Structural Change

Before going into How Randy Mott changed the Structure of HP, you might wonder what is Organizational Structure? Any one?

In the very first class of these course prof. Yu talked about organizing has one of the four management task. Organizing is structuring working relationships in a way that allows organizational members to work together to achieve organizational goals. The outcome of organizing is the creation of organizational structure, a formal system of task and job reporting relationships that determines how employees use resources to achieve organizational goals. The main purpose of organizational structure is to coordinate and motivate Organizational members so that they work together to achieve organizational goals.

One of the main problems of most organizations is uncertainty, hence managers try to design an organizational structure to fit the factors or circumstances that are affecting the company the most and causing the most uncertainty.

The structure of any organization (HP included) as four important determinants.

1. organizational environment

2. Strategy

3. Human Resources

4. Technology

Before going on, I would like the audience to take not that the main reason Randy Mott was brought in was as mentioned by Silva is to under go a 3yr makeover of HP’S internal tech system. Cutting in half HP’S annual spending on tech from $3.5b in 2005.

Organizational environment: This explains how the environment in which an organization operates will influence the organizational structure of the company. Rapid external environmental change brings about greater uncertainty, hence the need for a flexible structure and a decentralized hierarchy of authority.

On the other hand, stable external environment will have low level of uncertainty, hence the need for formal structure and centralized hierarchy of authority.

The conflict here as it relates to HP is that, yes cutting cost (IT operation cost) will bring about an increase in...