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Contemporary Organization Design Processes Report

The document discusses contemporary organization design processes, emphasizing the need for managers to create structures that meet organizational needs through approaches like reengineering and team-based organizations. It highlights the importance of understanding cultural differences in multinational organizations and outlines four dominant themes in current design strategies: technological change, the significance of people, customer engagement, and global considerations. Ultimately, it stresses that there is no 'one best way' to design an organization, as multiple factors must be taken into account.

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CHRISTINE JOY BACIA
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7 views2 pages

Contemporary Organization Design Processes Report

The document discusses contemporary organization design processes, emphasizing the need for managers to create structures that meet organizational needs through approaches like reengineering and team-based organizations. It highlights the importance of understanding cultural differences in multinational organizations and outlines four dominant themes in current design strategies: technological change, the significance of people, customer engagement, and global considerations. Ultimately, it stresses that there is no 'one best way' to design an organization, as multiple factors must be taken into account.

Uploaded by

CHRISTINE JOY BACIA
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Contemporary Organization Design Processes

The task of the manager or organization designer is to examine the entity and its situation and
to design a form of organization that meets its needs. A partial list of contemporary alternatives
includes such approaches as downsizing, rightsizing, reengineering the organization, and team-
based organizations. These approaches often make use of participation, reduction in force,
process innovation, and network alliances

Reengineering the organization

Reengineering is the radical redesign of organizational processes to achieve major gains in


cost, time, and provision of services. It forces the organization to start from scratch to redesign
itself around its most important or core processes rather than beginning with its current form
and making incremental changes.

Rethinking the organization

Rethinking the organization is also a process for restructuring that throws out traditional
assumptions that organizations should be structured with boxes and horizontal and vertical
lines. Robert Tomasko makes some suggestions for new organizational forms for the future. He
suggests that the traditional pyramid shape of organizations may be inappropriate for current
business practices.

Global Organization Structure and Design Issues

Managers working in an international environment must consider not only similarities and
differences among firms in different cultures but also the structural features of multinational
organizations.

Between-Culture Issues – are variations in the structure and design of companies operating in
different cultures. Many cultures still take a traditional view of organizational structure, not
unlike the approaches used by this consultant and coauthor of “In Search of Excellence, spent
some time lecturing to managers in China. They were not interested in his ideas about
decentralization and worker participation; however, instead, the most frequently asked question
concerned how a manager determined the optimal span control. However, managers in global
companies may have to understand the differential interaction patterns among employees in
different countries and not draw the wrong conclusions from culturally based interactions.

Multinational Organizations – More and more firms have entered the international arena and
have found it necessary to adapt their designs to better cope with different cultures. For an
organization that has become more deeply involved in international activities, a logical form of
organization design is the international matrix. This type of matrix array products managers
across the product departments.

Dominant Themes of Contemporary Designs

The four dominant themes of current design strategies are:

1.) The effects of technological and environmental change,


2.) The importance of people,
3.) The necessity of staying in touch with the customer,
4.) The global organization

The emphasis on productivity through people that was energized by Thomas Peters and
Robert Waterman Jr. in the 1980s continues in almost every aspect of contemporary
organization design. In addition, Peters and Nancy Austin further emphasized the importance of
staying in touch with customers at the initial stage in organization design. Unfortunately, there is
no “one best way”. Managers must consider the impact of multiple factors – socio-technical
systems, strategy, the structural imperatives, changing important technology, people, global
consideration, and concern for end users – on their particular organization, and design the
organization structure accordingly.

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