Routledge The Intelligent Organisation: Driving Systemic Change with Information

The Intelligent Organisation proposes a radically different way of designing organisations to capitalise on the potential offered by contemporary information capability. Integrated, coherent information is taken as a competitive advantage enabling synthesis of behaviour and processes in an organisation designed backwards from its customers to achieve desired outcomes. An Intelligent Organisation uses information to drive learning and adaptation at the level of individuals, tasks, processes and the whole organisation, to deliver transformational changes in business performance. This fully updated second edition explores how to enable this change through systemic reinvention. Drawing on proven organisational applications exploiting data, information and management science, and grounded in tested theory, this book is not about incremental improvement but about fundamentally rethinking the whole. Building on the first edition, two chapters have been added to apply the ideas of the Intelligent Organisation to the individual as well as to the nation. Further discussion on the current issues around technology and ethics have been incorporated, as well as review questions and improved pedagogy. The text is supported by updated case studies throughout and a dedicated website, www.intelligentorganisation.com, with support materials for lecturers. Uniquely bridging the gap between information systems and organisational behaviour, The Intelligent Organisation will be of particular significance to master’s and undergraduate students of Information Systems, Knowledge Management and Organisational Theory. Review "If your aspiration as CEO is to capture and exploit as much value as you can from what your organisation knows but you are unsure how to achieve it, read Dr. Beckford’s book. Based on practical experience but well-grounded in theory, applying these ideas will help you to achieve a more purposeful and valuable enterprise and to discover how being an intelligent organisation demands more than knowing what you know; it is about how to generate purposeful value by taking good decisions and the execution of agile leadership." ― Brian Collins CB, FREng, Professor of Engineering Policy, Deputy Convenor of UKCRIC, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, UCL "This is a challenging book: it calls for leaders to face the need to make their organisations ‘intelligent’ – and in doing so engages with a crucial issue of our age: using data to create the information needed for decision-making while at the same time learning in such a way as to change the very organisation involved in creating the data. John Beckford illustrates his theses about how this can be done with examples from a wider range of examples and accepts the challenge of trying to apply the methodology to the individual (himself) and to the nation." ― David Nussbaum, Chief Executive Officer, The Elders Foundation, London "Professor Beckford’s revised and extended second edition of The Intelligent Organisation should be required reading for leaders at all levels in 21st-century businesses. He reiterates the central thesis of the need to think systemically about the way a business works in order to put information at the heart of providing value – both for customers and for the business. The text is accessible, with a balanced blend of theory and practical examples drawn from Beckford’s eclectic consultancy work, and occasionally lightened with apposite comment, opinion and a certain black humour. More importantly the practical models, insights and guidance provide a series of clear approaches to the very challenging issues facing all businesses in today’s rapidly changing environment." ― Jim Johnson, Director, Arup Digital Leader for UK, India, Middle East & Africa "John Beckford's achievement here is three-fold. First he makes systemic thinking accessible, while holding the reader to really consider systems in all their ne