Organizational Engineering: An Overview of Current Perspectives

Miguel Maria Castro Melo Godinho de

Key information

Authors:

Miguel Maria Castro Melo Godinho de (Miguel Maria Castro Melo Godinho de Matos)

Supervisors:

José Manuel Nunes Salvador Tribolet (José Manuel Nunes Salvador Tribolet)

Published in

07/20/2007

Abstract

Organizations exist in many types, shapes and fulfilling different purposes. They are the main service providers of our present society and address most of our needs from the most basic ones such as producing food, channeling water, providing healthcare services, to our most extravagant wants such as cosmetic products, luxurious cars, fashionable clothes, etc. Organizations have always resorted on more or less advanced technological items to accomplish their tasks but only very specific technological tools have forced them to revolutionize their way of behaving and performing. Information Technology objects, which are being responsible for numerous enterprise transformations, are now pervasive items of organization?s operations. They have changed the way of communicating, they have contributed to the acceleration of the interactions between people with and within organizations and they have opened doors to new ways of organizing enterprises. Unfortunately, they have also become one of the most common sources of organizational problems. This thesis address the interactions between the world of machines dominated by engineering sciences and the world of people which has been mainly the concern of social sciences. It studies the main perspectives of a discipline called Organizational Engineering and identifies the issues that they do not address and that are fundamental for minimizing the problems that arise when the worlds of people and machines collide. This study proposes a path for blending these two worlds based on existing methodologies and tools developed in the academic community.