Submitted by: Submitted by giuliettap91
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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 10/07/2013 03:02 AM
Campbell & Gould (2002): Do you have a well-designed organization?; Harvard Business Review
Most executives can sense when their organizations are not working well, but few know how to correct the situation. A comprehensive redesign is just too intimidating. 9 tests of organization design to evaluate existing structure or create a new one
1-4: Fit tests; 5-9: good design tests, to strike a balance between empowerment and control
1) The right fit test. Does your design direct sufficient management attention to your sources of competitive advantage in each market?
Rule of thumb: if a single unit is dedicated to a single market segment or sources/initiatives of advantage, it is receiving sufficient attention
2) The parenting advantage test. Does your design help the corporate parent add value to the organization?
Understand which are the corporate-level activities that provide real value to the overall company and see if design hinders it.
Parents create value through:
o Select propositions: acquire units/ people for less
o Build proposition: expand size and scope
o Stretch proposition: set targets and benchmarks
o Link propositions: help units work together
o Leverage propositions: exploit central resources (brand, relationships, skill, patent)
3) The people test. Does your design reflect the strengths, weaknesses, and motivations of your people?
Look at key players (top management team) and look if there are appropriate responsibility and reporting relationships and if in the company there are career paths and development initiatives needed to create and retain new talent; look at the loser from redesign.
4) The feasibility test. Have you taken account of all the constraints that may impede your implementation of your design?
a. Government regulations
b. Consider carefully the interest of other stakeholders.
c. Company’s information system could prevent certain organizational changes.
d. Corporate cultures can limit the feasibility of design...