Introduction
McShane and Von Glinow state that “the best organizational structure depends on the organization’s external environment, size, technology, and strategy” (409). To identify the best organizational structure for Protegé Engineering, I will first determine what ‘Organizational Structure’ means. In a second step I will analyze its elements and carve out the important components for the considered organization. Finally I will provide a conclusion and recommendation.
Organizational Structures
In general, organizational structure is related to the way that an organization organizes employees and jobs, so that its work can be performed and its goals can be met. McShane and Von Glinow define ‘Organizational Structure’ in more detail; they state that organizational structure “refers to the division of labor as well as the patterns of coordination, communication, workflow, and formal power that direct organizational activities” (386). To understand what this means we will have a look at each component. The division of labor is related to the “subdivision of work into separate jobs assigned to different people” (McShane and Von Glinow 386). The patterns of coordination refer to the coordinating of work activities between the employees where they divide work among themselves. This process requires coordinating mechanism to ensure the workflow, which means that everyone works in concert (McShane and Von Glinow 386). The primary means of coordination are informal communication which involves “sharing information on mutual tasks and forming common mental models to synchronize work activities”, Formal hierarchy which refers to the “assigning legitimate power to individuals, who then use this power to direct work pro...
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...ble when the merging organizations operate in different industries or countries because cultures differ between industries and countries (McShane and Von Glinow 428).
Conclusion and recommendation
The integration process of merging companies is a combination of the existing cultures into a new culture that maintains the best features of the previous cultures, and it is most likely to succeed when existing cultures already need improvement so that employees are motivated to accept change. This strategy is particularly challenging when the members of the organization are satisfied with their previous culture because they will be resistant to change. Another very important factor for the success of mergers is the level of commitments made by the employees. Therefore, employees should be brought into the process as early as possible (Badrtalei and Bates 314).
The Organisation structure of a company addresses the fact that every organisation has specific units that are responsible for different roles and actions in the organisation and that no department within the organisation stands alone, they are intertwined. The organisational chart or structure should be designed to divide up the work load, responsibilities and roles to be done
Merged businesses can decrease many of their expenses. Cropped marketing budget, lower material cost, redundant employee layoffs, merging the patient’s database lessens the overall business costs. Often, merged business adopts new and innovative technology which may seem costly, but technology actually
fail (Cheng, 2012). Mergers and acquisitions are much common in these days and only a few of them are end up in successes. Even though mergers and acquisitions are not result much successes rate, many organizations are still preferring it because, it is used as a cooperative strategy but nowadays it is used for cooperative development. The cultural differences and merger integration can be considered as an important factor for the failure rate but this study mainly focused
The structure of an organization is the sum of total ways in which it divides its labour into distinct tasks and then achieves coordination among them. (Mintzberg, 1979). An organization can be structured in many ways depending on their objectives. An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. (www.wikipedia.org)
Organizational structure is the linking of departments and jobs within an organization. The idea of self managing teams was a significant insight gained into organizational structure. Bolman and Deal state that self-directed teams typically produce better results and
“Structure is the pattern of relationships among positions in the organisations and among members of the organisation. Structure makes possible the application of the process of management and creates a framework of order and command through which the activities of the organisation can be planned, organised, directed and controlled.” (Mullins)
Organizations are initially structured around tasks, and as the organization continues to grow, the structure within the organization takes on many characteristics. Not all structures are advantageous, especially if they are lacking in some areas. There is a relationship between structure and size of the organization that affect the centralization of the organization. At the highest levels, the personality of the chief executive may amend the organizations' structure. The structure within an organization helps define the roles and responsibilities among the members from each department and work group. The four general types of organization structure are functional, divisional, matrix, and project based. “Organizational structure is the skeleton of an organization” (Feigenbaum, 2013) and how these individuals relate to each another. Structure is a statement of the current affairs, not the ideas, intentions or improvement within an organization. When business leaders develop their initial plans for an organization, he or she looks at how to design a company and takes inventory of all the tasks, functions and goals of the business. The leader then develops groupings and ordering of job positions, departments, and human resources to effectively and efficiently perform these tasks. Technology, size, environment, strategy and goals affect an organizational structure and effects, whether they are categorized as mechanistic or organic.
Organizational culture is key in project management and in any merge process, as it will dictate the parameters in which an organization preforms. In the case of Honicker and its merge process, organizational culture has a tremendous importance, as it regulates the way in which this organizations execute in regular basis and how they interact with their clients and stakeholders. Schein (2010) stated: “culture is an abstraction”. It can be argued then that even when companies are working in the same market, the way in which they actually do business might (most probably) be different. In any merge process organizational culture plays a pivotal role as it might signify the success of complete failure of the process. Honicker appears to be a mature organization in project management; nevertheless, the other four companies, along with their PM immaturity, possess cultures that showed little commitment to Honicker’s goals (which after the merge were their goals as well), a different teamwork approach, and a selfish engagement to the “common” endeavor. One of the main reasons why this situation happened was because of the different cultures that characterized each organization. If these cultural issues continue, the merge is most likely to end up being a failure, as the acquired organizations will not be able to perform in accordance to Honicker’s standards and
Despite the success of his major initiatives, the current CEO, Clas Ake Hedstrom, is still looking for ways to further integrate and produce synergies amongst Sandvik’s business areas. Integration has already occurred or is being studied in human resources, marketing, and information technology. However, disagreement exists amongst managers over the amount and level at which integration is needed. Employees are also concerned about a return to centralized decision-making and loss of autonomy over their business area. Finally, it is still unclear how the cost, fit and significance of further integration may impact business area needs. The uncertainty surrounding these issues makes the whole idea of integration to create synergies questionable.
First of all, organizational structure determines the hierarchy, the levels of communication, and how job tasks are formally divided, grouped and coordinated within an organization (Langton, Robbins, & Judge, 2013). There are six key elements that managers need to address when they design their organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, centralization and decentralization, and formalization (Langton et al., 2013). The way in which an organizational structure is constructed and implemented can affect company productivity.
Organizational structure is one of the three key organizational assets that could contribute to the effectiveness of operations of any organization (Zheng, Yan and Mclean 2009) It is joined together by different flows of information, decision processes, hierarchy of authority, specialization and working materials. (Enz 2009; Mintzberg 1980) Furthermore, it also determines the operating workflow, control of information, decision-making in the organization and the line authority (Mintzberg 1980). The facets of the organizational structure, the relationships that exist within it, and how the business processes (Bititci et al 2011) are controlled, determine the managerial style that should be utilized in addition to the strategies the organization could implement. Going further, a company’s organizational design and the parts that constitute it are seen as a contributing factor to superior performance, which ultimately provide an organization with competitive advantage over its competitors. (Enz 2009; Zheng, Yang, and Mclean 2009)
Organizational structure can be defined as the “formal arrangement of jobs within an organization” (Robbins & Coulter, 2009, p. 185). Having a defined and unified structure helps employees work more efficiently. Jacques Kemp, former CEO of ING Insurance Asia/Pacific, realized this need early on in his role. The company had been performing well and recently acquired another insurance company to become “one of the largest life insurance companies in Asia-Pacific” (Schotter, 2006, p. 4). However, Kemp’s proactive personality led him to seek out ways to achieve more efficient coordination between the regional office and business units (Robbins & Coulter, 2009). Kemp noticed that “most business unit managers did not even know the current corporate standards” and he began searching for a way to manage the managers (Schotter, 2006, p. 5). ING Insurance Asia/Pacific’s organizational structure was mechanistic and fairly well structured, but for a company that had recently been involved in a major acquisition and was divided across 12 geographically dispersed markets there was a great need to tweak this structure to unify the company (Schotter, 2006). If I had been in Kemp’s position as CEO, I would have made modifications to the organizational chain of command, formalized business processes, and used technology to stimulate collaboration amongst the region to help this company overcome organizational design challenges.
Mergers and acquisitions immediately impact organizations with changes in ownership, in ideology, and eventually, in practice. There are multiple reasons, motives, economic forces and institutional factors that can, taken together or in isolation, influence corporate decisions to engage in mergers or acquisitions. The financial risks of merging with or acquiring an organization in another country and how those risks can be mitigated are important issues for corporations to conduct research on. This paper will examine the sensible and dubious reasons for mergers and acquisitions and the benefits and costs of the cash and stock transactions.
Organizational structure within an organization is a critical component of the day to day operations of a business. An organization benefits from organizational structure as a result of all it encompasses. It is used to define how tasks are divided, grouped and coordinated. Six elements should be addressed during the design of the organization’s structure: work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, spans of control, centralization and decentralization. These components are a direct reflection of the organization’s culture, power and politics.
Organizational structure is the way that an organization arranges people and jobs so that work can be performed and goals can be achieved. Good organizational design helps communications, productivity, and innovation. Many organization structures have been created based on organizational strategy, size, technology, and environment. Robbins and Judge (2011, p. 504) listed three common structures: simple, bureaucracy, and matrix. In this post the author will describe the matrix structure, and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.