BusinessPundit has a thought provoking post entitled "Management By Tweaking". Part of the post says:
... That leads me to wonder, why are we so concerned with massive change if
it might not be needed? When things aren't going right, companies often
have reorganizations, layoffs, etc., and I'm not sure that is always
necessary ...
My
personal experiences with getting organizational design training on the
job has generally been bad. Although I am all for learning on the job,
I have found that few companies can provide good foundational training
in this area.
Unfortunately, I also suspect that organizational design theory may
be a weak point for some business schools. At the University of
Chicago, I took an elective course entitled something like the
"Strategy and Structure of Organizations" (an invaluable course for
me), but it was not a course chosen by most students who instead wanted
pure strategy courses that might help them with the strategy consulting
jobs at firms like BCG, McKinsey, and Bain.
Some of the most useful principles I've encountered in organizational design include:
- Organizational structure stems from strategy
- Functional organizations may be used to share resources across a variety of areas
- Business unit organizations may be used to define self-sufficient units / money machines
- Differences associated with financial control organizations versus
strategic control organizations should be deliberately implemented.
Do you have any favorites?
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