and Bauhaus architecture Steve
Jobs was exposed to. Even when the analogy is imperfect, it may provide the rough outlines of
a novel framing of a vexing problem.

While managers can add these practices to their tool kits to enhance their own reframing
capabilities, they also have a responsibility to ensure that the broader organization supports
reframing. The first step is to build channels and foster a culture where the in-house devil’s
advocates and visionaries can voice their concerns and ideas and employees have time for
playful exploration and incubation. Though such efforts may not result in tangible benefits
immediately, they may be essential for the renewal and long-term prosperity of the
organization and its stakeholders.