‘Organizational Linkages: Understanding tho Productivity Paradox (1994) iptv np edioperoneDO09045043hra 18 Hl copy 1684, 2060 The Ral Academy of Seles ih ese NCE OW PRODUCTIVITY AND MANAGEMENT + 167 CONCLUSION AND NEXT STEPS In this chapter, we have not addressed organizational linkages and the productivity paradox methodologically or quantitatively. Our aim has been to spark systems thinking about the origins of the paradox. Some elements of the paradox may be explainable, others may not. But we strongly believe the methodological issues are much more tractable if systems principles, theories, and concepts are understood and put into practice. In order to address the productivity paradox and organi- zational linkages methodologically or quantitatively, several prerequi- sites must be resolved. First, profound knowledge of productivity and quality improvement is necessary to model and predict improvement in an entity. We believe that profound knowledge did not exist for much of the work being evaluated in the literature. Thus, itis impossible to rely on existing research and evaluation work as a basis for verifying that there is, in fact, a paradox. It is just as reasonable to concinde there is no paradox, only the perception of one based on poor measure- ment and evaluation, ‘Second, the lag between when an improvement intervention is made in an entity and when actual (predicted) improvement is seen, felt, and measured in the entity or in other entities as a result of linkages must bbe understood and dealt with methodologically. It is widely accepted that many short-term (tactical) operational improvements have long- term (strategic) consequences. The evaluation research that has been done to date, however, does not appear to be sufficiently longitudinal. Thus, researchers and practitioners may not be waiting long enough to see their belief in cause-and-effect relationships come to fruition. The lag between the time a potential improvement is made and when true improvement can be seen, felt, and measured presents a challenge for researchers and practitioners. Macroeconomic methodology does not have enough granularity to address this issue at the level of an organi- zational system, ‘Third, a science and methodology of measurement for performance improvement for organizational systems must be developed. Perfor- mance must be operationally defined and a theoretical measurement- breakdown structure developed and utilized so that evaluation results are comparable. Defining predicted linkages from entity to entity on the basis of belief’ in or, better yet, knowledge of cause-and-effect rela- tionships is crucial to resolving the apparent paradox. The viewpoint we expressed in this chapter was threefold: (1) a fixed system of performance and productivity measures cannot meet the informational needs of management in a modern production orga- nization, (2) macro performance cannot be deduced from miero mea-