Yanko Dimitrov

Assignment A
Part 1
Bottom-up Organisation Perspective in the context of Information Systems
Nowadays, digital technology has become tightly intertwined with people’s lives.
The easy access to a wide range of information and data has come to benefit both individuals
and organisations. This technical advance has brought the need for a system/s which can
collect, process and distribute large amounts of data in order for the people to be able to use
and implement the information that is at their disposal. That need contributed to establishing
the study of Information Systems, known as Informatics. An Information System can
generally be described as ‘an organized system for the collection, organization, storage and
communication of information.’ (Beynon-Davies, P., 2013). Furthermore, Informatics is
defined as ‘The study of information, information systems and ICT (Information and
Communication Technology) applied to various phenomena.’ (Beynon-Davies, P., 2013).

Since we have already looked into the organisation theory and reviewed the model of
the Top-down Perspective, I will attempt to look over the Bottom-up Perspective in the
following analysis. As Top-down Perspective is common for centralised organisations,
Bottom-up leans towards decentralised organisations. However, a usual case is for both
perspectives to be applied together.

According to Slack and Lewis (2011), Bottom-up organisation perspective is guided

by ‘shaping objectives and action, at least partly, by the knowledge it (the employee) gains
from its day-to-day activities.’

Decentralised organisations rely on the human potential at their disposal (employees

and their ideas), in order to form their action plans and market strategy, unlike the centralised
organisations which are solely led by the top management. The work environment in a
decentralised organisation is set in a way to encourage employees to come-up with ideas for
improvement. This allows for lower and middle management incentives involving major
decision-making process on that level. ‘Bottom-up strategy is initiated by lower managers’
actions representing their own interpretations of the company’s directions, which may
partially differ from top management’s prior intentions.’ (Kim, Y.H., Sting, F.J., Loch C.H.,
2014, p.9)

On the other hand, Barnes (2002) describes the Bottom-up approach as a process,
which emerges from the absence of a corporate strategy, which involves risk to the operations
of the organisation.

A good example of the Bottom-up Perspective applied in a traditional (centralised)

organisation can be observed with the Whirlpool case, starting in the 1990’s. According to
Robinson (2014) the huge competition in the home appliances market quickly reduced the
prices of the home appliances, thus diminishing margins for the manufacturers. The main
issue was the lack of diversification in the segment, making brand recognition and
importance negligible, resulting in $698 average sale per customer. At that time only R&D,
engineering or product development departments were responsible for innovation.
However, CEO David Whitwam embarked on a mission to transform the company, spreading
the effort for innovation on all levels. Thanks to it, ideas were collected from the workers,
which helped to diversify the products and increase the average sale per customer up to
$3000 in 2010’s and get the company a sixth place for most innovative company in 2011 by
Fast Company magazine.

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Yanko Dimitrov

References:
1. Beynon-Davies, P. (2013). Business Information Systems. 2nd ed. Palgrave
Macmillan Ltd., London, England
2. Slack, N., Lewis, M., (2011). Operations Strategy, 3rd ed. Pearson Education Ltd.,
Harlow, England
3. Kim, Y.H., Sting, F.J., Loch C.H. (2014). Top-Down, Bottom-Up, or Both?
Toward an Integrative Perspective on Operations Strategy Formation. Journal of
Operations Management, Vol.32 (7-8), pp.462-474
4. Barnes, D., (2002). The Complexities of the Manufacturing Strategy Formation
Process in Practice. International Journal of Operations & Production Management,
Vol.22, pp.1090-1111
5. Robinson, G.A. (2014). The idea-driven organization : unlocking the power in
bottom-up ideas. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, California