A Comparison of Two Potential Bases for Office Analysis: Function and Organizational Unit.

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to compare two office analysis procedures which differed in their strategies for bounding the context of the analysis process. One was based on the concept of the office as organizational unit, while the other embodied the concept of the office as function or workflow. In order to determine the impact of these different strategies, we conducted an experiment in which two groups of four subjects each were instructed in the use of one of the two office analysis procedures. Each subject prepared descriptions of two offices, and recommended potential improvements in their information-processing activities. For each analysis, the subject read a set of transcripts of interviews, which had been conducted during office analysis projects in actual organizations. The recommendations made by subjects were evaluated by management personnel at the field site organizations, who rated each recommendation's feasibility and value to the company. These scores, and other data collected during the experiment, were used to determine the impact of different analysis perspectives. Our results indicate that analysis perspective does affect the information-acquisition behavior of subjects during the analysis process; but does not affect the content of subjects' office descriptions or the total utility of their recommendations. In addition, we noted a strong inverse correlation between the extent to which subjects documented the current system and the total utility of the recommendations they produced. This suggests that the overdocumentation of current procedures may in fact interfere with, rather than facilitate, the identification of opportunities for improving the performance of office work.