Assignment
Length: 1,200-1,800 Words.
In the Group Project, your group will study the following organizational design problem. Your task is to assess the problem and recommend an organizational design structure for the company described. You will also provide a recommendation for how the design will be sustained. To assist you in the analysis and recommendation, you will answer the questions below in your group discussions.
Problem
A 60-year-old engineer and his 45-year-old wife founded a software company, ABC Software Corporation, four years ago and are its sole owners and managers. Because of their use of a unique software design, the corporation quickly obtained a highly profitable market niche. The wife's charm and diplomacy helped build a customer loyalty that is seldom found in the industry, causing the company to grow to $80 plus million in sales and 300 employees. The company has one major multinational customer. ABC Software Corporation is located in the United States in a large metropolitan area. It grew organically, and its informal structure is a haphazard maze of interlocking personal relationships based on friendships and loyalty to the company's two owners. The employees are all very bright, self-taught, and technically savvy. Only one employee besides the engineer and the accountant has a college degree.
The two owners have hired your team to help them determine what kind of organizational design they need to put in place and what kind of training their employees need to function in the new design.
The first thing you will do is work with your team to discuss and answer the following four groups of questions.
Preliminary Questions for the Design Team
Answer the following preliminary questions with your team before proceeding further:
What do you need to know before beginning the redesign process?
How will you go about determining the needs of the individuals in the organization?
What are the critical needs that the new organization must address?
What do you see as the major problems facing your task as organizational designers?
What are the organizational problems that the redesign must address and solve?
How should your team organize for accomplishing this task?
How will your team work together to accomplish the redesign?
What have you learned by answering these questions?
Diagnostic Questions for the Design Team
Answer the following diagnostic questions with your team before proceeding further:
What do you believe is the general business environment that the ABC Corporation is operating in?
What is the company's task environment?
What do you believe the company's strategy is (if it has one), and what do you believe the strategy might be?
If you cannot determine or articulate a company strategy, then what do you believe the strategy should be?
Given what you know about the situation, what are the ABC Corporation's technology, structure, measurement, and human resource systems?
From what you know, what is the organizational culture likely to be?
What have you learned by answering these questions?
Design Questions for the Team
Answer the following design questions with your team before proceeding further:
What are the critical design principles that need to be addressed?
What are the advantages, disadvantages, and contingencies that any design being considered must address?
Which of the formal designs (e.g., functional, divisional, network, matrix, process, or customer-centric) would obviously be inappropriate and why?
How would the current informal design affect any design the team proposes?
What have you learned by answering these questions?
Redesign Questions for the Team
Answer the following redesign questions with your team before proceeding further:
What is the most appropriate design?
Why did you select this as the most appropriate design?
What are the advantages, disadvantages, and contingencies of the redesign selected?
What organizational problems or issues will the design supposedly solve?
What unintended consequences might occur because of the new design?