A management strategy for innovation and organizational design: the case of MRP2/JIT production management systems

Abstract

Industrial innovation often involves human rather than technical problems. Such problems can be particularly acute when embedded within organizational structures and when allied to mechanisms, such as control systems, which reinforce the status quo. Management accountancy systems often play this role, being crucially involved in the process of evaluating innovative investments against performance criteria. and indeed are an element within a range of options available in the organizational design process. Yet often in practice such systems and their designers are too far removed from where the innovation occurs: being seen incorrectly as an adjunct of senior management, and as an appraisal and control mechanism, rather than an enabler of change and improvement. This is a symptom of a wider problem of separation between the sites of innovation and production. These issues arc explored and some strategic design criteria developed in the context of MRP2/JIT production management systems.