Harley Davidson Case Study

Harley Davidson Case Study

1) During Teerlink’s tenure as Harley’s CFO was the organizational structure flat or tall? Centralized or decentralized?

After his appointment as CEO Richard Teerlink changed the Harley-Davidson Organizational structure from a conventional hierarchical structure to a circle based organizational structure (cross functional). This change came about in order to foster teamwork aomng the employees and do away with command and control leadership style of management. A circle organizational structure often compares with a flat structure. A flat organizational structure is most popular among smalller organizations. However as mentioned above it was Teerlink's need to move away from a hierarchical structure gave rise to the flat structure.

The structural change fundamentally changed how Harley-Davidson focused on their overall output. The company changed a very informal company to a formal structure which in turn made fewer people integral to the company and eliminated unnecessary titles. Thereby, In general, this circle system allows the structure of Harley-Davidson to become flatter, less hierarchical, more fluid and even virtual.

The organization after the 1993 changes became more centralized. Richard Teerlink understood the need to focus on the company's performance faced with overseas competition, thereby drastically reduced the number of titles inside the main structure of the company. In his own words, those on the highest up were the CEO, his secretary, CFO and the president of continuous improvement. Richard Teerlink took out all other previous title hold as they were just auditors and did not contribute to the performance of the company. In fact this centralized approach focuses on creating a demand team instead of individual string of title holders. This centralized system in turn will reduce the time that it takes to produce as it aims to kill approval time from different bosses.

There by, it is clear that Harley-Davidson...