Netmap: An Innovative Diagnostic Tool

The ways an organisation goes about getting things done are commonly quite different from the command, control and communications relationships defined by formal organisation charts, written policies, procedure manuals, and job descriptions. Managerial reliance upon the definitive/coercive model inherent in these typical documents leads to erroneous identification of issues and inappropriate remedies. Until recently there has been no paradigm for description of how organisations actually work, but a computer‐based methodology of elegant simplicity, based upon the concept of the organisation as a reciprocal, interdependent, negotiated network of relationships, is now available. It offers a CAT‐scan‐like, many‐angled look at the physiology of an organisation under any number of operating or prospective operating circumstances to show cultural alignments, communications flows, utilisation of knowledge workers, disparities in procedures and department charters between actual and formally defined, the impact of reward systems and the characteristics in integrative links. Consequences of contemplated organisational changes, interventions or strategies can be dynamically simulated. Certain data conventions and illustrative applications of the new procedures are presented.