Toward the maieutic management of business systems

In response to the shortening product life cycle, we have increased parallelism in all aspects of our work in the microelectronics industry. In order to produce an integrated solution, management has increased the emphasis on teams. As an example, building-in reliability (BIR) during new product development and manufacturing in the semiconductor industry requires teams of technologists from design, development, packaging, reliability and manufacturing to work effectively across both technical and organizational boundaries within the same corporate structure. Participation in these teams in conventional business systems can result in frustration because the team members often lack sufficient authority to affect change in organizations which must contribute to the final solution. In this paper, BIR provides a rich context for discussion of managing effective interaction in a hierarchical organization. Our model, called "maieutic* management", is a psychology of organizations that facilitates the management of change. Proceeding from the definition of hierarchical and interactive, a number of examples and metaphors are used to clarify the distinction between the two concepts. The model recognizes the important role for hierarchical authority in supporting team interactions and leads to an open system which integrates hierarchy and interaction. Evolution toward open systems with maieutic management promises an organization that can successfully respond to changes in the technical and/or economic environments in a timely fashion.<>