Harley Davidson Case Study

Harley Davidson Case Study

1. During Teerlink's tenure as Harley's Chief Financial Officer, was the organization structure flat or tall? Centralized or decentralized?

Explain your answers. 

Tall Organizational Structure

Large, complex organizations often require a taller hierarchy. In its simplest form, a tall structure results in one long chain of command similar to the military. As an organization grows, the number of management levels increases and the structure grows taller. In a tall structure, managers form many ranks and each has a small area of control. Although tall structures have more management levels than flat structures, there is no definitive number that draws a line between the two.

Flat Organizational Structure

Flat structures have fewer management levels, with each level controlling a broad area or group. Flat organizations focus on empowering employees rather than adhering to the chain of command. By encouraging this, flat structures attempt to tap into employees’ creative talents and to solve problems by collaboration.

* During Teerlink's time period as the chief financial officer (for almost 6 years), from 1983 till 1989 the organizational structure at Harley Davidson was a flat functional system. This is due to the reason that Harley Davidson benchmarked the Japanese market since they were financially downgraded and had implemented the productivity triad where the line workers were encouraged to contribute to the decision making process because they believed in the fact that these workers knew better than management what worked and what did not.

But also according to the case study, the organizational structure was arranged in such a way where the chain of command went up level by level to the top depending on the severity of the problem which consumed quite a lot of time. This can clearly be seen when Teerlink mentions after becoming the CEO “The senior staff consists of me, my secretary, the CFO and our vice...