The fact that concepts drive human actions and define the root-causes of things drove to the development of Unicist Conceptual Management that materializes the unicist approach to businesses. This development drove management towards a superior level of possibilities.
Business management in the XXI Century requires, besides the functional leadership skills, managing the concepts of a business and the concepts of the restricted and wide contexts to be able to expand the business and ensure its permanence.
Efficacy in Work Processes
The Unicist Approach defines that efficacy is the capacity of individuals to produce results in a responsible way. This implies that efficacy requires awareness of what one is doing.
The unicist ontogenetic map defines that the integration of the levels of efficiency, efficacy and automation produce the effectiveness in work processes.
To change effectiveness in processes it is necessary to manage the unique manageable sub-concept which is efficacy.
Human activity needs to be managed also if effectiveness needs to be improved within the boundaries of an existing system. That is why the change of effectiveness needs to be introduced managing the active function.
The driver to change efficiency is also a human activity. That is why efficacy has to be the driver.
Changing the efficiency level may require a significant modification of the automation level of an activity. This generates a mutation of the work process.
The Fundamentals of Efficacy
The fundamentals of efficacy can by defined as:
- The identification with the role: Efficacy requires that individuals are identified with the role they are fulfilling when they work. The role can be defined as the social identity of the individual.
- The identification with the task: Efficacy requires having the necessary competencies to develop a task that allows enjoying the work.
- Knowledge: Knowledge implies having the necessary “knowledge objects” to do the work stored in the long term memory.
The efficacy of individuals can be calculated using the mathematics of the Unicist Logic:
Unicist Efficacy = I(R) * I(T) * K
Individuals need to assume the responsibility of working in the field of their efficacy which defines the limits of the possibilities for assuming responsibilities to produce results.
Evolution implies developing the active function, while the energy conservation function tends to compensate the changes or not.
When the purpose is significantly changed, which is the case of automation, a mutation of work stations is being produced.
In the industrial fields, efficiency and efficacy can be managed using the unicist fishbone which has been developed, based on the Ishikawa model, integrating all the elements that are part of a unicist ontological structure.
Unicist Workstation Design
The specific WSD requires defining the efficacy that needs to be available, the efficiency of the system and the necessary level of automation according to the characteristics of the adaptive aspects of a job.
Processes can be fully automated when they require no adaptive behavior. Efficacy becomes critical when adaptive behavior is necessary.
Efficiency can grow up to a certain level when defining jobs. When a certain level is surpassed, it produces paradoxical results because it alienates workers. Job enrichment is a way to compensate an extreme level of efficiency at work.
Efficacy varies from person to person based in their natural characteristics and the schooling system they were subject to. Operational thinkers have their efficacy level at a high programmed level that uses disambiguated language and operational know how to work.
People who developed their conceptual thinking are able to deal with ambiguous environments with a low level of programming. Low level of programming implies that individuals need to behave in an adaptive way depending on the responses of the environment.
People who seek for security are expecting a highly programmed environment. Those who seek for freedom, having assumed the responsibility for producing results, expect a low programmed job.
Work Process Automation, semi-automation and adaptation
The unicist work process design has become the core of business process management in order to take advantage of the new technological solutions produced in the field of software and hardware and integrating with innovative peopleware solutions to increase the production of results.
Marshall McLuhan said that the “medium is the message”. This also applies to IT solutions. That is why to design work processes it is necessary to build the integration of peopleware, hardware and software. It requires using the unicist double dialectical logic that allows integrating this triadic structure.
Different levels of efficacy require having a different level of automation. It becomes extremely difficult to install different levels of automation in organizations.
That is why there are usually different job levels that assume different levels of risk.
Top management is based on adaptive systems while middle management is based on semi-automated systems.
Automation is, on the one hand, a job-killer but, on the other hand, it enhances the quality of human activity and allows developing business objects to ensure processes for business growth.
The integration of automation, semi-automation and adaptive systems is the core of the job oriented workstation design process after the general process has been solved.
This approach allows empowering the introduction of new technologies integrating them with the results that have to be produced and the peopleware that drives to them.
Design of Peopleware
Peopleware is what allows integrating hardware and software providing the true driver of the business model. It is necessary to understand the organizational equilibrium laws, the natural organization and the object driven business model in order to manage peopleware.
By definition, an approach that deals with the deepest human drivers to work is abstract. This abstraction needs to be apprehended in a reflection process to approach solutions for work processes.
Peopleware is business architecture applied to work process design. Therefore, it is for people who have a sound knowledge of the business that is being modeled.
Peopleware can be defined, in plain language, as the structure of attitudes that influence individuals’ activities.
Software can be observed because it establishes the interface of individuals with an activity. Hardware can be perceived because the evident appearances of hardware can be observed but its functionality can be perceived through the possibilities it offers to software. But peopleware is the deepest aspect of human activity and can only be intuited and validated using destructive and non-destructive pilot tests.
Peopleware defines attitudes. Therefore it deals with the deepest approach to individual behavior that deals with the human capacity of apprehending nature.
This implies entering the field of the ontology of human behavior, the natural organization, the laws of organizational equilibrium and the apprehension of objects that emulate the organization of nature.
Organizational equilibrium is the purpose of peopleware. It has to be considered that organizational equilibrium needs to vary depending on the cycle of a business.
When growth becomes necessary, centrifugal forces need to prevail. But centripetal forces need to prevail when profit improvement needs to be achieved.
The Algorithm of Peopleware
It is necessary to know the algorithm of peopleware in order to design it. Peopleware is the starting point of operational business process design and the end of this activity.
Artificial conflicts are produced when business processes are designed without considering peopleware.
Establishing a process that follows the rules of organizational equilibrium necessary to achieve the short and long term goals is the first step to define peopleware.
The internal equilibrium defines the active function to start with. Internal equilibrium is basic to achieve any level of equilibrium. This internal equilibrium is strongly influenced by the myths and fallacious myths of an organization.
The equilibrium of actions is the second stage of equilibrium building. This equilibrium depends on the centripetal or centrifugal forces that need to prevail in order to achieve the short term objectives to be able to fulfill the long term goals.
Finally, it is necessary to manage the environmental equilibrium in order to adapt to the market and to the environment. When this objective has been fulfilled, within an adequate internal equilibrium and having implemented the necessary equilibrating actions, the organizational equilibrium can be considered as functional.
The natural organization is a meta-model in itself that integrates organization that is needed for the business and the market, the client orientation and the personalization of the work processes.
When there is a hypothesis for the natural organization of a business, then the client centered management needs to be established to drive actions towards the end client and then the personal organization needs to be defined in order to ensure individual satisfaction within the culture of the business.
The natural organization model can be considered as valid when these aspects have been covered. It has to be considered that the personalized organization model is also a catalyst for the minimum strategy defined by the object driven business model.
The validity of the business model accelerates the use of business objects because they will save energy and make processes simpler and more effective.
The object driven business model starts with the definition of object driven management that differs enormously from subject driven management. If the definition of object driven management can be considered as feasible, the first aspect that needs to use objects is the centrifugal force towards the market that is defined by the object driven marketing.
The establishment of an object driven organization, inserting objects into the business processes, is the next step after the objective of developing the object driven marketing has been fulfilled.
The process ends when process driven management can be introduced. It has to be considered that the object driven organization is the entropy inhibitor for peopleware because it guarantees the prevalence of objectivity and the minimization of subjectivity.
Types of Peopleware
Considering the ontology of peopleware, there are four structural approaches that share the same name as the segments of the operational business model.
- Operation Driven Peopleware
- Process Driven Peopleware
- Technology Driven Peopleware
- Value Driven Peopleware
Operation Driven Peopleware
Operation driven peopleware is mainly focused on managing businesses centered on the generation of external value, thus it is basically centrifugal, managing the activity based on the software used.
People consider forward thinking as natural and expect to achieve their objectives following software based procedures.
Operation driven peopleware needs to be put into action by a value driven approach and be complemented with a technological support.
Process Driven Peopleware
Process driven peopleware is focused on the use of objects in order to minimize personal efforts and the use of efficiency tools to ensure results without forcing individuals to assume the responsibility for defining the processes. People tend towards a bureaucratic approach to work in order to achieve the objectives.
Process driven peopleware needs to be put into action by a technology driven approach and be complemented with a value driven support.
Technology Driven Peopleware
Technology driven peopleware uses performance management as its central activity. Technology provides the necessary procedures that this approach is focused on and a performance control in order to achieve the goals established according to the natural organization of a business. The natural organization is based on expansive goals.
Technology driven peopleware needs to be put into action by a process driven approach and be complemented with an operation driven support.
Value Driven Peopleware
The value driven approach is centrally focused on the explicit or implicit needs of the client. The client might be internal or external. This approach allows maximizing the value delivered to the market which allows focusing on a result driven management that is extremely expansive.
The value driven peopleware needs to be put into action by an operation driven approach and be complemented with a process driven support.
Conclusion
Peopleware is perhaps the most significant development to provide business operational solutions to companies. It allows transforming administrative systems into adaptive systems to upgrade work processes when managing businesses as unified fields.
Peopleware provides the utility to operational business models allowing software to be user friendly (aesthetic for the user) and the functionality of hardware to become solid.
When peopleware has been defined, an adequate aesthetic use of software with a solid hardware will make business processes operational.
Annex
Expert Systems to Sustain Methods
The unicist expert systems are alternative tools for any method that deals with business problem solving or solution building.
They were developed to manage the fundamentals of business processes by managing the root causes of processes to develop solutions in adaptive environments.
With multiple specialized modules to solve specific problems, these systems manage the unified field of the business processes to manage their functionality, dynamics and adaptability.
The Unicist Research Institute
