Jörgen sandberg. Stockholm School of Economics. A classic managerial problem, страница 9

The focus of the conception 1 optimizers on the relation between monitoring parameters and a single engine quality implies that all their key attributes are centered around that relation, forming a distinctive structure of competence in engine optimization. The ability to analyze and interpret how one or several monitoring parameters have influenced engine quality is one of the most fundamental attributes of this conception. It is through this attribute that these workers evaluate each optimization. They build up their understanding of analyzing and interpreting the particular optimization through the attribute of being accurate and methodical. When addressing a specific quality, these individuals change one monitoring parameter at a time, analyze the influence it had on the current quality, note it, choose a new parameter and change

it, investigate the influence on the quality, and so on. Analyzing and interpreting also implies the attribute of understanding how the qualities of an engine react to changes in the parameter. This is the kind of knowledge that the optimizers build up around the qualities of an engine so that they can judge which parameter should be adjusted and by how much in order to reach the desired requirement. This attribute is closely connected to the attribute of understanding which monitoring parameters have an influence on a specific quality of an engine and how they do so. Together, these two latter attributes form two poles of the focused relation between the parameter and engine quality. This basis allows for the optimizers to analyze and interpret the results from the tests and then adjust the relevant parameter so that the optimum value of the quality in question will be reached in each separate optimization step.

Conception 2: Optimizing Interacting Qualities

In contrast to the workers described above, the individuals who hold conception 2 do not delimit and organize engine optimization into separate steps but see it as several interacting steps in which every engine quality is optimized in relation to every other. Delimiting and organizing the optimization work as interacting steps shifts the focus from the relations between monitoring parameters and single engine qualities to the relations among the qualities of the engine. These optimizers take all optimizing steps into consideration at each single step, thinking "If I optimize a specific quality, what will happen to the remaining engine qualities that will subsequently be optimized?" Hence, for these optimizers, the primary aim in each step is to optimize a single quality so that it will interact with the remaining qualities to ultimately produce an approved engine:

I: But if we say it like this, what is a competent engine optimizer for you?

010: It's someone who has an idea about . . someone who can see into this crystal ball, in this engine's future, yeah, into the future of my work. The further you are able to understand the future, the better I think it is. We have to make modifications to certain things to be able to achieve other things later on. So to be able to understand how . . . a certain optimization

influences other qualities. It's not so simple that if I optimize X, then all other qualities are independent, because they aren't. The link between these qualities, I think, is important and you learn them through experience. That's what I'm talking about, being able to understand things, understand the links, because if you understand the links you can more easily look into the future and judge what will happen.    

This change in focus implies that the attributes within this conception emerge from the relations between the qualities of the engine, again forming a distinctive structure of competence in engine optimization. As the qualities of the engine interact with each other, the optimizers must understand in which order and how accurately the qualities should be optimized in each situation. Therefore the attribute of optimizing the qualities of the engine in the right order and being accurate is of fundamental importance for these optimizers. It is of interest to note that accuracy means different